Rose-Owls and Pumpkin Girls

...can't trust that day.

Getting out of bed this morning was complicated by the fact that I was so thoroughly covered by cats that I had to practically do sit-ups to recover the use of one arm. This is the true danger of having large cats. When they want to, they win.

Still, the weekend was good, despite back issues which kept me abed a bit longer than I wanted them to on Sunday (as in, "they kept me abed on Sunday"). The new episode of Doctor Who, "The Girl Who Waited," was stellar. The season premiere of iCarly was excellent. I managed to package two-thirds of the pending poster orders for shipping. I made Chris watch War of the Worlds: Live, which was the big concert of selections from the War of the Worlds musical (complete with giant floating Richard Burton head). And Contagion...

...seriously, this movie was designed to be porn for Seanans. It could not have made me happier if it had come with the first theatrical trailer for the upcoming prequel to The Thing.

OH WAIT. IT DID.

Now, I want to note, firmly, that this is not a movie for people who are looking for plot, detailed characterization, clear enemies, happy endings, or absolutely absolute endings. It's a story about a virus. Viruses don't have secondary motivations. They don't have desires. They just have biological imperatives, and when they start exercising those imperatives, it's the job of people like the CDC, EIS, and WHO to step in and try to make them stop. Characters don't get detailed back stories or motivations, because there isn't time.

And yes, lots and lots and lots of people die. That's what happens when this sort of thing occurs. It's a good movie. It's smart, it's solid, and while the science is extremely rushed (and several layers of medical care are missing), it's rushed in the way that says "we needed a two-hour narrative, not a twenty-hour miniseries," rather than being rushed in the way that says "honey badger didn't give a fuck."

If you're not a germaphobe, I recommend this movie hugely. If you are, I recommend you stay home and watch iCarly. Or War of the Worlds: Live.

Ulla!

Monday dawned bright and (very, very) early, since DongWon had asked that I be at Orbit at nine a.m. to do some recording. Now, Orbit is located near Grand Central Station, which is very much Properly In Manhattan. I was staying in Jersey City, which is very much not Properly In Manhattan. It is, in fact, in a different state. As a California girl, this causes me a certain amount of existential confusion every time I need to go from one to the other very quickly, since I know, deep down in my soul, that it takes at least eight hours to go from one state to another. Such is the eternal divide between the East and West Coasts.

Since I needed to get to Orbit by nine, I got up at seven. This means that, on some level, I got up at four. There is a reason I occasionally demand love and caffeine from my editors. I am comfortable enough with Manhattan at this point that I was able to get myself to the office with a minimum of trouble (barring a brief "walking the wrong way up 6th Avenue" incident, and really, that could have happened to anyone), which is good, since I was carrying my laptop. Yes, the big orange one. Yes, the one that weighs as much as one of the cats. Why?

Because I was having dinner with The Agent and a few more of her clients that evening, which meant there was no way I was getting back to Jersey City. And if I was going to be at Orbit all day, I was damn well going to get some serious work done.

I beat DongWon to the office by almost twenty minutes, and was detained by security until he arrived. I am never letting him forget this. Never ever ever never. But! He did eventually show up, and we were able to get into the office, finally, where there were greetings and huggings, and presentations of really fancy chocolate (from me to the office, not from the office to me). I had time to inhale one doughnut and drink a bottle of Diet Dr Pepper, and then it was off to the recording studio, where a very nice engineer explained how a recording booth worked. Thanks, nice engineer! Nobody had bothered to tell him that I have three studio albums out. Sorry, nice engineer.

My first task: recording the audio book edition of "Apocalypse Scenario." Super-fun! I managed not to get too into it, but wow was I glad to have done voice work before. It was nice and smooth and lovely. I followed it with two different podcast recordings, all done in the same wee room. Everything was professional and well-orchestrated, and before I knew it, it was all over, and I was being settled at the only open desk in the office.

Cue working. Type type type. Type type type. I was supposed to have lunch with some friends who were also in New York for BEA; when they didn't answer their phones, I had lunch with DongWon and Devi (another Orbit editor) instead. We went to a seafood restaurant, where I ate mussels and potatoes and hot fudge sundae, om nom. DongWon had to run before we finished eating, leaving Davi and I to talk about him behind his back. Ha ha, DongWon. Ha, ha.

