Tomorrow (or more accurately, later today) is the start of the 2007 Singapore Writers Festival. It goes until the 9th, but most of the events seem to be grouped on the two weekends. Check out the website for the full schedule.

I'll be attending panel events and readings Saturday and Sunday at The Arts House, and I hope to see some of y'all there; if you recognize me (sans beard), please introduce yourself.

Yesterday was the Mid-Autumn/Lantern/Mooncake Festival here in Singapore, and we drove out last night to the Chinese Gardens on the western side of the island to check out the festivities there. Much of it was cartoonish and kind of cutesy, but some of the displays were really beautiful. Janet's dad took a bunch of pictures and I uploaded them to Flickr (starting here).

It was also the culmination of probably a month (or longer) of mooncake madness. Everywhere you went, you'd see them being sold in exquisite and elaborate painted boxes, by street vendors with mobile carts, by restaurants and hotels, in food courts, in mall kiosks. Pretty incredible. And though there were the traditional flavors, mooncake craftsmen have also gotten very creative. A restaurant near the Simei MRT was selling incredible-tasting mooncakes, and our favorites were mint chocolate chip and green tea. Another place made a chocolate and Bailey's mooncake that blew my socks off.

Photo by Raymond Chui

It turns out I did spend a little time at the Art Market this weekend after all, a few hours on Saturday and a few on Sunday, mostly there just to keep Janet company, although she was busy for much of the time painting some new ACEO cards, to the wide-eyed amazement of the children who happened by. The above shot was taken on Saturday by Janet's dad; I'm wearing my new "Robot Dance Contest" t-shirt and scribbling away at a travel article involving South Asian tailors. Displayed on the table is an assortment of blank greeting cards featuring Janet's wonderful watercolor art on the front; she sold a bunch of these cards and a print as well.

It was an interesting art festival; there were over 60 arts and crafts vendors, with lots of foot traffic, although I can't help wondering how many more people might have come if the parks service (a government organization) had been allowed to advertise, and if the event had been held in a more accessible location than Fort Canning Park. But this was their first time running such a festival, to see if it could work, so they're still new at it. There was live music outside as well, and food vendors too (of course). Janet was exhausted by the end of it (it went from noon to 9pm on Saturday and noon to 6pm on Sunday), but she made a ton of contacts, and lots of people snagged her business card. She's planning to sell the remaining greeting cards on her website, so keep an eye on Illumina to see when they go on sale.

The 2007 conference for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP, which sounds like a noise you'd make when stubbing your toe on a doorframe: "Awp! Damn doorframe!") will be held tomorrow through Saturday in Atlanta. In case you were wondering about this organization, their goal is to "foster literary talent and achievement, to advance the art of writing as essential to a good education, and to serve the makers, teachers, students, and readers of contemporary writing." Very broad, yes, but it seems they've been a big factor in getting institutions of higher learning to treat literature as a living art, encouraging the practice of studying contemporary authors in university classes, and inviting them to speak on campuses.

The conference sports a jam-packed schedule of panel discussions and readings, as well as a Book Fair, which is just a fancy name for a big-ass dealer's room packed with a panoply of publishers.

And I mention all of this not because I will be there, but because Text:UR—The New Book of Masks, edited by the very groovy experimeditor, published by the very able raw_dog, and containing a story by yours truly, will be released at AWP. If anyone reading this is going, make sure to visit the Raw Dog Screaming Press table and nab a copy. I peeked at some of the other stories when going over the proof for my own, and this looks to be an incredibly cool anthology.

I'm not the only one who thinks so:

“Fantasy fans looking for familiar themes and names among the 20 stories in Aguirre's boldly original anthology will be disappointed. Those who like experimental fiction that's not always readily accessible will be richly rewarded. Highlights include Nadia Gregor's enigmatic 'Faure, Envenomed, Dictates,' Eric Schaller's hilarious 'Monkey Shines,' Catherine Kasper's gently satiric 'The Theater Spectacular,' and Joshua Cohen's breathless, fabulous split-sentence split-thought confession, 'Last Transmission or Man with a Robotic Ermine.' Aguirre, who won a World Fantasy Award for Leviathan 3 (edited with Jeff VanderMeer), demonstrates once again why he's one of today's more innovative genre editors.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Text:Ur is diverse, fun, and well-crafted. A rich introduction to these innovative authors, it is filled with inventive, audacious, and intelligent work. Anyone looking for a compilation of high-quality fiction will enjoy this book.”
—Midwest Book Review

W00t. I can't wait to get my contributor copy.

