michaeldthomas

No, I didn't quit LJ for Google +.

The last few weeks have been crazy busy. We had wonderful times at 4th Street Fantasy Conversation and CONvergence. We're only now just coming back to reality.

I would write con reports, but they would look like this:

1- We hung out with friends. Many of them are in the SF/F industry. :-)
2- We ate with friends. Mmm, food.
3- Drinking might have occurred, followed by gossiping, pontificating, and/or handstands.
4- We learned many secrets and got caught up in some small dramas (no permanent damage).
5- Lynne was magnificent. You should have seen her in that one dress.
6- Caitlin had a great time at my mom's.
7- We miss our friends. :-(

As we become more embedded in the community, there's just less and less I can talk about. It makes for a great life, but it's lousy for blogging.

Other than coming home to dead A/C (now fixed), everything else is fine. There should be a BIG ANNOUNCEMENT about my editor wife in a week or two (many of you already know what I'm talking about).

That's it for the next few weeks. Lynne is editing Chicks Dig Comics and working on the SF Squeecast. She should also be finished with The Scarlet Queen by the end of the week. Beta Readers should have it in two weeks.

We're pretty much ready for WorldCon.

Caitlin finishes Summer School this week. I'm working on a troublesome short story.

How are you?

Real life is managing to be as real as possible.

1- Entropy visited our home again. This morning the fridge started to make noises like the Tin Man with an upper respiratory infection. It's been a loud fridge for a long time, so its immanent demise comes as no surprise. Luckily, Lowe's had a nearly identical fridge on sale and in stock. Nice people will bring it here tomorrow while taking away the old one. Other than the dryer, that means every appliance in our household has been repaired or replaced in the last month (plus a kitchen sink repair). Homeownership is fun!

2- Caitlin is doing much better. She made it through the last few days of school without any screaming fits. Her brain has also been stable. Hooray for good Caitlin health!

3- Pink Raygun gave Whedonistas a good review.

4- I like my new short story (so far).

5- The week started off with the deaths of comic book creator Dwayne McDuffie and Doctor Who Brigadier actor Nick Courtney. They both will be greatly missed. I keep tearing up from all of the wonderful remembrances.

How are you?

This post is really just to convince my mom that everything is fine (she worries if I don't post every three days or so). ;-)

We're enjoying our first weekend at home in quite some time. For Caitlin and me, this means a little bit of rest. Unfortunately for rarelylynne, this means that she needs to finish editing the Whedonistas's manuscript for the Publisher. My poor wife never gets to stop.

Actually, next weekend is her birthday. Some guests are coming in for what's becoming the annual "Squee Weekend Spectacular." I've been knocking things off of the honey-do list in preparation. Home owning is so glamorous. :-)

Caitlin is fine. She's watching TV and working on a scrapbook of her Make-A-Wish trip.

There's not much else going on around here. I now own a signed copy of Matthew Waterhouse's Blue Box Boy. I'm hoping that it lives up to my expectations.

It's a house-husband day. I shoveled the latest snowpocalypse, took Cait to school, and started some laundry. I also managed to go to the post office to mail away a short story. I feel full of virtue. :-)

I'm taking the day off from writing since I just finished a draft of a new short story, and it needs a couple of days to percolate before I start my rewrites. Other than housework, I'll probably spend the day catching up with my reading.

We had some so-so news about Caitlin's Make-A-Wish. Though she qualified nine months ago, there's still no word from the Disney Channel or Demi Lovato's handlers about scheduling. Caitlin's Wish coordinator called me yesterday, and we decided that we're probably going to ditch this Wish and move on to Plan B unless we hear from Disney/Demi in the next two weeks.

What's Plan B? A trip to Disney World! Caitlin is pretty excited about going. Lynne's also excited since she's never been there. We'll be there for a week at their special Make-A-Wish hotel. This will be our first pure vacation since Caitlin was born.

Well, that weekend sucked. I've had much worse, but that wasn't exactly the relaxing days off that we had hoped for. A week of Pertussis watch left me pretty stressed out. rarelylynne was also fried from a week of meetings, events, Chicks Dig Time Lords's editorial work, and teaching.

With minimal plans on the books, it seemed like this would be a good weekend to relax. Then we had a plumbing event. :P

It turned out to only be a dead wax ring on the toilet, but it still wasn't cheap. Granted, it was much better than some of the worse-case scenerios that ran through my head. I could have fixed it myself, but Lynne insisted that we just have the plumber do it since he was already there.

