Live from Logan airport

So, here I am at gate C-36, waiting for a Jet Blue flight to New York to meet with my publisher. People who know me well will tell you that I generally hate to travel. I like being places and seeing people, so all you readers out there working on bringing me there should't despair, but I hate planning trips. I dislike packing, driving, and that moment at the end of a flight when everyone stands up even though the doors aren't open yet and there is nowhere to go.

But here's a funny twist: I like airports. Except for extreme situations (such as 30 hours in Detroit, after a cancelled last-flight-of-the-night), airports can be kind of fun.

I fly often enough to know the drill about how to check in, what to pack, what can be carried on, and how to arrange bags so what I need during the flight isn't stuck in the overhead bin where I have to crawl over other passengers to get it. Concerns about civil liberties and foot-borne diseases aside (they make you wear flip-flops in dorm bathrooms to prevent the spread of disease... I'm not a gemophobe by any stretch of the imagination, but how often do they bleach that security area where everyone has to take off their shoes?) security isn't usually too bad.

When I used to tour more often, I had some exciting security stories. Apparently, a series of one-way tickets purchased at the last minute by a third party raise those "random" security flags - go figure. In Kalamazoo, MI ("yes, we do exist!") they took every single item out of our carry-on, went through it, and the told us, "you can repack and board the plane now" as if they hadn't just totally unpacked two suitcases that my mother and I had needed to stand on to close that morning. That was October, 2011, though, so people were pretty cautious.

Back to why I like airports.

For one, I love people-watching. Little kids and business men, that frazzled-looking school-teacher type I always seem to meet, old men who look tired and lonely, college students, families speaking in languages I cannot identify never-mind understand, an angry grump on a cell phone... So many interesting people. I've had friendly conversations with all sorts of people in airports. Once when I had a flight connection get messed up, I was befriended by a pair of Franciscan (Dominican?) priests (monks? I'm not sure of my terminology here).

Now there's a guy talking photographs of the terminal... No, not photos plural. He has been sitting across from me for a while, but he just randomly stood up, took one picture of the gate, and then sat back down to continue watching the weather. Why? No idea, but I could make something up, and it would be a great story.

As my current protagonist Jay would say, airports are full of people totally engaged in their own lives. In more my own words, people in airports are in the middle of their stories. Some might be near the end, heading home at the end of a whirlwind, but the pages are still turning.

And that's why I like airports.

Signing off of Logan's free wi-fi so I can board my plane now. Take care, everyone; I'll be home soon.

Still around somewhere

So, I've barely had a chance to sit at the computer for the past week. Today will be no exception, but I wanted to take a couple minutes to at least check in. I hope everyone had a lovely Easter, Passover, or any other holiday or non-holiday you've celebrated lately.

As for myself, this morning's big goal is to make sure everything is washed and dried so we can pack away all the kitchen supplies that only come out once a year. Then, I'm going to try to find a reasonable place to put all those buckets of kitchen supplies that doesn't involve the basement - we're having the basement finished in the near future, so there's no point in storing anything down there right before we will need to pull it all out.

You should see me around more this week. My goal for April break is to finish Inbox. This may be somewhat optimistic, and depends on how long the story I'm working on turns out to be, but at the least I would like to get an update done today or tomorrow, and another around the end of the week.

I'm also going to NYC on Tuesday to meet with my publisher and editor, which I am looking forward to. At least hours in the airport will give me an opportunity to get some editing and writing done.

And that's the update for the day.

SOPA, PIPA, and the internet strike

[Edit] The official protest is over, so I've returned the banner to normal, but the post below will remain in the blog... because there's no reason to delete it.

I am not blacking out Nyeusigrube today because I lack the technological confidence to do so and be sure I can get the website BACK in the future... but I am in support of the strike against SOPA and PIPA.

I am a US copyright holder. I am a published novelist and I rely on the income generated by copyrighted material. So why am I not in support of legislation designed to protect copyright and combat internet piracy?

Because the way SOPA and PIPA are written, they will certainly FAIL to protect copyright in any realistic fashion, and in doing so, will violate free expression and the freedom of the internet.

To quote Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Though not in the original quote, many times this is paraphrased with the addition of "... deserve neither liberty nor safety, and will lose both." That is what these bills aim to do- sacrifice our first amendment rights, and sacrifice innovation and creativity, in favor of theoretical security that will harm more people than it will actually help.

Given we're talking about legislation, a lot of the articles on the web are pretty tough to get through (though more are readable today, now that the news is taking notice of the web-strike), but this post gives a pretty concise explanation of the problem:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/how-pipa-and-sopa-violate-white-house-principles-supporting-free-speech

In case anyone out there is wondering, if SOPA or PIPA goes into effect in anything near its current form, Nyeusigrube.com will shut down. As I said, I support copyright protections; I rely on them. But I barely have the time to check the forum and reply to posts. I do not have the time to police every post, every avatar, every signature, every link and every site linked from that. I chose not to go into law enforcement for a reason. This law would give me the option of becoming a police officer, or leaving the internet.