Many of my online and offline friends are off this weekend in the wilds of Austin, Tejas (does Austin have wilds?), having a wonderful time at World Fantasy Con, and once again I'm stuck at BitterCon 2006, although there are some very nice people here with me. :)


BitterCon 2006 banner by clarkesworld

I'm not sure how many conventions I'll be going to from now on. Things are still up in the air as to when we're making the big move, but right now we're thinking some time in the Spring, maybe even earlier. This might mean missing WisCon, which would break my heart (or at least squeeze it roughly), especially since Kelly is one of the G's of H this year. We definitely won't be here for Trinoc*con, which is disappointing to Janet, since GRRM is the Literary GoH. We might be able to swing WorldCon in Yokohama, since we'll definitely be in the region at that point, though wow, attending membership is US$220 per person; we'll have to see about that one.

Anyway, there are things to do and see this weekend. Ventriloquist Jeff Dunham (along with Peanut, Walter, and Jose Jalapeno on a Stick) is playing at Goodnight's. The annual International Festival will be going on at the state fairgrounds. And I may be participating again in NaDruWriNi:



Last year's entries were amusing and fun, and a clear indication that I can no longer hold my liquor, so why not do it again?

Had a nice and relaxing weekend. The weather had cooled down and we opened all the windows in our duplex. We also spent quite a bit of it outside, which was a nice change of pace.

Saturday morning, we woke late and broke our fast with some oatmeal, then got online. I spent several hours adding titles to Second Chance Book Adoption (there are 280 at present, go take a look!), although there are three bookshelves I haven't even gotten to yet. It's been an interesting process, going through my books with a more critical eye than I ever have, trying to decide whether they're worth shipping to Singapore. This process is made easier by the existence of Kinokuniya and Borders over there, which will carry a good majority of the books I'm getting rid of, just in case I want to purchase them again. There are several small press ventures I wouldn't be able to get there (or would have to at great expense), so I'm keeping those, but I'm also selling some as well, such as Charles de Lint's Triskell Tales and the deluxe limited edition of John Shirley's Wetbones. The prices are rock-bottom, folks. Step on up.

(And believe it or not, I do hate to keep talking about the site, but it's important for two reasons. 1) Any books that I place with you lovely people won't need to be shipped to Singapore, thereby reducing the cost; and 2) any money made from the adoptions will be going toward helping us move there, halfway round the world, which is damn expensive anyway. So please, help a guy out.)

At 4:30, we met my parents at the fairgrounds for the Greek Festival. The food was delicious (natch) and the dancers were great. They'd moved to a new building this year, and it was much bigger than the last venue (which had gotten so crowded over the years that you could hardly move). I bought some pastries to bring home (baklava, flogeres, galaktoboureko and thiples), and polished them off last night. My mother was working this year as an emcee, making announcements every so often and trying to keep the crowd energy high. Unfortunately, she wasn't told what to say or when; they basically handed her the mic, threw on her stage, and said, "Good luck!" Fortunately, she has lots of experience in front of people, both as a teacher and broadcaster; I can't remember the number of times that she worked Festival (the bi-annual begathon) at PBS trying to raise money for the local station. So she did a great job, although it tired her out.

After we left, Janet didn't want to go home yet, so we drove over to North Hills Mall and walked around. I told Janet about how different the mall looked when I was in high school (much much smaller, with far fewer upscale shops), and how David Sedaris had written about it in Me Talk Pretty One Day (and here). I have to say that I really like the walkability of the new remodeled shopping center, although many of the shops and restaurants are so pricey that we have to hurry by lest we get sucked in and our wallets emptied. They've also built condos into the levels above the shops, and it appears that people are living there now. There were both a Kerr Drug and Harris Teeter nearby, so we walked over and got a few things, then went back to the car and headed home.

Yesterday we headed over to the farmers' market and picked up some fresh okra, baby bell peppers, squash, tomatoes, goat cheese and free range eggs. It was probably the most we've ever spent there, though it was still less than $20. The market was packed, and it was good to see so many people there, buying directly from the farmers themselves.

