kaleidotrope

I stayed home today, thanks largely to a bad neck crick that became real pain in the middle of night and kept me from getting back to sleep. It started on Monday, and I’m sure I just slept badly on it, but last night around four or five in the morning I must have really twisted my neck. It hurt a lot, and was still well past uncomfortable when I woke up (late). I took a shower and got dressed, thinking I’d swallow a Motrin and hope for the best, but it was already well past eight when I got anywhere near the door. I was going to both miss my train — meaning I’d have to walk or take the train from Penn Station, getting in even later — and I’d still barely be able to move my head from side to side.

So I stayed home. It’s not something I like doing, but lying in bed and applying heat to the back of my neck seemed like the better course of action. I checked my work e-mail periodically throughout the day, and I seem to have gotten back to the simply uncomfortableness I had Tuesday night before bed. I’m going to get a good night’s sleep and get to work tomorrow.

In the meantime, though, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that the latest issue of Kaleidotrope is now available. It’s a little different than usual, though no shorter in length. This issue, which I’m calling the “Summer 2011” issue, features a fantasy novella, a long-form poem, and what I hope is a really nice cover. Check it out, won’t you?

A busy day at work, and then I came home and mowed the front lawn before dinner. You know, like one does.

I’m a little amazed that it’s almost the end of June, not least of all because I still have an issue of Kaleidotrope to put together for next month. And mountains of stories still waiting to be read.

It was a rainy day, although the sort without a whole lot of actual rain. Just gloomy and cloudy, misty and muggy, Thursday all around.

I was off from work today, but I spent a good amount of time checking my work e-mail, off and on, nonetheless. I’d been waiting on a book chapter for a couple of weeks, and both I and the acquiring editor whose book it is are out of the office, and his assistant had been out of the office since last week, getting back today. So some off-site coordinating and e-mail forwarding was in order.

I also spent the day trying, yet again, to get caught up on Kaleidotrope slush. I just have way too many submissions at the moment, both for what I can reasonably fill into a year and for my own reading sanity, and it’s been slow going trying to get caught up. I think I’ve finally read everything up to and including March, which is a start, but you really do start to re-evaluate what makes a story good when you’re paying a cent a word out of your pocket for it.

(Out of hope and necessity, then, I put up a donate button on the Kaleidotrope page. I’m already looking at more than $1000 expenses for the year. Those word counts sure do add up, don’t they?)

Other than that, the day was mostly spent fighting allergies. I bought some Allegra-D — it’s got pseudoephedrine, so they have to scan your driver’s license, even though one box would probably make for the world’s tiniest methamphetamine lab — but I was a little hesitant to take it. I’ve taken Claritin-D before, which is roughly the same thing (they didn’t have any at the drug store), but this recommends taking on an empty stomach. And I went out to a local Japanese seafood buffet for dinner tonight and left with anything but an empty stomach. And being on your own, suddenly, does make you (or at least me) hesitant about trying new drugs, even over-the-counter antihistamines like this. What if I have a really bad reaction? What if I need, but can’t get to, a doctor? What if I die here? Who’ll be my role model, now that my role model is gone, gone, he ducked back down the alley with some roly-poly little bat-faced girl…

Um, maybe I’ll just take it tomorrow before breakfast and see if that helps the runny, itchy nose and near-constant sneezing.

That was Thursday.