Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Am in Amsterdam. Where ought I to be?
  

    
Neil - well, you're supposed to be in Rotterdam tomorrow... and I have
no idea how far that is from Amsterdam. I think you have to pass
through dontgivadam and beaverdam between tonight and tomorrow.

but then... I've been known to be wrong.

Dodge, i don't know if I shared this or not, but the crown was when I
realized that they had been HEATING my room the whole time before my
surgery. I'm sure that was helping my comfort level tons... I didn't
really feel like walking until after they took the catheter out and
then went into the hall for a walk I was astonished at how much less
miserable I felt. they had FANS out there!
  

    

Hmm. Looking at my map, looks like there's Germany... Spain... the hanging
gardens of Babylon... Switzerland!
Not too useful.
  

    
I don't know where -you're- supposed to be, but Waldo is looking very
nervous, and has begun chewing his knit cap.
  

    
>Am in Amsterdam. Where ought I to be?

maybe at the Hilton, talking in your bed for a week?

(the newspapers said
what'cha doing in bed
i said we're only trying to get us some peace ...

you know it ain't easy...)
  

    
> Am in Amsterdam. Where ought I to be?

_Not_ Market Harborough, anyway...
  

    
Good heavens.  Neil's in Europe.  I have fallen so far behind.
  

    
Neil- Don't have too much fun, now ;) 

Martha- Yeah, what did you win?

Dan- congrats on extensions of the show! That's great!

squeaks- congrats on a successful move! It's fun, isn't it? I've moved
soooo many times that half the time stuff is still in boxes when it
comes time to pack. We get to do it again in two months. We were hoping
this would be the last time for a while, but I'm saving and building
credit for a dairy goat farm and am hoping to get that off the ground
sometime so.... But THAT will be the last move for a while, I swear!
Anyhow. Yeah. Congrats on the move. Hehe. Are you and the boy adjusting
well? I love the excitement of moving in with a SO! Of course, I don't
do that anymore, so I just re-live it through others:)

Christy- Hope you are well again.


The sky is rumbling. Ahh, I love April Showers....
  

    
I keep waiting for them to post about the thing on the web site so I can
just paste in the url....
  

    
Dodge--
Physical therapists are, at least in my experience, a very dicey
proposition. They're either tremendously helpful or an utter waste of
time and money. Fortunately, my wife (who has been dealing with back
troubles for going on three years now) found a particularly good one in
our area, helpful folks indeed. They're the only practice out of four
or five she's tried that seems to understand that people in therapy
will have good days and bad days, not just a uniform improving trend.
Good luck to you.

Neil:
re: "Where ought I to be?"
Eventually, hopefully Michigan. That way Wellies and Thingies can come
visit me and see the sights rather than vice-versa. I'm always happy
to play tour guide.

Hey, whaddaya know, I posted. Huh.
  

    
E-mail from Dodge:

Dan: Yeah. I remember that too. I'd had gallbladder surgery. 11 inch
incision from the bellybutton to the sternum. As soon as I opened my
eyes they told me I had to get out of bed and walk. Still had the
catheter and the feeds. They'd put the drips in the back of my hand -
switched out every other day. Took me forever for the bruising to go
away. Had 2 bags hanging on the rack. My pal'd brought me my voluminous
satin oriental dragon robe. I shuffled down the hall doing my George
Burns impression and being doped to the gills still I sang crackedly,
"Me And My Shadow". The nurses looked at me like they were calling the
surgeon the next opportunity to have me moved to the psyche ward.

And, yeah. I wish I could get the people that worked with me before for
physical therapy but they are across town. An hour drive away. Sigh.

Beams to Neil. Don't let them lose you. We all want you back safe and
sound. Tell Them we said so.
Black car with black roof. Now, why don't that surprise me?
  

    
I want to know what award martha won too. 

Davey -- well spotted.

It's going okay. Did a signing tonight which kind of wore me out --
don't have premeningitis stamina.
  

    
I think Martha won the June Anne Baker Prize, given out by PlayGround, a 
Bay Area Playwrights organization.

