Tag: pizza

The Only Way Out

Tuesday and back to the office. It’s only twenty-nine degrees outside, which of course means it feels abominably cold at my desk between the windows–but the apartment is bearable overall. The shower is going to be difficult this morning, as will getting outside to walk to the car and then into the building once I get to work, which means walking very fast. The bed felt incredibly comfy and warm and snug this morning, too. Ah, well, it’s a short work week and we should be out of this insane cold snap (for New Orleans) by the weekend.

Yesterday I started the strength PT, which was tiring and exhausting but felt good at the same time, in the way that using your muscles feels good after a long period of inertia. I thought I might be a bit sore this morning, but I’m not. It is amazing also how tiring the light weights I am now using are, but it’s done and it’s not something I need to fear. I didn’t have anxiety about it, either, which is a lovely outcome. I did spend a lot more time yesterday thinking about this year and what I want to get done, writing-wise, so yesterday was also productive in that way. I also mapped out some other projects that are in progress, and then treated Paul to pizza from the new place that has replaced Slice, U Pizza. It was good, but not as good as Midway on Freret–but much more convenient, since I can just walk there to pick it up. It’s lovely being able to eat pizza again.

We also started watching Lupin last night, which we both are really enjoying. I know the character is basing what he does and how he does it on the book adventures of Arsene Lupin, but it also reminds me a lot of an old Sidney Sheldon book in which a young woman was framed for something, her father was ruined, and she went to jail–only to get out and become a master international criminal after getting revenge on the people who killed her dad and framed her–I want to say it was If Tomorrow Comes and my spotty memory is telling me her name was Tracy Whitney; and if you know anything about me you know how much I love a good get-even revenge story, so that was one of my favorite Sheldon books (revenge was always a motivating factor in Sheldon novels, although remembering some things about The Other Side of Midnight has me questioning my love and appreciation of Sheldon; and yes, I do remember reading that as a teenager and not liking the way it turned out, although I recognized that final act of the book was necessary and really subscribed to Sheldon’s overarching theme that life sucks for women, even if he showed it in a misogynist way). I don’t have the time or the bandwidth to revisit any Sidney Sheldon novels and I would imagine they wouldn’t hold up to modern scrutiny, and probably shouldn’t have back in the day, either.

So, today I am going to make some to-do lists; one for the week, one for the month, and one for the first quarter of the year, bearing in mind for me that things are always subject to change. After work tonight I am going to swing by uptown to get the mail, dependent on how insane driving in the city is during this cold snap and hard freeze warning. People here are the shittiest drivers bar none of anywhere I’ve ever lived, primarily because driving here isn’t like driving anywhere else, and so you can imagine what they are like in cold weather, when there may be ice on the road or if it’s, God forbid, snowing outside. New Orleans comes to a screeching halt when it snows here, and it’s been a while since the last time we had cold weather. I had the Honda the last time; I remember because I had to give a co-worker a ride to work and I took pictures of my car in the snow, maybe even video? So it was either the winter of 2017 or 2018; but we’d just moved into the new building in December 2018 so it must have been 2017. I’ve not seen any snow forecast for this hard freeze warning, which won’t be lifted until ten a.m. tomorrow morning. Le sigh.

But it means I will sleep really well tonight.

So I am dressing in layers to go outside to get to the car–T-shirt, sweater, jacket, but no tights under my pants since the problem with layers is you still have to spend a lot of time inside, so you eventually get too hot and have to remove some of the layers, which would be a pain at work with removing tights, so I am skipping that. I am about to brave the cold, Constant Reader, so wish me luck and I will maybe see you later. Have a lovely warm Tuesday, wherever you are.

I’ll Do It All Over Again

Well, it’s Thursday and my week at the office–a very shortened one–will be over this afternoon. Yesterday getting back to work was a challenge. I didn’t have a problem getting up in the morning–I didn’t sleep well the night before–but late in the afternoon I started feeling tired; the low energy from not eating real food is also a thing (I’ve literally lost nine pounds since last Thursday, and nine pounds in five days is not good. If I continue to lose weight at this rate, within two more weeks I’d be down to a weight I’ve not seen since the aughts… I do not recommend this diet to anyone), and I think I may go to bed a little earlier than usual tonight. We were busy at work yesterday and I also had to catch up all my work from the days I was out, but I managed to get it all done and it was indeed a lovely thing. I mailed some things at the post office, stopped and made groceries (more ice cream and yogurt), and then came home to a protein shake for dinner. Yay, more soft food.

