Tad Williams

So we did dinner for 17 people. A touch ambitious, non? or at least, requiring multo hard work. A whole week's worth, actually. I found I wanted to be distracted during the holidays. It was lovely people and lovely company – plus it was also precious time with Tad and the kids. But I have much energy at the moment (owing to yoga) and I find that what I need of Xmas is for it to be over. I'm not a grouch, it's just I need to get back to writing in order to feel myself again.

Here's this incredible "Big Asteroid Impact" video, about to go all over the web –

Happy New Year! Jesus – what a year!

I lie back in my lover’s arms and say, “Talk to me, darling… of red herrings.” At least I intend to when he gets up: I’m fretting about them in the new Odfarm. It’s about 1 in the afternoon and the lover in question is in bed, trying to sleep off a virus – looks like he’s got a cold – poor man.

I frickin hate getting older.

That was a killer line, I was running away with that, but then I got a number of phone calls I was obliged to answer because it’s the kids’ playdates. And I ended up thinking, one thing I might just grip about in the blog – Interruption, the multi-form beast that stalks the home office.

Yesterday was my birthday and the reason I hate getting older is, for the first time, really, I’ve been feeling it physically in ways I can’t overcome. I just frickin hate it.

But I had a loverly time. We went to see Milk. It was extraordinary. I just want to see it again, instantly, right now.

So my daughter is screaming at me and I am circling the island, I mean the thing in the kitchen that gave me a big insight because I saw how it’s truly like: you make a shrine there. Heaps of crap, yeah, but some powerful stuff in between, like the photo of my daughter that cuts off the top of her head but is still total attitude. And the wine. And the Buddha. And the flowers. Daughter is still yelling in my ear, and I am yelling right back, except I left the kitchen for the office so I could type this. What the yelling translates to is, by degrees we are learning to take a shower then leave the bathroom moderately cleaned up for the next person. I hope.

The Dogly One fixed the connection. Man, it took a preposterous amount of time, like, 5 days. I mean, each time it goes down, it’s that sort of time-frame. We sorely feel the need of some office staff, I’m tellin’ ya.

I am resolved to follow a more twitter-like dimension in the blog. So here it is, raw and happening. Man. Oh! We are HUUUGE fans of Flight of the Conchords. Check this out ---

That’s a Brit-inflected sound of extreme frustration. We have had no web connection for several days now and we limpalong, getting not very much done one way or another. It’s frustrating because there is SO MUCH to get done. Tad is a hero: right now, on the other side of the office, he’s putting his all into fixing things. It’s part of the perils of living in a rural area. Right now it’s pissing me off hugely. And him. He’s been on the phone repeatedly for two bloody, bloody days.

We’ve just go back from Daughter of the Household’s concert – her last holidays concert at her elementary school. All those sweet-faced kids, piping along to a very jolly piano accompaniment. It was simply exquisitely beautiful. It was also a draughty and bum-aching experience, the Cal. weather being unusually chilly.

We have put much work, these past weeks, into revising this site and deciding things we want to do with it. Fingers crossed, there’ll be a new home page soon, it’s been bloody forever. After that, the News page, hopefully. But we’ve been thinking mostly about web presence, and what to make for that. So there’ll be more going on with this stuff sometime in the New Year. I promise you a newly worked web site, plum-pudding-stuffed with embarrassments from Tad’s life. Mm, think I meant ‘embarrassments of riches’ there.

We've been busy. That's why there hasn't been anything for a few. I didn't mean to stop blogging, but things got a bit intense in other areas of life.

I've squabbled with Himself, the One who's bloody slow with writing his blog. I want him to write more.

I want also to be writing more myself, but it's all been slowed down by getting the front page of the website redesigned, and the frame of mind it cast me into, which is: I can get creative and stay in my bubble, OR I can get things sorted. But I can't do both. I don't want to beat myself up. Also: Here Be Kids.

Anyway, we've all but sold Tad's new novels. I'll put something up on the site about them soon.