Back to the office; more working; more whining at my computer. I actually had to borrow copies of Feed and Deadline to use as reference material, since otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to verify the continuity of what I was writing. This is why it's good to write at your publisher's. They'll always have copies of the books you need on hand.

Eventually, the day ended. Poof. And I, being the sensible girl that I am, loaded up my tote bag with my laptop and all the books I had managed to collect over the course of the day and went hieing off to downtown to meet up with The Agent for dinner. She had directed me to a library, in an alley, in an unfamiliar part of the city. I assume this is because she wants to see whether I will survive being eaten by a Grue. I found the library, and felt very smug about it, right until I went inside, went down to the floor where the YA author event I was meeting her at was being held, and discovered that I had, in fact, descended to a very unpleasant and specialized CIRCLE OF HELL.

Seriously. What seemed like several hundred people (and may have been just fifty, I don't know, it was a CIRCLE OF HELL) were crammed into an itty-bitty space, creating an immense amount of heat and noise. And somewhere in all that chaos was my agent. I sought. I strove. I gave up.

Spotting a woman with a Diet Dr Pepper, I begged to know where it had come from, and damn near wept when informed that she had brought it with her. Then I discovered, much to my surprise, that she was actually a book blogger I know through her reviews. And then she took me to the secret cluster of book bloggers hiding from the heat near the elevators. Yay! Much joy and chatter and hugging followed, lasting until The Agent appeared, her new client Claire in tow, to whisk me away to a less hellish locale.

Did I attack the first gas station we passed like it was the Promised Land, coming away with a sack of Diet Dr Pepper? Yes. Yes, I did.

We had dinner at a lovely place near Waverly Place (still no wizards), where we ate bread and cheese and I had fish and eventually went downstairs and was horribly sick due to a fish bone sticking in my throat. Since I had not retained dinner, The Agent bought me a cupcake. Happy times. Claire was awesome, but I was tired, and BEA was the next morning, so I returned to New Jersey and slept. FOREVER.

Next: BEA and DAW. It's acronym day!

Time for our time-delay travelogue, in which I attempt to prove that I am, in fact, still a real person! Yay! So...

Last Saturday, I flew to New York to begin my whirlwind tour of the East Coast and Midwest, as represented by New York, New Jersey, and Wisconsin. Seriously, even considering this particular set of stops probably qualifies me as slightly out of my tree. Actually doing it? Totally insane.

I began in San Francisco, where my mother and youngest sister drove me to the airport. I dressed for success in business class, wearing a bright green tank top and my Scooby-Doo Halloween pajama pants, with my hair in pigtails. I wish I could say this was me making a statement, but in reality, it's just that I travel so much, and the security theater has become such a circus, that I am no longer willing to deal with uncomfortable clothing on top of everything else that air travel entails.

Virgin America (my preferred airline) has recently moved into SFO's newly reopened Terminal 2. This was my first trip to the new terminal. I was dubious, but after five minutes experiencing Terminal 2's charms, I am here to tell you that I, brothers and sisters, am a true believer in Terminal 2. A full-sized supermarket! A wine bar! A burger joint selling Diet Dr Pepper inside security! And a full-sized bookstore, to boot. I have seen the airport promised land, and it is Terminal 2.

I found copies of Feed and the Toby books in the airport bookstore, and signed them, pigtails and orange Halloween pants and all. I believe I am now marked down as one of the bookstore's more surreal author visits.

Thanks to a combination of good luck, good timing, and flying Main Cabin Select, I managed to be the first one on the plane, and nested myself solidly in my lovely exit-row seat, with velociraptor, laptop, sack of DDP, and lots and lots of work to do. As soon as we were off the ground, I commenced to doing just that, working on Blackout, "Rat-Catcher," "Landslide," and reading a manuscript I've been asked to blurb. The flight was smooth, the middle seat was empty, and it was, all in all, lovely...with one notable exception.

