Exploding Poohsticks

Owie, owie, ouch. I burned my left pinkie while baking tonight. That makes two weeks in a row with cooking-related injuries. (Last week it was jalapeno burns.) Let's see if I can make it through tomorrow's dinner prep...

On the bright side, I now have warm-from-the-oven chocolatey oatmeal cookies, just because I felt like it. Which I am having with my third glass of red wine. I do love being a grownup. Even though, at the moment, I would much rather be working on the monster WiPs or angry/sexy/GTFO-my-head-NOW poems instead wading through twenty-year-old tax paperwork.

Speaking of poetry, "I Hear You With Half of My Heart went up at My Poem Rocks last month, and three very short poems up at 7x20 over the summer.

To my considerable startlement, I also picked up this...

From tennis

for this:
( NWS fridge-magnet ficlet under the cut )

...which, you know, not bad for something pulled together three hours before the deadline. Now if I can stop living the rest of my life like that... *grimace*

( the words on the fridge )

Also? BBC livetexts and usopen.org radio are lovesome things. ( And then there are the aspects of fandom that are not. )

*glee*

Not that I have any room to talk. I had lunch with a colleague yesterday, and we got to talking about my upcoming month in Israel:

J: Are you going to visit any other countries while you're there?

R: I seriously considered Egypt and Jordan, but probably not. The problem is that I don't have time to learn enough Arabic before I leave. [beat] Um. Yeah. I know I don't have to, but...

J: Yeah, but I know you well enough for that to actually make sense.

(1) Andrea Petkovic - interesting, personality-wise

(2) Andrew Broad at the TW boards says, "Monica Niculescu is the WTA version of Fabrice Santoro: she has two hands both sides, but unlike Marion Bartoli, she has Santoro's forehand slice, and plays lots of dropshots."

(3) Also in the TW forum, from Jenni, a disgruntled St. Louis fan: "I'm not even that upset that they got rid of Washburn. It's that this team is always trading away cows and then expecting us to be excited that they got a handful of magic beans with 'great fastballs.' Ridiculous. But then again, this is the team that traded our Hall of Fame manager for Randy Winn."

(4) "Lendl" was an answer in this morning's UPI crossword.

(5) The NYT had an article on Andrea Jaeger, who became a nun after she retired. Sadly, the article's about a property dispute between her children's charity ranch and its neighbors.

According to the dentist's assistant, the 3/16" chunk I dug out of my gum on Saturday was some of the concrete used in installing the temporary crown. In any case, I got through the morning with a combination of ibuprofen and folk remedies (some saltwater rinsing, followed by gauze plastered with a paste made from Becherovka and ground cloves), and by sacking out (having been awake since 3 a.m. was a factor in that as well). Post-dentist, I stopped at two grocery stores, the art supply store, and the library, and the rest of the evening will be spent at the easel as soon as the contractor working on my bedroom window clears out (long story). Onwards...

(1) Project P finally delivered to client this afternoon. Yay! I am looking forward to sleeping through the night!

(2) While it was not a good thing to hear the dentist say, "That fracture went deeper than I thought," nor to feel said dentist's drill against said fracture, the repair has been made, I have painkillers at hand, and also a blenderful of homemade tomato soup. And because of good thing #1, I can also indulge in shots of St. Germain.

(3) I also had a jar of sardinade au thym I'd brought back from France. Lovely on toast.

(4) Listening to Stile Antico's recording of Byrd's "Vigilate."

( three recs: Tokyo Babylon, Harudaki, Rachel Manija Brown )

So, so tired, and yet more middle-of-the-night bug-chasing anticipated. On the plus side, having to be on standby online all damned day resulted in some catching up via e-mail (which in turn resulted in some rearranging of my language-study plans -- it turns out I'll be attending a wedding in Israel this fall, so Hebrew just leapfrogged over Mandarin. I'm loving the library's Pimsleur CD series, by the way...) and the writing of a New Year's Resolution fic:

