gwyndolin has been staying with me since she came up from San Jose on the train Tuesday. Fun has included but not been limited to climbing(!), Pike Place Market, a lot of baking, and less writing than either of us expected. Tonight being her last night in Seattle, we went over to La Casa jeanineers and woadwarrior to spend time with corwynofamber, Vicky, cupcake_goth, and stroppy_baggage. corwynofamber gave me a doll-house bathtub full of tiny rubber (flying) monkeys (and one ape), which makes him A+++++; and jeanineers loaned a Che Guevara hat and sunglasses that fit the WFA bust of Lovecraft. gwyndolin has uploaded pictures.

And now a public service announcement: I am seeing someone!

The Interstitial Arts Foundation's online auctions are live now, with a new auction item going up every day. It's a rolling set of auctions, with the first item up on November 1 and closing on November 8, the second up on November 2 and closing on November 9, and so forth. My hat isn't up yet, but go take a look at the other cool things.

The open dinner next Monday in Philadelphia has moved to next Wednesday evening, 11/11, due to a change in my travel plans. 7 pm, probably at the house restaurant in the airport Marriott, but I'll confirm location. Let me know if you can make it.

I attended my first World Fantasy Convention in Seattle in 1989, when a friend was running Hospitality and needed people to help. I didn't really enjoy it -- it's basically a professonal conference for writers, editors, and agents and has little for the fans. That was before I was writing fiction professionally. Today it's one of my favorite conventions of the year.

The convention started out a little shaky. Our Southwest Airlines flight from Portland to San Jose was running about a half-hour late, and we were just starting to wonder what was up when I got this rather strange email on my phone:

However, as the gate agent explained a minute or two later, we didn't actually have to fly PDX-SJC-LAX, LAX-PDX-SJC. It turned out that the plane had been delayed by mechanical problems to the extent that it jeopardized people's connections in LAX, so they skipped the SJC stop and gave the few of us who were actually getting off in SJC tickets on an LAX-SJC flight that left LAX almost immediately, so that we only spent about ten minutes in LAX. Although this change turned our one-hour nonstop flight into a five-hour detour, I think it was well-handled: they communicated the problem well, gave priority to people with connections, and provided an immediate solution to the rest of us. Kudos to Southwest.

Once we got there, this year's WFC was one of the best I can remember, indeed one of my favorite cons in a long time. Being on the West Coast, a lot of my writer friends were there; the hotel and its location, close to many fine restaurants in downtown San Jose, were excellent; and there was a great bar where everyone could hang out (unlike, for example, the Montreal Worldcon where there was no single obvious gathering place).

I didn't attend a lot of programming that I wasn't on. I was actually on two program items: a reading from the four DayBreak Magazine writers, which was remarkably well attended considering it was opposite the mass signing, and an uproarious Improv Storytelling event with Jay Lake and Mary Robinette Kowal about which someone later told me "I peed my pants laughing." Most of my time was spent hanging out in the bar, the halls, and occasionally a party, talking with my friends and peers.

This seemed to be my con for meeting cool Portland people I hadn't known existed: Lee Moyer, Victoria Blake, and Carlton Mellick III. I also met and was blown away by Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) and Kate Secor (aiglet), who fling off quotable quips like some cats shed hair -- now I know how some people feel around me and Kate. (Just one example: I debated with Seanan whether the ASL sign for "moose lobotomist" should end with the sign for "doctor" or the suffix "-ist.") I also got to hang out with some people I'd met before but never spent a lot of time with, including Grá and Jennifer Linnea and Laura Anne Gilman (suricattus). I hadn't realized I was getting Grá and Chris Reynaga (chris_reynaga) mixed up, but now I think I'll be able to tell them apart.

Most of the con, though, I spent hanging out with writer friends from all over, whom I will not attempt to enumerate for fear of missing someone. I don't think I schmooze very effectively at these things -- I should have been chatting up book editors a lot more than I did -- but I got a lot of good writing advice and a few useful rumors as well as a lot of laughs.

