by john | Feb 2, 2010 | Real Life
It’s 5:40 AM and I’ve been up for two hours. That’s about the epitome of suck in my life, as I am the furthest thing from a morning person. At least the waiting room has wi-fi. My father-in-law just arrived with Suzy’s aunt in tow, beginning the phenomenon that I’ve never understood – the waiting room congregation. I understand the principle – you want to show your support for the person having surgery, and be there in case the family member that has to be on site in case of emergencies needs anything. And in case of emergency surgery, it makes more sense to me. Then there’s the chance that something tragic, or at least exciting. will happen.
But I’m not a morning person and the thought of spending the day trapped in a hospital waiting room is bad enough, much less having to spend it making small talk with my in-laws. It would be okay if this were June, far enough from the holidays that we might not have seen each other in a while, but it’s February, pretty much guaranteeing that we’ll have nothing to talk about.
Add that to the fact that I’ve got a $2 million project that goes to bid today, and I’m not a happy camper. And I’ve got a cold, which makes me nothing but grumpier. Obviously my disposition will improve by the afternoon, once the bid is out and Suzy’s surgery is completed successfully, but for the next few hours I’d much prefer to just put on my headphones, watch a few episodes of Sons of Anarchy, and wait for the day to move along.
by john | Jan 28, 2010 | Real Life, Writing
This is one of those boring posts where I don’t really have anything to say but write a blog post anyway to spew forth the crap in my head and maybe lessen the load on my sinuses a little. I’m spending the last few minutes of my workday avoiding work because I’m at that point in my workload where I feel trapped and know I can’t finish any projects so I don’t want to start on any of them because what’s the point I can’t finish any of them anyway. So I’ll just blog and pretend like I don’t have too much shit to do and not enough time to do it in. So here’s what’s up in my world.
I’m planning on going over to the Green Rice Gallery in NoDa tomorrow night for a reading hosted by the good folks at Iodine and the Main Street Rag. There’s an open mic afterwards (why people insist upon calling it an open mike when there’s never been a “k” in microphone confuses me) and I’ll probably read something and pimp my book a little. Good/bad news on that front – I’m down to only a couple dozen out of the initial print run of 100 copies, so the books have moved a bit. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I probably gave away two dozen over Christmas to family, so I’m still not 100% sure if I lost money on the deal or not. The other downer is that to continue promoting my work, I’ll have to order more, and I’m kinda broke right now, so I need to figure that out.
And the reason I’ll need more copies is that I booked another reading, this one in late March/early April at the Literary Bookpost in Salisbury. They have a Saturday Salon series, and I sent them an electronic copy of my book to look over. They responded affirmatively, so now we just need to settle on a date. That, along with my stuff at Story Slam and an appearance in the February edition of Just Do It at Theatre Charlotte will keep me pretty bust for the foreseeable future. I think we’ll do another Carolina Writer’s Showcase at Story Slam in March, and I have another couple of ideas that I’ve been cogitating on that I wanted to get some feedback on.
Do you think it’s worth $5 to attend an open mic reader’s night? I think there should be enough momentum among people to put one of these together monthly. Everybody, even the folks reading, pay $5 to get in. That covers the cost of running the building. If we get a good crowd, we make enough to keep it going. Otherwise, it’s hard to justify the cost of the lights.
The other idea I had is a poetry contest. Not like a poetry slam, where things have to be memorized, but a contest for the best poetry. I was thinking $10 to enter and there would be two prizes each month – an audience prize and a judges’ prize. There would be three judges – one from the venue, one from the audience, and one from a previous month’s winner. The entry fees would be split between the two prizes, and it would be possible for one person to win both, so either two people win $50 each, or one person wins $100. So do you think people would participate, and do you think people would pay $10 to watch it?
