Upgrading . . .

must restart life tomorrow. need to repartition and reformat all aspects of existence. searching for install disks.

This Just In…

In today’s e-mail from NCTE’s Senior Editor on my book manuscript:

“Attached are the reviews of your MS. As you’ll see, they’re all positive (yay!), with varying amounts of suggestions for revision.”

Maybe I really and truly am an author!!! :-)

Incognito

I have blundered into the problem with an open, online existence. How do you say the things that you need to when everyone is watching? How does an author control her readers?

Now I of all people know that you shouldn’t put things online that you’re not willing to let anyone in the world read. But there’s a difference between putting something out there for anyone to read and putting something out there with your name on it for anyone to read. But is an anonymous existence the same? What happens when you lose your readers? Does a text matter if no one reads it?

I planned to come home and write tonight, but I couldn’t figure out how. The more I think about it, the more silenced I feel by my circumstances. It’s been a very hard month, and I’m not sure whether the right thing to do is stand up and write the story or scrawl it away secretly. Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer.

Family

Things I’ve Come to Understand Because of 4/16

• I love my brother-in-law as much as my brother. I’m sure I have for a long time, but I didn’t realize it consciously till 4/16.
• Feeling secure isn’t about locking all the doors. It’s about feeling I don’t have to and I’ll still be okay.
• I know what it’s like to have an asthma attack now, and I know that there are two Virginia state police officers who are the nicest men in the world. Thank you for taking care of me when I broke down with that asthma attack.
• I have learned that a poet’s words can give a community a path out of their sadness. I had no idea a poem could ever be adopted so thoroughly. Literature is a powerful thing.
• I found that I have compassion for a mass murderer. What he did was horrible, but I’m glad the Va Tech community found a place for a Hokie Stone for him in the memorial.
• I understand what it was like to want a gun. For a day, I wanted a gun, and I wanted to know how to shoot it to defend myself. [You’re all safe; the feeling passed.]
• I still feel safe on campus. At 1:30 AM Friday, I was walking around by myself. I have not let someone take that away.
• There are times when knowing that everyone in my family is physically safe isn’t enough.
• I know which people in this vast world really care about me. They IMed or emailed on 4/16 to check on me. One of them even showed up outside my office building to give me a hug on the 17th. Some of them are still checking on me. Some people still haven’t said a word. The categories of who does and doesn’t care about me have become very transparent. [edit: This was misread as indicating that I have/had a list of names. I don’t/didn’t. 5/15/07]
• That I’ll never understand and I desperately want to know why.

In Memory

Normally all these ribbons seem silly and pretentious to me. Today, this is the best I can do. I don’t have words for it.

Reading My E-mail While Chris Writes His Blog

Click To Play

Chris.tv got a little boring. Okay, sure the writing teacher in me was entertained for a while by watching him compose his blog entry on the mashups from Thursday night. Once I saw that his composing process was fairly normal however, I wandered off to do other things. This is the result. Again, even though Bwana disagrees, I must emphasize that using iMovie does not involve sacrificing kittens. Soundtrack: Download “NYC Trippin'” (mp3) from “All The Pretty Lights” by Soul Ballet 215 Music More On This Album

Pink Camo Purse

OMG!!! Gaze upon the beautiful present that I am saving up to buy for Dr. B to carry to her knitwit jamboree. It is going to match her shirt PERFECTLY!!!