Nice To Be With You

Monday morning and back to the office with me today; huzzah? It was a nice, lovely weekend around the Lost Apartment, one in which I felt really good about my writing life and resettling into what is the new normal for my life these days. I’ve kind of gotten off the treadmill of endless deadlines and volunteering, and all this lovely extra free time has been spoiling me a bit, which is why I’ve not really been getting anywhere with my writing lately; I’m not used to the luxury of time, and now instead of scheduling my days to within an inch of their lives…I don’t have to do that anymore, and it’s nice. I need to adapt to reading every evening again, and doing some writing before calling it a day and repairing to my easy chair.

I actually overslept this morning. I set my alarm, but forgot completely that the power had been off, taking my alarm setting back to 12:00. Fortunately, Sparky was hungry, and he is relentless when he’s hungry (of course, he has no ability to feed himself, so ignoring him to sleep a little longer is actually kind of mean), and I looked at the clock and was like oh shit that was a close one. So he saved the day, kind of, which is always appreciated. As I sit here swilling coffee, I still have time to get to work on time this morning, despite having to assemble the carrot cheesecake and put the frosting on (I also need to make the frosting; I’m just doing homemade whipped cream–you can never go wrong with whipped cream, ever), and then load it into the cake carrier and hope I don’t have to suddenly slam on the brakes in the car. It’s generally not a great omen to start your work week by oversleeping, but I feel fine and I’ll get to work on time. The morning feels a bit off, but it’ll straighten itself out before long, I am sure. But I made the cake yesterday and pretty much have the mess already cleaned up, so there’s not too much to do once I get home from the gym today. I am thinking about making meatballs when I do, but I don’t know how much trouble I want to go to after the gym (yes, I am stopping at the gym on my way home from work; I even brought clothes to change into), and then it’s home to do some more writing.

I pretty much have decided that the next thing I am going to work on is Never Kiss a Stranger, and I am going to take it from novella to novel. It simply doesn’t work as a novella; one of those “way too much story to condense here” but we’ll see how it goes. I am not limiting myself on how long it’s going to be, and I am also not going to force it to be a novel, either. If there’s only enough story for forty thousand words, I’ll write another and combine them into one book. I also think the Chanse story I was going to write as a novella might actually be a novel, too. I also have another Chanse novel idea that I am going to explore, too. I am also not limiting myself to the Murder in the titles anymore, either.

The “christian” author who came for Dolly last week is really sorry she made everyone mad by claiming Dolly is not a good person because she doesn’t call out sin. Ericka Andersen isn’t sorry for any of her foul, unchristian values and beliefs; she’s just sorry she used Dolly as her example–which is hilarious; her entire piece is predicated on Dolly and her goodness; there’s really no one else she could have used. The backlash is everything she deserves and more; The Federalist also needs to apologize to everyone for running that disgusting hit piece, and whatever editor okayed it is too stupid to work as an editor at any time. Imagine signing off on a piece attacking Dolly Parton for not being Christian enough! Everybody loves Dolly; her icon status is only limited because we haven’t reached the stars yet with the good news of Dolly. Ericka Andersen–an admitted alcoholic who only got sober thanks to God (which begs the question, didn’t God make her an alcoholic? She clearly didn’t learn the lesson She intended Ms. Andersen to learn from her struggle with alcohol)–is the absolute worst kind of Christian, and I hope this follows her for the rest of her life.

Christ, not even Newsmax or OANN would have signed off on that piece. Jesus.

I did have a lovely weekend. It was extremely hot all weekend, so I spent most of the weekend indoors as much as I possibly could. Going to make groceries yesterday was absolutely miserable. I also need to get a window screen thing for my car; it gets so hot inside that it’s miserable getting inside after work, or any time during the summer. The car was so hot yesterday that when I closed the hatch after unloading the groceries I touched the metal and pulled my hand back, almost certain it had been scalded. It was not, but I used the handle after that–and even it was hot to the touch. Yay, and it’s not really summer yet!

We did watch more of The Acolyte last night, and followed that up with Easy A, the movie where I originally fell for Emma Stone, and the movie is very interesting, particularly from a “teen movie” perspective. It owes some to The Scarlet Letter, of course, and maybe what I should do at some point is a “teen movie” blog; how it evolved from the beach movies and Disney family comedies (think Kurt Russell as a teenager) to the teen sex comedies and John Hughes and so forth. But Easy A could have never been filmed back in the 60s and 70s, and probably not even in the 80s or 90s–because female-centered sex comedies are rare, and her character would have been seen as a “bad influence” on teen girls of the time. But the movie also parodies teen rom-coms, too, which elevates it over your average teen movie.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, everyone, and I’ll probably be back later.

