Art of the Odd

Sunday morning, I was up by six thirty (which I keep typing as “sex thirty”), to take a shower, coat myself in sunscreen, and get into full makeup for my 1 PM performance at Anaheed’s Belly Dance Swap Meet in Grenada Hills. Why so early, and why the sunscreen? Because first, I had to go to a 9 AM rehearsal for the Topanga Earth Day show I’m doing with Melanie. I stuffed my Earth Day costume into my dance bag, threw my performance CD into the box with my Swap Meet costume, and was out of the house and on my way by 8:15.

Now, the costume I wore for my Swap Meet performance is one I’ve worn there before. I first saw it in the profile picture of another dancer, on a bellydance-related message board I discovered about the same time I started dancing. I fell in love. “If she ever sells that costume,” I thought to myself, “I’m going to buy it.” About a year later, she did - and I didn’t have the money for it. This made me sad. But then the dancer she sold it to decided it didn’t fit, and she sold it. To me. This made me very, very happy.

Ever since I bought it, though, I’ve been on the lookout for just the right pair of earrings to wear with it. Big gold hoops have done the job, but I was never very excited about them. Yesterday, after I danced, I found the earrings.

They were two dollars. And although the photos make the earrings look very pink, and the costume very purple, the sequins are in fact the very same color.

And this? This makes me very, very happy.

I like browsing the spam comments in my Akismet filter before I delete them - partly because I want to be sure no legit comments have gotten trapped in there (I haven’t had any trouble with that, but I know other people have), and partly because some of them amuse me. There are plenty of the type filled with random characters, hiding links to sites I have no desire to see, but the ones I like are the ones that attempt (usually in mangled English) to form some kind of personal connection.

“This post I like very much. You come my site. Much love. Ebbeca.”

I got a new one today, though. Some SpamBot thinks I’m behind the times.

“I saw similar post three month ago. Topicality of this post sucks. Dude, you have to keep up to date.”

This, from Dotty - or “femaleapants at (free email service not named here, lest Dotty be hijacking a legitimate email address)” - whose web address promises me “onkel-man-best-gay-video.”

As if I’m going to fall for that. Dotty, dude - you have to keep up to date.

As promised, I’ve submitted one of the stories I used for my Clarion application to Weird Tales. I was so wound up about it, I forgot to attach it to the first email (though I did remember to paste the first four paragraphs into the body of that email, per the instructions at Ralan.com’s listing for the magazine), and had to send a second one, with an apology and an attachment. I can only hope Ann VanderMeer’s done something similar in her time…

NovySan got the invite for his high school reunion yesterday. It’s at the Hilton, in a town near the one he grew up.

The invitation included a brief description of the event. There’ll be an open bar - four hours worth of an open bar. This is a good thing. And dancing, yes. We like dancing. And a buffet. That’s alright. Nothing wrong with a buffet. But what’s on the buffet, that’s the question. Well, it appears to be… Heavy hors d’oeuvres.

Heavy. Hors d’oeurves.

Heavy. Hors. D’oeurves.

Nope. Still can’t wrap my head around that.

I’ll plan to take a camera. And maybe a scale.

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to apply to the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, at UC San Diego. As I’ve mentioned here before, I’ve always thought of myself as a writer - but I haven’t always been willing actually to write, and one of the things that’s often stopped me is fear. Fear of sucking. Fear of not sucking. (Because if you don’t suck, then you really have no excuse, do you?) But, having made the resolution, I actually carried through, and this morning I got an email telling me that, although I wasn’t one of the 18 writers selected for the workshop, I have been put on the waitlist.

I can live with that.

In fact, I can more than live with that. I’m so excited I can barely type.

I’m a bit nervous, though. Because another of my resolutions was to submit at least one piece of writing for publication. I know which piece it is. It’s one of the short stories I submitted to Clarion. I’ve got one or two small edits left to make to it, and then away it goes. And I know which market’s getting it. It’s Weird Tales. My goal is to get it to them by the end of the week.

Wish me luck…