Did I mention that Gary has a room for his band?  No?  He does.  It's in a building that also has rooms for three other bands (Kramus practices there and 7 Days Away as well).  Practice time in the evenings, no problem.  Which is a good thing, for whenever Gary and Will tried to practice at home, it got on their father's nerves.  For it is loud.  Verily. 

And, the band has songs.  Nothing polished yet, but six pieces.  One of them very up and down; pop and heavy.  There are songs with screaming.

Then, this, yesterday, was the day that the high school band went and played for the local grade schools.  Will played bass drums.  Except at one school where he played around on the drum set.  No big deal, he said, he did the same thing in Middle School. 

There was a dress code for this.  Black dress pants.  He wore his skinny jeans.

I will now have to write a story.  Or a readable fragment.

This is a good thing.

According to my son, if your alternator is locked up, spray in about a can of this special break it loose lubricant and bang on the alternator over and over again with a soft metal hammer.

I'm a day ahead of everyone.  Because when I wake it is the third shift which is actually your tomorrow.  My way, today is my husband's mumblemumble birthday.  It is also our TWENTY-SIXTH anniversary.  Going prior to the official vows, we have been together for THIRTY years.  THIRTY YEARS!  Yay, us!!!1!! 

When I was going through pictures to share last week, I came across a small number from the early years we were together.  Back when I was skinny with long hair, long arms, long legs.  My dear one's comment when he looked through them.  "You look so very young." 

Maybe.  *gringrin*

I voted early this morning. After I dropped the kids off at school, and we were early enough that I missed the blockade for the front school entrance. Yay! If we're a few minutes later, I have to drop them off in the back, back where the teachers park.

So, there was one person in front of me, voting, when I walked in. I went down the line, showing my identification, signing two forms. I was the forty-ninth voter. I went into the voting booth which was a paneled table with the electronic voting machine. I viewed all the pages, made my selections, pressed the red buttons. When I left, one person had come into the room and one person was entering the building.

In celebration, I had pancakes and sausage from McDonald's which I ate with syrup, although I do not like syrup. It was a celebration so I had the syrup whether I wanted it or not.

What I am reading, or reading from, this weekend, my weekend almost past:

The December issue of "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction." I received it in the mail yesterday. I'm about halfway through the Robert Reed story. It doesn't seem to be my favorite story, but I have to be careful of Reed's work. Sometimes, the ending switches my opinion. What could be my least favorite read turns into something amazing.

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, 2008, the Twenty-first Annual Collection, edited by Ellen Datlow and Kelly Link and Gavin J.Grant. Okay, so I'm sort of skipping around in this collection, because I'd read a number of the stories last year. I did get a chance to read "The Cambist and Lord Iron; A Fairy Tale of Economics" by Daniel Abraham. That story had been available online for the reading (because it was up for a Hugo award) but I'd had a terrible time getting it to download, to download, every time I tried (and I tried half a dozen times, I'm sure). Worth the wait, oh yes, a delightful story about the economics behind, well, unusual things. (Btw, Daniel Abraham is the author of the short story, "Flat Diane," although "TC&LI" is nothing in content or style like that story.) I, also, enjoyed the Billy Collins poem. Although I had to pause and search for why the ending, what the ending, and I think I answered my own question/s. So, okay. Karen Russell's "Vampires in the Lemon Grove"....just saying I had bats in women's hair in one of my stories prior to the publication of this one and if that story ever gets published, remember I did not take an element of the Russell story and twist it into one of mine. It was always already there. This story by Russell also made it into The Best American Short Stories, 2008 edition, edited by Salman Rushdie. It's a vampire tale, but not one like any I have ever read. It isn't stereotypically a vampire tale, except...except that it is. It is about a monster. An ancient, immortal creature whose hunger is impossible to apease.

And, so, I am, also, reading fiction out of The Best American Short Stories, 2008 edition, edited by Salman Rushdie which I picked up yesterday at Hastings. I am thrilled that George Saunder's story, Puppy, is in that collection. Because when I read it last year, it had a lasting impression upon me. It isn't a pretty story, mind you, it has people in it that are stark and ugly. It compares and contrasts two different lifestyles, two very different lifestyles of women who are wives and mothers. The conclusion hits like a power punch, at least, my conclusion did. I read "Admiral" last night. Another power punch story. And, there is stories by Kevin Brockmeier, Jonathan Lethem and Alice Munro to look forward to.

Last, a novel, I am reading an advance copy of Couch by Benjamin Parzybok. It is an advance copy of the novel because I will be reviewing it. On my journal. What do you call the opening in a novel, the first 50 pages? the first 100? all the way to the middle? I have reached the first option on the opening and I am all about the protagonist and his situation. Thom, even his name is great, he's a large ogre of a man who found an apartment, but lost his girlfriend as well as his job. His two roommates are a varied sort, varied in personality and talents. They've been evicted from their apartment due to circumstances beyond their control. And, that comfy couch they've been sharing, too nice to abandon totally, they've carried to Goodwill and when Goodwill wouldn't take it, they've carried it to a secondhand store where circumstances were such that it wasn't accepted there either. Even talking about the book here, makes me want pick it up and read more of it.

And as a final note, a while back, I did finish reading, finally, Micheal Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union which was brilliant, but not really for me. And, Hannah Tinti (she had a collection of stories titled Animal Crackers that I read a few years ago), her book, The Good Thief, I liked it too, but especially the way she gathered together the opening and the middle for the fairly happy ending. Kudos.

Last night, while I was waiting for small children in costume and large children with painted faces, I searched the internet for spooky content. Not too spooky for I didn't want nightmares or bad karma, both of which are sort of the same, but not really. In my search I came across the Winchester Mystery House.

There are many wondrous things about the house besides the story behind it. There are doors that open upon air, doors that lock behind you, windows that look into rooms, fireplaces, stained glass, spider webs, the number thirteen everywhere.

As I often do, I did an image search and in my search, there, a stairway to nowhere. It is a polished wooden stairway, maybe Maple, with similar wood lining the sides. It rises upward, neverending until it reaches a wooden ceiling with a disconnected pipe. I've dreamt of stairways like that one. Strange narrow stairways rising upward, but instead of a ceiling blocking the way, there is a narrow opening in which to squeeze through. Once through the opening, there is a secret room with mysterious people, some who I may know or some that in my dream I think I know, and these people are in an exclusive club, having a informal exclusive meeting and I cannot tell whether they are happy to see me or not. It doesn't matter, I join them, glancing through fantastic literature set about the room, or pulling upon the elbow of a person with a familiar face to ask a question or two. Sometimes, that question is how to exit that secret room without having to squeeze through that tiny space over the stairway again. It seems that there is a conventional entrance and exit and I take that way even though it leads to more staircases and rooms with steps up and into odd spaces or into winding hallways or other ornate chambers where people gather and talk or tiny little rooms hidden behind a crack in the wall where I find the children playing with blankets and wooden toys, maybe a stuffed animal or a doll that is porcelain and priceless, when they all should be sound asleep.

Or treat or tricking at my house, where I received not a single child or teenager, but my street was dark and empty with no other lights on, so it must have been bypassed for richer territory.

Or maybe they heard about my lack of Twix bars.