Proud

What have you done today, to make you feel proud?

That M People song was released in the mid-1990’s, and has become kind of a queer anthem in the time since. It was used in the original American adaptation of Queer as Folk, and it gets played a lot during Pride Month. I loved the M People; I have one of their CD’s and they were prominent on my dance soundtrack of 1994-1996 (“Sight for Sore Eyes” is still a great song I have on Spotify playlists today), which is also a time I am writing about (sidebar: maybe “Never Kiss a Stranger” is a novel not a novella), so it stays fresh in my head.

Pride is a direct response to shame–because so many of us were forced to live in shame about who we are and just existing for so fucking long, we now choose to come out and be proud rather than ashamed of who and what we are, despite the bigots who continue to try to legalize oppression of us while all we really want is to be left alone to live our lives in peace. I will never be made to feel ashamed of myself for who I am any more. And no, I’m not sorry that my existence bothers some people because you know what? Their existence bothers me-but the primary difference is I am not trying to force them to stop existing or even to like queer people.

Pride is of course one of the seven deadly sins for Christians—Proverbs 16-18: Pride goeth before destruction, And a haughty spirit before a fall. Better it is to be of a lowly spirit with the poor, than to divide the spoil with the proud.

So, the use of the way “pride” for our month of celebration inevitably brings out the faux-christians, screaming about sin and…but as I said, our pride is the opposite of shame, and we are reclaiming ourselves and refusing to be shamed for who we are anymore. And yes, the shaming always comes from christians cishets (I prefer the French pronunciation shah-SHAY)  —you know, the ones who are supposed to love without question? And ultimately, my life and my sins are between me and God—and none of your fucking business.

But this post is for those of you who stubbornly refuse to get it: my sexuality doesn’t impact you AT ALL.

Why do they need a whole month? Veterans only get a day is one of my absolute favorites. First, the use of “they”, while politer and not quite as insulting, is really no different from the ever-popular bigoted “you people”; so I guess props are in order for being slightly more polite (although I suppose if they knew it was politer they’d use you people, or to be grammatically correct, those people)? As for veterans only getting a day while we get a month, well, I don’t seem to recall legislation being passed on any level of government legalizing discrimination against veterans. (Although the way our government treats its veterans is disgraceful–and as always, the war hawks who love to send young men and women to risk their lives, mental health, and limbs for a foreign policy predicated on ensuring corporations make as much money as humanly possible will always vote to cut or eliminate veterans’ benefits while waving Support the troops! banners and flags–because they are nothing if not craven, vile, and completely soulless.) The combined efforts of government and medical science were applied for years to criminalize and stamp out the existence of queer people. Homosexuality was still considered a mental illness (!!!!) until I was twelve years old. How precisely does one grow up well-balanced mentally and emotionally when you are repeatedly told that what you are is actually insane? (And coming from a family where mental health issues are genetic…and knowing that I had my own mental health issues already wasn’t helpful; I thought for a long time the two were connected.)

And for the record, May is Military Appreciation Month, and the fact they don’t know this makes a mockery of their religion, their intelligences, and their feigned concern for the military.

If the cishets had to put up with, for one day–a mere twenty-four hours–what queer people do every day, they’d become homicidal.

And telling people they cannot legally discriminate against a fellow American citizen is not forcing them to accept and/or like queer people; it’s merely telling them they must treat queer people with the same respect they’d treat anyone (oh, the horror). The entire point of this country, from its beginning (although it has often failed to live up to that ideal) is that every citizen is equal in the eyes of the law–regardless of anything that might make them slightly different, especially when the difference is so slight as to not be noticeable. I don’t know why this is so hard for people, I really don’t. (And yes the convictions of Greg Stillson last week affirmed this guiding principle for the nation and his worshippers choosing to not accept that is more example of their utter contempt for this country, period. Some ‘patriots’.)

And if you don’t want to be compared to Nazis, then stop coming for marginalized groups and scapegoating them. Your dishonesty is not only un-Christian, but inhuman. It is not for other humans to judge sin; that is, per your own Holy Book and what you theoretically believe, reserved for a God who is very jealous about what is His and what is not. I believe in Christianity as a game-plan or road map to being a good person and doing good things in my life; I do not believe in talking snakes or trumpets so loud they can make walls collapse or that having heatstroke on the road to Damascus was actually divine intervention. I do not believe Paul had visions of Jesus, so anything written by him in the New Testament is suspect and not gospel.