Hey, maybe hardcover book sales would go back up if we banned the internet?

... if only there were some way to advertise them...

In the blink of an eye

The wedding was wonderful - perfect. The closest thing I can compare it to is seeing particularly good visual fan-art, and having that moment of, "Oh my god, here in front of me is that person I imagined," except it was nothing like that.

If I had dreamed the wedding... well, it would be nothing like this, because in my dreams/anxiety-prompted nightmares, nothing went right. On the day itself, everything went right. I could not have wished for it to be any more beautiful.

We had tons of friends from a variety of places fly in-- Alaska, Washington, Minnesota, and Ohio represented-- and many of them stayed with us before the wedding. I was nervous beforehand about having house-guests, but they were all wonderful. The two who came in early and stayed with us a while (Mace and Devon) before the wedding were seriously the best house-guests you could ask for; they made those last anxiety-filled days so much easier. We all laughed so hard we probably seemed like crazy-people. It was wonderful - and then even more friends came in, and then family I haven't seen in years. Remarkably, air-travel cooperated; several people were early, and not a single person got into the airport late, so our five trips into Logan were relatively easy.

The day of... everything was beautiful. The anxiety dissipated during my hair-and-makeup appointment, after which the sentimental feeling made me nearly cry every time I saw a new person in the bridal party. Have you ever seen women fanning their faces with their hands, usually in silly TV shows and such? I never thought I would actually do that, but lo and behold...

There are a bunch of pictures posted in the Chatter forum on the Message Boards, and I'm sure more stories will come out there if you want to know more. For now... I'm checking back in to real life, with some of the best memories of my life to cherish and hold on to.

Yours,
Mrs. Atwater-Rhodes

PS - yes, we're each keeping our own names, but yes, I am using the Mrs. I fought for the right to be a Mrs in the Massachusetts State House. I'm wearing the title.

8 Days

One of my friends pointed out that we all sound like we're in a horror movie like "The Ring" lately. She keeps sending me texts updating me on how many days are left before she visits (she's coming in a few days before the wedding) so I get ominous text-messages like:

Five days left!

Only three days!

Right now, we're eight days out from the wedding. Eight days from exactly now, I'll probably be getting hair-and-makeup done. Nine days from now, I'll be married.

Two days from now, hopefully I'll have finished the bathroom tile and grout, so when my friend comes to visit there will be a working shower in this house.

I'm off to get back to that: A Buffy Season 7 marathon while mixing mastic and hanging tile.

Ask and ye shall receive?

It's almost June! Someone asked me for "an update," though they didn't specify what, so I figured I should jot down a quick blog post.

The wedding is fast approaching; we've been planning for almost fourteen months, and yet it seems there are so many last-month and last-minute details to handle.

Mandi and I just closed on the house! We've been in for about two weeks now, and there are yet another million things to do- the roof and siding are being redone, and I'm gutting and redoing the bathroom. In the meantime, we need to shower at my parents' house. Since we have several friends staying with us for the wedding, the bathroom is very much a high priority to finish.

In the meantime, it's been 90 to 100 degrees locally, which is not conducive to unpacking, or remodeling, or thinking and working. We broke down and bought and AC yesterday, so hopefully the brain will start working a little better.

And I'm still working and very happy in my new position. I'm officially a full time special ed tutor, which means I do a little of everything- earth science, biology, Spanish, life skills, and geometry are all on my docket at the moment. In the fall I'll be doing another practicum, so I'll be helping to teach a creative writing class, which I'm very excited about. I'm also trying to work with a student in chemistry, though I don't know if that scheduling will work out.

In terms of writing and publishing, I'm about 1/5 of the way into writing Maeve'ra II (Kaydee's story), and All Just Glass has a publication date posted and a cover up on Amazon. For those who haven't already heard, AJG is a follow-up to Shattered Mirror. It's narrated not just by Sarah, but also by Adia and their cousin Zachary Vida. You'll also meet Jay Marinitch, who narrates Promises to Keep, my 2009 NaNo, which I am considering for publication after Poison Tree.

And that's all the news that's fit to print! You may not hear a lot from me the next several weeks, but at least you'll know what I'm up to.

Welcome to December

Well... National Novel Writing Month is over, and what a month it was. I made my 50k this year; in some ways it was easier than other years, and in some ways it was harder.

It often seemed like there was no way I could finish. There was so much going on. I've had a couple friends dealing with fairly serious health issues this fall, which has occupied a lot of my attention. Meanwhile, Mandi and I are still wedding-planning (we finally arranged a taste-testing with the caterer, which went very well) and... okay, I'll just say it. We've been house hunting. I'll let you know how it goes.

And of course, there's Thanksgiving, which was particularly exciting this year when the oven spontaneously shut down-- completely, oven and stove all turning off, and it's electric, so off means OFF-- about 30 minutes before I expected to take the bird out. There was a lot of discussion about finishing one of the birds on the grill or taking them 15 minutes down the road to my sister's house to finish making dinner as all the handy folk in the house checked circuit breakers (I was the first one to look, but no one believed me when I said nothing was flipped) and pondered.

