The Latest Adventure

I suddenly (as in a few days ago) woke up to the concept of entering my book — and asking my publisher to enter my book in various contests for best poetry books of 2010. It's not that I really think I stand a chance (and I missed a lot of the biggies anyway), but why not try? You gotta be in it to win it, as my mother-in-law says, though she is probably talking about the lottery.

Most of the contests I hadn't already missed had end-of-year or even end-of-January deadlines, so here I was entering information in an online form for one of them, not really pressed. And then I got stuck when they wanted my publisher's phone number, which I'd never used. So I emailed him, John and I had dinner, and we settled into our respective laptops in the living room. Not having that much else to do, I looked through old email and found my publisher's phone number, and entered it in the form and hit Send. At which point, I got a reply that the form went through and I should now see to it that six copies of my book were sent by a midnight December 17 postmark. This was at around 8:30 in the evening on December 17! I uttered a few choice words and thought that was that. But then I got an idea. Lo, Google told me that there was a San Francisco post office near the airport open until midnight.

It was pouring rain. I don't drive at night, definitely don't drive at night in the rain (unless someone's life depends on it) and I'd had a glass and a half of 2-buck Chuck to boot. But thanks to John and our GPS, we made it. Hurray and then some! Not that it matters in the least, as I said, but small victories count for something in this dice-loaded-against-you world.

Yes, and I'm happy to celebrate the repeal of DADT from this "liberal bastion," though it seems to me that the right to fight in a war is a strange right indeed. On the personal side, yay for unemployment benefits extension, though I applied for a wonderful job the other day, and would like very much to be working again in 2011.