The people behind me (and in the row across from theirs, making six in total) seem to have taken Jersey Shore as an etiquette guide. They talked loudly, even shouting across the plane. They argued with the flight attendants. They listened to some sort of media player, again loudly (I could hear it through my headphones) without using headphones of their own. One of them passed gas several times, causing the rest to laugh uproariously. I didn't recline my seat, since I was working; somehow, this wasn't enough room for the person behind me, who kicked me, a lot. Seriously, what were these people, twelve? No, most twelve-year-olds have better manners. It was a real relief to get off the plane and see them nevermore.

Jon and Merav met me at the airport with Subway and DDP, and whisked me away to scenic Jersey City, New Jersey, one of my many homes away from home, where we watched Doctor Who before stumbling to sleep the sleep of the righteous, the just, and the exhausted.

My New York adventure was underway at last.

Last night, in an effort to keep me off the Internet on my book release day (you can thank her later; I thanked her already), Our Meg hauled me off to the San Francisco stop on the current Emilie Autumn Asylum Tour. This may make it sound like I wasn't a willing conspirator. I was, to the extent of ordering cupcakes to be delivered to the venue (a brilliant stroke of genius on Meg's part, and one which I was happy to see come to fruition). We had three boxes sent over: one of Mad Tea Party (chai cake, ginger buttercream, and strawberry jam), one of mixed Vanilla and Pretty Pretty Princess, and one of mixed Chocolate and Grasshopper. Yes, we are quite possibly evil.

I get off work before Meg does, so I hied me down to Borderlands, where I hung out with Naamen and Cole, ate a scone, and signed some books. Then Meg collected me, and we went for dinner at Fritz's, where delicious mussels prepared me for the hike ahead. The club Emilie was appearing at, The Bottom of the Hill, was waaaaaaay the hell down 17th Street, in a neighborhood I didn't even know existed. It was a hike and Toby research at the same time!

Because we had VIP tickets, we had been advised to arrive at the venue by 7PM. Because we are, well, us, we arrived at the venue by 5:30PM, and watched as the steampunks, neo-punks, Victorian gaslamp burlesque girls, and other Plague Rats came trickling up. Meg sat on the sidewalk and performed her costume change, because she's awesome that way. I fidgeted and poked at things, because I'm predictable that way.

Eventually, we were let inside, where the stage manager recognized us as the cupcake girls, and made sure the rest of the VIP ticketholders knew who we were. Her pronunciation of my name was epic, and may have actually been one of the secret words which unlocks the walls of the world. We then went back to the little room where the tea and cupcakes had been set up, and there was much nomming, and all was right with the world.

Emilie Autumn is a tiny little thing who can wail on a violin, and I want to see her play with Amy. Just saying.

After the VIP gathering was over, everyone went and lined up to wait for their turn to get a picture and an autograph. Meg called me by name when I went back for a strawberry cupcake, and a woman ahead of us blinked, and asked, "Seanan McGuire?!" I agreed that this was so. She produced a copy of Late Eclipses from her bag. I signed it. Life was good. Meg and I were giggling about the oddity of it all when another girl in the line asked what I wrote. I told her...and shrieking happened.

So, you know. Apparently, I have fanbase overlap with Emilie Autumn. Who knew?

The show itself was, as expected, insane, a mixture of electronica and burlesque, madness, music, and mayhem. Meg and I had seats (yes, actual chairs) toward the back, and we treated them like gymnastic equipment, climbing to watch delighted as Emilie and the Bloody Crumpets owned the stage. Veronica stripped, Captain Maggot hooped, and the Contessa threatened to eat us all. Tea was tossed, audience members were kissed, and Emilie did half the show dressed as a Plague Rat.

Life is good.

My last full day in Australia dawned bright and clear, and best of all, WorldCon-free*, which meant Jeanne and I could get in some high-quality TOURISM before I had to go to the airport and catch my flight back to the United States. FOR GREAT JUSTICE. Our plans for the day involved hitting the Melbourne Zoo (renowned among zoos for being TOTALLY BITCHIN'), and then driving a gazillion miles** to Phillip Island to witness the Penguin Parade.

