Humor

Take a deep breath, originally uploaded by cynthiacloskey.

My father turns 70 today. In our family, that means pyrotechnics.

We traditionally get our birthday cakes from Robert’s Bakery, in downtown Butler. My brother loaded up the cake with 70 candles, and Dad managed to get them all extinguished before the cake caught fire.

The icing did melt a bit though.

Happy birthday, Dad!

“So, Susan, now that you’ve jumped out of an airplane, what are you going to do next?”

“Hmmm. Good question. I guess I should tell you I’m going to visit Mickey Mouse, but that’s so cliche. Why don’t we say I’m going to bust my ass at work, then take a few days off to hang with my sister and her brood, who are in from out of town, which means complete and utter family love and chaos, and then that I’ll go out of town on business for two days, all while fretting that I’m making little headway on my manuscript edits (or this blog, for that matter) — speaking of which, while I’ve gotten rejections to my query letter, I did get another request for a partial! And remember that column I’m writing? That’s due next week! No problem! No pressure, Susan, no pressure! Oh, and did I tell you I’m starting to get feeling back in my ass after 2 1/2 hours of watching The Dark Knight on Saturday? Really, it’s like Disney World, right?…” [insert Joker-like laughter] “Right?!”

“Uh, well, sure. Okay, thanks for the interview. I’m going to go –”

“Waaaaaaaaaait! Can you help me pack my suitcase?”

Mmm. I guess it’s looking to be another one of those “when it rains it pours” kind of weeks. I hope you have a good one!

PS. Thank you for your great comments on my last post and the skydiving videos. The video was made by my big strapping tandem master, who was wearing a small video camera on his left wrist in this kind of glove. Once we were back on the ground the skydiving gurus burned the video to DVD and added the songs, which I chose from a list of about 15 options, all in about 20-30 minutes. (The wait wasn’t a problem; Fly-Boy and I were practically passed out in our chairs after coming down from the adrenaline rush.) It’s a great keepsake, and I’m really pleased that I got it.

Ok, here’s the low-down on my skydiving adventure. I’ll try not to bore you with the details. Or maybe I will. Hey, I did a tandem jump and you didn’t (presumably), so I can do what I want!

The Back Story

I met a woman, Georgia, through a women’s networking lunch group a few years ago and we really hit it off. I was in her office one day shortly after we met and noticed photos of her in skydiving gear. It turns out that Georgia’s son was a jump master/skydiver dude and that she had done her first jump in her 40’s. Cool!

Flashing forward to about 2 months ago, Georgia and I were emailing each other about getting together one of these days, and I mentioned I was interested in going skydiving (cuckoo) and could she recommend a place. She mentioned that a group of friends was going to a place in Canton, OH for a day of jumping on July 13th and would I like to come along? Voila! My idea had now crossed over into reality (or insanity).

You should also know about a month ago I started dating someone, who for purposes of this post I will call Fly-Boy because, well, he came along with me skydiving. It wasn’t a prerequisite to date me or anything like that, but when I casually inquired whether he had ever done a jump before (trust me, this came up naturally in conversation…at least I think it did), he said, “No, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”

Hmmm. (Are the gods o’ wacky ideas testing me?)

I mentioned my July plans to Fly-Boy and half-jokingly asked him if he wanted to come along. Turns out he did and a week and a $30 refundable deposit later, he was signed up, too.

By the way, when he said he wanted to go I warned him there were no guarantees about how I might act under duress, that I might do something horrible like vomit on him. He said it wouldn’t be the first time.

How sweet is that?

The Big Day

On Sunday morning we drove the 90 minutes in the rain watching the gray, dismal, cloudy skies the whole way. We arrived, met everyone and then waited. And waited. And waited for a good 2 and a half hours, praying that the skies would clear so we could do this STUPID SKYDIVING BEFORE I CHICKEN OUT. And you know what? The skies cleared for us; you can see in the photos just how blue the sky was, but let me tell you it looked quite stormy in the morning.

