Feeling distinctly grotty instead of the slightly unwell that's plagued me the past week-and-a-bit, so it's tea and Robitussin and naps this weekend. Overall, though, it was a pretty good week -- sold a poem, attended a fun cocktail party (with really good crabcakes -- almost no breading and a perfect mustard sauce -- and good conversation, too), and finished drafting a six-page outline. The betas were very kind to the unholy holiday fic, so that's all sorted and submitted, which frees me to focus on revising poems as soon as I finish the Advent sermon...

There's also the BBC Alphabetical Checklist, a repository of snark, despair, and pragmatism that sent me into stitches (as well as being quite informative about distinctions such as the proper prepositions for Anglican bodies (the Church OF England, the Church OF Ireland, the Episcopal Church IN Scotland, the Church IN Wales)). [ETA from an anonymous commenter: "Unfortunately the BBC is mistaken, which is unusual. There is no 'Episcopal Church in Scotland', though there used to be. It is now called the Scottish Episcopal Church."]

( Some of the highlights )

Was up too late and up too early (in relation to the too-lateness, that is), and there was a rejection for two poems in my in-box when I opened it. And I don’t have enough left in the mental tank to get any new submissions out the door before midnight.

On the other hand, I’m not sick yet, my beta-reader remains awesome, and there are other good things as well:

Receiving my copy and payment for On Our Way to Battle. (Thanks, samhenderson!)

The Library of Congress online card catalog and Amazon's look-inside-the-book feature. Vetting citations has never been easier...

The NYT’s article on Robert Fagles and his new translation of the Aeneid, and also that I noticed it because it happened to be #2 on the most-emailed list.

Songs from the Labyrinth is still delighting me during my commute and coffee breaks. It’s been reminding me both that Dowland is a hell of a songwriter and that Sting has that x-factor that separates okay musicians from those who have the knack of knowing when and how to bite off a phrase just so or stretchhh it out a second longer (I’m captivated by how he sings the word "eyes" two different ways in "Clear or cloudy" -- a very small detail, but it makes the performance for me.)

I don’t happen to possess that x-factor when it comes to music or calligraphy – I’m okay at them on my good days, but I’m never going to be great at either. And it’s not nearly present enough during most of my efforts at writing, either -- but I have been gifted with a measure of it there, and when it does kick in, oh is that a good feeling. When instinct and training and practice manage to intersect such that I know I’ve locked the right words into the right order to make the reader laugh or gasp or suck in their breath in recognition – in those moments, I am myself most alive.

The sooner I get through my current deadlines, the sooner I can get back to leaving saucers out for the prowling half-truths and stinging rhythms (pace Viereck). Onwards, then.

Color me startled: my copy of Word doesn't recognize "universalism" (although it suggests "Universalism" when prompted), but it does have "Schwarzenegger." Oy.

If my software makes little sense, however, my brain makes even less. I seem to be afflicted with both a bout of the stupids and a peculiar cloudburst of nostalgia, the latter triggered primarily by two pieces of music. The first is Richard Shindell's A Summer Wind, A Cotton Dress, which shot right up next to Dar Williams's "Iowa" and Peter Gabriel's "Secret World" the instant I played it on my car stereo, it being very much a song of someone who knows both of safety and burning, and there being a wild sweetness in the arrangement that has me playing it over and over again, sometimes singing along with the melody and sometimes piecing in bits of harmony, and missing moments that were never mine to miss...

...and the second is "Sweetly Sings the Donkey." I completely do not understand my reaction to this one. Yes, I sang it when I was a kid, and yes, it's a catchy tune, but it was never a favorite, and I don't have any specific memories attached to it, good or bad -- I can't even remember which grade it would have been -- so why did I melt into a puddle of goo upon seeing a songbook at the library today with that very title? All of a sudden I'm back to being nine years old, singing round after round with imaginary friends...

*shakes head*

And you? Which songs (or other sense-triggers) are distracting you these days?