Frustration and awe
Some notes on Saturday:
Got my Hugo ballot in, just barely. Unfortunately, I ended up without enough time to read a bunch of good-sounding stories that various people had recommended. I'm particularly sad that I didn't get around to reading the December F&SF, featuring work by both David M and Ben R.
One reason that I ended up short on time was that I wasted too much time Saturday afternoon on a couple of things that I should've waited to do 'til today:
I noticed that a whole bunch of SH authors who should've been on the Campbell-eligible authors list weren't on it. I felt especially bad about this because the administrators of that page asked me for a list months ago, and I failed to put one together. So I put one together yesterday and sent it to them, knowing that it was too late for this year. The list was partly for my own benefit, but of course since nobody but me and the authors themselves knew they were eligible, none of those authors are likely to get many noms this year. Ah, well, they'll be on the list next year. But I shouldn't have taken time yesterday to do this.
Also Saturday afternoon, Cheryl pointed out to me (thanks, Cheryl!) that a particular blog hosted at wordpress.com had copied the text of one my blog entries in its entirety and reposted it--without permission or attribution, and without copying the formatting or links. It was one of those life-update entries, not something that it made any sense for anyone else to reprint. I dropped a quick note to the Wordpress folks to let them know about it, figuring it was an obvious TOS violation and they'd just take it down--and I got a note back from them telling me that I would have to file a formal DMCA takedown notice to get it removed.
I reluctantly ended up doing that; I'll explain in a future entry why I was reluctant, but I want to try to keep this entry at least somewhat focused. But it took a while to write the thing, especially 'cause I felt obliged to tell the Wordpress people what I thought of the DMCA along the way.
Anyway. So all that was frustrating, but again I really should've waited a day or two to send the DMCA notice; there was no immediate rush, and I had much more important things to do with my time yesterday. But I got caught up in the moment.
It didn't help that my eating schedule got completely thrown off yesterday. I had very little food in the house, and I kept meaning to get up and go grocery shopping, but kept getting drawn into various Hugo-related activities, and then various annoyance-related activities; and at around 4 p.m. I realized that I'd barely eaten all day and that I wasn't going to have time to go shopping. So I had a little food, and then around 6 Kam showed up with sandwiches from Tony & Alba's (yum!), and things got better.
And then we went to Cirque du Soleil, and things got much better; this is where the "awe" part of this entry's title comes in. But more on that in a future entry.
Got home around 11:30 p.m., threw together a Hugo ballot, submitted it around 11:50. By which time Kam was nearly asleep, so I poked around on the computer for a while longer (starting this journal entry, in fact). Around 1 a.m., I was getting ready to go to sleep when Mary Anne called; Kavi was sick, so M was staying up with her. Normally I turn off my phone around 11 p.m., but I hadn't done so that night, and was glad I hadn't. We ended up having a great two-hour conversation--we hadn't really talked since I got back from Chicago, I think, and certainly not since I left for Mexico. By the end of that, I was wide awake, so I did more computer stuff for half an hour or so and got to bed a little after 3:30.
So, though I'm still kicking myself a little for wasting time in the afternoon that could've been spent reading stories, the second half of the day was really nice. Thanks, Kam and Mary Anne!