Thursday, March 20, 2003
Even as days before road trips go, today was bad. Fortunately, it's now yesterday. Move along, move along.
There's a terrific thunderstorm raging outside. We've had lightning and thunder most of the evening, and a tornado watch to boot. The rain sounds nice. I suppose I shouldn't be online in the storm. I just wanted to make this entry before bed.
Thryn's already gone to bed.
The page proofs for The Five of Cups arrived this afternoon. I'm going to look over them while I try to get sleepy.
And the war has begun. Bush talked for four minutes, to confirm what CNN was already showing us, and I'm pretty sure he didn't use the word "war" once. I asked Jennifer and she didn't hear it either. I had CNN on almost the entire day, from about 10 a.m. until about an hour ago. That can't possibly be healthy. The newscaster droned on excitedly all day long, anxious, anticipatory, apocalyptic background noise. I counted down the last bit of Hussein's 48-hour grace period, keeping up with the minutes on the iBook (little clock display, upper right hand corner). Every now and then I'd stop to see if anything had actually happened. I kept catching the same story about an Hispanic kid that wasn't pulling his weight and was the cause of some consternation in his unit. He's apparently received his 15 minutes in the form of international humiliation. Maybe I should think of that as global tough love. Hey, maybe that's what's happening in Iraq. It's not war. It's just really, really tough love.
I'm seriously considering cancelling on ICFA. I know, sooner or later, I'm going to become known as "that chick who never shows at cons," but there are extenuating circumstances (again). And a zillion drunken college kids strung out (literally) along I-95, between me and my hotel room in Ft. Lauderdale, drunk and armed with SUVs and 4X4s. That's scarier than college kids squatting in the desert with automatic rifles, when you think about at. But I want to see Peter, and I want to see Ramsey, so, maybe. You guys don't mind, I'm sure. All of you have the good sense not to come to academic conferences and a.m. readings by misanthropic, bleary-eyed authors.
See ya in the morning. Keep watching the skies.
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