Miscellany, and general Catching Up

I keep letting this blog slip... Terrible, really... Poor thing must get so lonely.

So:
At the end of last month, my boss popped into London's Forbidden Planet to see Stephen Donaldson and get his latest book (Fatal Revenant, of 'The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant') signed. I invited myself along, to watch her turn into a giggly fangirl. In the end, all she did was gush a little, but even that was fun to watch.

The next day, we bounded off to Milton Keynes for Collectormania and I, personally, found it so disappointing that I've set a dangerous precident... I bought nothing, while she bought lots. Being a Sunday, the CentreMK branch of The Entertainer wasn't open - they being part of the 'Keep Sunday Special' brigade - and even browsing M&S for a new winter jacket yielded no purchases. Why can I never find anything in Small? I did buy a six pack each of A&W's Cream Soda and Root Beer, along with some sweets... but nothing from the show.

I've come up with a detailed outline for a new short story (hurrah!) which should actually be short (my last first attempt at a short story in recent years was quite long... my second topped 30,000 words, and my third has been on indefinite hold for the last three years or so having topped 30K while still mostly in note form). I'm pretty certain this one is going to be the first in my secondary cycle... which may end up being finished first. It certainly felt good to come up with such a complete concept, and it all happened while I was half asleep in bed.

Work has been bonkers. Nothing new there, but the sheer scale of staff turnover lately has been staggering. Two editors have resigned in the last month... One moving on to bigger and better things, the other taking a well-earned break and considering her options in this big, wide world. There is more... but I'm too tired to go into it right now.

In other news, there was a disturbing rumour circulating at work this morning... later confirmed as more than mere rumour... My cyberstalker of old apparently made a pass at one of our gay salesmen at a leaving do for one of our Copy Controllers a couple of years back. Scary...

On a similarly weird note, I was rooting around in my drawers at home the other night, and came across a printout of an email exchange I had with a female colleague about three years ago (symptomatic of the rumours that circulated about me at the time), and an apologetic letter from her mother which accompanied the return of a book I loaned her that she lost. I giggled over both briefly, then threw them away...