greygirlbeast | I can haz iPod back! (Reply)

Just got word that the lost and ancient iPod has been found, and is waiting for me in Mystic, Connecticut. Spooky will be retrieving it this afternoon.

And, gods help me, I just started a Facebook account (as Caitlín Kiernan; don't forget the fada over the second "i" in "Caitlín").

And while I'm writing these very short paragraphs, I should mention the discovery of vast subsurface glaciers of water ice on Mars. Wow. Worlds unfolding before our eyes. And this reminds me, there's a superb piece on Mars in the new National Geographic, with text by John Updike.

I'm sitting here trying to wake up. And trying even harder not to be overwhelmed by all the work I have to get done between today and the end of November, when my "semi-vacation" begins. I have to finish "The Colliers' Venus." I have to write one or two new pieces for Sirenia Digest #36, and actually produce the issue, by the 30th. I have to finish the read-through on The Red Tree, and, probably, write its epilogue. I have 10 days to do all this. I'm thinking I'll be including the first section of the presently shelved The Dinosaurs of Mars as part of #36. And I have an idea for a vignette, but I think it's too bizarre to try to give a synopsis for. I'll just have to write it.

I think I'm still decompressing from the slingshot excursion to Manhattan on Wednesday. Everything seems sort of distorted, some sort of peculiar time dilation. Is this really Friday? Is that possible? Yesterday, no work, just recuperation. Sonya (

sovay) had to head back to Boston about 4:50 p.m. (CaST). I sent her off with my copy of House of Leaves, and an order that she read it at least once before returning to Providence. The day went so quickly. It was afternoon before I'd quite grasped the fact of morning. It's hard to even recall what I did yesterday.

I know that, after Sonya left, I read "Cranial anatomy and taxonomy of Dolichorhynchops bonneri new combination, a polycotylid [Sauropterygia; Plesiosauria] from the Pierre Shale of Wyoming and South Dakota," in the latest Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. In 1986, while in school in Colorado, I did prep work on a specimen of Dolichorhynchops from the Pierre Shale of Red Bird, WY, so it was like revisiting an old friend. My one-time mentor Bob Bakker used to refer to this taxon as the "double penguin," which is a pretty good description of what it might have looked like while alive and swimming.

As for last night, there was pizza. We watched three more episodes (4-6) of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and I'm still impressed. Afterwards, there was WoW. I finally got my guild off the ground, "Wrath of Elune." Yes, the moon is an angry goddess, and she's out for blood. I played Mithwen, my night elf, and got her to Lvl 34, mainly by fighting satyrs in Forest Song Wood. With Suraa's help, I must have slain a hundred satyrs. They had it coming (at least from Mithwen's perspective), having raped and murdered a dryad.

I'm still waiting to learn just how ill my stepfather —— Vann —— is, but we know, already, that it's very, very serious. Anyway, not really the sort of thing I feel comfortable talking about here.

And that's pretty much yesterday.

There are photos from the KGB reading behind the cut (thanks to

ellen_datlow), and you can see many more here: