Well, I didn’t get my blatant self-promotion done yesterday, so I will have to work extra hard today to make sure it does get done; cannot go two days without any, after all. I do feel tired this morning, and I am going into the office tomorrow. I have appointments for the surgery all morning on Monday, so I am going to take the day off–which means staying at the office after the department meeting to get all the things done for the next week that I would ordinarily do on Monday. I keep hoping the dentist will call about my dentures; it would be so awesome if I could get them on Friday, but surely they will come in by next week. I know things have slowed down with deliveries to New Orleans thanks to the visibility issues we’re having down here in the mornings. There’s a swamp fire in the East (which is why the whole city smells like burning rubber), and that mixes in with the heavy fog and visibility is relatively non-existent. Yesterday morning every bridge into New Orleans was closed except for the causeway, and there were some bad accidents before the bridges were closed. I-55 still hasn’t recovered from that insane massive pile-up in the same conditions last week, and I think it still closed southbound. As you cannot get into New Orleans from anywhere else in the state (other than Metairie and Kenner) without having to cross a bridge, you can see how closing all the bridges1 could cause delays in deliveries to the city–which is also probably why the grocery stores all look so picked over all the time.
I did manage to do some chores last night when I got home–finished a load of laundry and started another; emptied the dishwasher and reloaded it to run again, with another load waiting to go–and I made groceries on Carrollton before heading uptown to get the mail. My new copy of Chris Wiltz’ The Last Madam2 arrived yesterday, along with shaving accoutrement that I’d ordered, which was lovely. I think I am probably going to come straight home from work today. I’ve picked up the mail every day this week so far, it can wait again until Saturday when I take books to donate to the library sale. I really need to get back to work on the book and some of the other writing I am trying to get done before the surgery knocks me out for a while. I don’t know how much writing I am going to be able to do during the three-week post-operative hard cast to keep the arm immobile period, but in a worst case scenario, I should be able to sit in my easy chair and read and watch movies, right?
I watched a documentary last night on Youtube about how Egypt survived the Bronze Age Collapse (which is a period which really interests me–all the civilizations crumbled around the same time but we don’t really know why), and I also watched another episode of Moonlighting, and it just so happened that my all-time favorite episode was on deck, “Twas the Episode Before Christmas”–which also is one of my favorite series Christmas episodes of all time. This was the episode where the show fully committed to breaking the fourth wall regularly (they’d flirted with it before, with the occasional joke about the run time of the show or the viewers), but this is the episode where Miss DiPesto finds a baby in her apartment right before Christmas, and from thus the mystery was sprung. I also absolutely loved that the three FBI agents looking for the baby were all named King (hence the Three Kings looking for the baby at Christmas), and other little clever touches like that. It’s also an incredibly well-written episode, anchored by a truly beautiful and sensitive performance by Allyce Beasley as Miss DiPesto–who was robbed of an Emmy for this episode. This also, along with getting the new Donna Andrews Christmas mystery (Let It Crow! Let It Crow! Let It Crow!) and David Valdes’ new y/a romance Finding My Elf, had me thinking about Christmas again, and my weird bipolar feelings about the holiday, and also had me thinking about how little I’ve written about Christmas in my vast array of work; as far as I can remember there’s one short story (“The Snow Globe”) and one book (Royal Street Reveillon), but that’s really it. I’ve written other Christmas short stories, but have never shown them to anyone or wrote additional drafts, because they were gushingly sentimental, and I despise cheap sentiment. (Oh yes, years ago I edited an anthology of gay Christmas stories, Upon a Midnight Clear, which has been out of print for at least fifteen years, if not more.) I am going to try to read more Christmas-set books this year during the holiday season, much as I read horror the entire month of Halloween.
I’m also thinking I should write more about Christmas, and another Christmas book isn’t a bad idea, either.
I just wish I could get my mind to focus on something, you know? But I suspect that has to do with the looming surgery. This weekend, LSU plays Florida on Saturday night, and I am not sure I’ll watch much else–I’ll have the games on in the background but fully intend to get shit done around the house, and read, and write. I am not going to be able to do much around the house for at least three weeks, which has me a little concerned about the laundry–but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. One nice thing about football season is that once LSU is out of contention for anything, I don’t really have to pay much attention to anything else other than them for the rest of the season. I do love football, but not enough at this point to justify wasting an entire day watching games.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I am going to try to get some more blatant self-promotion out today, too.
Queer and Loathing in America 