We got up stupid-early in the morning to meet Mal and his very sweet friend whose name I have since forgotten, because I Am Crap With Names. They had rented a car for the day, because they are wonderful, thoughtful people. And it was off for the zoo! Well. Off for breakfast. But after that, the zoo! Hooray the zoo!

Sadly for us, several school groups had also decided that this was a yay the zoo kind of day, and the place was swarming with children. I do not question the right of children to go to the zoo, nor, in fact, the need for children to go to the zoo. But when it's one adult to thirty small boys, I start to feel a little bit like a cat surrounded by Aeslin mice, and that isn't a fun sensation. We chose the path that seemed least likely to intersect with the school groups, and started wandering.

The Melbourne Zoo is just as awesome as its press implied it would be. Within the first twenty minutes, we'd seen snow leopards, cougars, bears, and tigers, and I had decided that this was the zoo where the fourth InCryptid book would be set. SURPRISE. We went on to see an enclosure containing only male lions, who were, um, rather dedicated to finding some females; a large pack of African wild dogs; some cool birds; giraffes; a bunch of wild turkeys; and the biggest damn tortoises I have ever seen in my life. Seriously, people could live in those shells. If they weren't, y'know, already occupied.

And then, wonder of wonders, miracle and miracles...the Reptile House. Which was full of glories untold and miracles unnumbered, including several species of snake that I had never actually seen before. Because I love my snake-fearing friends, I will not go into explicit detail, save to say that I had a powerful bonding experience with a taipan, and small boys who taunt rattlesnakes should be put out of the Reptile House at once.

We wandered the zoo a bit more, with a stop for lunch before we entered the Australian wildlife exhibit. Kangaroos roamed free, wombats burbled, and Jeanne and I finally got to see an echidna. Yay! We stopped the admire the echidna. At great length. A zookeeper noticed us clustered there, and came over to announce that she'd be doing a koala show in five minutes at the (connected) koala enclosure. We allowed as how this was very nice for her, and kept watching the echidna, I don't know, echid. Whatever you call what an echidna does. Ten minutes later, the zookeeper came back and asked, if she told us all about the echidna, would we come and see the koala show. Would we ever!

I got to touch an echidna. My life is now complete.

The koala show turned out to be pretty cool, too, and their young female koala—named "Alice," nicknamed "Devil Spawn," which proves that there's an Alice everywhere—was spritely and fun to watch, unlike her wild cousins. Totally worth the stop.

We also saw: manta rays with awesome leopard spots on, platypuses swimming (and being way smaller*** than I expected them to be), elephants taken VERY SERIOUSLY, lemurs, orangutans, fish, seahorses, and penguins. And then it was time to leave the zoo, so that we could spend hours upon hours in the car, driving to Philip Island. Mal's friend left us then, as he did not want to spend hours upon hours in the car. Mal's friend is a smart guy.

I kept myself amused during the drive by counting Australian magpies, as they were everywhere. One's for sorrow, two's for joy—does anybody know what seventy-eight is for? Because there were a lot of magpies. It was like being escorted across Australia by Vixy in spirit guide form. Hi, Vixy!

We reached Philip Island fifteen minutes before the Penguin Parade began. Now, this is not a tightly scheduled thing; the term "penguin parade" actually refers to the completely natural life cycle of the Fairy Penguin. They go out to sea in the morning, and return on the evening tide, whereupon they parade up the beach to get back to their nests. Humans sell tickets to watch this happen. The penguins don't get it. But hey, if we want to freeze our asses off sitting on the bleachers and watching them walk, more power to us.

It was like something out of The Last Unicorn. Waves would roll in, and leave behind little foot-high penguins when they rolled out again. Then the little penguins marched up the beach, making fantastically loud noises. It was magical. It was bizarre. It was freezing. We ran for the hot cocoa stand when it was over, and that stuff did NOT last long.

Signs in the parking lot requested that we check under our car for penguins. That's Australia, all over. Hello, welcome, please do not flatten a penguin when you leave.

I am so glad I got to go.

(*I loved WorldCon, and had a fantastic time, once I started actually sleeping again. But it was awfully nice to be done with all my "official" duties that didn't involve enjoying the native wildlife and putting horrific things in my mouth.)