Also this weekend, I watched Smoke Signals on VHS (I know! Videotape!) and looked for things I could use in my comp. class. We're reading Sherman Alexie's "Indian Education" for class, and one of my fellow faculty noticed this and mentioned that the film (which Alexie wrote the screenplay for) might be something my students might enjoy. I did enjoy it quite a bit, especially the odd-couple friendship between the angry Victor Joseph and the dorky Thomas Builds-the-Fire. (An interesting tidbit from IMDB: the beautiful Irene Bedard, who plays Suzy Song in the film, was the physical model for the Pocahontas character in the Disney films.) The film also is an achievement in its all-Native cast and crew, from the director down to the extras. Now I just have to decide whether I can pluck out one section to play for the class or show the entire thing; the running time is 89 minutes, so it would take two classes to play the whole thing, which would eat into a lot of class time.

All for now. Later today I'll be writing a response to gabe chouinard's recent rant/review with a really long name, so stay tuned.

Haven't been posting much lately because of all the busyness. Teaching is eating up a lot of time and energy, and one of my classes is more rambunctious than I would like, causing me to have dreams last night of smashing bottles and windows and overturning tables and beating people up because someone didn't like my curry-flavored salad dressing (don't ask). Allergies also acting up at the mo', which is weird because the temps have cooled down into the comfortable low to mid 70s; I even wore a jacket to work this morning. I can't even remember the last time I did a podcast.

I discovered purely by accident this morning that Samantha Hunt (who wrote probably my favorite story in the Tramampoline anthology) has a novel out, The Seas. It's been available in hardcover from MacAdam/Cage for almost two years, and the paperback has been out from Picador since last December. I'm very curious now to check this out.

And hey, the annual Greek Festival is this weekend! Opa and w00t! It's the 25th time that the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church has put the festival on, and I'm excited to see what they do this year. Little old Greek ladies have been cooking for months to provide the food for the three days of the event, and I can't wait to get me some pastitsio and baklava. Yum.

The Carrboro Book Fair was today, and so we drove over late this morning. Two Cranes Press wasn't represented, mostly because we're so low on copies of our books that it didn't make sense to get a table there. Still, it was good to go. Not nearly as big as last year, but still a good assortment of indie and anarchist presses. We talked to some folks from Haymarket Books (the press that published China Mieville's dissertation Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law), who had moved down from Madison. One of the guys is helping to organize the Southeast Social Forum, coming up in a couple weeks in Durham. We also talked to John Dancy-Jones, who runs The Paper Plant in Raleigh, an indie press and paper/bookmaker that's been around for a few decades, and makes all his paper from recycled materials. The smaller atmosphere this year invited more discussion, and we got to chat with several other zinesters as well.

And, because we didn't spend enough money on books last weekend, we picked up some more things at the book fair (though the total came to less than $40 this time):

Zines

• A Safety Lesson With Natural Gas Joe by Christoph Meyer (Parcell Press)
• The Heart Star by Christoph Meyer (Parcell Press)
• The Uninvited Guest: 6 Stories by Billy Odom, illustrations by David Larson (The Paper Plant)
• Farce nos. 3 &4 edited by John Dancy-Jones (The Paper Plant)
• Fences of Enclosure, Windows of Possibility by Naomi Klein (Downward Mobility Press)
• Toward the Destruction of Schooling by Jan D. Matthews
• Own Your Own Yoni!
• Cultor Sore no. 15 edited by Taylor Ball
• Take Back Your Life: A Wimmin's Guide to Alternative Health Care by Alicia non Grata

Books

• Making Stuff & Doing Things: A Collection of DIY Guides to Doing Just About Everything by Kyle Bravo (Microcosm Publishing)
• Stolen Sharpie Revolution: A DIY Zone Resource by Alex Wrekk (Microcosm Publishing)

We also picked up several catalogs, flyers, and postcards, including two from Process Media's Self-Reliance series, called Preparedness Now! by Aton Edwards and Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America by Mark Ehrman, as well as Crimethinc's "A Civilian's Guide to Direct Action."

All in all, a very good haul for very little money.

I also got a very strong urge to start an old-school zine, but that may have just been an impulse.

Afterward, we drove down Weaver Street to the Really Really Free Market, but all we picked up was Soy, Not "Oi!" compiled by the Hippycore Krewe (AK Press) and a papadum (though it wasn't really papadum). And then we headed home.

Now I need a nap.

Today I gave both my final exams and wished my students luck on the rest of their college careers and whatever they choose to do after graduation. During the first exam (10:00-11:50), I read a good chunk of Air (and finished it later in the afternoon, and it is awesomeness incarnate), and during the second exam (1:00-2:50), I graded the first exams and then the second exams as they were finished. When I got home, I finished grading everything and computed all the final grades for my classes. I printed out the Excel spreadsheets with their scores (74% passing in the first class, but only 26% passing in the second class, eesh), and will turn them in to my division head tomorrow. And then I am DONE, baby!