From their website:

 The June Anne Baker Prize, initiated by John H. Gilman in memory of his 
late wife, is awarded annually to a female emerging playwright 
representing a new comedic or political voice for the stage. The prize 
offers a commission for a new full-length play and a workshop production 
of the completed script. 

The play that probably cinched it for her was one called Cold Calls, which 
is available to read in the theatre conference of the WELL (which I 
co-host)  You have to join the WELL in order to read the play.... [Well, 
you could promise Martha to produce it and she would probably mail you a 
copy of the play...]

The play is available at <theat.286.113> for you WELL subscribers.

Non-subscribers, get on the horn!
  

    
Neat!
  

    
Martha - Fabulous! I've been wanting to read that, but for some
bizarro reason never hooked up with the theatre confernce. Now I can do
both.
erm... later 
after the show
I'm NOT procrastinating! I just have to shower!
  

    
Martha -- yay!!!!

...

Elf Festival is cold and wet. Brian and Wendy Froud are fine dinner
companions.
  

    
Martha -- Having done the Umbilical Shuffle, I imagine you gliding (so
to speak) down the hall in your dragon robe, arching your fingers and
muttering, "I am afraid my illustrious father, Doctor Fu Manchu, is
away on a house call.  We are saving time today by simply shooting
difficult protagonists in the head.  I trust this will not
inconvenience you unduly."

Well, okay, that's my take, anyway.

Me, I do not have a dragon robe.  I have a floor-length, hooded black
one of the "What do you mean, 'oh God, there are bats?'  This is a
tower room.  You were expecting maybe sea turtles?" variety.

And I still think that if I come up for one more surgery, I will
demand the tool-free case.  And a DVD burner.
  

    



Dodge

I am, for some strange reason, moved to post at the beginning rather than the
end of the week. Or rather in addition to.

I was reading Neil's American Gods blogger. Yes. I downloaded the whole thing
and am slogging and giggling my way through it. I read one entry where he's
making a list of everything he wants to write soon. He wants to write a book
called, he says, "The Seven Sisters" and immediately, me, the garden and
roses nut thinks, why does Neil want to do a book about a rose? then I cotton
to the fact it's a Neverwhere #2 book. Aha. THOSE Seven Sisters. Am now
wishing he had the time but I see he's planning something else before. Sigh.

Went to Greek Orthodox friends Easter dinner Sunday. She is a pal who is an
animator teacher (multimedia and video as well) and once did a Hellraiser
video with another person for a class and once upon a time planned to ask to
do it all for real but the project got shelved. She leant me her Hellraiser
comics to catch up on. Some of them. I must take very good care of them and
return them to her next week though.

Painted the wall again and the adjoining (longer) wall. Still isn't the right
shade. Will leave the shorter wall this shade for a while. Plan to rag paint
over the other 3 with white. Which will look good standing in the living room
looking into the hall. The big wall facing will be pink under with white
cloudy things over and the wall facing the living room in the hall is medium
lavender under with very light cloudy things over. I may get a deeper rose
shade to redo the short wall and use for accents (some more hand painted
roses maybe - there are yellow ones on the medium lavender strip in the
hall) and mix even more of the white white into the present gallon to make a
very pale pink for the kitchen. You end up with a lot of paint if you keep
adding quarts of white. Eventually, maybe, I will end up with the blush pink
I originally wanted. Even the dining room pretty peachy pink wasn't as light
as I started out wanting but liked it so it stays.  I'm so glad my landlady
is a friend of mine and told me I could do whatever I wanted to the interior
as long as I don't bother her for the expense.  Except I may need to get her
to put in a washer/dryer connection. Have fixed the door so it looks like
carved wood with roses in the panels (used papier machet - hey, free). Am
having so much fun though it's taking a while.

OK. Carry on.
  

    
The PlayGround site is finally updated (the Emerging Playwrights Festival
link):

http://www.playground-sf.org

The site doesn't mention that they handed me this June Anne Baker Prize and
expect me to write a full-length play though.
  

