"Break", Ha Ha Ha Redux

[handful_ofdust]

October, at last. I’ve been thinking about what to do this year, since pretty much anything would beat what I’ve done every other year (ie, nuttin’, honey). Since this remains my favorite month/season/holiday, I’m thinking it would be very fun to ally myself to an actual event on the day itself—oh ye of the Royal Sarcophagus Society, are you doing anything?—and also host a party, maybe one where you could show up with scary stuff to read, scary music to play and/or scary films to watch (but only in part, not in whole—scary individual scenes and/or sequences, possibly). I remember I had a Halloween party once where I set up Nosferatu on a permanent loop and just kept on playing the soundtracks I have for it (Liminal, Nash the Slash) over and over. But would that really be all that fun for anybody else?;)

So, catch-up report: The weekend started off with a bit of a bang in terms of physical issues, since I left school having screwed my back so intensely that I was subject to spasms which would knot somewhere between my shoulderblades and then ripple dismayingly outward through my chest, like intense gas pain. (Luckily, this has since pretty much stopped, due to lots of drugs, BodyFlow and a massage on Sunday). Saturday we did chores ‘n’ stuff, though not enough of them (didn’t shop, for example), then dropped Cal off at Mom’s and moved on to the Rue Morgue House of Horror, where strange’s wedding reception was going on. That turned out to be great fun, so we stuck around a lot longer than we probably should have, given the fact that I had to be reading something at 6:00 the next morning.

At 5:00 AM, therefore, we got up…looking back, it should probably have been 4:30…and got ourselves out the door. The good part was that we had a car for once, due to Cal’s "birthday" celebration in Mississauga later that afternoon; the bad part was that I’d totally forgotten what a rat’s nest Yorkville is at the best of times, let alone when you’re frantically trying to locate the Helliconia Club in a maze of blocked-off streets. I got to the Club with maybe five minutes to spare, only to find the’d assumed I wasn’t coming. But I was able to slip in after the person filling in for me, so things came to a fairly satisfying conclusion—the benefits of a mainly-comatose audience cannot be undercut, since it really cuts down on the whole people-getting-up-and-leaving-during-your-brilliant-short-story quotient. After, Steve, moon_custafer and I went to Mel’s All-Night Diner for breakfast, then drove her home, then went back to our place and crashed like we were in a downbound 747.

By 3:00 PM, we were back on track and en route to Mississauga, with Mom and Cal in tow. Cal spent much of the time playing with trains (sometimes three at once) and ignoring everybody around him, including all his relatives. It was exhausting but rewarding, and I was very happy when it was over. And thayat’s abaout ayall ah hayave ta say abaout thayat.

Now it’s Tuesday already, and I am faced with my usual Break Week list of stuff to catch up on. So far, it goes thusly—

Find Cal’s birth certificate, apply online for S.I.N. # (Not done).
Call to schedule haircut (Done) and eyebrows/moustache (Not done).
Call dentist re emergency check-up for broken filling (Done).
Pay bills (Not done)/send mail (Done).
Call re getting lint-trap fixed (Not done).
Call re fixing wiring and light-fixtures (Not done).
Find out who to call re getting window-screen fixed (Not done).
Reprint Course Outlines for next semester and get over to TFS for copying (Not done).
Finish next section(s) of "Strange Weight"(Not done).
Invoice for Rue Morgue work (Done).
Review books for Rue Morgue and send by October 15 (Not done).
Watch all new Dust Devil re-issue and set up interview with Richard Stanley (I’m about halfway through "The Secret Glory", his documentary on Otto Rahn); check to see if this is for October 15 too (not done); panic if it is.
Contact someone re gemmafiles.com issues (Not done).
Input and coallate notes for Lilim, No Vacancies (SO damn not done).

Interestingly, I was going through my word-counts (some only prospective) for the stories I’d been thinking about putting in Dark is Better, the "new" collection…setting aside for the moment pretty much completely who the Hell I would ever get to publish it…and realized that the way things are going, I might as well literally turn it into the all-Five-Family Coven show. Which means we end up with a shared universe and an incestuously interrelated cast of thusands, but why not? It’ll either lay or at least map out the groundwork for everything else I’ve been working on, and I’ll probably make 100,000 words without a massive amount of trouble. So this may end up becoming my NaNoWriMo 2006 project, unless A) I hear back about Blood from the Air before then or B) I make it NaNoScreeMo instead, and concentrate on Lilim or No Vacancies.

And what else? Just to be perverse/stand out from the crowd, I hereby attest that I friggin’ love Heroes thus far. Perhaps I’m helped in this by having never seen Gilmore Girls for more than three minutes at a stretch, and thus not giving a shit who that "annoying" Milo Ventimiglia is; I have the benefit of being able to simply see him as Peter Petrelli, who I don’t find annoying , though I do fear for him. Actually, I fear for them all.;)

Other stuff in the pipe: Lost premiere tomorrow. More Supernatural Season Two on Thursday, so I need to use my new Supernatural Season One disks to catch up with all the stuff I never saw first time ‘round. Battlestar Galactica Season Three premiere on Saturday, which we’ll probably have to start taping and watching after we’re finally through BSG Seasons 2.1 and 2.2. I also want to watch those three ep.s of Invasion they fucked me out of first time ‘round by moving it constantly, but think this will be filed in the "eventually" pile.

In terms of books, meanwhile, I’ve been inhaling them at a frightening rate, but have no reviews to offer. Damn this journalism career hangover of wanting to be paid for my observations!;)

Finally, Cal continues toothy, train-obsessed. This is not news, but it’s all I have. ‘Night.