Sunday, March 25, 2012

Very Slow on the Uptake

When I was a college freshman, my roommate told me that her father always paid cash when he bought a car. She looked very proud of this statement. It was pronounced in a similar way to other teachings of financial advice from her dad, like when she told me that he always knew to a penny what was in his checking account. I had a hard time puzzling out why it would be better to walk into a car dealership with that much cash in his pocket, instead of writing a check. I suppose I never forgot that statement because I couldn't figure it out. I was many years out of college when I remembered the statement again and realized that what she probably meant was he never took out a loan to buy a car, but purchased it with money he had in savings. That is good advice.

Tuesday 2 a.m.: Kill king, implicate princes

On the counter at the drugstore were some pocket-sized planning calendars--plastic coated, with kind of ugly designs. I noticed their labels said, "The Macbeth Collection". In small letters they said:
Plan Ahead.  A little planning goes a long way.
So what do you write in your Macbeth planner?

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Boskone 2012 notes

Just the raw notes, now shared on Google Docs.

I was typing notes at some of the panels.  I kept thinking I'd edit them and post them here, but there's always something better to do.  In the meantime, I've uploaded them to Google Docs, and selected share with public. Maybe with them in Google Docs, I'll be more likely to edit them.  I deleted what I wrote during Elaine Isaak's writing exercise and just left the prompts (except the visual prompt that was on a card dealt from a stack.)

Working on my bio for zoetrope

I learned how to read so I could read the Oz books.  I grew up discussing science fiction dreams with my father.  I escaped Jr High and bouts of flu by reading Heinlein, Azimov, and back issues of Analog.  When I was fifteen, I met a disciple of Gerard K O'Neil, who convinced me that people don't need to live on planets: our future is in free-floating space colonies and hollowed-out asteroids  I've been writing about Mark Hankin, his family, and their friends since I was seventeen.