So, maybe you remember how I was thinking of riffing on "Lay All Your Love on Me" to get it out of my system?

Here.

:-)

... or so the song goes. Actually, the difficulty is that life careens on no matter whether I'm paying attention or not, which means I'm nowhere near unpacked, I'll be sightsinging 11 pieces at tonight's rehearsal (and learning one by ear; the remaining two I've sung before), and I'm daunted at the necessity of getting my house company-ready by Monday.

Also, I ache all over, and I'm not sure if it's residual jetlag, residual-falling-off-a-horse-in-Jordan (I did get back on, go me), climate shock (I wore a bikini top in Tel Aviv last Saturday; today, I'm swaddled in my fleece robe and flannel nightgown, and I'm still cold), resuming my acquaintance with Tennessee Valley allergens, or if I'm succumbing to one of the many colds lurking around me (the BYM has been complaining of a scratchy throat). I better not be - I have high notes to hit! - but I've had to defer catching up with people, just in case, and that's a bummer.

Mopiness and munched-up-by-obligations-ness aside, HI! (For those of you just tuning in, I was in Israel for a month - primarily to attend a friend's wedding in Tel Aviv, but also to indulge my wanderlust while I have the legs and flextime to give it rein. There are more details and photos at my general journal.) I couldn't help but think of y'all while I was over there - there was a sushi restaurant in Jerusalem with a manga-styled girl in its ads; cartoon crustaceans on subway walls; shiny, shiny beach structures and a gorgeous library at the Israel Supreme Court, both of which made me miss marginaliana like you wouldn't believe (and so did seeing the Sesame Street stream of Google-logos (November 4-10) every time I hopped onto google.co.il to figure out buses, trains, and other logistics); and a Woodpigeon cover of "Lay All Your Love Down on Me" that had me remembering geoviki's lists.

(I have been unnaturally obsessed with that song for the past nine days - the Information Society version happened to be playing while I was at the Japonika in Haifa, and somehow rooted itself into my system before I was done with my coffee, and the plane home had the ABBA original in its database, so I ended up playing it over and over from Turkey to Quebec in tandem with dance mixes of "All Out of Love" and "Don't Leave Me This Way." It was weirdly soothing to doze to, although the teenage girl in the seat next to me probably thinks I'm a sad, sad freak. I'll just have to riff on it for My Poem Rocks or some other venue - something in my psyche wants its turn on the dancefloor...)

Um, so, yeah, lots going on, and lots more to say, but I've definitely exceeded my babble quota for the day. Plus, lunch to make and cards to send and files to edit and submissions to assemble. Speaking of the last, there are now poems scheduled to appear at Strange Horizons and Dead Mule in the near-ish future, and just a couple hours, qarrtsiluni went live with both the text and audio versions of I am waiting for the right instant to say your name. (For what it's worth, I feel this is my best reading to date of anything I've written, so I'm extra-pleased about that.)

*hugs you all, bounds off to terrorize the mailman* *eg*

Owie, owie, ouch. I burned my left pinkie while baking tonight. That makes two weeks in a row with cooking-related injuries. (Last week it was jalapeno burns.) Let's see if I can make it through tomorrow's dinner prep...

On the bright side, I now have warm-from-the-oven chocolatey oatmeal cookies, just because I felt like it. Which I am having with my third glass of red wine. I do love being a grownup. Even though, at the moment, I would much rather be working on the monster WiPs or angry/sexy/GTFO-my-head-NOW poems instead wading through twenty-year-old tax paperwork.

Speaking of poetry, I Hear You With Half of My Heart went up at My Poem Rocks last month, and three very short poems up at 7x20 over the summer.

To my considerable startlement, I also picked up this...

From tennis

for this:
( NWS fridge-magnet ficlet under the cut )

...which, you know, not bad for something pulled together three hours before the deadline. Now if I can stop living the rest of my life like that... *grimace*

( the words on the fridge )

Also? BBC livetexts and usopen.org radio are lovesome things. ( And then there are the aspects of fandom that are not. )

*glee*

Not that I have any room to talk. I had lunch with a colleague yesterday, and we got to talking about my upcoming month in Israel:

J: Are you going to visit any other countries while you're there?

R: I seriously considered Egypt and Jordan, but probably not. The problem is that I don't have time to learn enough Arabic before I leave. [beat] Um. Yeah. I know I don't have to, but...

J: Yeah, but I know you well enough for that to actually make sense.