So the place came alive and they started prepping us and our fellow tandem jumpers. We went through a short training with Mike, who claimed to be the perfect instructor and ended up being my tandem master. (To be honest, I would have called him God as long as he got me down in one piece.)

A little later, after the first 4 people went up (they could take 2 in a plane at a time), I went to the bathroom about 15 times and then we got suited up:

We looked very top gun-ish, don’t you think? And dorky. Fly-Boy looks quite serious about the whole thing, but he apparently has a policy of not smiling in photos. Especially those before he is going to jump out of an airplane.

Then our boys helped us into our S&M/Lifesaving harnesses.

We were ready.

An Overview of the Experience

The bottom line: it takes 20 minutes for the plane to get up to altitude at 10K feet. About halfway through your ride up in the comfy (cough-cough) cabin, which is the size of the terribly small closet you can only use to store your underwear, you turn around and kneel in front of the person responsible for your life so he/she can hook you up to him/her. Then, when the time is right, the tandem master going first opens the door and looks out to find the right locale and conditions for the jump, or something like that. All I know is that you are going 80 mph, the wind is blowing and HELLO! the door is open.

When it’s good to go, you are instructed to place your right foot on a wee-little step next to the professional’s (this entails you looking to see that your leg is now outside of the plane), hang your left knee over the edge of the door, cross your arms — and, after your jump buddy pushes off, buh-bye. After jumping you have to kick your legs back, hold your head up, pray a lot and off you go. Fall. Whatever. A few seconds and a tap on the shoulder later, you can open your arms for the rest of the free-fall, which only takes about 30 seconds. The parachute ride is about 6 minutes. You can help steer, which is cool.

Live Vicariously, If You Dare

I think converting the video to the right format and uploading it was even more harrowing than doing the jump itself. But if you want to experience a lot of dorky, nervous giggling before, during and after I throw myself out of a perfectly good aircraft, you can watch it here. The second video clip is the free fall in real time — about 30 seconds. You know, at a rate of 120 mph from 10,000 feet.

A few notes:

1. My apologies to all of Ohio for previously saying your topography is boring. Up in a plane on a clear day, it is actually quite picturesque and lovely. During the free-fall I couldn’t really comment.

2. Despite the silly giggling, I swear to you I really wasn’t “nervous-nervous,” even when the door opened or stepping my foot out on the little step, which freaked out some of the other jumpers. That said, I experienced sheer terror when we did the nosedive out of the plane and somersaulted until righting ourselves. For some reason I wasn’t expecting that. Sheer. Terror. for 2 seconds.

3. The video is proof that I am a) a dork, which we’ve established; and b) need to lose some weight to avoid having a double chin recorded in future videos. Oh, and my teeth appear much bigger than normal (which means big!) when my gums are literally flapping in the breeze. Ah, well. What can I say? I jumped out of a plane and you (presumably) didn’t, so there.

4. The only part that upset my stomach was doing a spiral. One of those “seemed like a good idea at the time” moments. Kind of screwed with me for a good hour afterwards. Fly-Boy got carried away and did 3 spirals! That really caught up with him after he landed.

All right, so here they are, if you care to watch:

In real time:

Did I hear someone say kuh-ray-zee?

PS. Georgia asked what Fly-Boy and I were going to do for our next date. We both agreed the movies might be a good idea!

So about a year ago I had this idea.

An idea that I have NO idea why it came to me and then wouldn’t go away. I get ideas in my head at times, as I’ve alluded to, but certainly nothing like this.

It might be because I turn 40 next month.

It might be another example of me trying to expand my horizons and enjoy life — barreling or bumbling through it, depending on the day.

It might be that, as Drama Girl told me this evening after all was said and done:

Yep, that might be it.

I told my mom about this a few weeks ago because I needed her to baby-sit for the day. Her eyes got wide and she said, “Oh, Susan!” A few of my friends and my boss responded the same exact way when I told them about my plans for the weekend.

But, crazy or not, today I did something I wanted to do.