Those are ideas that I’m kicking around, in addition to writing new material and submitting like mad. I’ve sent submissions out to seven different journals, online and print, this month, and gotten one acceptance (The Dead Mule) and one rejection (Camroc). The rest I haven’t heard from, but it’s too soon for most of them. I’ve spent some time this week poring over The Poet’s Market, and am starting to develop a real sense of attitude for places that don’t accept electronic submissions. I mean, damn people, it’s the future, why waste stamps? So my new submission policy is to focus on places that accept electronic submissions, because that makes life easier on all of us. If it’s a really respected journal, then I’ll go for a mailed sub, but since a lot of those places also don’t accept simultaneous submissions, they aren’t necessarily the best venue for an unknown poet anyway.
And here I go getting locked into the paradigm I was complaining about not all that long ago. Before you know it I’ll be running off to get my MFA and start life as an English professor with a tenure-track gig just so that I can write more. I already have a jacket with leather patches on the elbows. Look, there’s nothing wrong with an MFA. There’s nothing wrong with being a teacher. But there is something wrong with the lack of relevance of poetry (and theatre, and real music) in today’s world. The more we look for the newest Twitter, or Facebook, or Farmville, or iPad, or whatever, the more we’re ignoring each other and the immediacy with which people are supposed to live life. So I’ll spend a little more time trying to buck the system and figure out how to get poets and poetry noticed, and maybe less time submitting to journals published by universities who don’t care about the world outside their ivory towers anyway.
(steps down off soapbox)
So now I’ve spewed the better part of 1,000 words without a coherent theme, so I’ll direct you to two awesome women who you should read EVERY DAY. But especially the linked posts, because they are teh awesome. Amanda Fucking Palmer and The Bloggess. Both of the linked posts moved me, one in a stand up and throw a fist in the air in solidarity kind of way, and another in a nod your head with tears dripping into your beard because you’ve been there and have the scars to prove it kind of way. I think you’re all smart enough to figure out which is which.
Now my workday is done, my Farmville strawberries are ready for harvest, and I’m gonna take my fat ass home for dinner. See ya around.
by john | Jan 26, 2010 | Real Life, Travel
How’s that for a title? Yesterday was, in fact, my first time setting foot inside a gynecologist’s exam room. Suzy has surgery scheduled for Tuesday and the doc wanted to consult with both of us beforehand. Well, I don’t think he really gave a shit if I was there or not, but Suzy wanted me there, so there I was. This isn’t the first time Suzy’s had surgery on her woman parts, as we tend to refer to them here in the South, but hopefully it will be the last. She’s scheduled for a hysterectomy, which we’re having done to take care of some issues she’s had with uterine fibroids for several years. Apparently there’s a certain level of discomfort that folks experience when there are benign tumors the size of baseballs and golf balls growing on random internal organs. So that, along with our decision to not have kids, has led us to this point. And not without some discussion, and some fear to boot.
It took us a while to decide that we didn’t want kids, or maybe more to realize it. We’d both always thought we wanted kids when we were growing up, and even when we were married we thought we wanted kids. But over time our priorities shifted, and there was always something more important to work on, or plan for, or enjoy, and kids moved further and further into the rear-view. so now that option is going away, and it’s not without a little twinge on both our parts, but we know it’s the right decision for both of us. At this point I think we’re too old to start, even with the trend towards older parents that I’ve noticed over recent years. But Suzy’s a few years older than me, and the risks outweigh the potential at this point, and her health is paramount, so we’re moving ahead with it. And let’s face it – I’m a selfish bastard and enjoy living my life the way I want to live it, not the way some ankle-biter requires me to. And that’s not likely to change anytime in the near (or distant) future. But I will admit that it took a little while to adjust to the finality of the decision. It’s one thing when you make the decision yourself, it’s something else entirely when heath concerns take the decision away from you.
