Astronomy camp is over and I want to go baaaaack!!
We wrapped up on Saturday with a discussion on extra solar planets, and Vonda gave all of us a yarn marine critter she’d crocheted as mementos.
Here’s mine perched on the astronomy textbook we received, waiting to be packed for the journey south:
It’s black with silver speckles (although they look purple in this picture; I think a reflection from the textbook) which makes me think of the Wyoming sky at night as I saw it on Friday. I lubs it. *sniffle* I’m in the process of finding the perfect nesting place for it in our library.
Then we went over to Mike’s house to drown our post-astronomy-workshop blues in drunken revelry* along with several of Mike’s students and university colleagues.
Riotous games of Thing were played–with Vy doing an awesome job as Thing Wrangler–as well as several hands of Once Upon A Time. Thing, for folks unfamiliar with it, is a game somewhat like Mafia, except with fewer players, and when folks are Thingafied, they don’t leave play. I haven’t actually played Mafia, so there may be other subtle differences in the rules. (ktempest and Alaya wanted to play Mafia, but we didn’t have enough players.)
samhenderson is a prodigious Thing force to be reckoned with, as she managed to convince folks for several rounds that she could not be Thing because it was simply Too Obvious. Brilliant! If I were a parasitic alien entity intent upon taking over the world, I would so totally invade her first. And, as a public service announcement for anyone who might play Thing with Tempest in the future: even if she’s not Thinged, she’s on the Thing’s side!! Run away!
My flight home on Sunday was uneventful and on time, and Hobkin was pleased to see me. After thoroughly sniffing my face, he attached himself to my hip all night while I babbled nonstop to fosteronfilm about my adventures at Launch Pad. I highly, highly recommend it for any writer even remotely interested in space and science. Go apply for next year, yo!
* Actually, while there were quite a few bottles of booze to partake of, overall, the inebriation wasn’t at the level of, say, a SF convention–that I saw at least. I actually didn’t drink anything until nearly the end of the night when Mike produced a bottle of “Chinese liquor” and foisted it upon folks. From a single sniff of it, I knew that it was potent enough to knock me flat (I believe it was something like sake, but on steroids), possibly potent enough to ignite if you coughed hard enough, so I scampered away and filled a shot glass with coffee liquor as a defensive measure.
Writing Stuff
Agh! So much work to catch up on! Ack!! If you’re waiting on a note from me, I’m plowing through my “to do” list as fast as I can. I had problems sending emails while in Wyoming (the university had a common email port blocked as a spam deterrent and the workaround wasn’t ideal) so my correspondences were limited.
Received:
– Payment for “The Snow Woman’s Daughter” which is slated for podcasting in either Escape Pod or the new fantasy spin-off podcast, Podcastle.
– Issue #6 of Fantasy Magazine with my interview with Andrea Kail in it.
For a second I thought, especially considering the context of the book beneath it, that the yarn was a big honkin’ chunk of meteorite. 🙂