To celebrate, I downloaded a whole pantload of audio files, from the events at this year's PEN World Voices Festival in New York. For someone who would not have been able to attend, it's very cool that PEN recorded the conversations and speeches given, and has put them up for free download. And onto the iPod they go. (Big thanks to MoorishGirl for the link.)

Oh, and my friend Michelle Lin, who runs the New York Brain Terrain blog, interviewed literary wunderkind Helen Oyeyemi during the festival, and it got me interested in seeking out her novel The Icarus Girl.

And DUDE! WisCon's only two weeks away! W00t! Yay WisCon! I can't wait to see so many of my writing pals again, and we should have another good contingent of Clarion 2002 folks. Now I just need to figure out what I'm going to read for the "Empathy, Lust, and Destruction" extravaganza. (Five storytellers enter. One leaves.) It's narrowed down to two choices at the moment. Oh, and hey, I'm on the "Knitting for Boys" panel, mainly because I want to learn how to do it. I'm not sure if I'll be able to add anything to the discussion, but it should be fun.

This afternoon, we hung out with the Triangle Greens, ate a vegetarian lunch, and talked about politics and social issues. Janet and I are seriously considering joining the group. The gathering was at ACRe Space, a community space that houses the Triangle Greens office, 1304 Bikes (which fixes up bicycles and donates them to children and working class folks), Food Not Bombs, and the Libertalia Mobile Infoshop. It was cool getting to chat with like-minded and socially conscious people from all walks of life.

(By the way, if you live in NC, Tuesday is a primary election. Get out and vote!)

Afterward, we drove to Durham for the Kessel/Delany show at the NC Festival of the Book. It was a 90-minute conversation between the two masters, and an interesting discussion of the role of politics in fiction, and ways to bring social awareness without alienating your audience. In the 60s and 70s, when Delany was writing about gay issues, he had to write about them in coded language, but he also did it without imposing his own ideology on the reader. It was a fascinating talk (especially since I'm dealing with some of these issues in my novel), and it was the only event that we went to during the festival.

(As an aside, I don't know what the festival organizers were thinking this year. And before I go any further, I must give the caveat that I was the assistant coordinator of the last festival at NCSU, so I'm naturally a little biased. Only a fraction of the authors from last time's festival were invited, and instead of organizing panels for several authors to participate in, they paired up a younger author with a more experienced one. However, the topics that these pairings were based around were incredibly specific to those authors, which I suppose is good in a way, since they would definitely know what to say, but it was so specific so as almost to be exclusionary. Their whole approach this time was designed to take the "literary" out of book enjoyment, but they invited no "popular" writers, and stuck instead to those whose work is not as well-known. There were some biggees in the literary field -- such as Allan Gurganus, Ann Patchett, Tom Wolfe, Luis Alberto Urrea and Pat Conroy -- but how many "regular folks" that they were hoping to attract actually read these people?

They also had a festival tent where many books by the attending authors were available for purchase. Only there was a monster queue that you had to line up in just to get in the tent. No thanks.

I'm interested to see what their attendance numbers were. They apparently hired someone fairly young to organize the festival, and although J. Peder Zane at the News & Observer raved over this type of program arrangement, it felt bass-ackwards to me. Maybe I'm just too entrenched in the convention panel model, but yanno, there is a reason it's still used. So we only attended one event during the entire festival, which is a shame, because it could have been really cool.)

We also sat next to Alex Wilson and his lovely wife Jen, and got to talk to them for a bit. Alex is going to Clarion this year (yay Alex! And he has a list of this year's participants, along with links to their blogs, right here), and he said hello to Delany, who is teaching there. I said hi to the young Dr. Kessel and his family, as well as my buddy Tommy, who's in the MFA program at NCSU.

It was a cool afternoon, but both Janet and I were exhausted when we got home.

Dude! It's Spring Break! We're gonna totally get wasted! Partay! Woo hoo!

Well, not really.

I turned in midterm grades this morning, and now am on my week break from teaching. I'll still be working at the desk job next week, so it's not a complete vacation, but I definitely need a rest from getting in front of a class of students. As much as I love it, it's draining to do day after day, and I need some time to recharge.