But the gene testing we did to see if she had the breast cancer gene mutation came back negative, so we’re looking at only removing the uterus, not the ovaries as well. So hopefully that will be able to be done via laproscopy, which would be much less invasive and have a significantly shorter recovery period. If they run into too much scar tissue from a myomectomy that was performed six years ago (remember the baseballs growing on internal organs? I was serious.) then they’ll have to do a full incision and that will make things more uncomfortable. We told the doc yesterday to take a look at the ovaries while he was in there, and as long as they looked normal, to leave them alone. He seemed to really want to remove them, but had no compelling arguments other than the fact that there isn’t great screening for ovarian cancer right now. I thought we should take the chance that Suzy won’t be the one woman in 80 that develops ovarian cancer, at least as long as it meant leaving as many factory-issued parts in place as possible. But I’m a non-surgery kinda guy, I don’t even like to go to the dentist, so my biases lean toward the least possible amount of cutting and removal.
The gene test coming back negative was a huge relief, because in addition to the ovary removal, he was recommending a preventative mastectomy if the test came back positive. Now on the bright side, what 40-year-old woman wouldn’t like to have a new set of boobs? But then we get back to my preference for original factory parts, and you see the conundrum. But the test says she’s no more likely to get breast cancer than anyone else, so that’s one for the win column.
But she’ll be laid up for a week or more, and unable to lift anything significant for several more, and that’s gonna seriously crimp my style. I’ve managed to avoid housework of any type for so long that Suzy has forgotten that I even know how to load a dishwasher, much less do anything more mentally taxing. This whole convalescence could screw up a good arrangement that we’ve had going. Because the last thing I want is for her to get back to full health and then still want me to do more around the house than sit on my fat ass hogging the remote. Yeah, I wanted to be Archie Bunker when I grew up, just without the racism. I pretty much got there, too. But seriously, I’ll be taking care of her while she’s recovering, and Bonnie (my sis) is coming up next weekend to stay with us and help out, so that’ll be good. I’ll be glad to have this in the rear-view, as it were, so we can get on to our Great Southeastern Tour 2010.
Yeah, that’s coming up faster than I expected. The Southeastern Theatre Conference is in Lexington, KY this year, and since Suzy has friends in Kentucky from childhood, she’s going with me. Then after the conference ends on Saturday afternoon, we’re going to take the next week to tour through the South taking pictures, seeing sights, seeing friends and generally hanging out. Our current plan is to be in Nashville Saturday night and Sunday (Spacefolks? Wanna see you!) then over to Memphis on Monday, tour Graceland and Sun Records and go to Tunica on Monday night. Tuesday we plan to drive south through Mississippi down to New Orleans and spend a couple days there. The nice folks at Harrah’s New Orleans would like for me to donate more to the local poker economy, so they’ve invited me to spend three nights at their lovely establishment. After that we’ll loop up through Alabama and Georgia and head home, hopefully getting home in time to do some laundry Sunday and get to work Monday, two weeks after we last saw our cat. This will be by far the longest road trip we’ve ever taken together, and it should be entertaining, to say the least. Adding vacation onto the end of a work trip is something I do a lot, but typically not this much. If our marriage can survive that much togetherness in a Nissan Versa, it’ll be a true testament to love. Or proof that I married a saint. One of those.
by john | Jan 25, 2010 | Real Life
Not that you care, really, what I think about Haiti, but it’s my blog, and you get what I give you. I watched the benefit concert Friday night, and thought it was very well-executed, with some great performances and great arrangements of classic songs by contemporary artists. My niece Audrey was in town taking her ordination exams and she crashed with us Friday night, so we watched it together. We were both impressed by Christina Aguilera and her longevity, and the arrangement that Justin Timberlake performed of one of my all-time favorite songs, Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, was good enough to make me ignore the fact that it was Justin Timberlake.
And then I bought the album off Amazon, and I’ve listened to it a couple times since then. It’s pretty solid, and I love the fact that less than 24 hours after the concert was aired, I had already downloaded it and was listening to it in my car. But I didn’t give anything to the Hope for Haiti charities, and I probably won’t.
