I'm taking a week of vacation from work and flying to Oregon on Thursday to spend the weekend at a small writer's retreat at the Sylvia Beach Hotel with about twenty or thirty other writers and their spouses/SOs. Devon Monk organized it, and of course Kent will be there, as well as a number of my Clarion alums. I'm really looking forward to this, since I've never been to Oregon, and the hotel is supposed to be really incredible. Each room is decorated in the theme of a different famous writer such as Melville, Austen, Poe, and Hemmingway to name a few. And of course Kent will be there, so I'm looking forward to that as well! (We're sharing the Melville room.)

So we're all coming from different parts of the country, all arriving on Thursday, but the funny thing is that purely without planning it, we're ending up on some of the same flights. I'm flying from New Orleans to Minneapolis to Portland, and I found out that not only is Tamela also on the Minneapolis/Portland flight, she's two seats away from me! Woo! Plus Kent is going straight to Portland from a work-related conference in Orlando, changing planes in Dallas--and Chiara and Sunish are going to be on the Dallas/Portland flight with him. But I guess there aren't all that many flights into Portland on a given day, so only natural that we should end up on the same flights. Still, it's kinda neat. (Okay, so I'm easily amused.)

Yesterday I'd decided that since it looked like the weather was going to continue to be gorgeous, I was going to take my dog and go to the Slidell park and run around with him and play with him some. Let him get out of the yard and stretch his legs a bit. But then I ran into one of the dog boys and told him what I was planning, and he told me that dogs weren't allowed at Slidell Park. Well bummer. But he suggested some soccer fields on the other side of town that might give us some nice open space to play in. So this afternoon I put Zeus's doggie seat belt on him, loaded him into the car and set out. To my disappointment though, the soccer fields had chains across the driveways, and signs saying "Private Property No Trespassing." Plus the park at that end of town had a big "No Dogs" sign as well. We ended up driving around for about 45 minutes, and even tried the Tammany Trace, which is a riding/walking/cycling trail--but it too had a no dogs sign. Totally frustrating. I ended up just taking him home and walking him around the block. I can't believe there's no place to go and play with a dog in this town. I know that there are a lot of parks that allow dogs; Audubon Park in New Orleans does, but of course I'm not going to drive all the way to New Orleans just to play with my dog. I just wish I could find someplace a bit closer.

I finally finished a new story, tentatively titled "Shroedinger's Hummingbird." This is one that I've been poking at on and off since about January, and you have no idea what a relief it is to finally finish it. I've been seriously unproductive on the writing front lately. I've only written three stories since Clarion. One needs massive work still, one is a short-short that's making the rounds (and recently got rejected by Asimov's) and now finally this one.

So it doesn't look like I'm going to be submitting to S&S this year. I did have one story that I'd considered sending, but I submitted it to the Avon anthology way back in January, and I still haven't heard back on it. And I've already mentioned how pathetic my writing output has been. But, oh well, there's always next year, and there are other anthologies. I feel like I'm starting to get that hunger back though that I had so much of last year. I'm writing down story ideas again, and spending more time at the library with my laptop. The Slidell library is a very nice one, and I've found a little quiet area with couches and tables, with a plug for my laptop. I'm even beginning to make more notes for the novel that I started a few weeks ago and then let fizzle. I'm bringing my laptop with me this weekend, and while I don't really expect to spend a great deal of time writing, I do want to at least make notes and do some outlining. I'm going to be in the air for over six hours, so I'll have plenty of time for that!