So after getting up and doing some rewriting on the fantasy novel – some good comes of this! – I try going back to bed. No joy. Can’t get comfortable.

Happens sometimes. Been happening way too much of late.

I decide to try sleeping in the recliner in the living room for a while. For some reason, after I do that, I can usually go right to sleep in my bed.

And when I get up to move, what do I find but a dead mouse.

In my bed.

Right where I was lying.

*Urk*

So the bed’s been changed, the bedclothes are soaking forever in Clorox 2 and laundry detergent, I’ve had a weird-o’clock in the morning shower, my restful night’s sleep is completely shot in the ass, and the cats are in unprecedented disgrace.

I’m thinking of replacing them with Horrid Japanese Robot Pets.

Now I’m doing the only sensible thing: playing exceedingly violent video games and watching SportsCenter until I recover enough equanimity to get some damn sleep.

Tomorrow is going to be … trying. Stay tuned.

As we frequently do of a Saturday morn my BFF Joe and I met for breakfast at our favorite Village Inn on Menaul east of University. As we ate and talked some people came in talking excitedly about all the police and emergency vehicles across the street at the hotel. I glanced out the window – we were in a booth on the east side of the building, near the front – but saw nothing interesting.

But people kept peering out and getting more and more interested in what was going on. I looked around a while later and saw a whole fleet of police vehicles on the east side of the hotel and in the parking lot across the side street. I also commented on the presence of the Hazmat truck.

Then the big white evidence van turned into the side street.

I went to the bathroom. When I returned Joe told me about fifteen guys in body armor and camouflage, toting assault rifles, had just trotted into the building. There were some other dudes in battledress hanging around a white SUV, which I took for their equipment truck. They were there the whole time.

So, things were getting more and more intriguing. News camerapersons from somewhere set up a camera on a tripod on our (north) side of the street.

Joe went and suggested to the manage that he draw the front shades – in case some crazy decided he wasn’t getting enough attention and tried targeting people sitting by the windows. Not much happened as a result of that. Possibly the police advised it was unnecessary, as we found later.

Joe and I didn’t, you know, move away from the window or anything. The walls, I believe, are nice and comforting brick. If high-velocity metal particulate pollution got to be an issue, we could get on the floor. It’s nothing I haven’t done before, but that’s another story.

Westbound traffic backed up on Menaul. The cops were diverting people through the VI parking lot – in one entrance, around the back, and out the other.  This didn’t seem the best solution, and in reasonably short order somebody wised up and blocked the street a block east, where there was an actual street to send people up.

We were thinking about leaving when the manager came by to tell us the police had sealed the perimeter and were asking everybody to stay inside. As in not leave.

We also found out that Joe’s leading surmise was correct: some suicidal guy had forted himself up in there. (If you want to off yourself, a proven and reliable way to do it is to lock yourself inside your house, apartment, or hotel room, call 911, and say you’re not coming out. For some reason that inspires the police to rush over and kill you.)

So we sat there a while watching what we could see. Which wasn’t, in truth, much. The Camo Dudes continued to hang out by the toybox truck. The hotel maintenance staff (we guessed from their matching blue shirts, anyway) came to hang out near the camera crew on our side of the street.

It looked as if we could be there a while. These standoffs can go on for a long time. Especially if the guy shot himself early on and the police negotiator was going to spend the next sixteen hours trying to talk his cooling corpse into surrendering (“Don’t do it, Charlie! It isn’t worth it!”). Which happens.

I got to regretting I hadn’t set up my TracFone to communicate with Twitter. VI doesn’t have public WiFi, and anyway my netbook was in the car, where I couldn’t go get it. So, no live bulletins from the front lines: sorries. I did eventually text my friend Larry.

A cop came in and spoke to a manager. Suddenly people started queuing up at the cash register. Sure enough, the manager turned up to say we were cleared to go. But we were supposed to leave by the east entrance, and turn left, for some reason.

We decided to wait until the line got shorter. We got talking again. Finally it struck me we might want to move out while the moving was good. Our chance to leave could be merely a window, which could close promptly if things suddenly hit the fan.

So off we went. As I was paying Joe talked to a manager. It turned out the guy in whose honor they were holding the standoff was in a room on the south side of the hotel, facing away from us, which was why the police decided to let us go.

As we exited the coffee shop the negotiator was yelling at the forted-up guy on a loudspeaker. Guess he wasn’t answering his room phone. Possibly because he was, I don’t know, dead?

At any rate I noticed a lot of what seemed plain old citizens loitering around the front entrance. Which didn’t seem that great an idea. First of all, police have been known to be mistaken about things like where their target actually is. Or how well contained he is – meaning he might have moved without anybody noticing.