I am also willing to account for that, if need be, if there ever actually is a Judgment Day. But what I believe is between me and God. To paraphrase Cher, I account to three people: myself, Paul, and God.

What I do know is that if there is a God and such a thing as a heaven, going to church three times a week while acting like a hateful piece of trash the rest of the week ain’t getting your ass into your heaven. You’re literally doing the bare fucking minimum, and those three hours or so you’re spending in church are just a waste of your time because you aren’t learning anything or striving to be better.

And any heaven that welcomes people like Phyllis Schlafly, Anita Bryant, Maggie Gallagher et al is not my idea of heaven; spending eternity with those people would be Hell.

This year, Pride seems all the more important–certainly more than it has in years. I haven’t been to Pride in a very long time–I’ve been to a lot of Prides over the years–and probably won’t attend this year either; it’s too hot for one, and the older I get the less I like being hot, sweating, and tired in crowds.

I hate to break it to the homophobic trash, but nothing you say is original or something we haven’t heard a gazillion times before. I’ve said it before and will say it again: fuck all the way off. Miss me with your concerns about “the children” when you aren’t concerned, for example, about the need to teach kindergartners what to do if there’s an active shooter in their school. Miss me with your concerns about “the children” when the states passing the worst anti-queer laws are the same ones where child beauty pageants are the most popular. Where is the outrage about sexualizing children in that instance, Moms for Liberty? Yes, painting a six-year-old’s face like she’s a streetwalker and dressing her provocatively for a chance at a sash and a trophy is absolutely one-hundred-percent okay with you? These are also the same states that allow underage marriage and have almost complete abortion bans.

Moms for Liberty is just another incarnation of the hate group One Million Moms (who never ever had more than fifty thousand members); which is why I always say queers can never completely trust a lot of straight white women. (Let’s never forget that straight white women gave us President Donald Trump. Ever. This should be their everlasting shame.)

It’s also going to be interesting to see what companies and corporations will be making a play for queer dollars during Pride Month, while donating money to anti-queer politicians and stay silent when all these horrendous laws are being passed. Target? Anheuser Busch? Miss me with the rainbows and pride statements this year. You have a chance to stand up when it mattered and instead you turned into pathetic sniveling cowards waving a white flag–proving that your so-called “commitment” to equality and my community was nothing more than a disgusting, shameless attempt to attract queer dollars and the money of our allies. Shame on you both. I don’t drink beer, but when I did I drank a lot of Bud Light in gay bars because of their support of the queer community. But when they had an opportunity to take a principled stand for equality and against bigotry, they crumbled like a finely aged feta. Same with Target, which was even sadder because they had been so supportive. But I will never step inside another Target and I will never order from their website. My Target credit card will get paid off as quickly as possible so they make as little money from me in the future as possible, and I have already cut it up because I will never support that shitty, backstabbing, cowardly piece of shit company again.

I’ve always kind of had an issue with the corporatization of Pride over the years. Yes, I get it; they are usually non-profit organizations who need to raise money to pay expenses and put the show on. You need donors for that–as every nonprofit does–and so the swing to wooing businesses and multi-billion dollar corporations began…as well as the complaints about the merchandizing of Pride. But Pride was, and always has been, an event to celebrate every color in our rainbow and to show the world that we’re here and we aren’t going anywhere; we are not ashamed nor will we be shamed. We aren’t going back into the closet for anyone. Period.

It’s always amused me to listen to people complain about Pride, with the leathermen and the kink fetishists and the drag queens. “I don’t want my kids to see that!” Then keep your fucking kids at home. Any Pride that turns it back on any part of the community is notPride. I’m tired of being penalized because other people have had children—your children are NOT my responsibility.

I already pay taxes to educate them.

I also hate the shaming of kink; the attempt to remove drag queens and the leathermen and so forth from Pride celebrations because that makes the straights uncomfortable frankly disgusts me. Just because some queers have issues with kink—well, that’s their problem, and if anything, we all should be grateful to them. The leathermen and drag queens were out and proud when a lot of their current critics cowered in their closets, while the kinksters and queens were out fighting for the rights of the cowards, creating a community and a world in which they were free to come out…only to want to drive the people responsible for that freedom and community out of Pride. “I want to bring my kids to Pride but I don’t want them to see that.”