(**As a native Californian, I tend to view most places as being somewhat small and quaint. Yes, I realize this is insane, and potentially insulting, but I can't help it. My state is gargantuan, and it's messed up all my ideas about scale. Well, Australia is a continental FUCK YOU to this tendency, being as it is, I don't know, A CONTINENT, and is thus FUCKING ENORMOUS. Australia could eat California as a nice snack with some tea and scones and maybe a side order of Greenland. Australia is AWESOME.)

(***Sorry, Perry the Platypus.)

(Yes, part of me is still in Australia. Specifically, the part of me that's responsible for writing up this trip report. This entry is going to take us through Sunday, right up until the end of the pre-Hugo Cocktail Party. Not because I'm trying to be a tease. Because the Hugos themselves need a whole entry, just so I can explain, in depth, what was going through my messed-up little head.)

Sunday dawned bright and early, again, with an extra dose of sheer blind "oh sweet Great Pumpkin the Hugos are TONIGHT, they're giving out the Campbell Award TONIGHT, why am I not drinking heavily RIGHT NOW?!" panic. I love my psyche sometimes. Anyway, blah blah, showers, blah blah, straightening my hair into a shiny, manageable state. Fun for the whole family.

Once we were ready to leave our hotel room, Jeanne and I packed up everything we were going to need for Hugo prep in the smaller of my two pink-camo suitcases. That may sound like overkill, but once you factor in dresses, underclothes, makeup, brushes, small appliances, shoes, makeup, and other items needed by the two of us, well...if either of us had been wearing a more fabric-heavy dress, we would have needed a larger suitcase.

The suitcase accompanied us to breakfast, and from breakfast, to Cat's hotel, where we checked it with the concierge. All hail good hotels! With this accomplished, it was time for the second order of business: confirming that I had been removed from my five o'clock panel. I hate to do that sort of thing, but I really needed to be getting ready for the Hugos by then, since the pre-Hugo reception started at six. (Basically, it was "drop the panel" or "attend the Hugos naked.")

After dropping the panel, we swung by the Green Room, where I had one of my few unpleasant at-con experiences as a woman informed me, with great good cheer, that the Hugos were on Sunday night because they wanted to see how many of the nominees would actually break down and cry. Thanks, lady. Jeanne didn't hit her. I was very proud of Jeanne, and not just because "get thrown out of the Green Room" wasn't on my list of things to do that day.

We wandered the convention for a while before proceeding to my one remaining panel of the day, "YA Urban Fantasy." I was happy to be on the panel, if only because it provided a window into that beautiful future where I've sold the Clady books and can legitimately call myself a YA author. Plus, it meant I got to hang out with Karen Healey (best last name ever). I brought her a My Little Pony from my stable, because she'd expressed a fondness for Ponies, and I like to share. She was properly appreciative of the Pony, thus securing herself an eternal place in my heart. Yay!

The panel was cool, too.

After the panel, Jeanne and I made our way back to Cat's hotel to start getting ready. Cue increasing terror. Cat met us at the door in her bathrobe. "Close your eyes," she commanded.

I am an obedient blonde. I closed my eyes, and let her lead me into the room...where an entire bed was covered in tiaras. Big tiaras, little tiaras, fancy tiaras, less fancy tiaras (because all tiaras are inherently fancy, at least to some degree), tiaras.

"We wanted to make sure that no matter what, you went home with a tiara," she said.

I laughed because it was that or start crying, and I knew that if I started, I was never going to stop, ever. The tiaras were beautiful, and just made moreso by the sentiment behind them. You guys. Thank you so much.

Cat's friend Gretchen was also there, and the four of us started our respective "getting ready" cycles. Four fairy tale girls, no waiting. Gretchen looked like a punk-rock Red Riding Hood. I could easily have believed Jeanne spinning straw into gold. Cat, as always, was my sweet and stained Snow White, and I was a Grecian Lily Fair, with ice on my eyelids and a prayer pressed to my heart. Cat didn't have any good luck charms on her; I gave her my silver sixpence, and taped it to her foot with a Band-Aid. I put on earrings made by Beckett and tucked the two-dollar coin I found in San Francisco into the front of my strapless bra.