Eventually, my brother-in-law realized it had been unplugged. Go figure. A few people concurred that this made perfect sense, that it must have been loosened over time, but seriously, how does a major appliance randomly come unplugged when the very large plug is UNDER the appliance? Either way, we got it plugged back in and working again, and managed to serve by 6:30, which is outrageously late to serve Thanksgiving dinner.

All in all, though, it went well. I also managed to acquire Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, so I spent much of Saturday, Sunday and Monday playing that instead of working on my NaNo, which I still managed to finish by 10:30ish.

November has been a little surreal.

Now it's December. Like every year, I've sworn I am not going to the mall this year. The one near us is so overly large it creates its own traffic patterns for a month on each side of Christmas. Like every year, I'll probably be there a few days before Christmas buying last-minute items. Maybe I should just give in and go early instead.

Before then, though, I'm going to Torah study with my fiancee on Saturday morning, followed by a production of Beauty and the Beast that night. Chanukah starts the following Saturday, so Mandi and I will light candles right after I trim the tree and put up the creche with my parents.

And now... now I need to call the lawyer and see if the sellers have signed a contract yet, so we can go to a home inspection...

Welcome to December.

Whether pigs have wings

Let's see...

First off, I'm 25 now. Wild, right? People keep asking me if it's bugging me yet, being a "quarter century old," but the truth is, I am where I want to be. I am in love, and engaged, to a wonderful woman. I am in graduate school, working on the degree I need for the career I want. And about that career? I was just offered a job in the exact field I want to go in to.

Yes, I have a job! This is part of the reason I have been so scarce the last week, since I spent a few hours interviewing there, in addition to grading papers for my practicum, which is wrapping up soon; celebrating two birthdays, including my own and my fiancee's; and attending a night class on Wednesday. On Wednesday alone, I realized that I spent more than four hours just driving from place to place.

The job is relatively local, and involves working with students with emotional and behavioral difficulties, probably at the middle school level. I am very excited, and will be frantically planning curriculum the next few weeks, while grading the rest of my 56 papers, 18 tests, and a flashcard project, and working to get through the copyedited Token of Darkness.

For Inquiring Minds

(I didn't have time last night to post any kind of explanation or details - so here's a bit more of a story for you all)

In the fall of 2006, I participated in the National Student Exchange. Through NES, I spent a semester at Texas State University at San Marcos. Many wonderful things came out of this trip and I was much improved by it, but that is neither here nor there.

The point is, in December of 2006, I returned to Massachusetts, and a dear friend of mine threw me a welcome home party. I was quite cross at the time, because she had invited quite a few people I did not know, and I felt incredibly awkward. I ended up playing a board game (the Game of Life) with this girl, Mandi.

Fast-forward, and as of March of this year, 2009, Mandi and I have been dating for two years. For the sake of brevity I'll avoid listing all that makes her wonderful, suffice to say that she makes me happier than I knew I could be.

But there was full-time school and full-time jobs and real life stuff going on, and it didn't seem like a good time... but sometime in January, it dawned on me that she and I are not going to change. We will always be busy, active women, and life isn't going to suddenly pause so I can find the "right" time to get married. I realized, this is the woman I want to spend the rest of my zany, wild, sometimes complicated, busy life with. A good friend of mine pointed out that, if that's the case, then what excuses are even relevant?

Okay, I'm a little commitment shy.

Suffice to say, though, that I decided it was time. I spent a long time searching for the perfect ring. I'm a traditional gal that way. I found almost exactly what I wanted, but they had to make a couple alterations to make it perfect, so I had to order the ring. And wait.

And wait.

I had hoped it would be in by Valentine's Day, but that was a long shot... and it wasn't. I thought last weekend... but no such luck. Those who were on the "short list" of people who were in on this knew that I was more anxious every day, waiting for the ring to come in. The store told me, absolutely, by February 28, it would be in.

I have a professional day on Monday, so I figured, free day, and she's got a free day. It will be perfect. I'll set up something fun and romantic for us to do...

Then last night, she proposed.

You don't get all the details here, because she never signed the contract saying, "Every romantic thing you say or do may be copied into Wikipedia," but suffice to say, she knows me. And it was perfect. And many hours followed, in which many phone calls and IMs had to be made. I have not felt the need to tell something to so many people in so short a time since 1998 when my agent called on my fourteenth birthday.

(And this is, in some ways, even cooler than that.)

So yes, I am engaged. No, this is not an April Fools joke, or any other kind of scam. Yes, the picture (previous post) is my ring; the photo doesn't do it justice, despite a dear friend of mine trying his best to teach me how to use the macro mode on my camera. Her ring should be ready on Saturday. I hope. I'll pick it up after the Toad Hall event. We don't have a date picked out, but I think we're looking at spring/early summer 2010. It has only been twenty-seven hours since she asked the question, so... still working the details.

For Real This Time