3/12/06: Namedropping

[davidlevine]

Word count: 12784 | Since last entry: 721

Just back from the gay square dance in Seattle, where we danced to the stimulating Saundra Bryant and local caller Stephen Cole. Sandie is always a treat -- even her Challenge dancing is actually dancing, with flow and rhythm and all that stuff. LJ users present included allanh, sfbearhoney, and the always delightful katybeth.

On Friday morning we dropped Lise WINOLJ off at the ceramics conference, where we said goodbye to her and jonsinger. Most of the rest of the day was consumed by the ongoing comedy of errors trying to get an iPod adapter installed in the car, which started when the part that was supposed to be shipped second-day air was actually shipped third-day air, so arrived after our appointment on Tuesday. So we stopped in on our way to Seattle on Friday, where the install went quite quickly, but as soon as we hit the road the sound cut out completely after the iPod was slightly joggled. Naturally, when we took it back to the installer it worked perfectly, but they replaced the adapter anyway and it worked well the rest of the trip. The on-screen display is a little flaky, but the sound quality's excellent and the integration with the car radio is really nice.

On Sunday morning we skipped the fly-in's brunch in favor of a wonderful breakfast at Etta's with allanh, followed by a stroll around the Pike Place Market area and a trip to Uwajimaya for more Japanese puzzle books for kateyule. And who should we run into at Uwajimaya but alicebentley, on her way to an anime club meeting (it's her passion, but her son Marty lets her drag him along).

I've gotten better at keeping up the writing during trips like this one, maintaining at least 200 words per day. Which is a good thing, since this fershlugginer story has just passed 12,500 words and seems doomed to exceed the 17,500 word barrier between novelette and novella. But it seems to demand this length, so I mean to see it out.

A snippet: "When my reserved time arrived, the five satellites swiveled themselves to focus on Earth and kept up this scrutiny for a full eight hours. Post-processing took another two hours. During this time I floated among the tomatoes and zucchinis in the greenhouse, trying to distract myself with pruning and pollinating but actually accomplishing little more than plant-assisted nail-chewing. When my watch chimed, I rushed eagerly to Delta work bay, where the monitor revealed...

"Nothing.

"The interpolated data of the five satellites did not show any signal from Earth at all."