I'm going to set some definite goals for getting writing done, and get my butt in chair to make some progress on this novel. I'm hovering right now at 9700 words, which is already 200 words more than my longest short story, but I want to bump that up to at least 15,000 over the next week. I feel like every day that I don't work on it takes me that much further from my original energy and excitement, and I want to get back in the habit of working on it on a regular basis.

That being said, I will not be spending a lot of time on LJ next week. I'm spending way too much time refreshing my f-list, and not enough on my own fiction. So if anything exciting happens in your life next week, please don't be offended if I don't comment on it. If it's really really important, best email me about it.

This weekend is India Fest at the state fairgrounds, which was a lot of fun last year. Good food, music, and dancing.

And Monday is Janet and my second anniversary. Wow. Hard to believe it has been two years already. Yay to Janet for putting up with me for two whole years! :)

I never ever want to have a weekend like that again. Nearly 35 hours of work over four days. I thought helping to plan a wedding was stressful, but that was nothing compared to helping organize a literary festival.

Volunteers decided not to show up. Equipment people were late dropping off tables or picking up tarps. Rooms were locked when they were supposed to be unlocked. Authors who were contracted to sign books for forty-five minutes left after five because no one showed up; then when someone arrived twenty minutes later, the author was of course gone. It was unseasonably warm.

That's getting all the bad stuff out of the way. That's all the minutiae that the general public wouldn't have known about. And as much as I bitch and moan, the festival was pretty much a success. Almost all the events were well-attended. There wasn't a rain cloud in the sky. The audio/video equipment in the rooms all worked fine (mostly; there was occasionally a high whine or hiss from the speakers). Both the NCSU bookstores and the Library used book sale sold a lot of books.

I knew going into it that some volunteers were going to cancel, not show up, or generally eff up all my hard-wrought plans. But it was still disappointing and frustrating to be undermanned (especially on Sunday), and instead of being able to send a volunteer to do something, I'd have to do it myself.

Janet was an absolute angel. She came with me early on Saturday morning, and even when she wasn't scheduled to work, she'd stick around and help. She took charge of merchandise sales, and stayed on top of things. She was freaking awesome. As I told her this weekend, if I didn't love her before, I sure as hell would now. As it is, there's no humanly way for me to appropriately express my gratitude toward my wonderful wife.

So anyway, down to the nitty and the gritty. Thursday night was Alice Walker's kickoff lecture, and she just didn't seem to want to stop talking; she went forty minutes over. She read from the first chapter of her new novel, some poetry, and some weird little oddments, then answered a bunch of audience-written questions. After she was done, the reception started upstairs in a nicely furnished and catered room where the tables were all covered with purple cloth (a coincidence, and not meant as a connection to The Color Purple, though it was a nice bit of synchronicity). I stuck around until she came up and went inside, then I went home.

Friday, I got here at noon and, along with five other volunteers, put signs up all over campus to direct people to the different buildings in which we would have the readings and panel discussions. It was tired and sweaty work, but we got it all done. We also had signs to hang up in the volunteer, children's, and author hospitality tents. After finishing, I took my bus to my car, then drove back over to the student center for Dennis Lehane's keynote address. He was introduced by Michael Malone (another mystery writer, and, I found out, the sole writer on Days of Our Lives right now), and talked a bit about the experience of writing Mystic River and the cordial attitude of Clint Eastwood on inviting him to the set of the movie, and then he read from the first chapter of his new novel, which starts with a baseball strike in 1918 where Babe Ruth amuses himself by stealing his teammates' hats on the train to a game. It was extremely funny and well-written, and makes me want to read his stuff now. I stayed for the reception that night, getting to actually eat something; while I was at the buffet table, Lehane was standing right in front of me, and I told him how much I enjoyed the reading and appreciated him coming here. He said, "Thanks, I was glad to come here, Jason," which took me by surprise for a moment until I realized I was wearing a name tag. He signed some books, and we had a silent auction, and I got to shmooze a little bit. I talked to Sonny Brewer -- owner of Over the Transom Bookshop in Alabama and editor of the acclaimed Southern anthology series Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe -- and he told me to send him a story for the anthology's next installment. Yay, a solicitation! It's the second I've ever gotten, the first being from Andy Duncan for his and Brett Cox's Crossroads antho.