Did you?

PS. I’ll write and post more photos tomorrow. I’m also trying to upload video, but it’s not working out at the moment. Or I’m not patient enough. Either way, I’m headed to bed because the day’s experience has wiped me out… fortunately, without me wiping out.

I’ve fallen off the Twitter bandwagon. At first I stopped twittering in righteous indignation at the amount of time that the site goes down, or shuts down services because it’s overloaded. If I’m using something to stay in touch with people, I want it to work reliably. Otherwise, what’s the point?

I have an account on Pownce, and I thought I might use that as my Twitter alternative: a place to post short things that aren’t quite ready-for-blog-time, and to see what my friends are up to. It’s fine for that, except there’s not a critical mass of my curent friends there. Using Pownce felt like being the first one at a party, standing around holding a drink and waiting for everyone else to show up — and feeling sure that everyone has decided to go instead to another party across town (or stay at the party (Twitter) that they were already at).

So I didn’t use anything for a while. This turned out to be a lonely but brilliant idea. Lonely, because I was disconnected from the on-going conversations that everyone is continuing to have, doing perfectly fine without my interjections. Brilliant, because not being part of these conversations freed up oodles of time during the work day, time that I used to get real, paying work done.

And it turned out that, while those missed conversations were fun, I was still able to keep in enough touch with people to maintain friendships and feel sufficiently connected.

Still and all, I missed having an outlet for small observations, and I wished for a way to keep a little bit in the loop. I tried just dipping into Twitter and jumping back out, but the glitches and outages still seem to be going on. And the conversations are addictive; I don’t think my willpower is strong enough for small sips at the firehose.

I noticed a few people talking about Plurk. Yet another social networking site? Yes. I like its interface, especially how easy it is to see a thread of conversations (a big problem in Twitter). Plurk also doesn’t promise to be instantaneous, so it feels different from Twitter and instant messaging. The odd cartoony graphics are intriguing.

I’m especially interested in how they’ve integrated a concept of karma. The more you do with Plurk, the more karma you build; you ca also lose karma in various ways. The more karma you have, the more features you have access to. This matches one of the important principles for building a good social network (one which I first heard about from Brad King): No free rides. If you want to play, you have to contribute.

(Now that I think about it, Plurk karma is kind of like one of the rules of Fight Club: If this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight. Interesting.)

Anyway, one big way to build Plurk karma is to invite others to join. So…

Accept my invitation to Plurk!

This looks interesting:
A Transom Special Feature with Art Outlet’s SELF Program & FLIK International Movie Festival What is SELF?

SELF is a forum created by Art Outlet where artists explore self-portraiture in traditional and non-traditional media. It can be a memory, a vignette from life, an interesting dream that affected you, an experience of moving to a new culture, a story your mother once told you, an event that changed your notion of identity, a meditation on a certain theme in your life…

Transom, in association with Art Outlet and the FLIK International Movie Festival, is seeking multi-media self-portraits to be featured at the festival and on the site. We’ll offer honoraria to those we put on Transom. All stories must be non-fiction, under five minutes, and include both audio and visual components. The visual can literally reflect the story, or complement it – your choice. Along with your soundtrack, you can use photo slideshows, cut up old films and videos, animation, footage of locations or related imagery, or even a series of hand drawings. Whatever works for the story. (By the way, Transom is pleased to be working on this project with our original Web Director, Josh Barlow).

The video embedded above is a submission for the project, from Renee Shaw. It’s titled “My Best Friend Mark.”

Special announcement, with a deal for Pittsburgh-area bloggers:

Area bloggers are invited free of charge to Quantum Theatre’s performance of Shakepeare’s Cymbeline:

Preview Performance (they will be testing the techie workings of the production)
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Mellon Park (Point Breeze/Shadyside neighborhood)
8PM (no late seating, gates lock at 8 sharp)

Quantum Theatre’s upcoming production is Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, which runs in Mellon Park from July 31-Aug 24. It is truly innovative in that Karla Boos — the director and Quantum founder — is collaborating with Illah Nourbakhsh at the Robotics Institute at CMU to integrate interactive technology into the production.

