Diana Wynne Jones and Things to do

[3rdragon]

Last night I dreamed that Diana Wynne Jones came to Northampton. A whole bunch of us went to the bookstore(?) to see her, including violaclaire. There were a bunch of people there, but it wasn't crazy-crowded. Somehow there didn't seem to be many lines, and while there were so many people that it wasn't really possible to have long-term conversations with her. But she was really good at focusing on each person for a brief period of time, so even though you might have only 30 seconds in which you got to talk to her, you felt that you had all of her attention for those 30 seconds. Then, later, after the event, whatever it was, a bunch of the Smithies (and Viola) went into some sort of back room with DWJ and had a sort of large-group chitchat. It was just the usual smalltalk (majors, classes, interests, books reading, etc), but was rather less awkward than I usually find smalltalk to be. Also, in my dream, everyone was a much bigger fan of her books than I think that they actually are.

Then, this morning, I got the package I've been waiting for from my mother. It contained Diana Wynne Jones' The Tough Guide to Fantasyland and my new cell phone.


Today is Otelia Cromwell Day, which means that afternoon classes and activities are cancelled. My morning class was also cancelled. I had big plans for today/last night, including:

-being moral support for Talia's portfolio review
-working on my math paper
-going to the Bad Seeds pumpkin thing at President Christ's house
-going to fencing
-meeting someone at the ceramics studio to go over the ceramics speal
-Finishing El collar de la Paloma
-Writing my paper on El collar de la Paloma
-Making 4 redrawings of people in Cavalier dress for Costume I
-meeting with my math group at 4:30
-going to work at 5:00

So far I've actually done:
-moral support for portfolio review
-wrote out pattern for knitted pointy hat
-pumpkin thing (there was low turnout, so I ditched the pumpkin in favor of 3 new plants - rosemary, a boston fern, and something called Purple Knight)
-fencing practice
-finishing the Sulien book (which was good, and better-paced than the first)
-spending too much time on the rice thing
-checking e-mail and lj (several times)
-meeting person at ceramics studio
-cleaning the ceramics studio and moving a bunch of bisqueware that's going to be tossed if no one claims it before next week
-updating the ceramics club list at public safety
-trawling the web for a Muse article, ostensibly for my Education class (and failing to find it)
-checking my mail
-reading parts of The Tough Guide to Fantasyland to the table
-figuring out how to activate my new cell phone
-transfering/updating all of the contacts from my old cell phone
-cleaning my room (more or less. It isn't clean, but it's a lot better than it was)
-listening to the end of Stardust while cleaning my room
-continueing the unending project of interior decoration
-waterproofing my boots (not books. must be vigilent against typos)


You may have noticed that the list of things accomplished bears little resemblence to the list of things to do. It's been a good day; the things I've accomplished did need to be done, sometime (most of them, anyway. And not all of them necessarily needed to be done by me, but so it goes . . .). I just hope that I'm not regretting this rather lazy day come next week.


Is it a bad thing that I've talked more with my next-door neighbor's mother than with the neighbor herself? The mother has been here more than most parents (three times), but that still is . . . unusual.

It's November, and NaNoWriMo has started. And once again, despite the fact that several of my friends manage to do this, I see no way whatsoever that I could find the time (not to mention that I don't have any decent ideas at the moment). I have, however, decided that I will try to work on a short story. If it were five pages long, that would only be a page a week . . .