A weekend of AMAZINGLY COOL surprises!
* Surprise #1: On Friday night, we got a call from ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
olannon, saying something like, "Hey, guess where I am! Less than three hours away! What are you doing this weekend?" (Cue Clue and Dominus running around in excited circles, cause how often do our Texas friends get up here to just drop by on us? Right! Not often AT ALL! And Olannon, even without his Charming Wife in tow, is one of the best of them. We made grabbyhands at him, and drew him up to the house on force of our SHEER WILLS!
* Surprise #2: Saturday morning, before he arrived, Dominus and I went to the Troy Arts Council's lecture and ... well, faire kind of thingy, called "Write Here." It was meant to be a resource faire for Capital District writers, so that those who were looking for others-of-type in the area might have a place to begin. I went in expecting to be the only genre presence, and while I was the only one who self identified, there were several more who sought me out after the event to trade cards, AND, I found a local small book press that might possibly be able to offer a competitive rate for Verse Before the Flood to Lulu.com's. Keeping production local = WIN! AND, the bookmaker has a website, where they can do direct-to-buyer sales, and take the human-flake-factor out of me getting people's books into the mail in a timely fashion. Bonus! I don't know the exact numbers yet, but I am in violent optimism about all this.
* Surprise # 3: I got a call from Market Block Books that my replacement copy of The Colour of Loss had come in, so we made time to swing by and pick it up before dinner. The other order was in too... so I now have my copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in my hot little hands! GNYARERRRR!!!! Leaving this book alone until I've got my story done is gonna be HAAAARRRRDDDD!!!
* Surprise #4: Convinced Olannon to go to Boston with us! Yey! Went to Angela's onchaoticerotic's reccomendation, and had the Best Lunch EVAR! Pork in mole sauce... *droooool!* If we were locals there, we would so be eating there all the damned time!
* Surprise #5: Ikea, while just as chaotic and mania-inducing as I remember from the last time, had the bookcases we wanted, albeit in another colour than we'd chosen, for -30 than the price we'd expected to pay. We actually couldn't buy as many of them as we could afford, because we could only fit four of them into the Subaru. (And dayum! I'm bendy, yeah, but I don't ever want to spend a 3 hour ride THAT close to the dashboard again! My knees may never recover.)
* Surprise #6: While driving home, somewhere around Stockbridge, I saw a panther silhouetted on a hilltop against the sky... Yes. Really. A mountain lion. There was just no other animal of that size that it could have been. I got a long, clear look at the shape and scale of the thing -- short snout, small ears, looooong, thick, uptipped tail without any canine brushing shape. The body was too massy to be any of the dogs that could have been that size and still had a curved tail, plus no dog has that LONG a tail, that thick. It was a mountain lion. It was Puma, whom I've not seen in ten years, and heretofore, had NEVER seen outside the Dreamlands and the Sonora Desert Museum. I saw a fucking Mountain Lion in Stockbridge! How fucking cool is THAT?!
And now? Now I sleeps.
olannon, saying something like, "Hey, guess where I am! Less than three hours away! What are you doing this weekend?" (Cue Clue and Dominus running around in excited circles, cause how often do our Texas friends get up here to just drop by on us? Right! Not often AT ALL! And Olannon, even without his Charming Wife in tow, is one of the best of them. We made grabbyhands at him, and drew him up to the house on force of our SHEER WILLS!* Surprise #2: Saturday morning, before he arrived, Dominus and I went to the Troy Arts Council's lecture and ... well, faire kind of thingy, called "Write Here." It was meant to be a resource faire for Capital District writers, so that those who were looking for others-of-type in the area might have a place to begin. I went in expecting to be the only genre presence, and while I was the only one who self identified, there were several more who sought me out after the event to trade cards, AND, I found a local small book press that might possibly be able to offer a competitive rate for Verse Before the Flood to Lulu.com's. Keeping production local = WIN! AND, the bookmaker has a website, where they can do direct-to-buyer sales, and take the human-flake-factor out of me getting people's books into the mail in a timely fashion. Bonus! I don't know the exact numbers yet, but I am in violent optimism about all this.
* Surprise # 3: I got a call from Market Block Books that my replacement copy of The Colour of Loss had come in, so we made time to swing by and pick it up before dinner. The other order was in too... so I now have my copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in my hot little hands! GNYARERRRR!!!! Leaving this book alone until I've got my story done is gonna be HAAAARRRRDDDD!!!
* Surprise #4: Convinced Olannon to go to Boston with us! Yey! Went to Angela's on
chaoticerotic's reccomendation, and had the Best Lunch EVAR! Pork in mole sauce... *droooool!* If we were locals there, we would so be eating there all the damned time!* Surprise #5: Ikea, while just as chaotic and mania-inducing as I remember from the last time, had the bookcases we wanted, albeit in another colour than we'd chosen, for -30 than the price we'd expected to pay. We actually couldn't buy as many of them as we could afford, because we could only fit four of them into the Subaru. (And dayum! I'm bendy, yeah, but I don't ever want to spend a 3 hour ride THAT close to the dashboard again! My knees may never recover.)
* Surprise #6: While driving home, somewhere around Stockbridge, I saw a panther silhouetted on a hilltop against the sky... Yes. Really. A mountain lion. There was just no other animal of that size that it could have been. I got a long, clear look at the shape and scale of the thing -- short snout, small ears, looooong, thick, uptipped tail without any canine brushing shape. The body was too massy to be any of the dogs that could have been that size and still had a curved tail, plus no dog has that LONG a tail, that thick. It was a mountain lion. It was Puma, whom I've not seen in ten years, and heretofore, had NEVER seen outside the Dreamlands and the Sonora Desert Museum. I saw a fucking Mountain Lion in Stockbridge! How fucking cool is THAT?!
And now? Now I sleeps.