We can’t spill any more secrets than that, except to say that this event is sure to be a wonder.

Find out about Quantum Theatre at their website: www.quantumtheatre.com.

RSVP required; cancellations appreciated. Please RSVP to Rene Conrad at rconrad@quantumtheatre.com or 412.697.2929.

Crusty Rusty Bolts originally uploaded by mikeyexists

Friday evening and Saturday, bloggers from Pittsburgh, Erie, Youngstown, Cleveland, Buffalo, and other cities in this region will be meeting for the first Rust Belt Bloggers Summit.

Our primary goal — or at least, my view of our goal — is to meet and learn about each other and our common interests, with the hope of finding ways to work together. We share the desire to use social media to support and improve our communities; since the cities in the Rust Belt share history and characteristics, we should be able to find a lot in common.

City Paper previewed the event in an article today ("Bloggers to unite under common threads at conference"), with quotes from me and Doug Derda, as well as other thoughtful bloggers in other cities.

If you’re interested in attending, visit the Rust Belt Bloggers website to get details, and come join us. No registration needed; just show up.

Let’s shake off some of this rust, shall we?

I spoke too soon when I said that AMC was the only cable network I needed. I forgot the USA Network.

Burn Notice, my favorite television guilty pleasure, returns Thursday for its second season.

Burn Notice combines the spy techniques and intra-agency backstabbing of the Jason Bourne movies with MacGuyver do-it-yourself surveillance tips, then it adds some Ferris Bueller-type tongue-in-cheek voiceovers, and finally it throws the whole thing on the beaches of Miami. There’s more than enough eye candy for viewers of any gender, and just the right amount of intrigue to keep things interesting.

And the co-stars include Bruce “The Chin” Campbell (of the Evil Dead series) and Sharon Gless (Cagney of the detective series Cagney & Lacey). An abundance of riches.

For a taste of the sensibility of the show, watch this longer, more explanatory promo. Or check out the “Ask a Spy” feature on the show’s website. The show’s lead, Michael Westen (played by the strangely compelling Jeffrey Donovan) answers questions you didn’t know you had. Like, how can I break out of a prison in Turkmenistan? and how can I avoid embarrassing myself when playing sports at a company retreat? Great stuff.

And did you notice the soundtrack of that promo I pasted in above? Yes, that’s Billy Squier singing. Oh yeah.

My son asked me this yesterday:

“You know when people get really old, do you think eating lots of chocolate helps them stay alive?”

My response: “I sure hope so.”

Seriously, I think it may work. I’m going to up my intake starting today.

I wanted to show you a video of Ballboy performing “Something’s Going to Happen.” I envisioned that the title of my post would be “And no one will ever love you as much as I do.” It’s a perfect song for this evening.

Also: It’s true, you know. No one will ever love you as much as I do.

But YouTube doesn’t have a video of the band performing that song. They do have this lovely ditty though. The title is “I Lost You, But I Found Country Music,” and I think you’ll enjoy it.

You might also like this next song, especially the opening narrative. The song is “Avant Garde Music,” again by Ballboy.

Dear Peeps,

May I borrow the term “peeps” from my kids and call you that? Do I even have any peeps - or even a single peep - left after not blogging for a week?!

Then

Well, the last week kind of got away from me, so thanks to those of you for continuing to check in since my last post and return from Chicago. I got back from my trip last Sunday night, spent Monday trying to get organized (and squeezed in a date, too), and then launched into a short-but-crazy work week. (To quote a co-worker on Tuesday morning: “welcome back to the shit storm.” Oy.) I also got a call from the painter I talked to a few weeks earlier and surprise! he was ready to begin painting pratically my whole living space on Thursday! So, I spent Wednesday night taking stuff down and rearranging things, and spent Thursday and part of Friday in a complete mess that looked something like this:

(Note, however, that although we had no seating I had to hook up the TV right away so Drama Girl and T-Rex could go on living. )

The weekend was filled with lots of clean-up, fireworks, picnics, kids stuff, more clean-up, etc., etc.