[Subject line from Robert Pinsky's Tennis]

My original plans for the day have been curtailed by my left foot (not sure what I did, but I can't put weight on it, which precludes gadding to/from hot chicken festivals and fireworks and the like) and some encroaching deadlines, but I have a pitcher of iced peach tea at the ready and a whole raft of Haru wo Daiteita fics by geri-chan that I'm going to reward myself with as soon as I put some reasonable distance between me and Canis deadlinus chompus.

Not that that's stopped me from obsessively following Wimbledon. Proud of Dementieva for showing up with a serve, and especially proud of Roddick for working so hard to raise his game to finalist level. I do like Muzz (he's Scottish, he's fond of his dog, and his head's screwed on right -- "It's a pathetic attitude to lose one match and let it ruin your year"), but I'm pleased as punch that A-Rod prevailed in four sets, and I'll be happy about either him or Federer winning tomorrow as long as A-Rod brings his A+ game and pushes Federer to earn the darn thing. (Not that Federer won't have earned it otherwise, but I want to see more of him in flight. Match point yesterday against Haas was lovely to behold.)

Also (with apologies to aunty_marion), I have to say that following yesterday's semifinal via livetexts (BBC, Guardian, and Wimby) and scoreboarding (we get neither cable nor NBC at my house -- long story -- and the videostreams I've tried so far send my hard drive into seizures) was highly entertaining. There was one UK member of the TennisWorld forum who periodically burst out with lines from "Scots wha hae," and Stephen Fry let loose on Twitter with "Oh, in the name of cock-mothering arse mustard" mid-match and "Holy suck-pigging BITCH!" upon its conclusion. The Wimbledon Poet has posted A-Rod's iPod War Boast, which may be the first Beowulf-Rick Astley mashup in the history of online poetry.

Speaking of online poetry, I have three new pieces up at Dead Mule: "The Language of Waiting," "Fuel," and "Sonic Crochet Hook."

Have requested my snupin_santa background reading from the library. aunty_marion, gird thy loins glasses! *grin*

I don't have time to go find this, never mind read it, but there's an article in the September 2005 issue of The Lion and the Unicorn titled "The Liberty Tree and the Whomping Willow: Political Justice, Magical Science, and Harry Potter." *flails*

There's something about Snape as an animagus that brings out the good crack (cf. pixychelle's HSSD(N)KNT: The Two Turtledoves). It's the theme at snape100 this week and the two entries I read yesterday were adorable. *snicker*

Speaking of good crack, marginaliana's dealing again ("Five True Things Luna Believes (in) Even Though No One Else Does )," "Five Famous Wizarding Vacation Spots," etc.).

Although I'm not feeling like much of a writer at the moment (too much on simmer, not enough ready to serve), I did receive three very nice (and unexpected) bits of encouragement over the weekend. One was a dear friend taking the time to comment on an old fic; another was getting a phone message requesting permission to reprint my poem "The Stepsister" in next year's edition of Dwarf Stars, an anthology being produced by the Science Fiction Poetry Association. (Even better is that someone I've never met liked it enough to nominate it. Time to write a thank-you note...) Last but not least, I apparently made the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror honorable mention list. (I'm still in mild shock, so I may not manage to believe this until I stop by the bookstore after work...)

[And hey, make that four! Cathy Buburuz liked my haibun in the August 2006 print edition of Scifaikuest. (Not incidentally, if you happen to be looking for a cool little journal to read, you could do worse. I think there's a couple of words about werewolves in that issue as well...)]

(And speaking of work, how is it 3:15 p.m. already? Eep, eep, EEP! *hops back to the spreadsheet-and-Powerpoint tango*)

If you're into behind-the-scenes commentaries and the like, you might be interested in hpwriterschoice, a new comm inviting fic writers to discuss their best work. The August/September theme is "Favorite Fics"; if you hop over there, you can see what I wrote about writing "A Face of Faith."

VoicePost 214K 1:06

“This is a poem of mine that appears in THE BEDSIDE GUIDE TO NO TELL MOTEL, which will be featured on a podcast on MiPOradio later this month. It's a fabulous anthology and I urge all y'all to check it out... (even though it took me 30+ takes to read my own damn poem semi-properly. Oy!)” Transcribed by: bronze_ribbons

Francis Luong's review of the anthology.
The zine in which the poem originally appeared (along with four others).
Where to buy it (for $7 off retail).

ETA/PSA: Turns out phonepost mp3s won't download properly to disk via Safari 2.0.3, but Opera came to the rescue.