Title: Deserving
Fandom: Haru wo Daiteita
Characters: Yoshizumi, Iwaki, and Katou
Rating: PG
Summary: "What the hell am I in the middle of now?" Yoshizumi doesn't know what to think when he lands a starring role opposite Katou's Iwaki.
Wordcount: 1054
Written for: glass-icarus, who had specified that "possessiveness is a giant thing for me; thus, obviously, when I mentioned Yoshizumi, I didn't mean a threesome. :P Katou and Iwaki being sweet are fabulous, Yoshizumi calling them out on it is also fabulous, Yoshizumi poking fun at them or talking to them about their relationship (in passing or not), any combination of the three of them bonding over acting..."
Link: http://www.yuletidetreasure.org/archive/87/deserving.html
(I'll repost in this journal in a couple days or so - the file's on another machine)

* * *

( twenty first lines meme: arguably spoilers for FAKE and Haru below the cut )

Patterns? Um... That I tend to write longer sentences than most of you is probably not news (*waves at westernredcedar, who wrangled with this firsthand when she recorded "The Hounding of the Baskervilles"*). That I often start out stories with characters in media thinkety is likewise Not A Revelation. Beyond that... aaah. At the moment I wouldn't be able to recognize a Fibonacci sequence if it smacked me with a slide rule. I think it's time to go check on my cauldron of tomato stew and then either kick a sonnet closer to shape or succumb to another two-hour catnap.

[Subject line from Robert Pinsky's Tennis]

My original plans for the day have been curtailed by my left foot (not sure what I did, but I can't put weight on it, which precludes gadding to/from hot chicken festivals and fireworks and the like) and some encroaching deadlines, but I have a pitcher of iced peach tea at the ready and a whole raft of Haru wo Daiteita fics by geri-chan that I'm going to reward myself with as soon as I put some reasonable distance between me and Canis deadlinus chompus.

Not that that's stopped me from obsessively following Wimbledon. Proud of Dementieva for showing up with a serve, and especially proud of Roddick for working so hard to raise his game to finalist level. I do like Muzz (he's Scottish, he's fond of his dog, and his head's screwed on right -- "It's a pathetic attitude to lose one match and let it ruin your year"), but I'm pleased as punch that A-Rod prevailed in four sets, and I'll be happy about either him or Federer winning tomorrow as long as A-Rod brings his A+ game and pushes Federer to earn the darn thing. (Not that Federer won't have earned it otherwise, but I want to see more of him in flight. Match point yesterday against Haas was lovely to behold.)

Also (with apologies to aunty_marion), I have to say that following yesterday's semifinal via livetexts (BBC, Guardian, and Wimby) and scoreboarding (we get neither cable nor NBC at my house -- long story -- and the videostreams I've tried so far send my hard drive into seizures) was highly entertaining. There was one UK member of the TennisWorld forum who periodically burst out with lines from "Scots wha hae," and Stephen Fry let loose on Twitter with "Oh, in the name of cock-mothering arse mustard" mid-match and "Holy suck-pigging BITCH!" upon its conclusion. The Wimbledon Poet has posted A-Rod's iPod War Boast, which may be the first Beowulf-Rick Astley mashup in the history of online poetry.

Speaking of online poetry, I have three new pieces up at Dead Mule: "The Language of Waiting," "Fuel," and "Sonic Crochet Hook."

Alas, the Elf did not prevail, but golly, does he sound like a sweetie.

And Roddick, Murray, and Mauresmo all won! The last is especially a happy thing. Allez Momo!

(Much to rabbit on about but the to-do list has resumed trying to kill me. Later, loves.)

So, reckoning up my Saturday (which involved very little of what I'd ought've done... *sheepish*)...

total hours of sleep: six, maybe (three in the morning and three more as a crash-nap)

medications: inhaler, cough drops, Empress Afternoon tea

poems accepted: two
poems rejected: four
poems (re)submitted: eleven

wordcount so far for Not As Dumb part 3: 269. Not for lack of dwelling on it -- it's just not jelling yet. *grumpf*

Harudaki drabble-plot conceived and later discarded: 1 (on the phrase Mi o mochikuzusu, which is idiomatic for "His immoral life led him to ruin" but literally reads "He let his body go to the dogs," which was giving me ideas for Mochimune vs. Onozuka snarkage)

Number of times I thought of Yoshizumi during tonight's Noh performance: dozens
(the troupe is based in Kyoto; the lead dancer is the same one pictured in this flyer for the show in Memphis next Monday - Nashville was the second stop on their three-city tour)

