Tip jar results.

All things have been totaled (at long last), and the results of the latest tip jar are in, coming to a princely $1,187. I am still awed and amazed by the generosity of my readers. You've allowed me to prioritize finishing three InCryptid stories over the next three months:

"IM"
"Oh Pretty Bird"
"Bury Me In Satin"

These will be going up around the start of June, July, and August, respectively; "IM" focuses on Artie, while "Oh Pretty Bird" and "Bury Me In Satin" are both from the Johnny and Fran era. (That era is sadly coming to a close very soon: there are only three stories remaining to be written. I'm going to miss her. The first of those stories, "Snakes and Ladders," has also been prioritized.)

Upcoming appearances.

The book release party for Sparrow Hill Road will be taking place at Borderlands Books on Saturday, May 10th, starting at 5:00pm. There will be cupcakes! I'm actually planning to do a reading! Truly, it is a time of wonders. If you're unable to attend, remember that Borderlands takes orders both via the Internet and over the phone, and would be happy to hook you up with a signed and personalized book.

(If you're not attending and are planning to have me sign a book for you, please, please contact the store before the event date. I realized recently that some of y'all may not realize that I actually live an hour's drive from San Francisco, which means that—now that I don't have a day job—I can't just nip in to sign a few things before I head home. I don't want you to have to wait for your books because you called after I had already left the city!)

Cats.

They are. So mad.

Seriously, you have not seen anger like the anger of cats who are being left on the regular because their human needs to travel. I've managed to have at least a week at home every month so far this year, but they're pissed off, and I can't blame them. Poor babies. Also, it's summer, and if there's one thing Maine Coons hate, it's the coming of the summer. (Lilly and Lizzy don't mind as much. Ah, the joy of not being longhairs.)

More to come soon, and happy May!

My part of Northern California is currently experiencing its first really serious heat wave of 2011. I know better than to whine about this too much; by this point in the year, in a normal year, we'd be on heat wave three or four, and temperatures would be trending substantially higher than they are.

That being said, Thomas is only eleven months old, and this is actually the first really serious heat wave of his life. My house has air conditioning, but it doesn't run twenty-four hours a day, which means that it can get warm inside during the gaps. (Never dangerously warm. I am a good cat owner who does not bake her babies. But there's a big difference between "springtime cool" and "what is this shit?", especially when you've been genetically designed to go tromping around in heavy snow, mocking Jack Frost for his inability to nip at your nose.) Alice and Lilly are quietly miserable, but Thomas? Thomas is distressed.

Monday night, I got home from a hot, sweaty day at work, and promptly jumped into the shower, because sometimes, that's the only solution available to you. The Maine Coons thought so, too. In short order, I was joined in the shower by both Alice and Thomas, who splashed around in the water, got thoroughly drenched, and then took turns sitting on the plug so as to create a puddle for the other to swim in. Yes. My cats cooperatively filled the bathtub in order to have swampy funtimes.

After our shower, they squelched around the house like extras from Sigrid and the Sea Monsters until I chased them down and toweled them off. I think they're still annoyed about that. Sadly, their inability to understand "don't walk on keyboards while wet" is why they can't have a wading pool.

Heat wave with cats. It's going to be a long July.

I am not going to write an Arisia con report. I'm not good at them under the best of circumstances—they either wind up obscenely long and take six months to finish, turn into a series of comic strips, or make no sense—and these are not the best of circumstances, what with the "two conventions in two weekends" and "under a whole lot of deadlines" parts of our program. So these are the summarized highlights, for your amusement and edification.

Arriving in Boston! Persis picked me up from the airport, because a) Persis loves me, and b) I had made it quite clear that fuck you people, I am not going outside in the snow unless it's to enter a private car. No, I am not a prima donna; I simply refuse to take the bus or other forms of public transit when you have A FOOT OF SNOW on the ground. My sunny California upbringing can't handle the reality shift. I did, in fact, remain entirely inside the hotel until Monday afternoon, when I went outside in the snow, entered a private car, and returned to the airport. So screw you, New England winter; I am not your chew toy.

Hanging out with Rene! My room wasn't ready yet when we got to the hotel, so I wound up sitting with Rene, the Fan Guest of Honor, in the lobby Starbucks for about an hour. Rene was conchair for the Montreal WorldCon, and is a really neat guy. Plus he helped me get my luggage up to my room. Class act, yo.

