Fairly productive weekend

Didn't get everything done that I'd hoped, but did make some significant progress. Read a bunch of stories, rejected a bunch more, sent an acceptance and a revision request that I had let fall through the cracks.

Also found time to finally watch National Treasure, which has been waiting for me to watch it for weeks now. It was kinda goofy, and slow in the middle, but lots of fun; I suspect everyone involved had fun making this movie, and it was pleasantly mindless entertainment, and occasionally pretty funny. I keep wanting to say "good clean family fun"—not a lot of violence, not much that's scary, no sex, nothing really mentally or emotionally challenging; just pleasant fluff, plus a nice smattering of info from historical conspiracy theories (the plot centers around the treasure of the Knights Templar, later hidden by the Masons; I think this may be the first time I've seen Freemasons as the good guys in a movie). And a bunch of feel-good American history lessons mixed in. Nicolas Cage worth watching in a part that could've been written for Jimmy Stewart. (I feel like I'm sounding more negative than I mean to be about this; it was really exactly what I wanted, and I'd say overall it's well worth watching, as long as you go into it with the right expectations.)

This morning, did some more magazine stuff, then drove up to the east bay for a writing day. (Thanks much to CR for hosting! I want to get back in the habit of hosting these things regularly, sometime soon.) Made some progress on my story-in-progress for the first time since Hidden City; went through all the HC critiques, made a list of about 30 things I want to fix/change (some pretty major), partially implemented maybe two of those things. It'll still take a fair bit of work, but I have a clearer idea of what needs to be done now, and it was nice to immerse myself in the story again. Also did a little cleanup on another story (the one that I was sending out last year), preparatory to starting to send it out again, which I've been delaying doing (for no good reason at all) ever since it came back from Polyphony a couple months ago.

Had a nice dinner and chat with Naomi B, then drove home. More magazine stuff, and wrote a couple of long-delayed semi-responses to old emails.

I've been kind of groggy and detached all weekend, and especially all day today. (May have something to do with staying up 'til 2:30 last night writing rejections.) And somehow the weekend is now over and it's back to work in the morning. Time keeps going by. If I had about five consecutive weekends that were as productive as this past one (without any weeks in between to throw off my rhythm), I could probably get caught up on most of what I need to get caught up on.

Thanks for all the discussion of queer sf in that comment thread, btw; good and useful stuff. I don't have sufficient brain to respond at the moment, but maybe soon.

Okay, off I go. Another couple of stories, then maybe an episode of Firefly before I collapse into sleep. Or possibly I'll skip the Firefly and go straight to the collapse part.

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