Now

But that was then and this is now.

But Wait!

I never told you about Chicago, which was way, way back then, so let me recap my trip. In summary, it went like this:

Way Back Then

It was a blast, full of good food and company!

I flew in Thursday the 26th and spent the day with my cousin. We lunched downtown, drove around a bit sight-seeing, then headed to Andersonville, a great artsy neighborhood where he lives. After breakfast the next morning at a place that serves ooey, scrumptious cinnamon buns, he dropped me off at my hotel. I checked my bag and spent a few hours walking around Michigan Avenue.

Before my trip a lot of people asked me if I was going to shop, but I’m not a huge shopper so between visits I instead walked to Millennium Park. What’s in Millennium Park, you ask? Well, all sorts of interesting things…like the cool fountains with the faces of famous Chicagoans on them. Or at least I hear they’re famous.

They spit water out every five minutes or so.

And then there is the bean sculpture-thingamajig.

And the ampitheater and walkway to Lake Michigan.

After tooling around on my own, I took a break in the A/C to do some manuscript editing while I waited for the girls to arrive later that afternoon. They finally made it in after an unexpected 2 hour shuttle ride from O’Hare (note to first-time travelers: take the train instead!) We headed over to Taste of Chicago, a gastronomic feast for native Chicagoans and visitors alike. We sampled all sorts of things Friday night and again on Saturday. I’ll try just about anything (just about), so I was thrilled to partake in a little Sautéed Goat with Plantains from an African restaurant. (I told my one friend, “I have a blog. Of course I have to try the goat so I have something to write about!”) Very tasty, although the teenagers serving it to me were kind of laughing when I asked for it. I don’t know what that was all about. I ate it anyway. It was delish, similar to lamb.

At the festival we caught a bit of Chakka Khan’s and Stevie Wonder’s concerts, although the mix of sun, packed crowds, scavenging seagulls, and food (including the ice cream spilled on my back and hot sauce accidentally dumped on my friend’s shoes) was not for the fainthearted.

On Saturday we went to see the matinee performance of Wicked (wonderful - and I have tix to see it again when it comes here in the fall!) and then over to Navy Pier for dinner and fireworks. All in all, it was a great time catching up with everyone in a great city.

Now (Again)

I still feel like I’m in catch-up mode, especially with this whole manuscript business. I have some interesting things planned later this week, which I promise to blog about (I really will), but in the meantime…

Signed, sealed and delivered, I’m yours,

Susan

I’ve just learned that AMC is remaking The Prisoner, the rather spooky and incomprehensible but wildly engrossing Cold War series that the BBC made in the late 60s.

The original version of The Prisoner starts out like a James Bond story, but then gets very weird. The hero, played by Patrick McGoohan with a constant smirk and raised eyebrow, is a man known only as Number Six. The titles show us that he has resigned from some spy agency, then was kidnapped. He awakens in an isolated seashore community called the Village, from which he can’t escape. Why is he there? Who are these other people in the Village? Why can’t he leave? Who is Number One? It’s all mysterious, and it’s also surreal — the colors, the images, the giant white bubble that captures and returns anyone who tries to escape.

“Be seeing you” is the main catchphrase from the show. It’s how the characters say “goodbye”; there’s no escape, so of course they’ll be seeing you, but also the community is full of spies and security cameras, so at any time someone is seeing you.

The uneasy sensibility of The Prisoner fit the Cold War period perfectly. It also suits our current day, with the erosion of personal liberties by government as well as the loss of privacy via our lives on the Web and the constant sharing of personal data. (Giant Eagle Advantage Card, anyone?)

AMC is already my new favorite cable network, what with the classic movies and novel programming like Mad Men. Soon I won’t need any other channels. Be seeing you, indeed.