Cat and Diana! My roommates for the weekend were the lovely Cat "The Crusher" Valente, and the equally lovely Diana "The Destroyer" Fox. They both arrived Friday afternoon, and seriously, it was like spending the entire weekend having an awesome slumber party with awesome people and our own private bathroom. Our hotel room looked like it had been hit by a localized tornado. A tornado of RAW AWESOME. I couldn't have asked for a better time. Plus? They brought me presents. (I also brought them presents. I like to share.)

The Paranormal Romance Weather Report! My first panel of the weekend was on the appeal of paranormal romance and the flirtation with the mainstream. The only panelist I'd met prior to sitting down at the table was Kelley Armstrong, which was sort of neat. We talked for an hour, and it was a lively and engaged discussion, but didn't come with as many book recommendations as people expected...so I used my closing comments to provide a cable-news style weather report on offerings in the urban fantasy and paranormal romance genres. Yes, complete with a "and next, here's John with sports!" closer. It was more fun than it should have been. Seriously.

Shawn! My good friend Shawn lives in Massachusetts, and swears he actually likes New England winters. This is because Shawn is insane. He actually came to the convention to see me! It was awesome. He is a good Shawn, and shall be renowned in song and story.

Shaenon Garrity, big-time star! Shaenon was the Webcomics Guest of Honor, which meant that her adorable mad science illustrations were all over the program book (awesome), and that she had the big box of Skin Horse strips available for people to paw through and purchase. I got one of my favorite strips. And also? A hug.

Ellen and Delia! Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman are a) mad awesome, b) very sweet, and c) just plain cool. They're also involved with the Bordertown revival, about which I will blog more very, very soon. And Ellen? Ellen gave me an ARC of the new Bordertown book, about which I will also blog more very, very soon. So who has an ARC of the new Bordertown book? THAT WOULD BE ME. Dude, the trip was worth it for that alone, I swear.

Having an Irish pub attached to the hotel! One of the two hotel restaurants was an actual Irish pub, with actual Irish pub food. I basically ate shepherd's pie for every "real meal" I had during the weekend, and while that may not have been awesome from a Weight Watchers standpoint, it was pretty damn cool from a "don't flip out and kill everyone in a ten-mile radius" standpoint. You may now thank the Irish pub for saving mankind.

...okay, so even when I'm doing the quick-and-dirty highlights version of a con report, I can't condense it very well. Tune in next time, for more things that were awesome, or at least interesting, since "Seanan has an allergic reaction to some lady's perfume and spends the bulk of Sunday yearning for death" is totally making the list.

1. My website is currently down. Thanks to everyone who's pointed that out thus far today (and that's a sincere thanks—I needed to know, and better multiple people tell me than no one tells me). My webmaster is still asleep, because he's a lucky bastard, so I'll check in with him when he gets up. For now, site fall down, go boom. No clue why.

2. Oddly, this has come up lately, so...I try to answer all comments on this journal. Because my LJ inbox goes newest-to-oldest, when I get behind, newer comments wind up getting answered first, just so I don't miss any. I swear I'm not ignoring you if I haven't answered you yet, I just haven't answered you yet. It's all very recursive.

3. Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts. Yet another thing that I eat so that you don't have to. (I mean, they taste like pumpkin pie. Sort of. If it were being made by a robot who'd never tasted real pumpkin pie, but was really, really trying, really, really hard, and is now rusted from the shame of failure.)

4. The robot has never known love.

5. Things that are surprisingly classy: K-Mart's Halloween shirt selection for this year. I mean, who knew, right? But they have some lovely fall-themed stuff that manages to be seasonal, yet tasteful, and doesn't make me look like a house. Everybody wins! Especially me, as I enjoy bedecking my breasts with appliqued candy corn.

6. Places that currently have signed copies of my books, and will do mail-order: Borderlands Books in San Francisco. Other Change of Hobbit in Berkeley. Places that currently do not have signed copies of my books: pretty much everywhere else.

7. I'm attempting to finalize the liner notes source file for Wicked Girls, which means lots of cross-referencing and looking things up. Like many things in life, making an album is infinitely more complicated than it seems at first glance.

8. I fly to New York one week from today. This means I'm going to be scrambling to catch up with everything before I go, and then probably not posting much for about a week. I promise I will not be eaten by a grue.

9. Summer is spewing its last gasps all over the Bay Area, resulting in my wearing less clothing in September than I did in August. There is something very wrong here.

10. I feel a rant about holidays coming on. But not until I've had more caffeine.

How's by you?

