Snow White And Selected Works

Today there are two performances of the Petaluma City Ballet's latest production.

S. dances as a Celtic Maiden in one piece set to Irish music, which has a lot of attitude (we're talking leg positions, not the other kind). Then she's a demon in Snow White, working for the Queen. Very slinky and creepy and fun, she says.

But before that, she's at preparatory orchestra and sectional rehearsal.
I'll pick up R., who has been camped out at a friends house for days, and we'll go home, change, and head on over to the theater. This year we'll miss Petaluma's annual Butter & Egg Days Parade for the first time in many years, but I'm sure it'll be there for us next year.

I'm currently at Peet's, enjoying what is probably the highlight of my weeks: time alone with coffee (still decaf for Lent!) and my laptop, where catching up with non-work related computer tasks - email and the like - and writing (!) are made possible. Such a blessing.

Finished reading Pegasus by Robin McKinley yesterday. CURSE YOU, ROBIN MCKINLEY!

I had forgotten that it's a two-book story. I was in such denial that even two pages from the ending, I was happily thinking that soon everything was going to get resolved. Not. This, I now understand, is one of the great and terrible dangers of reading using your daughter's Nook. Even with little numbers on the screen to say how many pages you've read out of how many pages exist, you aren't holding the bulk of the book on the left with only the cover and a few slips of paper on the right to tell you there's no possible way the story can be resolved before the book ends. Serves me right for not supporting the author by buying her work in paper form.

Now I have to wait until next year to find out what happens to Sylvi and Ebon. Bah.

On a related note, here's a fantastic quote on writing from a Nanowrimo pep talk Robin McKinley sent last year:

Writing can be the worst, and often is—but it can also be the best. May you come out of that month knowing what you want to do next, and eager to keep going. Try to remember the peregrine days on the days that your husband/wife/roommate/dog needs steel wool to get you off the floor. And keep writing: the only way you can learn how your stories work is by letting them tell you. By putting live words together.

She inspires me. So do Laurie R. King, Gillian Bradshaw, Rhys Bowen, and Kate and Julie and Suzanne and Clare. If I remember that, and read not only what they write but also what they write about writing, it'll stand me in good stead.