Peeking into the rock

What I won: remember I got attacked by a story about a couple of boys who don't? The story grew, and so did the boys, and now it's a story about boys who grow up and when they're grown up, they do.
It really seems appropriate for Iris except for one thing: it's 14K long, and their limit for shorts is 10K (their lower limit for novel-like objects is 50K, but there's no way I can stretch this that far). So I've queried.

What I lost: no room at the inn, because I called too late. Both Jules and David have already offered room at their houses, but I'm not sure whether that's actually better than going home (well, yeah, it is, because it's not over Highway 17 in the middle of the night). I'm all sort of glum about BayCon anyway because I really did try to sign up for the writer's workshops and the guy who's organizing it never answered any of my emails and, well, that didn't happen. And the story I submitted -- on time, too, according to the main website -- I would have been revising if I hadn't sent it in.

However, I won another thing: I did finish revising the one about the last people and the baby quilt, and it is a whole lot better, which is surprising because I had thought it was pretty well finished before.

It's midnight again and I'm still up, but that's because I was finishing the boy story and querying Iris about it.

Not because I was playing puzzle games online and eating puffed rice with almond milk, not me.

On another front: my absentee ballot has arrived. I think I will turn it in at the precinct I'm working at on the day.

I have made some decisions, but they were difficult:

governor -- Phil Angelides. All of a sudden Westly and Angelides have started running really mean nasty ads -- Westly started it. Oddly, the first nasty anti-Angelides ad was what pushed me over the edge: Westly accused Angelides of wanting to raise taxes on the rich, and praised himself for starting up eBay. No, eBay is not a bad thing, but it's weird to contrast yourself in that way -- "I'm not going to raise taxes, and I'm a super successful entrepreneur?"

Apparently a lot of other people feel the same way and said so to the pollsters who called them up, because the latest anti-Angelides ad accuses him of being a real estate developer. And says that Angelides' ads about how he got support from all the public service unions were paid for by real estate people.

See, context is everything.

County supervisor, for my district (3rd?) I have weird choice. Let's really get into this, okay?

Here they are:

Neal Coonerty, who owns Bookshop Santa Cruz, has been Mayor, and publishes bumper stickers that read "Keep Santa Cruz Weird --" context is everything, again: these bumper stickers are in favor of lightening up on the street musicians already. This is the conservative candidate, the one that the chamber of commerce and the downtown business association and the hotel owners like. I was really pissed off at him for a couple of years because of his behavior on the City Council, but I've forgiven him. He's reversed himself on a copuple of homelessy issues and he was always good on a couple of others and he might support the living wage. and he's definitely all for keeping open space and supporting kid things.

Chris Krohn -- also used to be on the City Council. Kind of volatile sometimes, but decent, lefty (a Green), and seems to have integrity. I can't remember getting pissed off at him.

Jonathan Boutelle -- former secretary of the Central Labor Council, used to be really active in labor and peace things, has laid low for a long time because of manic-depressive things. Can be a loose cannon, but generally progressive, and I can't help liking him because our kids grew up together (Emma: I don't think you know Tommy Boutelle, he's a year or so older than Frank), because we demonstrated for peace together back in the day, because he sang "Silhouettes on the Shade" with Tim McCormick and Chris Matthews (not that Chris Matthews, the local one who own the "Poet and Patriot" bar next to the downtown Bagelry) at the very first re-establishment of the Labor Day picnic which was organized by yours truly and a bunch of lefties because we wanted to sell sodas at it to raise money for the Texas Farmworkers.

Anyway. I'm expecting Coonerty to narrowly win, or maybe a runoff between Coonerty and Krohn. I'm voting for Boutelle. My reasoning is this: if he gets ten or fifteen percent of the vote, he has a parley with Coonerty and a parley with Krohn , and he says -- at the runoff I'll throw my supporters at you, if you make some agreements about labor issues, capisce?

It worked when whatshisname ran for City Council -- (no, not Robert Norse. This other guy whose name is Joe something and whose last name I cannot even bring to the tip of my tongue right now)I believe he gave his support to Emily Reilly and we sure could do worse than her (she's the one who comes from the bakery up the street and she's so thoughtful and comes out way to the left of where you expect a small business owner to end up)

County Schools Supervisor -- beats me. I'll figure it out soon, though.

