Life Throws a Loop


When Words Collide was totally awesome, as it always is (some have said this year was the best ever), but I missed most of it. Friday, Don saw his doctor because of shortness of breath and overall exhaustion, which is NOT like him. The doctor wanted tests done at the urgent care centre a few blocks away (and wasn’t impressed that Don was going to get there on his motorcycle). The blood tests showed elevated enzymes indicating a heart attack had occurred (or was occurring). The ambulance took him to the hospital (Alec picked up the motorcycle from the urgent care parking lot and brought it home, thank goodness) where he had more tests. Then: an angiogram, angioplasty and stent.

The good news is: he went in healthy (non-smoker, non-drinker who exercises regularly and watches what he eats), so the prognosis is good. Tons of people told me about their father/brother/uncle that had this done 7/3/20 years ago, and feel better than ever. So, Don is home, now, with an even MORE rigid diet, instructions to take it easy (ha!) for a couple of weeks and no work or driving for a month–and a new exercise program coming. Changes for everyone, but we are very positive.

I DID get to parts of the convention (you can’t spend all your time in the hospital–it’d have worn Don out) and got about 5 million hugs and best wishes. What an awesome group of people I associate with!

When Words Collide coming up!


Cleaning the house, packing books and paintings to sell, researching for my panels, making lists of things to do–When Words Collide is this weekend. I said I’d only be on 2 panels, but I am also attending 2 workshops, doing 2 readings, being MC twice and have 2 commitments to the short story contest–the weekend is going to go by in a blur. Oh, and a SFWA meeting to chair.

Sale!


Very cool! I was talking to the editor of the SFWA blog, Todd Vandermark, at Launchpad, and when he discovered I teach creative writing, he asked if I would do a blog post for the SFWA site. Cool! One of my favourite courses is “Backstory Secrets”–which, I have to admit, is mostly a combo of Robert McKee and Donald Maass, but with my own twist on how to apply it to writing. So, I wrote up 1000 words putting into a nutshell (with examples), and made a sale! Yay!

Launchpad is AWESOME!


Where to start? Last night I guided a 2.3m telescope to photograph the spectrum of a star. How’s that for amazing? Did labs looking at the spectra of hydrogen, mercury, neon and a couple of other gasses. Counted and categorised galaxies photographedby the Hubble Space Telescope. Manipulated the filters on b&w photographs of galaxies to highlight information visible in different frequencies of light. Amazing!

Excited!


I leave tomorrow for Launchpad. They sent the week’s schedule (which looks heavy!) and a pre-test on science concepts. It was pretty challenging. However, I was relieved at the end when the last question asked how many astronomy courses I had taken and was able to check of “none.” But I think I did okay–will be interesting to see if we get to go over the pretest results (I’m driven by grades, what can I say?).