After checking Twitter, Cat announced that the Night Kitchen in Seattle was having a Hugo party. All those people, staying up just to find out what happened. It was amazing. So much love from across the world. I can't describe what it meant to me to learn that. No matter what, we were nowhere near alone.

Gretchen and Jeanne did a very good job of juggling their high-strung pumpkin princesses until Susan arrived to do our hair, and put on her Sooj playlist to provide background music. We all sang along with "Ship Full of Monsters" as Susan got me pinned into place, and "Pixie Can't Sleep" while she worked on Cat (who looked amazing, by the way, in her gown of royal oceanic blue). It took forever to get us all ready to go. It took no time at all. It was like we blinked, and we had to go, because the pre-Hugo reception was getting ready to start. After days and weeks and months of wondering, the hour was finally nigh.

Dude.

Aussiecon 4's pre-Hugo reception was sponsored by Orbit, which meant that the owner of my publishing house was there, and also that there was a lot of free champagne. I mean a lot of free champagne. It's a measure of my Irish heritage (and unwillingness to force myself to visit the restroom in my floor-length dress) that I did not wind up roaring drunk, given my tendency to drink cold liquids really, really fast, and the way people kept trying to hand me fresh glasses.

We milled around, admiring people's outfits, posing for pictures, and generally being sociable, until it was time to do the photo ops for the various trade publications. Unfortunately, the microphone really didn't work well enough for a room that size, and, well...let's just say that those of us who have served as SCA Heralds in the past rapidly came out of the medieval closet, yelling our heads off as we herded nominees into place. I got to have my picture taken with my Campbell class. It was amazing.

And then it was time to go. Time for the Hugos. Jeanne and I struck out at the head of the party, so that we could grab a sufficient number of seats.

Wow, was I nowhere near ready. And wow, did that not matter anymore.

Saturday continued the "early comes the dawn" trend, with Jeanne and I both out of bed by seven. Jennifer and Jeff didn't murder us for our sins against the sleeping, and that's probably a sign that they're in line for sainthood. (Then again, we didn't murder them for snoring, so maybe the scales are just nicely balanced.) This was already shaping up to be my busy day, and just got busier once we got to the convention center and discovered that my three o'clock panel had been moved to noon. Yay for the fluidity of time!

(Footnote: Originally, I was supposed to be on the eleven o'clock panel about female superheroes. For some reason, it wasn't printed on my badge, and I wound up not attending, since once the convention starts, my back-of-badge panel list is about the only thing that can make me change directions. While this was deeply disappointing at the time, all recountings of the panel have made me glad to have missed it, as I might have killed someone. Hint: telling me that there is no sexism in comics is a good way to get your head bitten off. I am a vermicious knid when provoked.)

The time-shifted panel was that glorious old standby, "What Is Filk?", and consisted of me, Bill Sutton, Kathleen Sloan, and Terence Chua. If you want a bunch of people to talk about filk and the definitions of same for an hour, well, you could do one hell of a lot worse. It was a lot of fun, watching all the local filkers realize that no, really, They Are Not Alone. We are filk. We are legion, yo.

I went literally straight from my panel-on-filk into an hour-long two-person panel with Paul Cornell, titled "Fringe: Paranormal Investigations in SF Television." I adore Paul. I adore geeking madly with Paul. And I adore paranormal investigations in science-fiction television. This panel was like the delicious chocolate bonbon of my weekend, and the only way it could have been better is if Jeanne had delivered a ham, cheese, and tomato croissant to me at the panel's end.

Oh. Wait. BEST PANEL EVER.

My signing was scheduled for four, right after Cat's signing. I went over and kept her company for a while, until her line began to form and she was occupied by her fans. Ah, the trials of stardom. Or something. Her signing ended, mine began, and I signed a bunch of stuff (as one does), while inking during pauses between people. Someday, this damn mermaid will be finished.

