The Great Karnak

I have placed in an envelope, sealed in a number five mayonnaise jar underneath Funk and Wagnall's porch, the name of the person who I believe will be running filk next year at Duckon. I hope that I'm wrong. Not because he/she would do a bad job, but because he/she does not deserve the amount of bad karma and tsuris that will devolve upon the person in the position.

Check back with me later and I'll open the envelope. :)

Much later.

The Great Karnak

I have placed in an envelope, sealed in a number five mayonnaise jar underneath Funk and Wagnall's porch, the name of the person who I believe will be running filk next year at Duckon. I hope that I'm wrong. Not because he/she would do a bad job, but because he/she does not deserve the amount of bad karma and tsuris that will devolve upon the person in the position.

Check back with me later and I'll open the envelope. :)

Much later.

Blasted (In the Past)

The air conditioner failed a few weeks ago. I believe I mentioned it here. Since it had been failing about once a year for some time due to a coolant leak, we decided it was finally time to replace it. Since it had never really cooled the second floor adequately, we decided to take the advice of our friendly HVAC guy and take a look at having an auxiliary unit installed for the sole purpose of cooling the second floor.

This meant he needed to take a look at the attic from the garage access. Unfortunately, the entrance was blocked by a pile of boxes that we put there in 1996 when we moved in. They were unstacked a few years ago when daisy_knotwise and jeff_duntemann went through them -- most of the boxes having come from Mrs. Duntemann's old home where the two of them grew up -- but after being unstacked and examined, they were restacked in the corner for future consideration. And now they needed to be moved. But where to?

Well, we'd just cleaned out the library so catalana's fiancee, Steve, could sleep there after Duckon. So with a mighty wince at the thought of recluttering the library, we hauled all of the boxes in there.

Three of the boxes were actually my stuff. Today, I finished emptying the first of these. It contained:

A 1982 St. Louis Globe-Democrat celebrating the Cardinals' World Series win

My old shortwave radio

A Varian print of my story, The Great Guano Gap. Since that's still available on line (much to my surprise!), I pitched it.

My Cub Scout scrapbook.

Articles about the Mascoutah chess team and scoresheets from four of the five games that I played in the state tournament the year that we won.

Three high school yearbooks

A blank ditto master

And a ludicrously large collection of rejection slips from about 35 years ago when I tried submitting to the SF magazines.

Boy, there's nothing like reading through that many rejection slips (almost all form letters) to make you want to just burn the pile. But instead, I've filed the stories and rejection slips away for my daughters to find some day.

Because, you know, I'm a lot better writer now than I was 35 years ago.

And I might yet try it again.

In my copious spare time. :)

Blasted (In the Past)

The air conditioner failed a few weeks ago. I believe I mentioned it here. Since it had been failing about once a year for some time due to a coolant leak, we decided it was finally time to replace it. Since it had never really cooled the second floor adequately, we decided to take the advice of our friendly HVAC guy and take a look at having an auxiliary unit installed for the sole purpose of cooling the second floor.

This meant he needed to take a look at the attic from the garage access. Unfortunately, the entrance was blocked by a pile of boxes that we put there in 1996 when we moved in. They were unstacked a few years ago when daisy_knotwise and jeff_duntemann went through them -- most of the boxes having come from Mrs. Duntemann's old home where the two of them grew up -- but after being unstacked and examined, they were restacked in the corner for future consideration. And now they needed to be moved. But where to?

Well, we'd just cleaned out the library so catalana's fiancee, Steve, could sleep there after Duckon. So with a mighty wince at the thought of recluttering the library, we hauled all of the boxes in there.

Three of the boxes were actually my stuff. Today, I finished emptying the first of these. It contained:

A 1982 St. Louis Globe-Democrat celebrating the Cardinals' World Series win

My old shortwave radio

A Varian print of my story, The Great Guano Gap. Since that's still available on line (much to my surprise!), I pitched it.

My Cub Scout scrapbook.

Articles about the Mascoutah chess team and scoresheets from four of the five games that I played in the state tournament the year that we won.

Three high school yearbooks

A blank ditto master

And a ludicrously large collection of rejection slips from about 35 years ago when I tried submitting to the SF magazines.

Boy, there's nothing like reading through that many rejection slips (almost all form letters) to make you want to just burn the pile. But instead, I've filed the stories and rejection slips away for my daughters to find some day.

Because, you know, I'm a lot better writer now than I was 35 years ago.

And I might yet try it again.

In my copious spare time. :)