    
Martha, many congratulations!

Bill, you know you're always welcome to come to Chicago again if
Neil's not visiting Michigan -- he'll be here for the Humanities
Festival -- if Sarah's up for it. We'd love to have you. :)

Squeaks,  yay for the end of the move! The soreness will go away, but
the annoyance of not having enough space for everything never will (in
my experience). I still have nine boxes of books in a closet, and four
big boxes of who-knows-what in a storage closet in the basement.

This is probably wholly uninteresting to everyone here, but I'm
excited -- my brother RJ just signed a two year contract with the
Tennessee Titans. He's a professional football player now. It's very
weird.
  

    
Congratulations, Martha!

Congratulations to your brother, Maure!  (I know lots of Titans fans.)

Post any time of the week, Dodge!
  

    
Martha--Congratulations!  And I love the play!  Would it frighten you
to know that I liked it much better than the August Wilson I saw
yesterday?  (It was Gem of the Ocean, which is new and needs work).

Maure--Yay!  Congratulations to RJ!

Bill--what Maure said!
  

    
Mike: You mean they didn't even offer you the CD burner this time? I
thought you'd taken the holographic projector as an alternate
selection. ("Help me, Obi-Borg Locutus. You're my only hope.")

I finally went out this morning for my first full cardio walk of the
year, around the near section of the Charles River path. 3.5 miles of
irregular trail in 75 minutes. I don't seem to have lost much wind or
heart over the long winter, yay.

The first-pruning winter-damage rose report: Dodge (and anyone else
interested), I think I lost the Pat Austin. I'm still hoping that it's
just making a verrrry slow recovery, but there are no signs of life
there <sigh>. I definitely lost (and took off this afternoon) the
bottom two canes of the Golden Showers, and most of three of the middle
canes of the White Dawn--that's 20+ linear feet of climbing roses
gone, feh. I also had to take off one of last year's new canes of the
Honorine de Brabant (all of the old wood survived and is thriving,
though) and a couple of canes and a lot of trims off the Sun Flare
(which isn't entirely bad since a low floribunda shouldn't be leggy
anyway); and cut almost everything off the Blue Girl to down below the
mulch level. The old Chicago Peace and the spicy red old-style rose by
the kitchen porch made it through with minimal damage.

Squeaks: Hooray for being done moving! And, oh, yeah, twisty
staircases, maneuvered around a few of those... Ibuprofen is your
friend. (Last time I moved was into this house when we bought it in
1994, after looking at nearly 40--Chip kept count, and he swears we
really did--because we both knew it had to be a house we could live in
for a looong time because we weren't EVER moving again. So far, so
good.)

Dodge, you're right about being lucky in your landlady, and that
sounds like a lot of paint to me, too.

Neil: The point when you ought to worry is if the "TBD" presentation
at Book Country sells out before yours does... (Don't look at me, I've
already bought two tickets. For yours.)
  Just because I'm curious, which laptop are you traveling with this
time? The Dell, or did you load up the little'un?

Aha! So kafclown was right about the award--YAY MARTHA! You knew
there'd be a catch to it, though, didn't you? When you finish the
full-length play are they bound to produce it?

Hey Mary, has your class started _Neverwhere_ yet?

And yay! for Maure's RJ-the-Titan!
  

    
Well, Mary, maybe you just didn't like the _production_ of the Wilson.

And, maybe it's easier to pull off 10 pages than 100.  (But now they expect
me to do the latter.)
  

    
Martha- Don't worry, it will be fabulous! You already know how to put
one word after another very well, in fact, better than most, so what's
another 1,000? :) Congratulations! (and I believe Neil-- you probably
_could_ do it standing on your head)

Maure- Congrats to RJ! No one in this house watches sports, but maybe
we will this year just so we can go, "There's Maure's brother throwing
an oddly-shaped ball around! Weee."

It's a beautiful day here and I'm trying to wake the husband so we can
go bird watching. And the forecaster said there would be rain. They're
always lying, aren't they? Yay, birdies!