In other news, my Bears were just awful against the Packers. Cutler had the yips, his receivers aren't talented enough to start for NIU, and Urlacher had a season-ending injury.

So much for hope.

Anyway, it's a new week. Caitlin is back at school, and I have a short story to finish. :-)

After five years of hemming and hawing, we’re finally painting the living room. Like many things in our life, this is sort of a big production number. Lynne took time off from work, I moved everything out of the room, and now she’s painting while I watch Caitlin upstairs. If all goes well, we should have a lovely green living room by Monday night.

The biggest snag at the moment is a winter storm. That should hit later tonight with 4-6 inches of snow. I am very tired of weather. I really hope that we have a temperate summer.

For the rest of the day, I will be hiding in Caitlin’s Princess Bedroom. She’s currently listening to Laura Linney reading The Bungalow Mystery (Nancy Drew #3). I have a bunch of little things that need doing, such as writing up some editorial notes. I expect us to be crawling the walls in about another hour.

If anybody has snowshoes and a love of painting, feel free to drop on by the house. :)

Meh.

(Take that, John Hodgman!)

It was a a Monday filled with annoying tasks. I spent a decent chunk of the day doing laundry. How the hell do we go through so much clothing? If I didn't know better, I would swear that rarelylynne and I change outfits three times per day.

Our new television is also broken. It's not a big deal; one of the speakers is dead. One the plus side, we still have the box and receipt from Target. On the minus side, our Target doesn't have the TV in stock. This meant that I spent the whole morning on the phone with different Targets. Tomorrow will involve a trek to South Elgin to make an exchange.

Caitlin is now old enough to have a strong opinion about which Jonas Brother is the cutest. I am not dealing with this well.

It looks like I'm not going to get any writing done until Wednesday.

Meh.

We've had record rain falls in Chicagoland over the last couple of days. It sucks out there. Luckily, our house has been okay, and our local “river” is only flooding a little. The biggest excitement came yesterday when we lost power. Turns out there was a loose power line that was setting the pole on fire a few houses down. The lovely people from the electric company fixed it in 45 minutes.

Today should be quiet. After the Bears game, we're off to the public library to see how much trouble I can get into during the dollar-bag book sale. By that point, the rain should finally be gone.

Speaking of rain, WTTW's PBS pledge drive hit a new low. I'm used to the make-more-money seminars, Doo Wop spectaculars, and mediocre-Irish-singer specials. I put up with it knowing that such pandering brings in the money. Last night, though, they unleashed the worst thing ever to get foolish baby boomers to give up their money. They actually showed a concert of a tacky Beatles tribute band called Rain.

Don't get me wrong, I've been known to enjoy the occasional Beatles tribute band at a summer festival. The problem with Rain was that they weren't actually any good. Their musicianship was lackluster, and their “singing” sounded nothing like the Beatles which is kind of a problem if you're a tribute band. To top it off, their Paul seemed to have had extensive plastic surgery to look more like Macca. His close-ups burned my eyes as his results made him look like a McCartney/Phyllis Diller love child.

I have an idea, how about PBS tries showing some intelligent, creative programming during pledge drives?

I’ve been in a weird mood today. There are a thousand things on my mind, and I’m just not adjusting well to my return to reality. Here are some things from my crazy brain:

1- My mom had minor surgery today involving the removal of a salivary duct that kept forming painful stones. Thankfully, everything went well.

2- With Caitlin back in school, I was able to return to my novel rewrites. The current chapter sucks donkey bullocks. I believe it’s salvageable, but not without some serious work. I’m growing impatient with the process, so Lynne is going to help get me some extra writing time this weekend.

3- There are no excuses for racism, and using your petty power to shield yourself from the consequences is disgusting.

4- I mowed the lawn.

5- The Cubs won again. Big Z looked great,

Ah, it’s Saturday morning. I’m watching Caitlin while rarelylynne goes to Sprawl-Mart to get some staple goods and mulch. She’s still fighting the good fight against the weeds of our backyard perimeter. We are fully expecting her to stumble onto an unknown Amazonian tribe.

I have one last quick hit from WisCon.

Hooray! The NIU SF archives gained three more official authors at WisCon. Tobias Buckell (tobiasbuckell), Caroline Stevermer (1crowdedhour), and Kelly McCullough (kellymccullough) joined Jack McDevitt, Don Bingle, E.E. Knight (eeknight), Kage Baker, Sarah Monette (truepenny), and Elizabeth Bear (matociquala). More authors are coming soon.

This afternoon, I’m back to my novel revisions. Is there a better way to spend a beautiful spring day than in a Panera on a computer? :)