I'm moving ...

I may change my mind about this later, but for now I'm moving my blog to Wordpress. Check it out here!

You know your book is too long when ...

... an error warning pops up that reads:

There are too many spelling and grammatical errors in this document to continue displaying them. To check for spelling and grammatical errors, please select Spelling and Grammar from the Tools pull-down menu.

That happened at 494 pages.

Thanksgiving Fun

See if you can identify the turkey in this picture. Take your time ...



(photo from the NYTimes)

If I Did It

Damn! OJ's If I Did It, which was canceled by NewCorp's Rupert Murdoch, is sellling for $4k on eBay. Apparently 300,000 copies were shipped before it was canceled.

Coutances

The other day on XMU I heard "Coutances" by Dutch singer Dick Annegarn, a song from "The Science of Sleep," which we saw last weekend. The movie is good (who doesn't love Gael Garcia Bernal?) and I love that it's set in Paris, but the best part is "Coutances." I bought it from iTunes the other night and can't stop listening to it. It's SO good.

And the Academy Award for Best Actor goes to ...

I have so many things to blog about-our trip to Mendocino, hiking Half Dome with the cables down, the wedding (I'm so far behind)-but right now I have a deadline for myself to get a rough draft of my book done with Thanksgiving. I'm getting close. I have 480 pages (scary!). Then I plan to print it out, read it, cry when I see what a mess it is, and come up with a plan for revision. In the meantime, I'll blog about the cat crisis we had the other night.

I come from the gym Thursday night around 10 p.m. to find Dr. Xeno (above), curled up on a sleeping bag on the sofa. This is how I usually find him, curled up on something soft, sound asleep. But when Martin tried to pet him, he hissed and growled and moaned like he was in terrible pain. When we tried to pick him up he howled in such agony that we were sure he had a broken leg. Either he had been hit by a car or he had fallen off the balcony. And when he tried to stand up to turn around, he winced in pain and lay back down. We called the emergency vet, who told us we should bring him in. We got the cat carrier out and lined it with Xeno's favorite blanket. Then, to avoid removing him from the sleeping bag, we instead carried the whole sleeping bag out to the car. While I was sitting in the passenger seat with him on my lap, before I could close the car door, he jumped out of the car and ran away. He was limping when he ran, so I still thought he had a broken leg. We chased him (he ran around the house, in through the cat door, and into the basement where I caught him by the tail as he tried to crawl between boards in the ceiling). Then Martin carried him back to the couch, where he curled up on the sleeping bag and went to sleep. He didn't budge for the rest of the night (he usually sleeps with us), so the next morning Martin took him to the vet. I drove down to the vet, too, as soon as I was dressed. It turned out the only thing fractured was Xeno's ego. No broken leg, no mortal wounds, NOTHING. Just a big melodramatic pussy. And later that day he was fine - FINE - as if nothing had happened. Martin's giving him antibiotics every day, but what I think he really needs it to toughen up, learn how to fight. If Bustopher were around, he'd teach him a few things.

The Purpose of Blogging

A quote from Eve Batey, blogging editor of the SF Chronicle: "That's the purpose of blogging, to give people a reason to fuck around at work." Ah, now I really feel like I have a PURPOSE in life.

New Yorker Pileup

What do you do with your New Yorkers? It's rare that I manage to read the fiction story every week, let alone the rest of the magazine, so I save all mine - for a while. Then, as the pile mounts in my living room and then is transferred to the basement, I wonder, "At what point do I throw them out?" Do I become a library and keep every back issue? Do I throw each issue out after I've read it? Do I keep my favorite ones for reference? Do I keep one year's worth (52 issues?) Help! What do YOU do with your New Yorkers?

Substance in Red Wine Extends Life of Mice

All you red wine lovers check out this NY Times article.