I cannot wait to go to Five Guys when this is all over. And pizza. Mmmmm.

I slept well last night, certainly more deeply than the night before, so I feel better this morning. Tomorrow is the visit to the Tulane Institute of Sports Medicine (more on this later), and I also have my hearing aids follow-up appointment. We’re going to be busy at the office today, and I have to stay later than I usually do, which will be interesting. I’ve got a to-do list I need to finish, and hopefully I won’t be so tired when I get home from the office tonight; I’m coming straight home after work for a rare change in the routine. I’m still way behind on the housework and I really need to start writing again; outside of the blog (which counts; I no longer pretend it doesn’t count as writing–which is what I always do when I am not writing fiction: “count the blog!”) and emails I’ve not really written much of anything since getting back from Bouchercon. SO much for all that inspiration I had from attending and being in the company of writers! But I think I will be able to get to work on some stories that need finishing this weekend, and some need revision and polishing. I also need to get back to work on Muscles, and writing those proposals that need writing. I don’t have to make a grocery run this weekend, and I am probably going to have to have some things delivered over the weekend, but that’s fine. I paid all the bills yesterday, too. So, it may not have seemed as productive as perhaps I would have preferred yesterday to be, but I did get some things done that needed to be done.

And it would be so lovely to get some more of these short stories done, you know, and out on submission? I only have one story out on sub, and it’s been almost a year since I sent it in to them. I don’t know why it’s taking so long, but that’s also publishing for you. While I do appreciate the convenience of using Submittable, at the same time it makes me wonder how it works on the other side. I was thinking last night, and have been ever since the Anthonys, about writing a post about editing anthologies. I have done over twenty of them at this point–there aren’t many people who can say they’ve done more in the genre, frankly, although they weren’t all crime; most were erotica, and I ain’t apologizing for that. I think only a few were actually crime and/or horror, which is kind of surprising. You’d think I’d have edited more crime anthologies than I have, but that is not the actual case. I think I’ve only done five crime anthologies–the three Bouchercon ones, and the queer noir ones I did with J. M. Redmann (Jean). I also want to do some more self-interviews; I have the questions from two of the other Anthony nominee panels I was on–best children’s/young adult. and the marvelous questions Leslie Karst came up with for the best humorous category–and I can use them to do self-interviews like I did with the queer crime panel John Copenhaver moderated for Outwrite back in August.

I was a little surprised by the positive response to my post about conference homophobia endured and how things have gotten better since the bad old days when I first started going to the mainstream mystery events. I generally don’t bother with paying much attention to response to blog posts, in all honesty; I try not to think about people reading it because I worry that will trigger anxiety and make me think about what I can and cannot say because of worries about giving offense (I never really want to offend anyone accidentally; I do not care about homophobes, misogynists, and racists being offended by my blog because that’s a bonus for writing it. But one core tenet of my life is to never hurt anyone’s feelings through carelessness; I know what that feels like and frankly, carelessness is worse than deliberate offense, I think, because the person puts no thought into being careless, which means you’re not even worth thinking about or your feelings simply are irrelevant; I prefer planned hatefulness because as least thought and effort went into it, if that makes any sense at all. It does in my fevered brain). But it did get a rousing response. Why was it time to write it now? I’d been considering writing that post for a long time. It’s been sitting in my drafts since Pride Month, which was when I wanted to post it, to strike another blow against homophobia and homophobes, but got sidetracked by all the boycott bullshit. Then I was going to post it before Bouchercon–the morning of the trip actually, but couldn’t get it finished before i had to leave the house. Being at Bouchercon–and being around my Queer Crime Writers–made it seem even more important than it was before I left because I do not want my Queer Crime Writers to ever be made to feel the way I felt when I encountered the homophobia at Bouchercon. I do feel very protective and paternal of the group, which I know is infantilizing them; they are adults who’ve faced it before and will face it again, but I want to spare them the ignominy of being belittled and demeaned by colleagues and bigoted programmers. That was what I meant by my presence making a difference at these things over the years–if I was the lightning rod that drew the homophobia out so it made things easier for this new generation of queer writers, I can actually live with that. If some good comes out of my hard times for other people, that’s something I can get on board with, really. I’ve never considered myself a ground breaker; while I think I’ve accomplished some terrific things with my writing over the years, I don’t think future generations will be studying my work for insights into the time in which I lived and what it meant to be queer in the late twentieth/early twenty-first century. You never know, but I think it’s highly unlikely.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again soon.