The AussieCon V filk concert was arranged a lot like the UK Filkcon Main Concert: everyone piled into a single room and performed two or three songs during the multi-hour slot. Kathleen Sloan was my stunt guitarist, and we went on after (among other people) the Suttons, Terence, and Nan Freeman. NO PRESSURE. I performed my own "Wicked Girls," and Vixy and Tony's "Burn It Down," both of which went over very well, before running to get changed for dinner.

Dinner! It was me, Jay and Shannon, Daniel and Kelly, and two people whose names sadly escape me right now (I'm sorry!). We went to a very nice place attached to the casino attached to the hotels attached to the mall, where we spent several hours chatting, enjoying decadently good food, and, in my case, eating a big bowl of bugs. Bay lobster! It's delicious! And looks like a horrible cross between a lobster and a trilobite, which made it EXTRA DELICIOUS.

There was some unpleasantness about the service, but Daniel was able to resolve it with a minimum of fuss, and we all decamped back to the Hilton to resume Barcon. While there, I got to meet Ellen Kushner, and tell her that she's a big part of why I write urban fantasy now. Also, there were cocktails. Which made it easier for me to actually fall asleep when I finally made it back to my hotel, since, well...

Saturday night. That meant it was almost time for the Hugos.

I did not sleep through the night.

10. It's Friday! And that means that tomorrow is Saturday, which further means that it's finally time for me to have a book event at the Other Change of Hobbit! Conveniently located next to Ashby BART, spacious, and full of neat things, this is one of my favorite bookstores. You should totally come.

9. Karen Healey (I know, right?) has a poll for the best moment of WorldCon 2010/Aussiecon IV, and yes, my squeaky acceptance of the Campbell Award is currently in the lead. Which is the sort of thing that makes me blink and cry a little. But in the good way, I promise! Also, John Scalzi licking stuff.

8. After our horrible "oh crap the house is full of fleas" experience this summer, everything seems to have settled down. Alice's belly-fur is growing back, no one's trying to claw their own flesh off, and our strict regimen of flea powdering the carpets and pouring poison on the cats is keeping the blood-suckers away. Thank the Great Pumpkin.

7. SHARKTOPUS! Tomorrow night on SyFy! Because Coyote loves me and wants me to be happy.

6. By the same measure, have you seen Jane Austin's Fight Club? Because seriously, this video is love. (Technically safe for work, if you're allowed to watch videos at work and feel like doing some potentially awkward explaining about why all those girls are smacking the crap out of each other.)

5. Resident Evil: Afterlife actually doesn't suck. I know, I'm as surprised as you are. Sort of tickled, too, but mostly just surprised. It's not as good as Resident Evil: Apocalypse, but then, what is?

4. Jean Grey is still dead.

3. Things that are back on the air: Glee, Fringe, Big Bang Theory, Bones, and America's Next Top Model. Things that have managed to stick the landing in their season finales: Rizzoli and Isles, Leverage, Unnatural History, and Warehouse 13. Things that make me happy: watching too much television.

2. Despite my currently perennially delayed posting schedule (curse you, Australia, and your lack of Internet), the latest iteration of the Traveling Circus and Snake-Handling Show went well, and we all had a fantastic time. Plus, the bookstore now has signed books, and that makes everything wonderful.

...and the best thing about today...

1. Welcome to fall.

What's awesome about your Friday?

Australia!

On Friday, August 27th, I left work to head for Kate's house, since she (and her wonderful car) was going to get me to the airport. My flight, I said, left at eight, so I needed to be there at six. I was quite confident on this point. There will be more on this later.

Even after driving to Concord, packing the last of my things, brushing the cats in a guilty "please don't hate me for leaving you" manner, and stopping at Sweet Tomatoes for dinner, we got me to the airport by four. Being the sort of person who'd rather be horrifyingly early than five minutes late, I was cool with this, hugged Kate, and went to check in with the calm serenity of one who is four hours early for their flight. Everything went without a hitch, including security, which was a glorious wasteland, free of congestion. Things were looking up.

Jeanne was already at the gate when I got there. "Wow, you're early," I said. She gave me a funny look.

"I'm two hours early for our flight," she replied.