At one point in the con I suffered a bout of Imposter Syndrome. What am I doing here? I whined to myself. I don't even have one published novel!. I got over it, though, and shortly after the con Kristine Kathryn Rusch posted an entry in her Freelancer's Guide series that helped me to understand what was going on in my head during that time. This quote in particular, from Robert Silverberg, nailed it: "My career, marked as it has been by triumph after triumph, has often seemed to me like nothing but a formidable struggle." We don't see our own successes, only our problems. Read Kris's post for more useful insights on the hazards of success.

Apart from that one moment of bleakness, though, it was an excellent excellent con and I'm really looking forward to next year's WFC even though it's in Columbus, Ohio.

Oh, one other thing. This was my first con with an iPhone and I got into Twitter in a big, big way. There was a lot of Twittering at this con; see this post by Scott Edelman for one perspective on just how useful this minimal communication method can be. (My story "horrorhouse" was also inspired by Twitter.) So, for my own future reference as much as anything, I'm including my tweets from the con ( behind this here cut tag... )

You can now read my story "horrorhouse" online at DayBreak Magazine. Enjoy!

This morning I downloaded the Yelp iphone app, which reminded me that I've been wanting to see if the BBC has anything comparable to NPR News' excellent interface.

Thus I stumbled upon Radyo, a good-looking radio app (listings in the App Store include screen shots) with high ratings from the, er, seven people who have reviewed it.

It's Turkish, you see.

But with language support in English, French, and Spanish! So hey!

First thing I see upon installing it?



Thanks to the wonders of Google Translate, this is revealed as:
Revised proposal
Found a new channel list.
You release: 20
New version: 29
Would you like to update now? No / Yes

Hayir! Hayir! İngilizce ver!

[Whew.] That was invigorating.

1) Apparently my neighborhood was the epicenter of the season's first major storm last night. Seattle City Light reports that the “cause was a tree falling into the line at W Bertona and 23rd Ave W.” Power was out for about an hour. Then a couple of hours later when I was snug in bed with Spanky, a lightning flash penetrated my closed eyelids so bright, it was like a flash photograph being taken right in my face. Thunder--house-shaking thunder--followed quick on its heels. Two more incidents of this crackenboomen, and then the skies open up, dumping hail upon us so hard I thought it might break my bedroom windows. Sophie, ever fearless, refused my offer of protection. She was at the windows and the balcony doors watching the storm with wide kitten eyes.

2) Ivar's, Seattle's local and well-loved seafood chain, admits that the discovery of submarine advertising signs from the 1950s was a gag...but it was a really good one--it made national news. And they're still selling chowder at the advertised 1950s prices, and will be through December. Yeah, I'm promoting their stuff but this was so clever, and the chowder's not bad, that I don't care.

3) I thought I might go to the zoo this morning, but I'm unsure how I feel about strolling in this weather. One thing's for sure: if I do go, I'll probably have most of the park to myself.

4) Had an excellent visit with markbourne yesterday morning. He's looking fit. We had lunch, talked about theater, the Japan trip, his progress, all sorts of stuff. And there was pie. Everything's better with pie.

5) Had a perfectly lovely evening with varina8 last night, our first visit since she returned from Europe. She brought me back two wonderful gifts: a pretty bookmark from Venice, now in use, and a stereo-opticon card of a cat dressed like a grandmother, knitting needles and yarn in her lap, wearing a patient-yet-condescending expression, as if to say, "You laugh now, puny human...but just wait." It's brilliant and hilarious, and is the next piece of art to get framed. It's marvelous and I'm delighted. I'll have to scan it to share; it must be Seen. And then...the lights went out. We traced her travels by candle light in my atlas and resisted the urge to tell ghost stories in the dark.

It's the morning after. There's a great deal of work to come, much of it quite unpleasant. But still, I feel so much better. Because we can take action, we have a plan, Things Will Be Done. calendula_witch and I have gone from formless dread to logistics. And believe me, I'm much better at logistics than I am at formless dread.

So now I plan, and deal, and run around, then get my ass kicked in surgery. I'll melt again right before the surgery. I'll melt again when it comes time to prescribe and plan chemo. But for now, I can be as strong as I like, and as busy as I always seem to need to be.