What the fuck, people? Don’t you understand that the only reason you can be queer in public with your kids is because of the very people you don’t want your children to see? It’s bad enough the straight use “the children” to try to take away our rights; it’s even worse when people within our community try the same tactics. I don’t know, maybe reexamine your own internalized homophobia rather than trying to reshape the community?

The original Prides were protests, and the original parades were protest marches. Seeing how Pride has, over the years, sold its soul and meaning to corporate sponsors saddens me. Those sponsors are mostly interested in queer dollars only (see: Target and Budweiser) and not in actually supporting the community and our rights (see: Target and Budweiser); you can tell by how quickly they back down when the Christofascists have a problem with their support of our community (see: Target and Budweiser).

That shallow support is unwelcomed and unwanted and very transparent.

Learn your history, queers. It wasn’t that long ago—during my own lifetime—that our sexuality stopped being considered mental illness. We’ve come pretty far in those fifty years, but we have a long way to go and the fight is not over. So, come out to Pride, and celebrate our hard-won freedoms. Be visible; because that visibility might help someone else come out and stop feeling shame. Create and live and love and vote and above all else, maintain queer joy in your life.

Because all of those things? Well, they’re also victories.

A Cowboy’s Work is Never Done

Sunday morning, after a gloomy rainy day (marvelous thunder and downpours off and on all day) where I pretty much just stayed indoors. I walked over to get the dry cleaning in the morning, and by the time I got back it was starting to sprinkle, and shortly after I came inside the floodgates opened. I curled up in my chair and read The Rival Queens for a while, then Paul got up and we finished watching Bodkin, which I enjoyed but didn’t care for the ending too much, after which we watched LSU lose to North Carolina (fourth ranked; LSU is number 24 and was only ranked after the SEC tournament, so no disgrace there, and they play to stay in the regional again today, against Wofford again. After the game we started Anthracite, a new French show on Netflix that is kind of off-kilter and very interesting. I did some writing in my journal, and I did do some chores around the house so it wasn’t a wash of a day, and really, who cares if it was? I really need to stop being so down on myself and recognize that sometimes I need downtime just like everyone else. I do want to do some things today, though–the whole day can’t be downtime, for sure. I also slept really well last night, for ten hours, which is insane. I am sleeping a lot lately and getting very good sleep, which has been lovely.

I have decided to do the occasional Pride blog post, about “things that made me realize I was gay” growing up, or things that I appreciated that probably were indicative of my sexual orientation from a very early age. Revisiting that dark closeted teenage space for this book hasn’t been terrific, but I think it will also help me deal with it, frankly. The 1970s are also an interesting time to go back to, as well, trying to dredge up memories that are long lost in the dark dusty recesses of my brain. I started a couple of said pride posts yesterday–one about The Other and one about Starsky and Hutch (which was really the first modern himbo show; more on that later)–and am thinking about other ones. My favorite gay anthems? I don’t know. But this year it seems very important to celebrate Pride–and shove it down the throats of the MAGA traitors and their evangelical cosplay Christian allies (looking at you, Mike the Self-righteous Johnson). After all, I can’t go anywhere without having a fucking cross shoved in my face.

Hey “christians”–more teaching by example and less demonstration of how Christian you are not, what do you think? Maybe then people will stop deserting your houses of worship, because they see the lies, self-righteousness, and utter hypocrisy that masquerades as faith in your befouled churches of blasphemy and apostasy.

It looks sunny outside this morning, so I think perhaps the rains of the last three days have now passed. That’s good, because I do want to go to the gym today to continue my rehabbing of my left arm. I am going to try this morning to get this and at least one other of the Pride posts done today; some writing and some chores, and when that’s all wrapped up I’ll head over to the gym for some rehab, come home and get cleaned up, and then read some more. I think I may stay away from LSU’s games today; if they beat Wofford again they face North Carolina again at six pm, for two games in one day, which is rough–and much as I love my Tigers, I can’t spend the day watching baseball, either.

And I am excited about writing again. It’s a lovely feeling. I’m not sure entirely what all I want to accomplish at this point other than trying to get the work done, but I definitely can get it all done if I keep my nose to the grindstone and keep working. I’m on my own schedule, so the only person being hurt if I take a day or so off from writing is me.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably see you again later today.

