sundries

No major re-writes! Also my editor is awesome and thoughtful and willing to take the material as seriously as I do. It's great.

On the other hand, the Internet at home is broken and may not be fixed until Sunday. I've finally stopped freaking out about it, but Not Cool.

SAG got money out of Enchanted for me. How satisfying. That whole thing was so ugly.

I've applied for two Guide positions at About.com, which as many of you know was my employer back in the previous millenium. I don't know how they feel about an ex-employee being a guide, or even if they got my guide apps as the confirmation emails never came (and weren't even in my spam box), but it would be a good step towards yet more freedom for me. I've applied in both the dance and celiac areas, but I suspect I am more qualified for the dance one.

Madeleine L'Engle

Publisher's Weekly reports Madeleine L'Engle has died.

A Wrinkle in Time was one of those books that snuck onto the required Hewitt summer reading book list that somehow wasn't about a brave and well-mannered girl facing the elements with the help of wolves. Okay, the reading lists weren't that bad, but they tended to make my brain burn in the not good way.

At any rate, I read that book young, and my recollections of it and my ability to place it in the context of my life are somewhat vague.

But I do remember all the creepy children bouncing the balls in exactly the same way and the boy who couldn't do it right who was hollered at and had to be hidden inside. I may not be remembering it right, but that's what's stuck with me nonetheless. Hide the awkward! It was like this incredible confirmation to me of yes, this is what the world was, and yes, I was what people hated in it. The complexity of children is rooted in the simple and how you play dodgeball matters.

At that time, I had a friend from summer camp named Meg. And when I met her, with blond pigtails braids and her gigantic eyes (thanks to trifocals) that moved back and forth all the time (she was born with cataracts and her eyes had learnt to constantly try to look around them) like a shark, I immediately thought this is Meg from that book just as I always pictured her! How could that be?

It turned out my father worked with her father and we had met before, but it took us years to figure this out and a bit of a Heavenly Creatures horror show of a friendship.

Just a few weeks ago, stevefava and I got explaining a tesseract to someone.

Books prevail and pervade.