In other news, several people have suggested pulling together a book about this, specifically on the male experience of cancer. I took a few steps toward pitching a book last year, but the interest was low. Still, it's on my mind.

For now, thank you everyone for the flood of good wishes, positive energy and prayer. (Yes, I did say "prayer". I may be a frothing atheist, but if it works for you, I'm proud to be a focus.) More to come.

Nacho Day approacheth.

Headstone at Dawson Cemetery, NM. © 2006, 2009 by Joseph E. Lake, Jr.



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

METAtropolis [ Audible.com | Powell's | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Borders ] reviewed here and here — A mixed bag, at least for my story.

catrambo reports on the reading tonight here in Portland — I've dropped the ball on promoting this, but 6:30 pm at the Press Club in SE Portland, with jeffvandermeer, catrambo, tattoo artist-turned-author Jeff Johnson and my own bad self.

Goth scuplture — In an earlier sense of the term. Cool stuff. (Thanks to willyumtx.)

Sketching the Mechanical Elephant — No, that is not a euphemism. Art writing art Guru James Gurney on the giant mechanical elephant.

England's Ancient Ridgeway Trail — Mmm. Want to go. Someone want to invite me to a UK Con as GoH so I can do this stuff?

Dark Red Spot Found on Kuiper Belt Object Haumae — Wow.

Anonymous Doc on the divergent experiences of patients and doctors

Media bias in the Washington Post op-ed page — Liberal media much? I like his phrasing, one of those outlets typically counted as part of the "Liberal Media" by right-wing self-victimizers and their media amplifiers.

?otD: Would 'Thorax' be a great name for a villain or what?

---

11/6/2009
Body movement: 60 minute suburban walk
Hours slept: 6.0
This morning's weigh-in: n/a (forgot)
Currently reading: The Jade Man's Skin by Daniel Fox

Five questions meme, y'all know the drill.  Comment with "FIGHT THE HEBETUDE!" if you want me to ask you some questions.  :D

Here are the ones newroticgirl asked me:

1) What did you love the most about where you grew up?

How it felt like I could ride my bike absolutely anywhere.  Looking back, there were lots of places that I couldn't get to by bike -- the library, the mall, Anderson's bookstore -- but I just remember how great it was to feel like I could hop on my bike and just head out, deciding where I wanted to go once I was already a few blocks away.  I'd go to friends' houses, or the pool, or White Hen Pantry (think 7-11), or a playground, or the school, or the awesomely named Dragon Lake Forest Preserve.  The last inspired quite a bit of bad poetry on my part, and wasn't nearly as beautiful as the places I go to be outdoors here in the northwest -- but it was a great place for feeling like you were truly getting away from it all.

2) Who was your first TV/movie/music crush?

Donny Osmond.  In fact, here I am in my oh-so-sparkly-glittery Donny Osmond t-shirt!  I also had a huge think for Jimmy Carter, and for KISS. 

3) What inspires you?

Awesome trees.  Babies.  Mountains.  Stars.  Bluegrass music.  My friends.  Thunder.  The awesome squiggly feeling I get in my the pit of my stomach when I've leapt off a scary cliff for something I really want in my life. 

4) What is the most unusual/interesting/weird job you've ever had?

Squatting over the bomber bay of an airplane, and dropping biscuits with a rabies vaccine in them down to coyotes and foxes across Texas. I've had a lot of jobs that have *seemed* weird or interesting to me, but this one seems odd to just about everyone. 

5) (Stealing this from the questions I got!) Tell me something that your internet friends probably don't know about you but you've always wanted to share.

Probably that I am virtually never offended by curious questions, but I do get irritated sometimes when people make assumptions about me, or my life, or my beliefs. 

Also, that I am currently sitting under my skylight during a thunderstorm, and it is freaky, loud, and awesome.  :D

Sure, I need to eat, knit, feed the dog, keep a roof more or less over my head. That's not the point of this post. I need to work because if I don't, I stagnate as a writer. I become too cocooned in my world. It sounds cozy. It's also sterile.

Out there, are real voices, stories, color, events, change, collisions, joy, crisis, romance. I get to see it all for the price of getting up (a few ablutions), stepping onto a bus and letting the show begin.

