stillsostrange

I wasted an hour and a half of my child-free morning to a fit of black rage which fed a writing tantrum, and another half hour to a horror movie quiz, but eventually the rage receded. I'm finally acknowledging that I'm trying to squish two books worth of plot into one (this is not a problem I often have), and one half has to go. So the return of House Ctesiphon, return of a dead house, and a whole bunch of fake plays and demimonde playwrights have to go. They can show up in the next book. This book gets an inconvenient corpse, foreign spies, family history, tragic romances, and--if I'm lucky--a trip to Iskar. And it needs some Cool Magic Stuff, but I'll figure that out later.

On the one hand, it's lovely that my mouth is hurting a lot less and I can chew soft things. (I can see the titanium screw gleaming in the socket now, and my stitches are impressively Frankensteinian [Frankenstonian?].) On the other, while I don't enjoy Vicodin much, I do appreciate the vivid dreams it gives me. Last night I had a drawn out dream about vampires, death in an immortal family, betrayal by one's own progeny, and the dangers inherent in choosing new progeny. I've already lost most of the details, and am left wistful and sad by their absence. I used to remember my dreams, and have in recent years done so less and less often.

I also dreamt that I asked a werewolf (played by Helen Mirren--Hollywood, make that happen) to bite me, because the alternative was to be bitten by someone whom I liked less. She chidingly explained that it wasn't that simple, and that you couldn't ask a wild animal to politely bite you and then walk away. The act was savagery, and not something to be scheduled. (We also stopped at a lodge off a snowy road in the woods, where I met several of my bookstore coworkers who were talking about videogames, lest the dream be too serious.) I am left with a strong desire to write about impeccably dressed were-ladies of a certain age.

And now I have to figure out what exactly my antag is conspiring with a foreign government to do.

(And yes, I have picked up on the ur-theme of all my recent bitey dreams.)

Last night, friends and I participated in Austin's Midnight Madness scavenger hunt. It's an all-night, city-wide, team-based hunt, and it is totally awesome. It began at 6:30 PM, and we got home at 6:00 AM. I am extremely groggy.

Reader, we won.

The teams met at 6:30 at Zilker Park, where we were led to picnic tables with Jenga (and Jenga derivatives) sets. Game control explained that we had a murder mystery to solve, and then made us play Jenga. My team ended up with a shitty off-brand Jenga*, and finished last. We finished, though, got our clue, and raced to the next clue. The next clue involved stereograms, which no one on my team can see. It was like the sailboat in Mallrats. After that, and one more extremely frustrating clue, we were a little dejected, but determined. But then clues started getting more fun (I just noticed that I first typed "more better"; yes, I'm tired.)--semaphore code, crossword puzzles, carnival games, a flashlight hunt through a cemetery. All the while we were finding location clues, we were also getting Clue-style weapon and alibi cards for the NPCs. At this point we were tearing through clues, and starting to catch up with other teams. A couple of teams, being made of lesser stuff, dropped out.

By 5:00 AM we had deciphered the last anagram clue and solved the murder mystery, so we sped back to the scene of the crime to make our accusation. At this point, we had called for a fair number of clues (which give you time penalties), and it was late, so we weren't hopeful about our chances, but still happy to have finished. It turned out that we were the second team to arrive, but the first had more time penalties than us and hadn't solved the mystery. Then we found out that every team had greater time penalties. That's when we started jumping tiredly for joy.

The upshot is, as winners, we get to plan next year's hunt. This is freaking awesome.

Now it's two in the afternoon and I'm groggy and sore, and I need to finish last night's coffee and make inroads into Kingdoms.

ETA: A side effect of all this is that I just woke up from a dream about finding a dead body while Das Ich was trying to set up for their show.



* I am not even joking--Jumbling Towers sucks goats. After two tries with that we grabbed the real Jenga from a team who had finished, and stacked it in no time.

I just woke up from a dream in which I was back in grad school, but I didn't have a textbook for my European history class (the textbook, when I found a copy in the library, was full of Russian, but we were discussing the Baader Meinhof Complex in class) and had just missed a quiz. I was also trying to put together PDFs for two different people, but I didn't have Acrobat. And then I was trying to refurbish a run-down shack in the Ozarks for someone in an environment suit (I think it was greygirlbeast, but the hardware store was closed and I didn't have any duct tape. There was also an odd sort of easter egg hunt and hiding candy in the woods.

Really, brain? I thought we were done with the pointless stress dreams.

Now I'm sluggish and dream-sticky and I need to get up and start work on Kingdoms.

Dear Subconscious:

I do not need anxiety dreams, thank you. I know when my deadline is.

Noloff,

Me

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Dear Bats Who Live Near The Bookstore:

Please don't die on our sidewalk. You are too adorable, and they won't let me stop and hold proper burial services in the middle of a workday.

Love,

Me

---

Dear Book:

WHY AREN'T YOU DONE ALREADY??!!! Interrobang!

Noloff,

Me

( Because I know everyone is riveted by other people's dreams... )

Later there was a set change and a different group of people were wading through an underground lake being attacked by zombie babies. Yanno, like you do.

Gretchen slept till 8! The latest she's ever slept. Or she might have woken up earlier and been unable to rouse her dead lump of a monkey.

After doggy breakfast I went back to bed, as is my wont, and who did I dream about but Alex and Liz*. They were fighting crime, as is their wont--this time in Russia, investigating blackmail and spooooky disappearances, and an apartment full of bones. The dream had a whole plot, but of course I don't remember that now.

I wonder if that's a sign, or just my subconscious being a brat.

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* For those of you recently arrived, their book has been the bane of my freakin' existence since the fall of 2002. I can't die until I rewrite it and get the suck out.

I did actually write a little yesterday between the zombification, but today seems to be be a loss. I spent an hour and a half being a passport-line zombie instead. But I paid to expedite the damn thing, so I will not be turned back at the Canuckistani border in August, and have to sneak across with sled dogs.

Amusingly, I do remember last night's dreams, which I haven't done much lately. Sadly, there were no zombies, or messages from the King. Only trains and great journeys and rescuing damsels kafkonia from demons. And then I had to find a job, which is a shitty thing for my subconscious to pull.

I could try to write, I suppose. Or I could photoshop more Hasturian zombies.