I know, all of a sudden I’m Pat Robertson. That’s not it, really. I think it’s great that we’ve raised $58 million off that concert. And I think it’s great that the Red Cross raised $20 million via text messages. And I agree that it’s not enough. It’s going to take billions of dollars to rebuild (or in some cases build for the first time), and I don’t know where that money’s going to come from. I don’t begrudge anyone who wants to help out and give their cash to the charities that are providing disaster-specific relief, but in my conversations with Audrey I wanted to work on the infrastructure of the country, not just a band-aid. I know that the Red Cross needs money, and that there will be people on the ground with those organizations for months, but I wanted my money to go to something that would be left behind and be working for the greater good for a long time after Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta were back home safe.
By the way, both of those guys rose in my estimation through through their actions during this crisis. Sometimes you have to remember that you’re a human being first and a journalist second, and I applaud both of them for putting down the reporter’s shield of dissociation when lives were at stake.
So after some research, and looking over the financials of the organization, I decided to give money to Water Missions International. This is a Charleston-based non-profit that provides water filtration systems to developing nations, and you can well imagine that there’s very little clean water in Haiti now that what rudimentary facilities that existed there two weeks ago have been flattened. The folks at WMI have already provided eight water filtration systems into Haiti since the quake, and they’re working to get more. These filtration systems can provide the daily clean water needs for up to 200 people per hour of operation, and once the systems are set up, maintenance chemicals are cheap and readily available. As a non-profit, their financials are readily available, and the vast majority of money taken in goes to program expenses (i.e. doing the actual work of the charity) as opposed to overhead or fundraising expenses. So their money flow looks good to me, and having run a non-profit back in the dark ages, I know a little about what those things are supposed to look like.
So that’s where my money is going – to bring clean water to the Haitian people not just today, but for years to come. I urge you, if you have not already given to the charity of your choice, to join me in supporting the work done by Water Missions International. Yes, they are a Christian organization. Yes, they may very well be a little preachy. No, I have not suddenly gotten all Bible-thumpy. but I think if you have to get a little preaching to go with your shit-free water, it’s a reasonable trade-off.
by john | Jan 18, 2010 | Real Life, Writing
It’s a busy week, and we got some spectacularly good news right before the Just Do It performance last weekend, so here’s what’s up.
Tuesday night – Charlotte Writer’s Club meeting at Joseph-Beth Booksellers at SouthPark. I’ve been going to this for a few months now, and am still deciding exactly what I’m getting out of my membership. The people are all very nice, and the speakers are usually pretty interesting, but there’s not a lot of sharing of member’s work that goes on. I did meet Jessie there, and I’ve since started to enjoy her blog daily, so that’s good. But I think it might not be something I invest too heavily into long-term. Just enough to get a little boost now and then.
Sometime this week I’m trying to get out to CAST to see Our Lady of 121st Street and review it for Charlotte Viewpoint. I like the script, and several of my friends are in it, so that should be fun.
Saturday afternoon I’ll head over to the Charlotte Comic Mini-Con put on by Heroes. I actually worked at Heroes for a while some years back when they were still on Central Avenue. This was back when I was playing Magic the Gathering a lot and I ran the tourneys at Heroes and basically made enough money working there to pay for my comics and my Magic cards. I’ve recently gotten back into reading comics, so there’s another cash-suck in my life, but these little cons are usually good for picking up trade paperbacks ridiculously cheaply, so I can get a lot of volume reading in. Comics have been a part of my life on and off forever, and this weekend I spent a lot of time curled up with Volumes I & II of Absolute Sandman, reminding myself how absolutely beautiful those books are. I think I’ll bust out my Chris Bachalo Death T-Shirt for Story Slam Saturday night in honor of the books.