It's easy to forget sometimes, given the natural impulses to focus on the negative aspects of the world around us, that people can be inherently decent. (This ties into something I've been pondering, involving Monkeyspheres and the nature of social formations, but it's also its own thing, in isolation, which is why I'm bringing it up right now.) I mean, we're all horrible human beings at some point or other, but we're also capable of being really good people. Case in point:

I don't generally carry any cash with me. It's a combination of factors, the most pressing of which is probably "I am a slightly vacant-looking blonde woman with a real fondness for the sort of trail often featured in classic horror movies." I've never been mugged, and I'd really rather not start any time soon, so I make a point of having as little money on me as possible. It's fun! This does, however, put me at a bit of a disadvantage when people looking for a cup of coffee ask me if I have any change, since "No, for sociological reasons" doesn't make much sense without the context.

Some days, I head straight to the office in the morning. Other days, I stop by the 7-11 near the Montgomery Street BART Station, where I can obtain a Double-Big Gulp of Diet Dr Pepper to get me through the morning. Despite the fact that it's June and should be, I don't know, summer, it was misting lightly, resulting in instant chilly dampness. Peh.

As I walked toward the 7-11, a man sitting on the sidewalk asked, "If you have any change when you come out, could you maybe help me get some breakfast?" He was hugging his dog. It was a good dog, brown and tan and cold-looking, but good. I like dogs.

"I'll see what I can do," I said, and went inside.

About five minutes later, I came out with my soda, a large coffee, a bunch of sugar and creamer packets (I never got the hang of fixing other people's coffees), an egg-on-croissant sandwich, and the biggest cinnamon bun they had, on the theory that he could, I don't know, give whatever he wanted to the dog. As I emerged, a little girl was petting the dog, and he was reassuring her mother that he'd never ask a kid for money just to pet his dog. The kid and her mother left. I walked over.

"I brought you breakfast," I said, and started handing him food.

He was very pleased—who doesn't like food?—and asked my name. I told him. His name was Dave (the dog was Daisy). Smiles all around...and then, as I was turning to head for work, he waved to another homeless gentleman, this one older, thinner, and sitting back against a doorway to stay out of the wet, and asked what was probably the best pair of questions I'll hear all day:

"Hey, you hungry? You want to share my breakfast?"

Sometimes the human race is fundamentally decent, even when it's hungry, damp, and sitting on a San Francisco sidewalk.

It's gonna be a pretty good day.

Friday, I was wearing my trench coat, running the space heater, and shivering a lot. Saturday, I walked to the store in my trench coat, and damn near overheated. Yesterday, I wandered around without a coat for the majority of the day, and even ran the air conditioner a bit in the evening. This morning, I put on my denim jacket.

We have had the changing of the coats. Spring has officially sprung.

I find that perfume is also a good indicator of the spring, as all the women on my morning commute begin competing with the newly-blooming flowers by attempting to smother me to death with their artificially floral scents. I like perfume as much as the next girl—my ungodly-large collection of bottles of BPAL testifies to that—but there's a difference between "wearing perfume" and "committing an act of chemical warfare." When I'm breathing through my mouth and turning green, you have crossed that line.

(My latest scent from the BPAL collection, by the way: Giant Squid. The description says it's "cannabis blossom, tonka bean, tobacco, frankincense, galangal, juniper berry, lantana, spiky aloe, green and white teas, and salty sea spray." I just like being able to answer "what's that perfume you're wearing?" with "RELEASE THE KRAKEN!" Sometimes I am a simple soul.)

The cats are responding to the spring by attempting to lose their winter coats in one fell swoop, resulting in hairballs of epic proportions springing up on my bedroom rug. Seriously, I brush Alice every day, and I still scraped an entire third cat's-worth of hair off the rug Saturday morning. I dread to think what may happen when I go to Australia for two weeks, since Alice is less willing to let Mom use the feline seam-ripper (ie, "the mat-catching brush") on her flanks and hindquarters. I'm going to come home to a house consisting of nothing but hair.

Amy arrived from Wisconsin yesterday, and brought a cheese hat for my sister-in-law. The world is occasionally very strange, as my mother's insistence on prancing about San Francisco International Airport with a giant wedge of cheese on her head clearly illustrates.

Happy spring!

...and not a drop to drink.

Native Californians (of which I am one) often joke that we live in a state that has three natural seasons: Wet, Dry, and On Fire. Local conditions have restricted us to Dry and On Fire in recent years, with instances of Wet being few and far-between. No one really likes a drought, but as no one really likes wet socks and the smell of moldy leaves, people have really only complained about it in the summer.