The Coventry Carol

New Year’s Eve Eve, and all is quiet in the Lost Apartment this morning. Scooter has been fed and given treats, so  he’s gone back to bed; Paul is curled up with him upstairs. I overslept again this morning, not as late as yesterday but still–I woke up just before ten. Obviously, I need the rest, but at the same time it becomes a little frustrating because I generally do my best work in the mornings.

I did some work yesterday but not much. I got sucked into the college football vortex after going to the grocery store and picking up the mail, and wound up mostly just reading The Shining most of the time. I finished reading the first part, which is all set-up; we meet the Torrances (Jack, Wendy, Danny) who are point-of-view characters and learn about their background–Jack’s drinking and violent temper; how he broke Danny’s arm in a rage and almost destroyed the marriage; Wendy, who still loves him but isn’t sure she should be staying with him, and young Danny, with his unusual talent and desperate love for both his parents and wanting them to stay married. This is also the tale of how they came to stay at the Overlook Hotel over the long, remote, brutal winter; one of the things that has always been a flaw to me with this book is the idea of a luxury hotel in the Rocky Mountains that is so high up in the mountains that it has to close for winter sports season. But King presents it as a fact; it is a necessary one for the story to work–the Torrances have to be completely cut off from civilization, and that again makes The Shining a novel of its time; even today there would be wi-fi service all winter up there; Jack would be able, undoubtedly, to look up all kinds of information about the hotel on-line (probably would have before taking the job) rather than having to dig through the stuff in the basement. But I am enjoying this reread, and I am also enjoying recognizing why some of the issues and problems I had with this book come from a personal place; I don’t like, for example, stories where children are in danger–whether from supernatural forces or from their parents or from anyone or anything, really. And that is also an interesting thing to unpack: why do these stories bother me so much, get under my skin, make me recoil from them?

I am really looking forward to my reread of Pet Sematary.

So this morning I need to finish cleaning and organizing. I may write today after the Saints game–none of the main players will be in the game, as they’ve already clinched the Number One seed and home-field advantage during the play-offs, so why risk your stars getting injured in a game that doesn’t matter (and games that don’t matter is another thing I dislike about the NFL; all games should matter) so I don’t know how intense the game will be or how wound-up in it I will get. But probably not very; since the game doesn’t matter.

We had a deep-dish Chicago style pizza from That’s Amore last night and it was everything. Everything. It is seriously my favorite pizza in New Orleans, but it’s so thick and heavy you can’t have it regularly; it’s perfect as an occasional treat. We hadn’t had one in months, so having one for dinner (and the second half of it today for today’s dinner) is probably the smart way to go. We are having our annual lunch at Commander’s Palace tomorrow–which will be wonderful–and I am going to simply make baked potatoes for our evening meal tomorrow night; Tuesday I’m going to make Shrimp Creole in the slow-cooker for dinner, and we’ll probably cook out for lunch for the LSU game (GEAUX TIGERS!).

Tomorrow morning’s blog will be my year recap; it’ll be curious to go back to my New Year’s Day blog from last year and see what the 2018 goals were, and if I made any progress on any of them (unlikely). It was an interesting year, to say the least, and one that I’m not in the least bit sorry to see ending. One of my year-end goals is to clean out my various email inboxes, as well, and to henceforth try to stay on top of these things.

We shall see how that plays out, won’t we?

I took some awesome pictures with my phone last night on the walk to pick up the pizza at That’s Amore. I’ll post them on Facebook at some time today.

And now, I am going to dive headlong back into the spice mines. I want to revise another chapter of the WIP and I am going to reread those last five chapters of the Scotty during the Saints game.

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