The bus: A middle-aged woman got in an argument with two middle-school boys who were about to commit a minor act of vandalism; three high school boys talked about detention, girls, scary teachers, what was the purpose of school anyway; a young black man and a middle aged white woman talked about religion; two hispanics and a white guy compared their work release programs and plans for the future.

The day continues like that. The couple in line at lunch talking about what they first bought online, "College textbooks! Shit, Amazon, I can't believe I work there now. That was the old site, y'now." "I'm so sure. Mine was eBay, some junky thing."

Every one of these conversations is fodder for something. If nothing else, for how people really talk. What they talk about. I hardly ever hear anyone answer a question directly. (Kid 1: Is detention really bad?  Kid 2: I had detention 5 times. I had to stare at a fire hydrant outside. Kid 3. I had detention once. I didn't go outside though. Kid 2: Yeah we were watching a movie so Mr. Hutchins sent me outside. It was the Matrix. Kid 3: We always watch boring movies. Kid 2: Stupid fuck. I was outside staring at a fire hydrant. Kid 1: What other movies did you guys see?)

So who are those kids? Is kid 2 really the bad ass he's saying he is? Did kid 1 get his question answered? Are they friends or not friends? 

Me, I love listening to this stuff and trying to puzzle it out. It gives me ideas. These people become analogs for characters. If I didn't leave the house to go to work, I would lose touch. So it's good I have to do it. Even if I do indulge in my fantasy occasionally of not having to work. I know it's good for me.

A friend needs a ride from Seattle to Portland on 11/6, to the Jeff VanderMeer/Cat Rambo reading. Anybody coming down tomorrow afternoon? Ping me, I'll hook you up.

I'll be in Philadelphia next Monday evening. Open dinner at 7 pm, probably at the house restaurant in the airport Marriott, but I'll confirm location. Let me know if you can make it.

Went to see the thoracic surgeon today. ginastonge drove me, as I was extremely stressed out. The thoracic surgeon is young, capable and has an excellent chairside manner. This is much like my colorectal surgeon, frankly, though you'd never confuse the two of them.

He started by asking me a few questions about my medical and surgical history, ( and then drew a diagram of my lungs. [Much more detail under the cut, somewhat medical TMI.] )

What does this all tell me? Well, it reinforces that medicine is an art as much as a science. It confirms that this sucker is a problem, and is being addressed. But most of all, this tells me once again that when I have a course of action, no matter how dreadful things are, they are much more manageable than when I have only uncertainty before me. I expect the Fear will be a regular friend to me in these next few weeks, and I have a long-time horror of anaesthesia, but I will pass over these, too.

In the mean time, I believe I shall refer to my impending dip into surgery as a "nacho-ectomy".

Wowzer. As of 5:50 Pacific Standard Time, the yarn-based site Ravelry.com has 500,000 members. Half a millyun knitters, crocheters, spinners, all hangin' out and swappin' ideas.

I wonder if there are other special interest/hobbyist web sites out there remotely like Ravelry? Maybe I'm being blinkered, but really, look at this list of features and tell me the trainspotters or the belly dancers have anything comparable:

* Inventory one's yarn stash, with links to manufacturer's info
* Track one's projects, in-progress and completed, with details of yarns used
* Queue up a "wishlist" of future projects
* Browse the patterns database, looking at other people's felted pirate hats, or fingerless mitts or whatever, with links to their photos & project notes & comments about what went wrong or how they made it better
* Join any of 10,000+ Groups. These are geographical, technical, serious, humorous. Hook up with fellow sock knitters, regulars at your favorite shop, first-time fathers, hand-dyers, the Ankh-Morpork Knitters Guild, Afghans for Afghans, Socks for Soldiers.
* With or without joining, use Groups to find knitting circles in a town you're about to visit. Read the chat forums, ask questions, arrange meetings, share horror stories.

And these all link up together!! When I start a new project, I can specify that I'm using X yarn from my stash. When I call it Finished and I note that I used N skeins of it, my inventory reflects that. Project notes link to pattern sources. Forum postings link to personal profiles.