Well, as of Monday, Wet has returned, and with a vengeance. Seriously. There are flooding advisories; people's houses are leaking and sliding down hills (again); Southern California was under some really scary severe weather warnings yesterday; and the beaches are closed due to high water conditions. (It's too much to hope that these "high water conditions" will result in a giant squid getting stuck in the Bay and eating commuters. But a girl can still dream.)

My shoes are soaked. My jeans are soaked. My trenchcoat is soaked, to the point where the water actually came through the ostensibly rainproof fabric and soaked my sweater as a sort of extra added bonus. My hair is soaked, and looks something like a dead Muppet that I have stapled unkindly to my head. I need more Diet Dr Pepper, but I'm trying to avoid going out into the rain again until I can at least feel my toes, since the last thing I want is to take a header into one of the rapidly-developing lakes studding the neighborhood.

Naturally, this is the day when I need to go, on foot, to the cupcake bakery and pick up three dozen cupcakes for tonight's author event. I begin to fear that I, and the cupcakes, will dissolve into sugary, somewhat greenish goo, and simply wash away. It's really impressively wet out there, people.

Glub.

1. I am about to head for the dentist, where I will be undergoing full sedation for the sake of massive surgery. After this, you should get a few months free of my discussing teeth, which will be nice for everybody. Because someone asked: I grew up on welfare, I have naturally not-so-good teeth, and for a long time, I didn't have the money to fix what was wrong. This combination leads to massive work, when you can finally manage to get it done. Thankfully, I'm getting.

2. The Rosemary and Rue pendant sale is going like gangbusters over at chimera_fancies, and it's honestly amazing what Mia's been able to do with this batch. I really recommend swinging by and looking for a favorite. All pendants are signed by me, and made from pieces of a recycled ARC.

3. Because of item one on this little list, the Great Pumpkin only knows whether I'm going to be capable of complicated things like "being awake" or "typing" today, so if you don't hear from me until tomorrow, it's not because I've been eaten by a grue. So don't worry.

4. It's pouring buckets. I am the Rain King.

5. Please remember to enter the A Local Habitation ARC giveaway. It doesn't require your own pets. Use the pets of a friend, or neighbor, or take advantage of your brother the zookeeper and throw your book to the tigers. (I will replace your book if you actually bring me photographic evidence of throwing it to the tigers, providing that happens with zookeeper permission.) Have fun!

So today is Tuesday—hooray!—but for me, it's essentially Monday, because I spent the real Monday in a haze of sedatives, painkillers, and other exciting pharmaceuticals associated with having lots and lots of dental work done. I now have two permanent crowns on my upper right rear molars, and can actually eat crunchy foods, like apples and carrots. This is very exciting for me. I'm living the dream, and in the dream, I can chew. (Years of poverty plus a pronounced phobia of dentists mean that I have a lot of work ahead of me. Fortunately, I have a very understanding dentist who specializes in working with the phobic, and who understands that I need to keep my iPod on at all times to keep from panicking when I hear them talking about what they're going to do. Oblivion is my anti-phobia buddy.)

In keeping with the week's established medical theme, I'm going to be spending the afternoon with my doctor, being poked and prodded and (one hopes) declared to be in as good of health as can be expected. This is a necessary first step in scheduling my next spinal epidural, IE, "those periodic injections which render Seanan capable of continuing to walk and interact like a normal human being." It's probably too much to hope that the procedure could happen before OVFF, but I'm guardedly hopeful of shoving it into the week between OVFF and World Fantasy, when I'm already going to be off from work and can thus spend the day in bed without any guilt.

Today is the book-day birthday for The Mermaid's Madness [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] by jimhines, a gentleman and a scholar if ever there was one. He's also a fellow member of the DAW Mafia, and just an awesome all-around guy...plus the book is amazing. My mother liked it better than she liked the first one, and we all remember how much she liked the first one. I highly recommend The Mermaid's Madness as a good investment of your book-buying dollars for this week. Join the Princess party now, and beat the rush!

I spent a good chunk of Sunday accidentally taking a six and a half mile walk through the cities of Concord and Clayton. I was trying to get to a friend's house for a barbecue, and I overshot by a little bit, assuming you consider four miles, much of it uphill, to be "a little bit." I had never walked some of that route before, so it was educational. I also hadn't walked all the skin off my heels in quite some time, so it was painful to boot. I am now wearing thick socks and bandages, and have no intention of taking that walk again any time soon. Still, it was a pleasant, if unexpected, little adventure in getting to know my home town a bit better. (Quoth a woman who saw me walking by with my iPod on, a Super Double-Gulp in one hand, and a book in my other hand, "Now that's multi-tasking.")

