Work-at-home Friday! I did wake up early this morning–Sparky only let me sleep for another fifteen minutes before getting aggressive about his breakfast. Which was fine, I needed to get up, and somehow not being jolted out of sleep by the alarm has the psychological effect of well I’m up and feel rested. I was again fatigued when I got home last night, which led to me sitting in my chair with my kitty asleep in my lap like a precious baby. I got caught up on the news (update: the country is still ablaze), and then settled in for the first two episodes of Spike Lee’s new Netflix documentary, Katrina: Come Hell and High Water, which is very well done. The two new documentaries on the catastrophe are very well done. It’s depressing and painful to watch them, and remember…but watching has reminded me again of how incompetent the sitting government was, not just here but especially in Washington. (And all the time passed? Hasn’t lessened my eternal hatred for Brownie and Chertoff and others of their ilk–FAUX NEWS–who did everything they could to try to cover for Bush’s great federal failure, demonize New Orleanians, and spread vicious lies that impacted the rescue timetables, may they all burn forever in hell with lighter fluid soaked into their skin.) I wound up going to bed early last night, which probably dramatically helped with getting up so early this morning. Social media and the news today will–as always on the anniversary–be deluged with remembrances and memorials, which are appreciated, but sometimes feels like gritty salt being rubbed into the wounds.
I have a meeting this morning and data entry to do around my errands. I am getting a flu shot today (and seeing about new COVID boosters; I am hoping my age and compromised immune system will qualify me since we now live in Stupid World). I have to return a library book this morning, and I also have to pick up a prescription. I think I’ll have groceries delivered this afternoon as well. We don’t really need very much, though, so maybe I’ll just actually drop into a store on the way home. Or tomorrow; it looks like we’re going to have thunderstorms this afternoon…which will be excellent reading weather, and since I need to finish my reread of Scotty X, that is absolutely perfect. I also have lots of chores to do since I didn’t do fuck-all when I got home last night. We’re also supposed to get some rain this morning, too. So, once I finish this and post it, I’ll work on my chores some and get started on data entry work. I also have some emails to answer, and plenty of emails to send as well.
Southern Decadence, the big gay party weekend, started yesterday but attendance will continue climbing to peak attendance throughout today and into tonight. The weather is lovely for them, rain aside, but they won’t care about the rain anyway. It’s weird that Decadence Friday is also the Katrina anniversary–at the time I’m writing this twenty years ago we were getting up in that miserable hotel outside of Birmingham that checked us in at 2 a.m. but told us we had to be out by ten or pay for another day (their corporate office got a nasty letter from me and I’ve never stayed in one of their hotels again unless a mystery conference was using them, and even then it’s very reluctant and I have to think about it for a long time), and it looked like the levees had held…but there was no one reporting from the lower 9th ward. We didn’t know the levees breached (thanks again, Army Corps of Engineers) until we got to Paul’s mom’s in rural Illinois late that night. Southern Decadence was supposed to be the weekend after Katrina.
I’m not even tempted to even consider going down there this weekend. My, how things have changed.
Crime Ink: Iconic is wracking up kudos in reviews, which is lovely and wonderful. It’s so nice to see queer work getting appreciation from mainstream reviewers…who wouldn’t touch most of us back when I was getting started. This is such a lovely change and it really makes me happy, especially for the new generation of queer mystery writers, who are all very talented and are doing exceptional work.
And on that note, I am going to forage some breakfast and get ready for my day. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning here.
Queer and Loathing in America 