Amy, you should have the cluestick handy. I was just cleaning out my email files and came upon a couple about your novel. Which is safely in a file on my hard drive, just so you know. But I had neglected to write myself an after-holidays note about it, and it had gone completely off my to-do list. Which is on my 2005 planner pages. Which are still in their package in the top layer on my desk. The planner is on the third-from-the-bottom layer. My desk is an archeological tell, at the moment.

Sigh.

Bev, I haven't even bought my new planner pages yet. It's all up here (taps forehead) and that's a bad, bad thing.

Well, that's not entirely true. I do have my brand-new Edward Gorey 2005 Evil Garden calendar hanging up, but so far that's all kids' appointments and school stuff.

I have a very sexy new O'Keefe day planner.

I have a Michael Parkes calendar up on my wall in its usual spot, plus my friend Pieter just sent us a Gorey desk calendar, and a jaw-dropping gorgeous San Francisco calendar in black and white, which alas, will not even remotely fit the only space I have for a wall calendar.

Kristin, I pinged you elsewhere, but insent.

I wish this upside down thing was talking to me. Hmmm. Maybe....

I'm in urgent need of a wall calendar. Remarkably, I didn't get one for Christmas, and I haven't had a chance to hit World Market and B&N for after-holidays calendar shopping. I'll be there tomorrow for a meeting, though. Surely there'll be some left.

Need to get Mom one, too. Her bank didn't do freebies this year.

Ooh, Deb, before I pitch it, do you have any use for a 2004 wall calender with photos of 1930s Paris?

Anybody else with a crafting need for Paris photos? Going, going....

World of Wonder

Ocean, sky, in my face. Boardwalk, terrifyingly far below.

I'm at Coney Island with my brother. He's managed to talk me into a swinging car on what, to my ten-year-old eye, is obviously a medieval torture device called the Wonder Wheel.

"I don't want to."

He explains the physics. Mistrustful, I allow myself to be strapped in, and the car swings out, as it's supposed to.

As we hit the top, the power goes out. Turns out it's borough-wide. Yet the car keeps swinging.

For the next five hours, my heart, my trust in the universe, the universe itself, are all upside down.

Oh, oof. At ten, no less. How miserable.

I. do. not. LIKE. amusement. park. rides.

I hurled all over my brother. Served him bloody well right. Do you know what it's like to be moving, in space, in an otherwise lightless and motionless universe? While looking down - down, mind you - at a giant roller coaster?

Bev, the calendar I used for 2004 was that Paris calendar. I also had a gorgeous one of Tuscany.

deb, that ride scared the bejeesus out of me. Some idiot ride operator let me get in one by myself at 10. I rattled around in it like a seed in a dried gourd. The safety bar couldn't hold me in place and I kept sliding out from under it. I had to use my arms to brace myself in a handstand every time it went upside down. Plus, it looked like the cotter pin that held the cover closed was just going to slide out everytime I pushed on the screen. And the amazing thing is? When I was 14, I got back on with a friend and had a blast with it.

Sail, this is the Wonder Wheel - at the time, at least, it was the world's largest ferris wheel.

It took me years to forgive my brother. They got us down sometime after midnight.