Also, contrary to what you hear endlessly in the media and see on all the cop-porn TV dramas, not all cops handle their weapons particularly well. If shooting broke out we weren’t necessarily immune to catching a stray one even on the supposedly wrong side of the building, and in any event the other direction from the presumed perp. There’s always the happy prospect of accidental discharge when some eager beaver is trotting around with his finger on his M-4′s trigger and the safety off.

So we hustled out of there without our usual ceremonial 10-15 minutes of fat-chewing in the parking lot. (Joe and I like to talk. We’re good at it.) Fortunately by this time they’d reopened Menaul and were allowing us to use both exits from the parking lot.

So ended our Great Coffee House Siege of ’10. And, just a note, none of this was remotely the fault of Village Inn or the restaurant’s personnel and management. Who are really nice people and have been super solicitous about me since my little health faux pas earlier in the year. They’re not responsible for what goes on across the damn street. That’s why I restrained my initial impulse to give this post a cutesy title like The Village Inn-cident. There is too such a thing as bad publicity.

When I got home, after a side trip to Costco – where, in total, I’ve spent upwards of $200 in the last two weeks (drat you, Emma Dog, for refusing to learn not to eat!) – naturally my first action was to hop online and try to get the details on what as going on, and how (and whether) the standoff had been resolved.

And guess what? Nada. On the usually-reliable KOAT-TV website the closest thing I could find was a bit on a freaking bear invasion.

And … this is odd. The situation must’ve started no later than about 11 AM – we got out around 12:30 PM, if memory serves (and remember, it doesn’t always.) It’s now 2:24 PM in the Mountain West. And the damn bears are still the “top story” over to KOAT.

Then again, sometimes incidents that ought to be fairly major news … get flushed, somehow. Are never heard about. I know this from personal experience. Still, I can’t imagine the local news not eventually saying something about so major a flap in the middle of Albuquerque.

Then again, we shall see.

And that’s why I haven’t gotten anything constructive done today! It’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it.

You thought I was kidding, didn't you? Again.

It was brought to our Christmas meeting tonight by the incomparable Patricia Rogers – if you know her, that’s an of course – who had found it in a bargain bin in Target, of all places. Patricia has a great many gifts. An infallible affinity for the weird is definitely among them.

As well as the usual suspects, Melinda Snodgrass fell by for a few minutes at the beginning of the meeting. As always it was fun hanging with her.

Along with showing various short Christmas films (the rest were Rifftrax) tonight’s meeting was the occasion of our Annual Dessert Cook-Off. The “challenge ingredient” this year was coffee.

There were a number of wonderful goodies, both with coffee and without. I thought of adding some coffee to my red chile pumpkin soup, but desisted on the strong suspicion it would be vomitous. Despite containing brown sugar the soup’s not really a dessert; I brought it because, well, people kept asking me to. Which was quite flattering.

Unfortunately, and despite the fact that Randi Tinkham was kind and generous enough to lug her crock-pot all the way down from  Santa Fe for me to warm the soup in, the stuff stayed ice-cold throughout most of the meeting. Some brave souls ate it cold. It’s not bad that way; it’s just better hot.

I didn’t win anything – as I dolefully predicted halfway through the meeting, the soup indeed got hot just about the time to wrap thigns up – but I didn’t really expect to. Under the circumstances more than I expected got eaten

When I was transferring the soup back to my kettle from the crock-pot I somehow managed to slop some onto the counter and onto me. Wonderful. Fortunately it wasn’t hot enough to napalm my legs.

However, on the way home I had to stop off to buy cat food at Wally World. As I went hit the bright lights inside I realized to my horror that I totally looked as if I had yarped all over my lower pants legs and shoes.

Then I consoled myself with the realization I was almost certainly not the only person in Wal-Mart at 10:30 on Friday night who looked as if they’d thrown up on their shoes. But I was the only one who looked that way and hadn’t.

We now conclude this evening’s presentation of TMI Theater…

Update: Snapshot of tonight’s SF club meeting:

Woman: Did you just say, “Shit, I’m a banana,” in German?

Me: Yes. Yes, I did.

Of course, given that we’ll be lucky if it gets above freezing at all today, we’ll be lucky, I’d have to be crazy to go.

Big tree for big fun.

And of course, I’m nothing if not crazy. I haven’t missed one of these puppies yet. I don’t intend to start now.

Besides, if you love Christmas like I love Christmas, it’s a wonderful time indeed, with lights and music and festive shops and happy crowds. I look forward to it the whole year.

Be there or be … warm!

I love those. I can totally see that happening. It’s a benevolent use of technology – facilitating easy yet meaningful kindness. (And as a technophile and optimist who loads his fiction with dire and doomful uses of technology, I’m a real sucker for things like that.)

