Thursday, April 24th, 2003 - Moving on This entry shall be full of randomness. You have been warned. Anyone know Oregon? Specifically Portland, Salem, Corvallis and Eugene? Tim and I have been kicking around the idea of moving up there eventually, but we're not sure when we'd find time to come up and poke around and determine which town would be best for us. Things we're looking for: A pedestrian-friendly town. Cheap rent. We'd like to rent a 2 bedroom house (or part of a duplex; we'd prefer to avoid bigger buildings and complexes) for around, oh, $500-$600 a month. Cafes that are good to work in; plugs for laptops are a good thing, but good coffee is more important. Bookstores. Places to get jobs/ places that have a decent job market right now. I know it's not a good time to move, but we want to avoid moving someplace where there just isn't any work at all, you know? Someplace green and pretty. More importantly, we need to be able to afford to live in the pretty part of town, not down by the train tracks or anything like that. Colleges and Universities are good things to have around; usually that means more jobs and better restaurants/ night life. Something to do. This isn't as important, though, as we mostly stay at home and write and watch movies via Netflix. Someplace not incredibly hard to travel from. I'd had Ashland on the list for a long time, but finally decided living 6 hours from the nearest big city (and, thus, airport) was just too remote for us. So, any comments? You can email me at gryffyn[at]there.net or you can post in the comments board (link below). Questions I have about the towns in particular are: Just how boring is Corvallis? How city-like is Portland? Is Eugene nice or is it all strip-malls? How busy is the road that connects all these? Is Salem a nice place to live? Do any of these places have better (read: warmer, slightly drier) weather than the others? Which ones have pretty fall colors? How annoying is public transit in Portalnd? And, are there any good suburbs in Portland where we could live cheap and prettily? I really really really want to do a writing workshop. Yes, this is because Tim gets to go off to Rio Hondo. Now, I can't imagine I'll ever be able to afford Clarion (sigh), mainly because it's 6 weeks off work, but I'm eyeing Viable Paradise. Not that we can afford to send me this fall, but perhaps in 2004 . . . sigh. I am yearning for the chance to do nothing but write and talk about writing for a whole week. It sounds lovely. I'm tired of being too tired or sore to write, of squeezing my writing time into my morning commute, of having to do things other than writing to make money every day. I know, most of us feel this way, it's just I'm all envious of Tim's recent spate of good fortune and I'm feeling the need to catch up. Actually, that's enough for an entry for right now. Ta! Tell me about Oregon and writing workshops.

Exercise Log: Did an hour-long body sculpt class Tuesday night. Only a bit sore. Going to try to go tonight again. Really! And I did! Missed the class, but worked out by myself: stretched and did situps for half and hour and did 20 min on the precor. Felt gooood. Go me! Writing log: Have been writing on "House Story" every morning this week! It's longhand, so I've no real idea how long it is, but it *feels* like it'll be close to novelette length. I'll have to rewrite it as I type it in (you know, add scenes instead of just telling) but I think it'll be good. Not very serious, though; it's a clever, fun story. Not usual for me. Current Publications: "Famishing" in Strange Horizons. My first pro sale! "Wetting the Bed" and a collab with Tim Pratt, "A Serious Case of Fairies" in Floodwater "How to Suck" reprinted in From Porn to Poetry: Clean Sheets Celebrates the Erotic Mind Currently Reading: Singularity Sky by Charles Stross (A treat they gave out at the Nebulas!) Polyphony 2 ed. by Deborah Layne and Jay Lake (A treat waiting for me in the mail when I got home!) Endless Nights by Neil Gaiman (A treat borrowed from Locus; only the first 3 stories were done, and the last one wasn't even fully inked yet. But very, very cool to get to read!) Donate money to my teeth, my grad school application fees, our writerly projects (Floodwater and Flytrap!). Every little bit helps!

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