Saturday morning, Janet and I got to the Brickyard (the brick-covered plaza in front of D.H. Hill Library) around 7:30, and as the equipment people hadn't yet taken down the tarps that enclosed the tents, we had to do it. Volunteers started trickling in, things got set up, and the day began. It was pretty much mass chaos until 11:00, when I escorted the skiffy writers to what John Kessel dubbed "The New Strange" panel. Richard sums it up fairly well, as does Jamie. The New Strange (not to be confused with the New Weird) was John's term for this recent slipstream/interstitial/ Amorphous Blob movement, and they discussed its relation to the magic realism of Borges and Marquez, as well as its presence in both genre and mainstream venues. The panel was very well attended, to my pleasant surprise, and I ran into Andreas, Luna, and Jamie there. I got to introduce Janet to Dale, Richard, Barb, Andy and Kelly. After the panel was over, I tried to herd the authors back over to the booksigning area.

Then, there was some crisis over at the NCLF tent (the weekend was mostly a series of crises, interspersed with brief moments of sitting down), so I headed over there and took care of it. Janet and I managed to find some time to get lunch, then I realized I had to substitute as a session host for a volunteer who didn't show up. So I hauled ass over to Witherspoon Theater (on the other side of campus), made sure they had enough water, and found out that they were signing books there, which meant I didn't have to escort them back to the Brickyard. So since they no longer needed me, I hauled ass again to hear Karen read from The Jane Austen Book Club and a recent essay in The Believer. (Unfortunately, the bookstore wasn't able to get the new novel to sell this weekend. One of the people in charge of ordering told me that Putnam refused to send copies, but Karen told me that Putnam said they were all too happy to send them but had never been contacted. Someone isn't telling the truth here. I was really disappointed at this, because Karen is one of my Clarion teachers, and a great person, and she got screwed over. But, in eight days she's going to be reading at The Regulator in Durham, and the book will definitely be there.) After her reading, we headed back to the Brickyard, and I was there on the walkie-talkie, putting out fires, and trying to make sure the day finished off all right.

At 5:00, Janet and I went home and rested for a bit, and I took a much-needed shower. Then we headed back to campus for Daniel Wallace's talk. He signed books for an hour beforehand, and we talked a bit; there was a steady stream of people getting books signed, so we talked in the spaces inbetween. I had emailed him a little before the festival, and had asked him some questions, so I then asked him on Saturday night if he'd a agree to an interview, and he said yes. So once the semester is over, and once I've finished interviewing Zoran, I'll interview Wallace. I pitched the idea to Strange Horizons, and hopefully they'll bite. Wallace showed me some pictures of him on the set of Big Fish, and signed my hardcover Algonquin copies of Big Fish and Ray in Reverse. I introduced him to Wilton Barnhardt, who was introducing him that evening, and then we went inside. Wallace is a charming, funny guy, and he won over the crowd in the first five minutes. He talked about writing, and having your book turned into a movie, and relating to his father. When he was done, Janet and I left, because we were simply too exhausted to stay and watch Big Fish in the theater.

Sunday was more of the same, with even more volunteers not showing up, and us scrambling to get everything done, but they got done. When the day was over, we helped break stuff down, then went home. I asked for Monday off, and my boss said I certainly deserved it. That night, Janet said, "All we're going to do tomorrow is relax," and I agreed, though it didn't quite happen.

Yesterday morning, I was so wiped from the weekend that I didn't get out of bed until noon, and it was to being awakened by Janet jumping on the bed and yelling, "My stuff is here!" The packages she had shipped over had just arrived, almost ten weeks after she sent them from Singapore. They were all wrapped up in what looked like shrink-wrapped black garbage bags, strapped to a wooden pallet and delivered to our door. We cut away the shrink wrap and unpacked a few of the boxes (they were heavy). Janet's butterfly chest was also in the grouping, and when she opened it up, it smelled just like her house back in Singapore, something I couldn't quite identify, but full of spices. We got everything inside and did some redecorating, moving the chest to one side of the sofa, and the square table to the other. It's starting to feel like it's our apartment instead of just my apartment.

We did a few errands, like depositing Janet's checks for winning two Strange Horizons Reader's Choice Awards, and putting a few chapbooks in the mail to nice people. We also found out that a box Janet had sent through surface mail also arrived, which means that everything she sent is now here. Woo! Last night, she made chicken curry and rice, and we watched volume one of the feel-good movie of the year on DVD, in preparation for watching volume two in the theater this coming weekend.

Man, what a crazy weekend. I'd like to be able to recover and sleep, but I still have two more weeks of classes, and three major papers to write. No rest for the weary.

Janet also has written about this past weekend in her journal, in backwards form, and fills in all the stuff I missed.

Discuss