Well, here’s a chance for you to help a human Cat, stranded in Germany by Expedia fuckery.

My friend, Midwestern SF and horror writer Elizabeth Donald, alerted me to the situation with this Tweet:

Anyone who’s got a few bucks, chip in at http://tinyurl.com/yjedqlm to help out @catvalente, who is stranded in Germany by Expedia.

The link takes you to The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, an online novel by Catherynne M. Valente, our strandee. You can scroll down to the Donate button, or hit this link where it’s easier to find.

Please consider helping Ms. Valente out. It’s a brutal situation to be in.

I don’t personally know Cat Valente. We have a number of writer friends in common, who hold her in extremely high esteem. I figure: she’s one of us. The Great Science Fiction and Fantasy Extended Family. I wasn’t able to donate much to the cause. I’m doing what I can to spread the word.

Please think about doing likewise. It’s an easy good thing to do, spreading the word. In all truth I believe that in voluntary community lies the hope of our survival.

And please, don’t let me hear any more static about Twitter being useless. It can be a waste of time. I waste too much time there.  But it has many powerful uses. This has been one.

Thanks!

Best not mess with Jules Verne Space Girl

(Photo credit: Tyerva)

We’re in the final stretch and I’ve had fun. Did a panel on NM in SF and fantasy, then the Mass Autographing. Got to see many good friends, fans and pros, including Connie Willis, Melinda Snodgrass and Jayné Franck. Thanks to Busted Flush being out I had plenty of signing to do. Though not as much as the table where George RR Martin, S.M. Stirling, and Diana Gabaldon were sitting. I cleverly chose my spot at the table next to theirs in hopes of getting overflow. Which didn’t work, but I had a fair amount of traffic anyway.

One person brought pretty much the whole Guardians series to get signed. Others commented on how cute my Asus EEE netbook PC is, on which I was live-Tweeting the signing. The high point, though, was when a gentleman from the ENMU Library presented a copy of Cybernetic Shogun for signing, and pointed out the stamp that showed it came from the personal collection of the late, great Jack Williamson. Which made me feel very honored.

Went home to give Emma’s bladder a break and clean up for the masquerade. Got back and did dinner at the hotel restaurant with Steve Stirling, just returned from a publicity tour for his latest, The Sword of the Lady: A Novel of the Change, as well as his wife Jan and John Jos. Miller. Just managed to get loose in time to check in before the masquerade began.

Masquerade went great this year. Possibly the largest ever. We always get a surprising number of cool and well-done costumes, and this year was no exception. It could be pretty well summed up: Steampunk and zombies. Both of which are fine with me; zombies are the con’s theme this year, and I really enjoy the Steampunk aesthetic. Even the Joker had Steampunk accessories – plus zombie minions.

Winners included the Joker crew for Best Presentation; a fairly little kid in a very impressive Warhammer 40K Space Marine suit; and the lovely Patricia Rogers as Jules Verne Space Girl. Best of Show, and a surprisingly easy call, I’m guessing, was a Steampunk group entry called Ariel’s Bodyguard. It was done by brother and sister Jennifer and Jacob Senn, college kids now, plus friends and some new junior Senns I suspect are younger siblings. The Senn kids have been doing fine costumes for years; they topped themselves this time out.

I’m very happy with my turn as MC. I felt as if I were on, the audience responded well – groaning theatrically at my jokes – and I got a lot of compliments, which is always nice. So, a good show all around, and I’m pleased to’ve done my part.

Hung out with Steve and Kathy Kubica, Dawn Barela, and Andy Riddle while they ate a late dinner at Fuddrucker’s near the hotel. Then went back and hung around the con suite for a little while, where I got to talk some with the brilliant Albuquerque artist Harry Morris, whom I’ve known for eons. Wanted to catch Necroville plus some other shorts and trailers, presented by my Twitter buddy Adam Jarmon Brown, who co-wrote and co-starred in Necroville with the absent Billy Garberina. But – I faded. Kathy said they had the movie on DVD at home. So I bagged it and left.

And now, I’m a bit less wired mentally, and should be able to get to sleep at a fairly reasonable hour.

All I’ve got formally scheduled tomorrow is my reading, which starts at 1:40 PM, a time about as eccentric as the 35 minute length I’ve been alloted. I originally posted it was at 1, owing to misreading the schedule.

Anyway, if you’re in the Albuquerque are and interested in science fiction or fantasy, or just meeting some fun and fascinating folks, swing by. Hope to see you if I haven’t!

Comments (from vanished post):

From Ty

You failed to mention Jayne’s amazing costume.

From Victor

Did I miss a cool costume? Jayné’s always amazing. No doubt I court trouble by saying so, but she’d amaze people …