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pameladeanFirst, I called the Hennepin County Jury Office the Monday after I discovered my summons to jury duty, and the nice woman I talked to just set me up with a new set of dates. I had considered what dates I would like before I called, luckily. I'd really hoped to wait until after my book deadline, but they wanted me earlier. So I start the week of May 8. I hope I don't end up trammelled inside during wonderful spring weather. April is too crowded already, what with Eric coming to visit and then Minicon.
I had an excessively social weekend, for me. On Saturday David and my mother and I drove down to Northfield for his sister's birthday party. (Lydy was invited, but was ill.) The guest of honor was late because her stepson had hurt his foot and they had to stop and get him some crutches; and David and I needed to leave early because David wanted to attend another party. But we had a fairly festive time, enlivened as usual by cats. The sky was so clear in Northfield, when we left, that you could count the Pleiades.
David had undertaken to take me home before his other party, but since we had to drop my mother off in Eden Prairie, the party was in Edina, and the party was not likely to go much later than midnight, I consented to go along. It was a gathering of photographers and gun enthusiasts, with some outliers. I had been to one other party of this friend's hosting, and had enjoyed it very much, but found so many strangers and so much gun and camera geeking a little wearing. I can get plenty of gun and camera geeking at home. David and I fell into conversation first with a man named Guy, who had come to hear the Scribblies and several other local writers pontificate at a panel hosted by Barnes and Noble, many years ago now, while he was still in college. My main recollection of the panel was that one panel member had said something frankly indefensible about another writer (not present) and that I had been too frozen with shock to say anything. Emma smacked the offender on the side of the head, however.
Anyway, Guy remembered a better panel, and we had a pleasant conversation about science fiction and cameras. Then we moved into the dining room and met the most fascinating person I recalled from the other party. He's an artist and a serious polymath, and while brilliant and sophisticated and possessed of lovely manners, is completely uninhibited about asking questions, both specific personal ones and gigantic philosophical ones. He told me that he had learned to speak English by reading comic books, when he was a child in New York. We talked over the prospects of Minicon and recommended new writers to one another. I also had a small chat with local writer Bruce Bethke, whom I had not seen for seven years or so. When I got tired of talking I had a very nice time half listening to the gun, knife, camera, and fencing conversations, and looking at all the photographs on the walls.
On Sunday David and I went to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
carbonel's Purim party, where we were presented with small bags of assorted goodies and had all-too-brief conversations with many people whom we don't see often enough, including a child who was a tiny, somewhat precarious-looking newborn the last time I laid eyes on him, the child's mothers, Lois Bujold, several people from the Romance Exchange, our old acquaintance Steve Bond, and many LJ people. We talked about baking, YA fiction, the Guthrie's farewell performance of Hamlet, Mississippi River cruises, and cats. Greg came home with us afterwards, and he and David put a new faucet in the downstairs bathroom sink, which had been without hot water for, um, a long time.
On Sunday night it snowed, and on Monday B and K coaxed David into going to Minnehaha Falls with them to take photographs, and when they got here, coaxed me to come too. It was a glorious day, with the sky as white as the snow and most objects almost obliterated with snowfall. K talked about negative space. The creek was rushing along noisily, with huge drifts and banks of snow on either side. The statues were snowy. We braved the steps to go down and look at the falls. There were curtains of ice, all blue and green, and through the middle of what had been a solid frozen fall of ice, the waterfall fell, at about half strength, a solid wall of water at the top separating into streams and balls of water before it hit the bottom. The only color was in some of the stones of the walls and bridges, which showed a little pink here and there; some brilliant yellow-green lichen on other wall stones; and the red breasts of the robins that B pointed out. Everybody except me took photographs. I just looked. We finished up at Anodyne for warm or cold drinks as individual taste dictated, and an extensive discussion of how to travel light.
Now I'm tired all over again. The book is okay. I may have finished the current chapter, aside from a conversation that I want to be overheard but the contents of which I do not yet know completely.
P.
I had an excessively social weekend, for me. On Saturday David and my mother and I drove down to Northfield for his sister's birthday party. (Lydy was invited, but was ill.) The guest of honor was late because her stepson had hurt his foot and they had to stop and get him some crutches; and David and I needed to leave early because David wanted to attend another party. But we had a fairly festive time, enlivened as usual by cats. The sky was so clear in Northfield, when we left, that you could count the Pleiades.
David had undertaken to take me home before his other party, but since we had to drop my mother off in Eden Prairie, the party was in Edina, and the party was not likely to go much later than midnight, I consented to go along. It was a gathering of photographers and gun enthusiasts, with some outliers. I had been to one other party of this friend's hosting, and had enjoyed it very much, but found so many strangers and so much gun and camera geeking a little wearing. I can get plenty of gun and camera geeking at home. David and I fell into conversation first with a man named Guy, who had come to hear the Scribblies and several other local writers pontificate at a panel hosted by Barnes and Noble, many years ago now, while he was still in college. My main recollection of the panel was that one panel member had said something frankly indefensible about another writer (not present) and that I had been too frozen with shock to say anything. Emma smacked the offender on the side of the head, however.
Anyway, Guy remembered a better panel, and we had a pleasant conversation about science fiction and cameras. Then we moved into the dining room and met the most fascinating person I recalled from the other party. He's an artist and a serious polymath, and while brilliant and sophisticated and possessed of lovely manners, is completely uninhibited about asking questions, both specific personal ones and gigantic philosophical ones. He told me that he had learned to speak English by reading comic books, when he was a child in New York. We talked over the prospects of Minicon and recommended new writers to one another. I also had a small chat with local writer Bruce Bethke, whom I had not seen for seven years or so. When I got tired of talking I had a very nice time half listening to the gun, knife, camera, and fencing conversations, and looking at all the photographs on the walls.
On Sunday David and I went to
carbonel's Purim party, where we were presented with small bags of assorted goodies and had all-too-brief conversations with many people whom we don't see often enough, including a child who was a tiny, somewhat precarious-looking newborn the last time I laid eyes on him, the child's mothers, Lois Bujold, several people from the Romance Exchange, our old acquaintance Steve Bond, and many LJ people. We talked about baking, YA fiction, the Guthrie's farewell performance of Hamlet, Mississippi River cruises, and cats. Greg came home with us afterwards, and he and David put a new faucet in the downstairs bathroom sink, which had been without hot water for, um, a long time. On Sunday night it snowed, and on Monday B and K coaxed David into going to Minnehaha Falls with them to take photographs, and when they got here, coaxed me to come too. It was a glorious day, with the sky as white as the snow and most objects almost obliterated with snowfall. K talked about negative space. The creek was rushing along noisily, with huge drifts and banks of snow on either side. The statues were snowy. We braved the steps to go down and look at the falls. There were curtains of ice, all blue and green, and through the middle of what had been a solid frozen fall of ice, the waterfall fell, at about half strength, a solid wall of water at the top separating into streams and balls of water before it hit the bottom. The only color was in some of the stones of the walls and bridges, which showed a little pink here and there; some brilliant yellow-green lichen on other wall stones; and the red breasts of the robins that B pointed out. Everybody except me took photographs. I just looked. We finished up at Anodyne for warm or cold drinks as individual taste dictated, and an extensive discussion of how to travel light.
Now I'm tired all over again. The book is okay. I may have finished the current chapter, aside from a conversation that I want to be overheard but the contents of which I do not yet know completely.
P.