Have 5 skeins of laceweight Malabrigo? See 6201 projects using it. Need two more skeins? 133 people with laceweight Malabrigo in their stash have said they'll sell or trade, and you can see the color and dye lot.

I don't even use the needle inventory, or the Local Yarn Shop directory, or the online marketplace.

So congratulations, Jess & Casey; this framework you have given us is AWESOME.

p.s. free!!

We've got our tickets for Australia!

The original plan was to buy economy-class tickets, upgrade to business class with miles, and stop over in Singapore on the way. That plan fell through when it turned out that Singapore's in a different "region" and the stopover would turn the trip into three separate legs. Then it turned out that upgradeable economy class tickets were insanely expensive (not as bad as business class, but more than twice the non-upgradeable fare). But it was possible to buy enough miles to obtain business-class tickets outright. Also, looking at the itineraries of the Star Alliance partners we thought we'd be able to stop over in New Zealand on the way. But that too proved infeasible -- New Zealand Air is extremely stingy in releasing business-class tickets to its partners.

So here's what we wound up with: we'll be flying business class PDX-LAX-SYD-MEL, departing on August 25 and returning on September 22. The Worldcon is in Melbourne September 2-6 and our itinerary is otherwise completely open.

Business class makes a HUGE difference on a flight this long. Because of the arbitrariness of upgrade awards I was really worried we wouldn't be able to get it, so I'm greatly relieved. The additional miles we had to buy to make this possible cost a little more than one economy-class ticket, so we're flying business class for about half the price of economy (plus, of course, every single mile in both our accounts).

Now that we've reduced our United mileage balance to near zero, I'm seriously considering switching to Alaska as my primary mileage account. United does fly everywhere but it's sometimes been extremely unpleasant to deal with them.

Seeing the thoracic surgeon today. calendula_witch could not be here, so ginastonge is stepping up to be my eyes and ears. I'm amazingly calm this morning. The pot is boiling, but quietly.

On my walk I was thinking about the things I'm afraid of. Some of them are valid, many are emotional responses to the ongoing stress of the situation. Oddly, I'm not particularly afraid of dying (though that's certainly not in the cards at the moment anyway, as anything more than the usual risks of showering, driving the car, etc.).

Things I am afraid of in surgery, chemo and beyond:

• Losing my ability to write


• Losing my sexuality


• The clouding of my thoughts


• Endless fear


• Allowing myself to become a victim


• The processes of chemotherapy


• That I will be playing whack-a-mole with cancer for the rest of my life


• That I will keep hurting those who love me by never getting well


• Leaving the_child, calendula_witch and my parents behind


• Not being able to be me any more

In truth, the list goes on and on, but most of it boils into the above points. I continue to face it down and move on, because in truth, what else is there to do? A close friend who is a double cancer survivor says, "I don't wear the pink hat." I suppose I wear the pink hat when I talk about this, but what I want most is normalcy, and I am afraid that is gone forever.

Today I find out more. More information is always better.

Taos Pueblo, © 2006, 2009 by Joseph E. Lake, Jr.



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Soviet War Paintings — Some very striking art here. (Snurched from Gurney Journey.)

Sex, then amnesia...and it's no soap opera — Weird. Some dance to remember, some dance to forget, I suppose. (Thanks to mikigarrison.)

Weird Stuff McDonalds Sells Around The World — A special investigative report from Dark Roasted Blend. In case you were wondering.

A Bell Helicopter lands on a Vermont Transit Flxible Clipper — Vintage weirdness. Some things happen simply because they can. Which may in fact explain much that goes on in my life.

Mars is sublime — Some seriously cool imaging.

Some Real Mature Women, And Some More Of They Friends... — Ta-Nehisi Coates on the myth of the Golden Age. Money shot: This is a theme residing in the conservative soul--a professed, thinly-reasoned skepticism of the fucked-up now, contrasted against a blind, unquestioning acceptance of the hypermoral past.

?otD: How many lungs does one man need, anyway?

---

11/5/2009
Body movement: 60 minute suburban walk
Hours slept: 6.5
This morning's weigh-in: 234.6
Currently reading: The Jade Man's Skin by Daniel Fox