Mars pictures!

[link]

If anyone would like to help my SiL out on a college course and fill out a (VERY SHORT) survey on diversity (by tonight), please email me at my profile addy.

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Thanks, everyone who responded! My sister in law waited until the last minute to do this assignment and your responses helped a great deal.

After a short break, the newest installment of my column, "How To Succeed As A Failing Writer" is up:

Come together … Right now -- Err, over pizza: Cross-genre conversation and all that jazz.

Enjoy!

The SF2F Buffista Swag Store is now open for business. I'd say about 90% of all products have now been added -- if you don't see something you want, let me know in the F2F thread and I'll try to make it happen.

All products have been marked up $1, with proceeds (if they exceed $25, which is the minimum necessary for Cafepress to send me a check) going towards the F2F fundage.

I just stumbled across this:

Seeking Book Donations

The New Orleans Public Library is asking for any and all hardcover and paperback books for people of all ages in an effort to restock the shelves after Katrina. The staff will assess which titles will be designated for its collections. The rest will be distributed to destitute families or sold for library fundraising.

Please send your books to:
Rica A. Trigs, Public Relations, New Orleans Public Library, 219 Loyola Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70112 If you tell the post office that they are for the library in New Orleans, they will give you the library rate which is slightly less than the book rate.

We are conducting a poll to determine what food will be served at the F2F Prom:

Food poll

Food results

Bear in mind that we will need to spend about $1000 on food (assuming a $500 bar tab) in order to get the suite comped, so there will probably end up being about 8-9 trays of stuff total.

Seeking Book Donations

The New Orleans Public Library is asking for any and all hardcover and paperback books for people of all ages in an effort to restock the shelves after Katrina. The staff will assess which titles will be designated for its collections. The rest will be distributed to destitute families or sold for library fundraising.

Please send your books to:

Rica A. Trigs, Public Relations, New Orleans Public Library, 219 Loyola Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70112 If you tell the post office that they are for the library in New Orleans, they will give you the library rate which is slightly less than the book rate.

Just FYI, Snopes has an article about the above [link]

I will be headlining a performance for the first time in 15 years on Thursday, April 13. I've got a fantastic accompanist and the venue is a ukulele factory so there are so many reasons to come! Details here:

[link]

Big-screen FIREFLY maraton in Santa Cruz, CA April 1st.

>[link]

Here's the scoop:

The marathon will be taking place at the Del Mar Theatre in downtown Santa Cruz, CA (click that link if you want to know where to pose official-type questions). It starts at 11:55 PM on Saturday night

(April 1st) and will go until 11 AM Sunday morning. 8 episodes of Firefly will be screened and then finally, we'll watch Serenity all bleary-eyed and excited after having stayed up all night long. Tickets cost $13 dollars for 10 hours of FF on an ENORMOUS SCREEN in a beautiful, 500 seat movie theater. There will be 3 ten minute intermissions and we'll get in and out privileges with the ticket. And yes, it's OK to bring in outside food, as long as it's not hot food (because that stinks up the theater, yo)--the only exception is pizza (there's a pizza place that sells by the slice next door so we won't starve or die of popcorn overdoses, although you can go that route if you want as the concessions stand will be open all night).

Tickets go on sale on Friday, March 24 @ 12:30 PM. Also, for the wussies out there, Serenity will play by itself on the Friday night before the marathon (March 31st) as the midnight movie (for the usual admission of $6.50).

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Here's a from-the-source update and clarification, on the subject of donating book stock to the NOLA library system:

I wrote to Walter Mascari, Acquisitions Librarian for the NOLA system:

I'm writing because the NOLA public library system has always carried my books on its shelves, and I wanted to know if sending you replacements from my own available stock would be useful to you.

Mr. Mascari wrote back:

We have been overwhelmed by book donations and have no storage at this time. I'm afraid your books would get lost in the hundreds of boxes of books that are already here. If it's all right, I'll save this email, and when things get managable, will contact you...

Thanks for thinking of us!

So, there you have it. Send money, not books, at this point in time.