"...what?" Apparently, I had been basing my internal flight time off the time we would be arriving in LAX for our transfer. Because sometimes, yes, I am very, very blonde. Coyote was clearly already getting involved in the trip; that's the first time I have ever made a mistake like that about flight times.

The first flight was relatively painless (I slept the whole way, which always helps), and our luggage was checked all the way through to Melbourne. So we located our gate, confirmed that there was no way for Qantas to shuffle things to seat us together, and then adjourned to the airport bar to make offerings to Coyote in the form of overpriced cocktails. Hooray for an excellent Mai Tai!

On the plane (a new Air Bus the size of an entire wing at my high school), we were seated literally sixty rows apart, so we bid each other a fond farewell and went to our respective homes for the next seventeen hours. Now, the nice thing about the Qantas Air Bus is the self-serve mini-bar between each section of the plane. They don't contain alcohol, thankfully, as an entire plane of drunk tourists would suck, but they do contain a nigh-infinite supply of Diet Coke. I drank a lot of Diet Coke. I also slept, a lot, and watched several movies, including Iron Man 2, which no one had been willing to see with me in the theater. Hooray for trans-Pacific flights!

Blah blah blah, time passes, blah blah blah, airplane food, blah blah, landing! In...Sydney. Because, see, Melbourne? Was enshrouded with fog, preventing us from landing, and after flying from California, we didn't have the fuel to circle. So we had to divert to another city altogether, which delighted the flight crew to no end. (It actually did delight the rest of my row, as they'd been going to Sydney, and were allowed to deplane. With their luggage. Lucky bastards.)

Eventually, we got back into the air, and were able to fly, finally, to Melbourne, where we had to go through Customs. First question on the card they make you fill out, no shit, was, "Are you carrying any weapons, illegal drugs, or prescription medications?" So the first question I was asked by the Australian Customs Agent was which of these things I had. I replied that I had legal medications. Also food. She sent me to Quarantine, while Jeanne went off to not be Quarantined.

At Quarantine, I was asked, "What kind of food are you carrying?"

Honesty is the best policy with Customs: "A pound of chocolates and five pounds of candy corn."

Blink. "What's candy corn?"

"Honey, mallow, and canuba wax."

"How much is five pounds?"

"I don't know. Two and a half kilos?"

She blinked again, and then waved to the door. "Just go."

Jeanne, meanwhile, was being poked and prodded to confirm that she wasn't secretly smuggling strawberries in her pants. The moral of our story is? Carry confusing candy.

Australia!

Well, here we go: I am now officially 90% of the way packed for my trip to Australia. My suitcases zip with relative ease. I still need to load up my thumb drive, since The Big Laptop isn't making the journey with me, and I have a few CDs scheduled to be delivered later this week that I'm really hoping to get onto my iPod before I fly, but that's about it. It's all dumping out my purse and finding my spare laptop battery from here.

It's weird to sit here and realize that in forty-eight short hours, I will be on a plane, about to land in Los Angeles, where I'll get on a second plane and begin the long journey to Melbourne. Because it's a night flight, I'll probably sleep for the first five or so hours, then wake up, blink groggily, and start working. That's just what I do on planes. (You think I'm kidding. I point to Exhibit A, Chasing St. Margaret. It's a romantic comedy. About jetlag. I wrote it, primarily, on my flight from San Francisco to London, and finished it on the flight from London to San Francisco. Because I am bitchin' productive when I'm several thousand feet up in the air.)

I have wanted to visit Australia since I knew there was an Australia to visit. To be quite honest, for a long time, I wanted to move there, until I realized a) my friends would miss me, b) quarantine would be hell on the cats, and c) Australia's immigration laws mean I couldn't move anyway. So visiting will have to be enough. I'm a little scared and a little excited and a little totally ready to be on my way, because seriously, I have no attention span and no brain left. It's sad, except for the part where it's funny for people who aren't me.

I will come back with wonderful stories and probably a sunburn, souvenirs, memories, and the strong desire to sleep for a week. Hey, who knows—maybe I'll even come back with a tiara. That'd sure make my mother happy.

Two days to Australia. That's too soon; that's nowhere near soon enough.