A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

Sunday was the day of two giant meals. The first occurred at Johnny D's, after N&M wanted to visit Davis again with me, and maybe hit some real estate offices together, since we declared an official start to our housing search last weekend. (They've fallen for the area, by all accounts, going there many times by themselves since I first introduced them to it a couple of months ago.) They weren't impressed by the crowdedness, and I started getting worried about overselling them on the oatmeal when M couldn't talk about anything except oatmeal impact anticipation. But the wait was shorter than they said, and all was good once we sat down and demanded giant plates of food like crazy anime characters, to the tune of mellow, live xylophone music.

And lo, the oatmeal was good. But everyone felt too bloated to talk to real estate people, so we just perambulated around the square despite the cold winds and looked at buildings and wrote down phone numbers, before dissolving to pursue our own tasks,

My central task this weekend involved crafting the outline to the first chapter or two of the new book. I was surprised at how long it took, but this was probably from the fact that it went almost to paragraph-depth, hundreds of lines long. It's all good.

(I used OmniOutliner for the job, which I have found useful enough to be worth my $21.12.)

Recent email suggests that I have something to learn about writing for this space; I gawped at my perception that the first chapter, as outlined in the proposal, would be enormous, and Chuck is all, "Naw, you can do that in 30 pages. This is a nutshell book, remember." I think this was before he saw my mega-outline, so he may be able to give me some advice there. (Update: he just mailed to say that his mail client autofiltered my outlines into his trash can, so he didn't see them until just now. Heh.)

The second Giant Meal happened at Buddha's Delight, a vegetarian (possibly even vegan) Chinese restaraunt, visited with part of a theatergoing party headed by magid. We agreed the food was yummy, but shared disappointment that the menu seemed to be mostly fake-meat dishes, instead of entrees that don't need meat of any level of veracity.

At dinner, while looking out the window at the Chinatown scenery, I was reminded of the strange person, place, or thing that cthulhia and queue once insisted I go see, somewhere in Boston proper, without telling me what it was. And now I cannot recall the location of this curious entity. My out-loud recollection sparked the interest of magid, who started listing random bizarre objects lying around Boston she knows about until I confessed that I really had no idea.

Then we went to see MacBeth but it was canceled because a lead actor was sick and without understudy. Next week, instead.

I couldn't have asked for a better weekend. Thanks to everyone I mentioned in the last several entries, and alsoqueue, Kit, and magid. And queue's hat. You all rock, and so does Boston. (I told Boston this, at the end of the fireworks.)

After helping them cheer for the fuzzy, fuzzy cthulhia, who unfortunatley could not hear us from her place in the parade due to the tintinabulation all around, the hat and I made our solitary way to N&M's, where a Circle N member, posted on the front steps specifically to watch for visitors while the masters of Morgul were out buying burritos, failed to recognize me due to the giant hat consuming most of my head. I also didn't really recognize her, though I had no excuse. (Actually, I used the hat as an excuse as well, though we all knew that was pretty lame.) Then Noah rounded the corner, and we were all kind of embarrassed. Blah! But it was OK. The four of us killed Dr. Lucky and stopped Devil Bunny (I also got to hear the My Life With The Thrill Kill Cult song about devil bunnies -- more pointers dereferenced), and then the remainder of CircN dropped by, and much out-hanging was had until things got all palindromic around midnight.

The T ride home was the drunkest ever, though given the wide variety of drunk people the world has to offer, I could have done far worse than those sharing the car with me home. Lame, but happy, not hostile.

Tomorrow promises to be filled with not just more shoulder-rubbing with my wacky pals, but full-on world collision as representatives from circles N and J(s) might meet for the first time. I'm a little nervous, though I know it'll all be good.