Lonely Street

It’s been interesting watching the right backpedal as hard as they are currently doing in order to convince voters that they aren’t that kind of Pro-Lifer, when we know damned well exactly what they will do about abortion if given the chance. The way the right managed to convince everyone in the decades after Roe was decided that pro-choice was actually an unpopular position, and that the American people wanted either an outright ban or severe limitations. It has always infuriated me because I knew it wasn’t true; most Americans would never say it out loud–the true success of the right-wing noise machine right there; be loud and scream a lot and you’ll convince people (particularly the media, which is not only disgusting, but was also decades of journalistic malpractice visited upon the public, who trusted them) that you are a majority position. (NARRATOR VOICE: If you have to outscream and outshout people about a position, your position is probably not popular). South Dakota had a ballot initiative three times to ban abortion outright in order to let the voters decide. These initiatives weren’t covered much by the media, and you can be forgiven for not knowing this happened…but in 2004 when Turdblossom and W made gay marriage a scare tactic to drive conservative voters, that ballot initiative was trounced in South Dakota soundly. It was once again trounced in 2006, but the big story that year was Republicans losing Congress and our first female speaker. I kept pointing this out to people, and have long said that Democratic candidates and politicians should work to put abortion on every ballot so the people could decide, instead of these lunatics that keep getting put in state legislatures and governor’s mansions.

And pro-life is a very toxic and unpopular political position, as politicians and judges in Virginia, Kansas, Alabama, and other red states have since discovered. NONE of their policies are popular and liked by the general population; and I love that the Democrats are finally fighting as hard and as dirty as the Lying Evangelicals. They need to be exposed as traitors, charlatans, and cosplay Christians. This latest ruling in Arizona? The justices need to be taken out and horsewhipped if they like 1860 laws so fucking much.

And don’t think they won’t come for birth control and divorce. You can never believe they are ever finished with their grasp for power and control–as long as they are the ones in control. If they aren’t. they’ll scream about how their “freedoms” are being oppressed.

They. Will. Never. Stop.

Yesterday was a wild day here in New Orleans. I knew we were going to have terrible weather, and it was pretty bad. We were under a tornado watch until one or two, and of course we were having flooding rain all day, and the streets were flooded all over the city (on the other hand, it gave me the opening line for the next Scotty: It was August and the streets were flooding.). We didn’t have a lot of clients come in for testing (obviously); when I got to work, I got out of my car just as the rain started, and I was pretty much soaked through by the time I got into the building (my socks were damp all day, which was super-annoying). But I got caught up on my work stuff, our site visit was cancelled but I am glad I got everything caught up–and I am hoping now to be able to stay on top of everything instead of being lazy and letting things slide. I was very tired when I got home–the city had pretty much shut down, to the point that I could actually take the highway home at 4:30, and got home in five minutes–and managed to finish a load of laundry and do some dishes. We watched the Hell Camp documentary about how the kids sent there were tortured and abused, some being seriously injured and some even died, and parents are still sending their kids to these places! We then watched a German documentary series about a gay serial killer in Berlin (a German serial killer? Who’d have thunk it?), which was interesting and creepy and more than a little scary (I’ve always held that gay men are the perfect victims for serial killers, because they are used to going home with strangers or bringing one home), but it was fun to watch while wrapped in a blanket and listening to the rain. Not quite the enormous pleasure it is to read in that situation (I am really looking forward to getting back to The Cypress House this weekend.)

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. May you have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I will probably be back here possibly later.

Saying Hello, Saying I Love You, Saying Goodbye

Tuesday and tomorrow I depart for San Diego. I am trying very hard not to get anxious about everything, but I am starting to feel it a bit. I have to decide what to pack, and I need to see what the weather is going to be like. I discovered a conflict in my schedule that I have to resolve in a way I don’t want, and there’s groceries to make and mail and prescriptions to pick up and laundry and dishes to finish and yes, I am going to be hopping all day today getting ready and/or thinking about the trip and making plans. I also have a lot of work to do in the office before I leave, because the month changes while I am gone so the things I always do over the month change have to be done–or at least I can get it as ready as I can. I think I answered all the emails I needed to get answered, and I think I can breathe a bit of a sigh of relief.

