N random things make an entry

1. I am renaming Sampo. It's now going to be Copper Mountain. This is partly because I think the latter is a better title in several ways but also because I secretly harbor hopes that Copper Mountain is a better-behaved book than Sampo. (So secretly that I put it on the internet! So: big secret. Don't tell anyone. Shhhh.) If you catch me making the wrong reference, please do poke and correct me.

2. Waking me unusually early (for me, which is late for many of you -- 5:15 a.m.) is apparently a good way to get random jobs done. This morning I washed out the utensil catch-all drawer in the kitchen, the one with stuff like the potato ricer, stuff we don't use all that often. This is the sort of job for which you have to take personal satisfaction, because nobody else is going to care whether your utensil catch-all drawer is clean. Even, you suspect, the other people who use it.

You also suspect that the second person may have been an inappropriate choice for these sentences.

3. Minnesotan lesson for the day: "He/she has other fine qualities," means, "I care about this person, but the trait under discussion drives me up the standard-issue cliched wall." This is not the equivalent of "bless his/her heart," but I'm not sure we have an equivalent of that. I did describe someone this week by saying, "She has a good heart when she remembers to use it," which is perhaps not the highest praise anyone has ever issued but not the biggest condemnation either.

4. I was opening my new(-to-me -- actually old -- but not used) Boiled in Lead CD, my third-to-last Christmas present of the year, and the (Minnesotan) record company postcard dealie that's often in them said, "We think you will find this not unlistenable." I love this state so much. Not unlistenable. That is a thing of beauty, is what that is. That is so Minnesotan it nearly hurts. Not unlistenable. Eeee.

5. I got my next-to-last Christmas present of the year yesterday. I think maybe I will get my last one today. That'd be good.

6. Travel is all a-tangle. Stay tuned.

Week of January 14-20

Two acceptances, two rejections. Not bad.

Also, I must have been a very, very good writergirl, because my next book has a peasant uprising in it. I love peasant uprisings. I am just irrationally fond of them. I just have to figure out what Lover #2 does other than being a miller and a baker.* I mean, not that people who bake aren't automatically just plain fascinating, but there's something else. It tickles in the corner of my brain, on the opposite bit from where the librettist and composer live. And the protag doesn't know what it is, but then she doesn't even know about the cook's proto-socialist connections to begin with, so there's no use relying on her for any of this stuff. I will sneak up on it sideways while they're not-fighting** about her departure for the palace and see if it helps.

Oh, oh, there's another body exerting gravitational pull on him. I will sit very quietly and see if I can deduce what it is by the shape of the deformation of his orbit.

Girl. Lab. You know the drill.

*I mean what he does other than being the Orvokki for this book. Not that his name is Orvokki, but that he is the one who is sensible throughout, which no one else is, entirely, although the protag tries a good deal harder than anyone in Thermionic Night and Copper Mountain ever did. (See how casually I called it that? Just like it had been named that all along? I tell you what: if it actually works and Sampo is noticeably better-behaved as Cu Mt., I will tell those of you who are parents, and you can start referring to your adolescents as Morris and Cynthia when they get uppity. Unless you actually did name them Morris and Cynthia, in which case you're on your own.)

**Yes, they have the kind of relationship where they have not-fights. Very quiet, courteous not-fights.