Yeah, everything is leading up to Story Slam for me this weekend. 8PM kicks off another Carolina Writers’ Night, and this time I’m sharing the stage with a novelist, a guitarist/short story writer and a columnist. It oughta be fun, and there’s always enough beer at Story Slam to make me seem witty, so come on out. It’s only $10, and then you can buy a book later and one of us will sign it for you. If you’re lucky, the one that wrote the book will sign it!
So last weekend, just before I went on for Just Do It, Suzy pulls me aside and tells me that the testing lab called. Now most of you don’t know that Suzy was recently tested for the breast cancer gene, and given the fact that her mother, aunt and grandmother all died of breast cancer, I figured the odds of her not having this particular gene were pretty slim. And her doc had already told her that if she had the gene, then she should seriously consider a double mastectomy.
Now a lot of you have met my wife. There’s a lot of boob there. And I’m a boob man. So telling the two of us that the girls might have to be removed was NOT a happy statement. Besides the scary genetic stuff, and bringing back memories of her mother’s death, telling a woman she’s gonna have to have her breasts removed is a pretty big damn deal. So it was with no small measure of delight that she told me that the test came back negative, and she does not have the genetic deformity that typically indicates a prediliction towards breast cancer, so we can return to our regularly scheduled program of mammograms and routine maintenance. So that was our good news for the day, and it was good indeed.
Talk with y’all later, and I hope to see you at Story Slam this weekend!
by john | Jan 12, 2010 | Real Life, Writing
So two things of happiness this evening, as I remain freezing my arse off in Atlanta. It’s been colder down here than in Charlotte for the past several days, and this Southern boy does NOT like the cold. But anyway…
I just got done chatting with the nice lady at the student loan joint, who informed me that the first nice lady I talked with was wrong, and my payment isn’t taking a 25% increase, only to be followed by a 25% increase ten days later. I am still stuck on this graduated repayment plan, which will see my payment increase by 25% every two years, but that means that my payment goes up again in January of 2012. By that time I think there will be little enough left on my total loan balance that I can hopefully just pay the fucker off. Sooner than that if I get anything working the WSOP from home this summer, but who knows what’s going to happen in that regard. So, on the one hand, my payment is increasing substantially this month. But not so substantially that I can’t make the payment and still pay all my bills, so that was a good conversation.
But the much better news is that one of my poems was accepted into the March edition of the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature! The poem “Aftermath,” which was briefly featured here before being taken down to maintain its unpublished status, was accepted after just one submission! Now I know that it’s rare to have the kind of success right out the gate that I’ve had. I won the Charlotte Writer’s Club Board Prize for Poetry right before the end of the year last year, and two of my poems were selected as finalists in the Atlanta Review poetry contest, and now one of my pieces has been accepted for publication on the first shot. This is, as we say in poker, too small a sample size. But these little successes are encouraging, and it’s keeping me writing new stuff. I’ve decided not to enter any poetry book contests right now, because I don’t think I have a solid enough body of work to warrant a book of only poetry. I am going to branch out a little and submit some short stories and non-fiction, and there are a couple of first novel contests that I’m looking at as well. But if I can keep my nose to it and keep submitting, hopefully the list of publications on my resume will continue to grow.
And for those of you who’ve known me for a while, Aftermath was written about my uncle’s suicide. That was my first attempt at putting those feelings together on paper, and I’m glad that the folks at Dead Mule felt that it was worthy of publication. I think it honors Ed’s memory and my family by sharing the universal nature of loss and our common reactions to it. So it’s kind of an important piece to me, and I’m glad that I’ll be able to share it with a wider audience than just here on this little piece of the internets.
Home tomorrow afternoon, then Charlotte StoryTellers Guild Thursday night, Just Do It at Theatre Charlotte Friday night, Charlotte Writer’s Club Tuesday night, Charlotte Mini-Con next Saturday (attending, not showing anything there) and Carolina Writers’ Showcase next Saturday Night. Mark your calendars for anything that seems interesting, hope to see you there!