Other people's poems recently read and/or revisited:

Meghann Marco, WTF Sestina

Lafayette Wattles, I Couldn't Tell Which Were The Thoughts And Which Were The Trees

Scott Owens, January Looks Forward and Back, Feeds the Stove October's Wood, Saves the Ashes for April's Garden

Tony Hoagland, Reading Moby-Dick at 30,000 Feet

And, one of the poems I read late last night was Charles Olson's "A Newly Discovered Homeric Hymn" (1955), which freaked me out just enough that I intend to inflict it upon the rest of you as a voicepost soon (because, y'know, that whole thing about comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable... *friendly evil smile*). (But seriously, it's not so much its subject matter - I mean, the Wattles poem hurts way, way more -- but something about the sounds of the Olson poem connected with something in my gut, and while it's not why I couldn't get back to sleep after 4:30 a.m. yesterday morning, it's probably poking at the phantom ribs of my subconscious when I'm not looking. And speaking of getting to bed -- oy.)

First and foremost, a heartfelt thank you to everyone who bid on my offerings at livelongmarry. *loves you all*

More joys and glee:

[click image for larger view]

ravenna_c_tan, organizer extraordinaire, has posted additional details on how to get to Quimby's. It is on Wednesday night and it is open to the public. You do not have to be registered for Terminus to attend this reading. There will be fabulous prizes (some of which are on my "To Make As Soon As Work Stops Eating Me Alive" list). ETA: Yet more info from the store's blog.

I have received my Quidditch team assignment: I will be playing for Betas Anonymous Punctuation Pixies. (There are least three readers of this journal now laughing their sweet arses off at the sheer appropriateness of this assignment.)

Via tjwritter: Tears of the Phoenix is hosting a gathering at the conference, Saturday night. Copying and pasting the description from the Intersections page:

Tears of the Phoenix Presents "The Little Room"
RSVP: Tamela at littleroom_intersection@terminus2008.org
Date: Saturday, August 9, 2008
Time: 8 p.m. - midnight
Location: Kitty O'Sheas Irish Pub, Hilton Chicago Hotel
The 1920s Literary Renaissance of Chicago was called "The Little Room". We want to recreate that resurgence Harry Potter-style by having a night of creativity with drabbles, flash fiction, drawbles or whatever else your gin-soaked bunny demands. Drop-ins welcome, challenges every half an hour! Twenty-one years of age and older only, please.

[As listed here, my other Saturday commitments include a 9 p.m. drabble booth shift and a 11 p.m. reading of "D'accord, d'accord," so I'll be holding off on the gin until those are done.]

In personal news, I'm still in the midst of making my mother's house saleable, among myriad other chores. The professional docket remains crowded, and the warren of plot- and poem-bunnies seems to have multiplied by a factor of twenty over the past week, which is exasperating at the moment, since I have way too many things on the "To Finish" list as it is. At the same time, it's rather exhilarating looking at the world through the eyes of new characters-to-be. I should shut up already and write, so I will. More later, my dears. *scatters carrots amongst all your bunnies, and hugs to those who want/need them*

David Sedaris, on hearing some of his earlier writing quoted:

“I thought, ‘It’s too dense, and it’s trying too hard.’ ” Though his prose slips down as smoothly as a Häagen-Dazs ice cream bar, he goes through the sort of process described by John Kenneth Galbraith, who said that “I do not put that note of spontaneity that my critics like into anything but the fifth draft.”

For Mr. Sedaris that process involves at least seven drafts and a great deal of reading aloud new pieces while on tour, listening to the cadences of the sentences and noting how the audience responds: when people laugh, when they lose interest. “You realize you’re repeating yourself or being lazy,” he said.

- Sarah Lyall, in today's New York Times

My sinuses currently feel like they're the size of pumpkins. Intelligent design my foot.

Also have another hour of work I have to log in before I can go to bed. *grumble*

That said, on the eight night of Christmas, my true love stopped by my sofa, handed me three Lego keychains -- one of Dumbledore, one of Hagrid, and one of Hermione -- and said, "I looked for your favorites, but they weren't in stock."

*still grinning from ear to ear*