Autumn has arrived at last; I was forced to break out my duvet Sunday night, and woke this morning under a cascade of cats, since not even Alice's innate insulation robs her of the feline desire to snuggle up to the nearest human and leech as much heat as she possibly can. (They promptly stole the warm spot when I got up. This is because they're cats, not idiots.) Next up, umbrellas and the annual hunt for a pair of shoes that I haven't already worn past the point of being waterproof.

And that, for the moment, is that. What's new with the rest of the world?

I find myself in need of a meteorologist to assist me with...well, to assist me with things that I am not presently at liberty to discuss, but trust me, it'll be fun. I've already spoken to a climatologist about global warming and various other factors, but now? Now I need to construct a really awesome storm.

If you can help, or know someone who can, please drop me a line, either here or via the contact form on my website.

Thanks!

Here in California, the blackberry brambles are putting out their last, sweetest berries, the ones that taste like an entire summer crammed into less than a single bite of fruit. The season's scant burden of tomatoes is ripe and colored like a thousand bonfires, coming in from the fields a bushel at a time. The butterflies are migrating down the coast, toward warmer climes; the department stores are dressing themselves in orange and black, like a season of mourning for our departing monarchs. Stray cats sun themselves later into the afternoon, because it takes that much longer for the concrete to warm up.

Summer is ending.

I always feel a little wistful this time of year. Autumn is my favorite season; I love the colors of the world, the constant taste of rain and bonfires in the air, and the seasonal ice cream flavors that inevitably cluster in the supermarkets. I love Halloween. I love the buildup and the teardown and everything else that comes with it. But still, the summer's ending. The rains are coming, the snows are coming, the harvest is coming in. Lily Fair only holds her court for a few months at a time, and then it's Snow White's turn for days on days, and then Rose Red again. We have so little time here, it makes me wistful to know that no matter how much I love it, it never lasts.

The orb weaver spiders are building their webs against the winter. The squirrels are squirreling away everything they can. The crows are singing songs of the cold days to come. And I'm watching my temporary country come around again, and I have my passport, and I'm an autumn girl; it's been too long since I've been home.

Dear Great Pumpkin;

With Halloween fast approaching, I felt it important to write and let you know that I have continued to be a very good girl. I have offered advice to people who asked for it, and not offered advice to people who didn't want it. I have allowed others to sample my candy corn without removing their fingers. I have hugged my friends and told my loved ones that I love them. I have not invoked any ancient evils to rise from their graves in the great corn maze and destroy an unsuspecting populace. I have made all my deadlines, even the ones I wanted to miss. And the swine flu still isn't my fault. So you see, I have been a very good girl, especially by my standards.

Today, Great Pumpkin, I am asking for the following gifts:

* Wonderful, easy, successful book release parties during which no one sets anybody else on fire. Please, Great Pumpkin, grant me two glorious nights, filled with wonder and joy and lots and lots and lots of book sales, because it turns out that I'm very nervous about this whole thing. Please let me be a Halloweentown Cinderella at the October Ball, only without the glass slippers, and let it all be wonderful. Also, please let there be lots of cookies. I'm a big fan of cookies.

* An easy, or at least not insanely painful, editing process on The Brightest Fell, which is definitely going to need a lot of editing before I hand it over to The Agent, much less The Editor. My first drafts are always excitingly messy, so I'm not particularly worried—the fact that it's book five, and book one just came out, means I have some breathing room—but I really would like breeze through the rewrites, just this once, so that I can get on to Ashes of Honor, preferably before A Local Habitation hits shelves. I will find it much easier to sleep once books four through six are put safely down, and when I sleep, I'm not destroying the world. You like the world, don't you, Great Pumpkin?

* Once again, I must request continued health for my cats, without whom the entire universe would be at risk from my unstoppable wrath. Alice is growing up gloriously beautiful, Great Pumpkin, although I continue to suspect that you may be her actual father (it's either you or an otter, and I oddly find you substantially more plausible). Lilly is continuing to do well with her new "sibling," and seeing the two of them rampaging through my house, destroying things at random, fills my heart with joy.

* Clean, timely page proofs for A Local Habitation and Feed, since right now, I am a blonde without deadlines. I do remember that I promised you three short stories with the Fighting Pumpkins cheerleading squad, as well as the origin stories for Hailey and Scaredy, in exchange for the trilogy sale. I keep my promises. Watch this space for further developments, Great Pumpkin, and thank you again.