I ran errands last night on the way home circling a thunderstorm, and then once I was finished I drove directly into its beating heart as it gave us a little respite from the horrific, seemingly endless heat. The big cold drops of rain started splatting down from above like liquid shrapnel. I managed to get inside the house before it really started coming down, and there was thunder and lightning, too. A marvelous New Orleans summer tropical storm, like we haven’t had hardly any of this entire blighted summer of hellish heat. The kind where so much water comes down the streets fill, swirling around catch basins and rising closer to the bottoms of cars, while the potholes and low=lying cracks and buckles in roads and sidewalks immediately fill with clear water. The temperature drops precipitously, given tired air conditioning systems the opportunity to catch up and finally take a well-deserved break after weeks of going at full blast–and sometimes not being able to keep up. The kind where condensation finally appears on your windows for the first time this summer, or so it seems. And even though you know all that water means it’ll be muggy as a rain forest again tomorrow as it evaporates into the heated air once more, you can at least breathe for a moment and enjoy the blessed break from what has become an unfortunate norm this summer.

But in checking my email, I see that today’s severe weather alert is merely coastal flooding, and there’s no extreme heat warning for the day, which is actually kind of nice. Today will be a break, and tomorrow I leave for the coast. My car will be roasting, of course, in the long-term off-airport parking lot, but there are worse things. I’m really looking forward to the trip, pushing down all of my anxiety triggers around traveling, and I will get home Sunday night, have Monday off, and then return to the office on Tuesday. I’m hoping there won’t be an adjustment to time zones involved on this trip, but I am sure it will be. If I wake up at my usual time, it will be four in the morning on the coast. But the day of traveling home will wear me out, plus I’ll be exhausted from being “on” panels and socializing. I just have to get over my intense FOMO and repair to my room to rest and relax periodically; I don’t need to be non-stop on the go, etc. and need to remember I’m an introvert who primarily is used to dealing with people quietly, one on one, and not in group environments. There will be lots of overstimulation.

But I can’t wait to see my queer crime writer friends again! Woo-hoo! They are always a good time.

I was tired when I got home last night from errands and so forth, and the thunderstorm and the damp chill in the air didn’t help matters very much. Paul stayed upstairs watching the US Open–so I have no need to fear Paul’s boredom while I am gone, as he’ll have the tennis to watch. We’re also hoping to get a cat at last once I get back, although my oral surgery is scheduled for that Friday; depending on how I feel, we could possibly get one on Saturday if I don’t still need painkillers and thus have a clear enough mind to drive, which would be super-great. All of my fall plans are currently on hold until I find out when my arm surgery is going to be. I hate that, because I feel like I am wasting time, which brings the anxiety out again. It’s so much fun being me, Constant Reader, you have literally no idea. But therein lies the rub; life really always is a endless string of “hurry up and wait” or “can’t make any plans until I find this out.” The joys of being older.

I think for now at least there’s nothing potentially going to develop that will threaten Louisiana tropically while I am gone–traveling during hurricane season means one more thing to check off the list. I am sorry and worried about those in the path of this Idalia monster that has Florida strictly in its sights. (If I were an evangelical piece of shit, I’d say something like “God is clearly not pleased with deSantis”–but I happily leave that kind of blame-shame to the “christian” cos-players. Funny how it’s usually red states at risk but they don’t see that as God’s punishment, but let something happen to a blue state–or New Orleans–and they start thumping their Bibles again instead of reading them. I’m so glad I’m not an evangelical piece of shit cosplay christian.)

I was hoping to get some writing done last night, but I wound up not doing a whole hell of a lot of anything. I watched some history videos on Youtube, started to watch the latest episode of Foundation–which, truth be told, is extremely well done but difficult to follow because it doesn’t always hold my interest, but I am definitely here for hot Lee Pace–but gave up as the opening credits rolled and went back to Youtube. I did end up watching something but couldn’t tell you what it was to save my life this morning, so clearly it made no impact on me. I did greatly enjoy the recent episode of My Adventures with Superman, which is quickly becoming one of my all-time favorite depictions of Superman and his cast of characters, but I think tonight–after cleaning the downstairs, packing, and cleaning out the refrigerator–I am going to read some more of Kelly Ford’s marvelous The Hunt, which I am enjoying; I do not want anyone to get the idea that I am not enjoying the book–it’s just that the heat and my mind being sort of fried has made it really hard for me to focus on reading something longform. I also finished reading the proofs for Mississippi River Mischief, which I’ll be bring with me to try to get some progress made on the proofing; if I manage to do that and nothing else while in San Diego I will be very pleased.

And on that note I think I will head into the spice mines for the day. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and tomorrow I will be writing to you before I leave for the coast. Huzzah!