Mortaine’s Blog

I sent “The Perfume Bottle” to Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction contest.

I spent $115 on Florentine stationery yesterday.

Yes, I am a total nerd. No, I’m not even a little sorry about it. I love this stationery, and everyone who sees it compliments me on it.

So, I joined a writing listserve recently, and I have to say that all they seem to talk about is politics. Clearly, I’m just “not getting it.” I even remarked on that when pointing out that someone’s crit of a snippet I’d posted was, frankly, sucky (a one-word crit is not a crit), and several people jumped to the defense, that politics interest writers and are therefore on-topic.

Sorry, but cross-stitching interests writers, too, but I wouldn’t consider it on-topic. From what I’ve seen, the fastest way to kill an online writing list is to allow unfettered political and religious debate.

On the other hand, this list claims to have been going for about 20 years now, so I don’t know– maybe it works.

OK, I was all set to post a bitchy little whine about how I just broke my headphones (grrr– the ones I like). When my boss called with the weirdest assignment I’ve ever been given.

More later in a protected post.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned lately how much I detest the Motorola two-way walkie talkie phones. In particular, I hate the chirping noise they make, because they don’t just make it when the call comes through, but rather for each transaction of the conversation. So, if you had a standard “Hi, hello, how are you, just fine, Joe” type of chat, the chirping would happen every time the other guy was about to say something, no matter how inconsequential and banal that something is.

I’ve been hearing it all day long here at work, and it leads me to suspect that the person using it does not realize he has a phone on his desk that could be used instead of the chirpy-thing. I only hope he’s visiting from one of the other offices and will be going back soon.

I just wanted to let you all know about , which is a community where we’ll be reading one book a month (together, as a community) in 2004.

If you’re a reader (like me), and you’ve been thinking “Gee, how can I get more reading done?” then come on over and read with us. I know some of you joined the as well, but you should know that this community doesn’t preclude the other– they complement each other nicely, as takes care of one of the 4 books each month that you should be reading this year.

Just thought you should all know. I know there are a lot of readers and would-be readers (especially folks who might want to read “great books” for a change!) on my Friends list!