Can I get wear PJ's around NY all weekend? Please? Between bag and jacket, I'm seriously thinking about calling off my all-nighter with Trudy and just catching dinner and heading back to the hotel. It means I will leave my hotel room at 7 a.m. on Friday and not be able to return to my hotel room till about 11 p.m. Sat. night, and this is kinda making me nuts.

We'll figure out whatever works for you. There is likely a pretty late bus back to your hotel, for example. If you have the address for the thing I can check.

EWW!

So, do you guys remember, like a week ago, when I was sick, and said I had a mouse making noise under my bed, and Hil said I should get a cat, but i said I can't get a cat, because I'm allergic, and then i talked about hypoallergenic kitties, and other conversation drifting happened? Yeah. Well, it turns out I was productive, and set up a mouse trap under my bed that day. Except that then i forgot about the mouse trap. And apparently sometime in the last week or so, the mouse trap caught the mouse, when i wasn't here, and I didn't notice because, you know, out of sight out of mind, and now my room smells a wee bit like slightly decomposed mouse. EWW!

Sorry.

Imagine it was two rats and you had been on vacation for two weeks.

Eww. That would definitely be worse, Ginger. Did that happen to you?

I don't remember if I was in one of my posting phases (I go through phases) on New Years Eve. One of the weirdest days of my life. I arrived back in NYC, after a week of vacation, to discover that our apartment had somehow tripped the building circuit breaker during the one week both me and my roommate were out of town. It has never happened other than that time, after a year and a half in the apartment. So naturally, all my food had rotted, making our apartment smell SO VERY BAD. Then, while buying candles and baking soda and deodorizer and other important things, I got a call from my mom saying that grandmother (who had been VERY ill for a VERY long time) had passed away. So I bought a ticket back to Louisiana the next day. Then proceeded to finish deodorizing my apartment, went to one of the best New Years Eve parties of my life, and flew back to Louisiana for the several-day funeral. Missed school. Overall... a weird week, generally unpleasant, with some pretty odd highlights.

Gris, Trudy and I are discussing plans right now. AIFG! What time does your play get out, and what part of town will you be in?

Did that happen to you?

Yes. Oddly enough, 911 won't send anyone to help you deal with dead rats at 2 a.m.

Yeah, I seem to recall your bizarre fortunately-unfortunately period there, Gris.

ION of smell, or lack thereof, the dog just came back from $90 (and 3 1/2 hours) worth of pampering and primping. Meanwhile I haven't had a haircut in six months. What is wrong with this picture?

Well, I'm fairly certain, even with split ends, you don't smell like a dog...

This is true. Plus I haven't been leaving great clumps of the stuff all over.

It's probably pointless and a waste of time, isn't it, to call out someone on a writers' loop for being a pedantic, condescending snob who thinks her country (England) is utterly superior to mine when it comes to literature, intellect, and all-around civilization? Because it's pissing me off.

ETA it's not that I don't love England, because I do. This woman just can't complain about anything in the publishing world without slurring "Yanks" and our tastes, and she's even playing the "it's called English for a reason" brand of prescriptivist grammar.