Living Wage made it to the ballot, and the City Council is taking it pretty seriously. The Sentinel is all over it, saying how bad it is for the economy and all that.

Bed!

Quattro Pro sorts the colums separately by default. That means I got my submissions tracker messed up and had to spend a half hour combing my LJ tags for what really happened this year (19 submissions, mostly in December). I was coy on a lot of those pages. I won't be anymore: I need two ways to keep track.

Today: Seven Little Men to Quantum Muse.

I thought I'd return to the rain story and finish it. 1.7K words later I am no closer to ending it. Though the storm is ending. I'm tempted to end it when the storm ends, with the crew switching to cleanup operations andd making some observation aboutn the state of the world.

On the other hand, news from Nairobi is that my stepmother is doing okay, though she still can't talk properly. She's reading and walking, though one leg doesn't work right. Reading the missives sent before the stroke is very eerie -- she was overworked and had a runin with the Tanzanian police over a misunderstanding about an innocent delivery of a manuscript, and when you know what was about to happen it looks inevitable.

On still other fronts I am about to put a slightly larger batch of fruitcake into the oven.

I refuse to use the word "meme" until every shred of the stupid misunderstanding about genetics and evolution that spawned the word has been dead and buried forever and forever.


Here are the first lines of the things I have around that are unfinished. I don't work on a lot of things at once. Most of these are things that are on hold for now.

Afterwar(which I am finishing real soon now, especially since I figured out that another 5-10K will make the last 5K easier to write)
From the plane you could not see the scars of the war. In this season the land was green and serene and healthy, a great lustrous animal supporting the symbiont cities, and fields, and parkland, and pulsing with clean, new, intelligent roads. But Pablo knew the scars existed, down below, subtle ones and shocking big ones, still telling the story of the racking disease of the war twenty-odd years before.


Bella and Chain (actually, I think the real beginning is different, but this is the earliest line I've written)
Bella spent Tuesday night on her latest star tower project. When her sister called, asking what she was up to, she had to answer "I'm stacking animals. And re-stacking them."

Clory's Contract(this is an amusement I return to now and then)
The first kiss was a surprise. Clory had imagined it before. but he had never expected it.

Mickey(working title)(this is a side effect of Esperanza Highway
All the students in one place and in one type of clothes and all with the same pile of papers in front of them and you could still pick Mickey out of the crowd. He sat at the dining hall table, his paperwork in front of him, his name tag disregarded, focussed on the welcome speech. Only Mickey held himself so rigid and sullen. Only Mickey frowned at every sentence the staff spoke.

Untitled (Damned Nation)(this is on hold due to lack of plot)
Hell is a bordertown factory, and there is no individual redemption.

A White Stone (working title)(this is turning inside out a novel that was rejected with encouragement)
A man walked into the Inmelr town from the western road, on foot like a harvest follower, but dressed well, in kingfisher blue and green, and carrying two instruments: a gittern, which while it had a low reputation was as capable of respectable music as any lute, and a hurdy-gurdy, which could do nothing but make a loud, rude, and thoroughly wonderful noise.

No Working Title
Felipe came up to the valley early in February, his pruning knife and his hook in his pants and a pair of old boots on his feet. There was work for him, though it was not at first easy to find. Joined a plowing gang for Mack, whose rancho was most of the land that had belonged to the Mission five years before and who intended to grow sugar beets though he had gotten a late start. Mack was the determined type of American, who thoughta pistol and a vision of success would suffice to bully the virgin land of California and the Indians hiding in it into producing abundance and profits never seen before by farmers who merely knew the land and worked it themselves.

I wanted to go on and put in the first lines of finished things that were unpublished, but that was a lot. All of them, actually, but a lot of them. So I didn't.

On other fronts, I saw the Mime Troupe yesterday, and it was the last summer show of the year, so it will do you no good for me to rave about it.

On still other frints, I am gradually becoming convinced I do have to do a Blandness Diet for a couple of weeks to see if it will cure my aching tongue and resurging reflux cough. This is not a happy thing. I think I will add the lovely things of life back in after a little while whether it gets better or no. If it gets better I will want to see if there is some compromise that will allow me to eat like a Californian. If it doesn't get better there's no point in eating like a -- I don't know what. like a person who eats bland things.