This is where we separate the women from the men.

That actually doesn't mean anything, or if it does, it's open to interpretation and I'll let you have your own. I can report with certainty though, the kind of certainty that only large heavy boxes stacked so thick you can't see the far walls of the rooms can provide, that we have moved. The Earth has quaked, the tides have ebbed and crashed, the polar bear has frolicked with the wildebeest, people tossed a football around while lots of people watched, some girl somewhere bought patchouli and made a sign protesting war with Iraq, some girl somewhere bought markers and signboard and made a sign protesting patchouli girls, the world kept on turn, turn, turning, Michael Jackson took a deep breath and WE MOVED. We moved.

We live in boxland, but we moved. We required the help of our good friends and saints Melendra and Joe Sutliff Sanders, who didn't even grumble when they showed up and we weren't close to done packing up our beloved possessions and other junk. We made good use of the lanky uber-youths that my mother brought from the country to bring the muscle. And we moved.

Soon, George will come back to live with us, as soon as Box-Land has diminished and gone into the West and become a place with Four Visible Walls in Every Room That Has Four Visible Walls. Or about a week. And I will go to movies and catch up on workshop (two reviews already and it's so nice reading what everyone has been working on while I've been Paint Girl) and write again and things will be like life.

Happy sigh.

Thoughts of boxes.

Trepidacious sigh.

But the worst is over.

Did I mention we had to go out yesterday and look in consignment stores and get a new bed? Yes, the old bed didn't survive the move and we have a nice one now that's hardly visible beneath the mountain of extra soft bedding I bought as a treat after the horrendous Saturday move of doom. But all is well. Except for the horrendous bruise on the bottom of my foot where I stepped on the old bed frame last night. But, still, all is much better.

Now we just have to figure out how to set up the new DSL service, if such a thing is possible with our new provider and our configuration of technological equipment. Richard, be on stand-by; we'll probably have to call for advice. (Uh, wait a minute, aren't I the advice columnist here?) Technical consulation, I mean.

I'm reading The Fellowship of the Ring, finally, and I'm pretty sure I only remember reading some bits of it when I was a kid. I figured I should at least make a shot at reading the whole thing, now that I'm all growed up and the aforementioned J. Sutliff Sanders is teaching a class on it (which Peter Beagle is making an appearance at, natch) and got me excited about reading it even if I'm not in the class. I could really do without the Tom Bombadil singing Lady Snaggleberry stuff though. At least, I could until Christopher pointed out that it works way better if you read Tom B. as a rapper and did a rendition of "I'm Tom Bombadil, Tom Bombadillo" which you will just have to improvise in your heads. There was much laughter.

The only bad thing about our new place so far is that the ice scraping truck came at oh, 2:30 a.m. to scrape very loudly and with painstaking precision the parking lot of the post office for what seemed like fucking eternity. I could have done without that, but I'm hoping he only does it when there's snow.

There's an awesome review of the Ideomancer Unbound anthology, which you should all go buy because Christopher Rowe has a story in it the reviewer describes as a "brief, beautiful American myth." Kristin, it even has a dragon. (To see the review you have to scroll down the list of publication until you hit Ideomancer Unbound; I couldn't get the direct link to work.)

And speaking of good reviews and (lately) Joe S.S., he and I are mentioned in the same sentence in this review of The Journal of Pulse-Pounding Narratives. He gets a "nicely written" complement and I get to be "ultracool," or at least my story does.

(promotional digressions aside)

Christopher sent me this photo, which is pretty damn funny and has probably been in all your inboxes months ago but you never know till you look, right?

I still love Janeane Garofalo, as much for her anti-war efforts as anything, even though I do think celebrities have to prove they know what the hell they're talking about when they climb out on these limbs. And. They. Should. Even though hair and lighting and politics actually have a lot to do with one another.

So, China doesn't want to take credit for America. Figures.

I kid. Off to enjoy my yummy sushi lunch and oh, if you get time, can you stop by and unpack some boxes? Thanks.