* A beautiful fall season. You like the autumn as much as I do, Great Pumpkin, because it is in the autumn that the world truly honors and appreciates your glory. So please, talk to the weather, and make sure that this autumn is one that we'll remember for years to come. And not because the entire state falls into the ocean, or catches fire, or is invaded by flesh-eating locusts from beyond the veil of time. Make this a beautiful, wonderful season, Great Pumpkin, and make it a treat without any tricks. Please.

* Please help me to finish Discount Armageddon in a satisfying, respectful, ass-kicking way, hopefully involving lots of explosions and snappy one-liners. I really want Verity and her family to find a home (and not just so Alice can finally find Thomas), and that means I need to get past the first chapter of their story. What I have so far is actually pretty solid. Please make it amazing.

I remain your faithful Halloween girl,
Seanan.

PS: You really did amazingly with the house for the Newsflesh trilogy. Thank you so much. You da squash.

Well, it's official; the spring is getting fully underway here in Northern California, aka 'one of those irritating places where the seasons are more of a formality than anything else.' How can I tell? For one thing, it's been raining off and on for the past four days. We need the rain. When we don't get the rain, we have a tendency to burst into flames, which is no fun for anybody. (It doesn't help that we've managed to transplant the noble eucalyptus from Australia and seed it all through the damn state. The actual meaning of the word 'eucalyptus' is 'tree that hates you and creates a fire hazard in order to make you die.' In Australia, even the flora yearns to hurt you.) That doesn't mean I enjoy taking my daily walks through vast fields of puddles.

Other signs of spring are springing up. The buses are crowded with people whose cars are in the shop -- a standard occurrence after the first serious rains of the year. Tourists are beginning to appear in increasingly-large flocks, looking dazed and confused when they're not greeted by a sunshiny city filled with happy people conducting musical numbers on the cable cars (yes, the movies can lie to you). Daffodils are sprouting in yards where they weren't even planted in the first place. And I just found the first bag of bunny corn at Safeway.

Bunny corn, for those of you who fail to share my obsession with honey-based confectionry, bunny corn is the springtime version of candy corn. It's made using the same candy base, and the same candy molds, but comes in a variety of pastel colors, rather than the more traditional orange-yellow-white. (They do something similar at Christmas, only then they call it 'reindeer corn.') Since I only really like fresh candy corn, this springtime sugar infusion is a vital part of my annual cycle. Groundhog sees his shadow, water starts pouring from the sky, I eat bunny corn, and all is right with the world.

I'm told that in other parts of the world, spring is a glorious bursting-forth of life and color and glory. Here in Northern California, spring is that season where you're up to your knees in mud, and bullfrogs from the overflowing stream out back are taking up housing in your front yard. (I actually really, really like that part. All hail the mighty bullfrog, almost big enough to eat a kitten.) It's a season of grays, browns, and blues, like a bruise that takes several months to heal over.

It's also a season of exciting things, from Wondercon (coming soon!) to Anton's new book (coming sooner!) and Ravens in the Library (coming soonest!). We may be bruised and battered, and we may look like drowned rats, but by all that is holy, we're gaining momentum!

Bunny corn?

Well, the weather outside is frightful...

...okay, yeah, that's about where it stops right now. Seriously. The snow in the front yard is up to mid-calf on me, and it is now snowing again. Huge, horrible flakes of white are pelting down on the world outside the window, getting thicker and heavier all the time. The weather forecast says that it's raining right now. Look, people. I'm from California, and even I can tell that THIS IS NOT RAIN, OKAY?!

So far, I've missed attending a Christmas party (due to frozen slush blocking access to the roads), and failed to convince Vixy to take me to buy groceries (due to frozen slush getting covered under a blanket of new-fallen snow). We are now seriously discussing the functionality of getting to Portland tomorrow. Perhaps what the weather does not understand is that if it tries to keep me from Voodoo Doughnut, I will cause it pain.

(Seriously, Persephone, I realize that you're having fantastic 'I just got home after six months of living with my mother oh my God that woman needs Prozac' sex with Hades all over the over Underworld, but you need to cut this shit out. If there's one more blizzard, I'm sending him a copy of Busty Chinese Moon Goddesses monthly and spiking your coffee with sleeping pills.)

The snow is falling even harder now, and is threatening to cancel tonight's rehearsal. Do not want. If you hear reports that the rest of my books are being ghost-written by Lilly, it's because I froze to death in Seattle. LAND OF SNOW.