I can hardly believe it. Things change quickly around here.  Just yesterday morning I was posting to a private mailing list that I was disappointed to not be going to World Fantasy in San Jose this October.  Many of my friends are going, it’s my favorite convention in the world, and there would be a chance to catch up with all sorts of new people too. However, I had decided that I would go to Montreal for Worldcon and it would be my one trip to the US this year.

Well, life is rich and strange here at Coode Street. Within an hour of writing my email the possibility arose that I might make San Jose. Then it became more likely. Then Marianne agreed, which I really didn’t expect given what these trips demand of her. And, now, I’m going!  It’s going to be a lightning trip, but I’ll be in San Jose from Wed 28 October to Monday 2 November, then home. I really, really hope that I’ll see everyone (Jeff, Jeff & Ann, Lucius, Bill, Ellens, Locusfolk, everyone!) when I’m there. I can’t wait. I’m totally stoked and I’m very, very grateful to Marianne and to somebody else. Pink drinks!!!!!

I was born in 1964. I was five years old (just shy of my sixth birthday) when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. I very clearly remember clustering around our old black and white television set to watch the lunarlanding, just as we later would watch the follow-up Apollo missions, Skylab and so on throughout the ’70s. I got caught up in the futurism which seemed to sweep everywhere that seemed to say we’d not only be traveling to the stars some time very soon, but we’d also have cities of tomorrow on the moon, under the ocean — everywhere. I have a copy of my annual primary school magazine that came out in 1971. Students were asked what they were going to be doing when they gew up. Aged 7, I wrote that I was going to be a geologist when I grew up and would live on Mars. I believed it in 1971 because it was believable then.

My friend girliejones is hosting a ‘Women in Music’ appreciation month.  There are a lot of artists, songs and albums I would recommend: Suzanne Vega’s debut, Rickie Lee Jones’ debut, Norah Jones’ debut, Missy Higgins’ debut, the Indigo Girls early compilation 4.5, Heart’s Dreamboat Annie, Joni Mitchell’s Blue, and either of the first two Pretenders albums, but instead I thought I might mention something that I’ve been listening to a lot these past few months. Shelby Lynne’s Just a Little Lovin‘ is a beautiful tribute to the music of the late Dusty Springfield.  A successful country and western singer herself, she takes songs from Dusty in Memphis and elsewhere and slows them down a tad, sings them a whisker lower, and delivers a slow, sensual sound the caresses careworn sensibilities.  It almost doesn’t matter what she’s singing, because it’s the sound of her voice that gently picks you up and carries you away, not the words she’s saying.  In truth some of the lyrics are best left unparsed, but the sound is for late nights and perfect Sunday mornings.

Well, this weekend is going to be about three things. Finishing Eclipse and Subterranean, and planning my schedule for the US trip. I’m terribly, terribly behind on the latter. I know where the planes are going to leave me, but not much else, which is crazy. I’ve not got a final program from Anticipation, but I have a few programmed things. Nothing planned for California, the sightseeing day in Montreal, or for the convention. Must fix!

The family are out of the house right now. I’m playing The Weepies. It’s been a hard couple days, made a lot harder by some things I just need to filter out of my world for a while. I need to make things a bit simpler, rather than more complicated.

In the meantime, I’m going to spend the time before dinner reading Fritz Leiber stories. Charles and I had decided on a core short list for our ‘best of Leiber’ volume, but hadn’t finalised it. Now it’s something left to me, which is incredibly sad. Charles and Fritz were such good friends, and Charles loved his work so much that it seems wrong to make the final decisions without him. Nonetheless, the important thing is to complete the book and make sure it would be one that he’d be proud of.