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I write about people who do extraordinary things. It just turned out that it was called science fiction. |
Tuesday, June 29, 1999
One year ago: Jump!
Two years ago: The Sky of the Cinema
The voice mail light was blinking on my phone at work. This always seems very ominous! But in this case, it just meant that I'd been down the hall, in the bathroom or getting a beverage, when my sister had called me. I called her back; she wanted to get some yarn from me, for a craft project she'll do tomorrow with the six kids that are currently partaking in "Camp Madrona," the cooperative child care project she's a part of. So she and her younger son dropped by this evening, and selected some skeins of varying colors. I was pleased to see that I'd really done a good job color-sorting the large quantities of yarn in my bedroom closet some time ago; there were large garbage bags of browns, blues, oranges, reds, and so on. I wonder when I did that? And the moths seemed to be at a minimum.
I asked her to give me a ride down to Elliot Bay Books. I wanted to go to the Clarion West reading, since Octavia Butler is the instructor this week for that SF bootcamp. Last year I missed too many of these readings (and the parties on six Friday nights).
The cafe was quite crowded when I got there, about forty five minutes before the reading was due to start in the next room. It's under new ownership, but the line is still amazingly slow for some reason. I treated myself to a large slice of Black Bottom Devil's Food Layer Cake, so large that I couldn't finish it. I almost didn't recognize my friend Melissa Shaw! She had eye surgery last fall, so no glasses now, and she'd dyed her hair dark.
When we went and sat down, I was surprised to see JD and his older daughter. He plays in the Irish band with my brother-in-law. His daughter, high-school age, is working on a project for her senior year coming up, and wants to write some SF short stories. Apparently Octavia Butler is one of her favorites! We were both surprised to see each other there.
When Butler gives a talk, she talks, instead of reading a selection of her writing. Most of what she said, I'd heard at Foolscap a few weeks ago, but it was good to hear again. Darn, I should have asked her about audiobook recordings by her of her own books. I really like her voice! She talked about her grandmother and mother, and how their life stories were of use to her in handling characters that she didn't know how to approach. The determination and strength of her grandmother, rising from less than nothing to be a property owner with many successful children and grandchildren, informed the struggle of her protagonist in the Parables books to found a modern-day religion.
* * * * * * * *
I do annoy myself sometimes. I was ridiculously pleased when this site was promoted to Lynda's main journals page. So of course, I let it bother me when I noticed that I'd been slightly demoted on another journals page. Gad, I wish I hadn't noticed! That's why I don't have a similar page, although many folks say they get their best reading recommendations from such pages.
Another annoyance: Someone brought up the Myers-Briggs personality stuff on a fannish mailing list, and most of the comments were very dismissive. "Oh, those tests are no better than those in a woman's magazine!" I tried to explain the system a bit, and allowed as how the free online tests might not be as good as those administered by a person trained in that system. But I don't think I explained it very well, since I'm not an expert, and I let myself be irked by the "I'm too complex to be pinned down by some system" tone. Grr! So I let it drop, since it was just making me mad.
I hope I'm not coming down with something! (This sounds like something my mother would have said to me.) If I weren't tired, job-stressed, lonely, then these little tweaks from the universe wouldn't cause me to turn a hair, I'm sure. I'll probably feel better tomorrow.
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