The New York Times spends 36 hours in Pittsburgh, and likes what it finds:
…old stereotypes die hard, and Pittsburgh probably doesn’t make many
people’s short list for a cosmopolitan getaway. Too bad, because this
city of 89 distinct neighborhoods is a cool and — dare I say, hip—city.
There are great restaurants, excellent shopping,
breakthrough galleries and prestigious museums. The convergence of
three rivers and surrounding green hills also make it a surprisingly
pretty urban setting.

Brillobox, The City Theatre, La Prima, and the Heinz History Center all are featured, along with standbys like the Incline, The Mattress Factory, and the Warhol Museum.

If you ever hear me say I’m going to do something like this, ok?

Much appreciated.

PS. Back from Chicago, was a great time. Will post more later.

Purple Loosestrife, originally uploaded by cambodia4kidsorg

Popular opinion has treated the invasive plants as botanical illegal aliens. The Environmental Protection Agency has labeled them as the second-greatest threat to the continent’s biodiversity, exceeded in their impact only by outright destruction of habitat. Major resources have been devoted to the spraying and rooting-out of invasive plants in the belief that their removal would enable an ecological revival. Roughly $45 million, for example, is spent every year in the unsuccessful attempt to stop the spread of a single European wetland weed, purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria).

New research, however, suggests that invasive species, at least in some instances, aren’t so much the causes of environmental degradation as eco-opportunists taking advantage of disturbed habitats. Or, as the biologist Andrew MacDougall of the University of Guelph, Ontario, puts it, the invasives may behave more as “passengers” than as “drivers.”

From Can Weeds Help Solve the Climate Crisis? (NYTimes.com)

I’ve been involved in the past with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, a wonderful organization that maintains Fallingwater and acts as custodian for natural resources in this state. Several years ago, I attended a workshop on exotic invasive plants, like purple loosestrife, multiflora rose, orange day-lily, and English ivy among many others, and participated in a project to remove purple loosestrife from a stream near here. It was hard and discouraging work: We spent a day carefully cutting off and bagging plants, but made barely any impression in the space.

One frequently cited definition is that a weed is “a plant out of place.” Many of the invasive exotics were brought here originally by well-intentioned gardeners and home owners. Purple loosestrife is rather pretty, for example. But because these plants proliferate so quickly and widely, we view them as weeds.

Now I read in this article in the NY Times that removal efforts like the purple loosestrife project I worked on may indirectly hasten the decline of native species in the area:

For three years [biologist Andrew MacDougall of the University of Guelph] removed the invasive grasses from plots he outlined within [a Nature Conservancy Canada property on Vancouver Island]. In some plots, he did this by mowing or burning; in others, he removed the weeds entirely. Yet the native flora didn’t rebound significantly. In some cases, the decline of the native plant species instead accelerated, and the fundamental character of the flora within the plots began to change, with woody plants encroaching on the formerly open, grassy areas.

MacDougall concluded that rather than serving as drivers of change, the foreign grasses were functioning more in the role of passengers, merely filling in as the natives disappeared. In fact, the foreigners seemed to be serving a stabilizing role. By blocking light from reaching the soil, they inhibited the germination of tree and shrub seeds. Keeping the brush at bay in this fashion preserved the open character of the savanna habitat so that the remnants of the original savanna wildflowers, grasses and wildlife could at least survive. In light of these findings, MacDougall says, he came to believe that the primary cause of the native flora’s decline was human intervention. Before European settlement, fire periodically cleansed the soil surface of dead plant material. Suppression of fire since settlement had allowed a thick layer of litter to accumulate, and the foreign grasses cope better with this than do the natives.

This theary makes sense, yet it also raises the question of what we should do — or not do. It seems impossible to think of not trying to remove fast-growing plants; it’s too easy to imagine a South consumed by kudzu. But until we can find ways to reduce our production of carbon dioxide (which seems to encourage the growth of many other unwelcome plant species), we may find we need to lean on certain invasives to help us preserve other species.

Suddenly, these plants no longer seem quite like weeds any more.

You may wet hard copies of these stories and wrap them on your self and let them dry, like papier-mâché. Afterwards the stories will have taken on the shape of your body.

From “Terms of Use” at Distorte

The Monkees (View Original Article)

A bit of technical help needed: I have a DVD of family films from decades ago. They were originally Super 8 films that my dad had; I took them to Tom Graham of Frames and Pixels, and he put them all on DVD for me, and worked with me to edit them into sequential order. (All for an extremely reasonable price.)

There are some entertaining bits in there, including brief footage of me, aged 1, dancing in front of the television while watching The Monkees. OK, so maybe they’re entertaining only to me and a few others. Still, I’d like to get them online to share.

How to do that? I have the rights to the footage, just need to know the steps to clip a bit of video from a DVD and bring it into iMovie.

If you can offer guidance, please comment or send me an email. (See the Contact page.) Thank you!

Tags: callsfor help, videos

In the middle of wrapping up projects and starting new work. Back very soon.

(I can has thyme machine?)

Chicago from Above
Originally uploaded by Stuck in Customs

I’m off for a few days to Chi-town, visiting my cousin tomorrow through Friday morning and then my girlfriends for a weekend sure to be filled with lots of talk, laughter, counseling and food (especially seeing that it’s Taste of Chicago this weekend). It’ll be like The Red Tent with shish kabobs, overpriced lemonade and live music from the likes of Stevie Wonder and Chaka Khan.

Let me pause for a moment while you sing, "Chaka Khan, Chaka Khan…"

We’ve been doing this girls get-together for about 4 years now and we all need it for different, yet the same, reasons. There are 5 of us, 4 having known each other since college. A few are going through really tough situations right now, but I know we’ll have a great time, too. I love them dearly; they’ve been a great source of support and friendship to me and I hope I have been to them.

I’m also excited to see my cousin. See, I have a special place in my heart for him. Right after news of my divorce made its way through the family grapevine 6 years ago, he sent me an email out of the blue — we hadn’t really kept in touch much, being 10 years apart and in different cities. Our grandparents were really upset by my news, so he offered to formally come out of the closet as a ploy to divert attention away from my situation! We decided our combined declarations might be too much for everyone’s hearts, but shared a good laugh about it. I will never forget that act of kindness. And he is a lot of fun to hang out with, too.

He’s going to show me his favorite places because I’ve never visited before. Never. Can’t believe that, but I’ve only done an OJ through O’Hare a few years ago. (Um, that would not be the "murder/police chase OJ" or the "busted in Vegas OJ" or the "I’ve done the unthinkable and written a book that someone was ACTUALLY GOING TO PUBLISH before sanity prevailed OJ." I’m talking  the "Hertz running through the airport OJ". And if you never saw the ad, then you’re too damn young to be up this late reading blogs!)

So that’s the scoop. It will be nice to take a break, although it comes at a kind of interesting time. I met someone last weekend, we had a good time and now are trying to work out our next date or two, which normally would have been perfect for this weekend. (Never fear, next week is fine.) And I wasn’t going to take anything resembling a computer, but last weekend I got a letter from one of the agents I queried (but not the one I pitched to). I opened it expecting a big ol’ "REJECT" stamped across the top. Nope, she wants to see my FULL manuscript.

Holy Canoli!

I’ve got some serious touching up to do before I send it out — I’m giving myself about 2+ weeks to get it right. So I’m bringing my laptop to edit in the airport and during a few hours of downtime I might have on Friday. Then again, I may just go get a canoli.

Oh, one last point. I’m kind of disappointed that I won’t be here for the annual Furry convention taking place in the ‘Burgh, which will be going on while I’m gone. Let me tell you, it’s a sight to see — especially because it takes place very close to where I work. Too close. Let’s just say that last year an obese stinky fox followed me into one of those automatic revolving doors in my building. The door goes so slow. Too slow. I was so creeped out I almost threw myself into the glass to make that thing move faster!

Enough rambling, have a great weekend!