To Infinite Cornfields – and Beyond!

You know what? Ohio’s a pretty nifty place.

Consider – thanks to the various quirks of life that bring people here (and hey, some people even stay!) – that photographer Kyle Cassidy, whose very cool “Where I Write: Fantasy & Science Fiction Authors in Their Creative Spaces” collection dropped my jaw awhile back, has just wrapped up a road trip through the state continuing that photo project.

And his notes and photos from the journey – they’re all worth reading – are a trunkful of “Damn that’s neat.” Stops across the state and visits with C.C. Finlay, Mike Resnick,  Stephen Leigh,  John Scalzi and Tobias Buckell, and then a swing up to Northeast Ohio for Catherynne M. Valente‘s weekend wedding. (She’s another author I discovered thanks to Penguicon – I absolutely love “A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica.”)

Of course, now that I’m all geeked up about how many nifty people are milling around these parts, it just so happens that the Buckeye Book Fair is this Saturday in Wooster -  not too far from where Kelsey’s got a gymnastics meet…

Seventeen Saturdays: Episode I

Today marks the first of my scheduled 17 consecutive long-run Saturdays.

Seventeen. Not a big number, really. (Heck, it’s already been 12 Saturdays since I started my freelancing career.) Still, for now it remains hard to wrap my head around the notion that I’ll be spending Saturday No. 18 resting and hanging out at JediCon WV, then waking up the next morning and making a go at my first marathon.

So, being Week Number One of the Hal Higdon novice marathoner’s  training plan, six miles were on the calendar for today. I plotted a 6.17-mile loop, loaded some podcasts on my player, and hit the road a little after 7:15 a.m.

I’ve never run with headphones, at least outside: Most of the time I’m on fairly rural, semi-hilly roads and I like to really be aware of what’s going on around me. And even on a treadmill, listening to music can mess with my pacing, so I’ve generally only used it for shorter runs where I’m trying to keep the adrenaline up and running hard.

That said, I’m facing a lot of miles over awfully familiar ground over the next four-plus months, and as gorgeous as I find the place where I live, well, sometimes, as we learn from Wesley in The Princess Bride novel, you’ve got to be able to take your brain away. I had a couple short podcasts my buddy Ivan had emailed me which I hadn’t gotten to yet, so he kept me company for a bit, and then – since I didn’t really plan ahead on this one – I listened to the latest “Car Talk” episode  from NPR.

I only plugged in one earbud, so I could still hear the world around me, but the audio player did make the run seem to go by more quickly. I’m on the lookout for other podcasts and radio shows – the Totally Rad Show‘s usually a fun listen, and there are a ton of classic sci-fi broadcasts of Dimension X and similar shows, which I love – but I also realized I’ve got a chance here to take in quite a few audiobooks (And dammit, will someone tell me why NONE of the three biggest library systems in Northeast Ohio have the Metatropolis CD ?!? Yes, I know the print version comes out next month, but two of the authors live here in Ohio and it’s a Hugo nominee, for the love o’Pete. Sheesh.), which I haven’t done regularly in the better part of a decade.

So, to finish the tale of the pavement: I didn’t really push myself on this run. It’s been a month since I’ve done anything over the five-mile mark, so I took it easy – even all the way through the finish – and wound up averaging about 9:30 per mile, finishing in just under 59-and-a-half minutes.

Sixteen Saturdays to go.

Off to fight the space zombies.

Pepper – named, in part, for Tobias Buckell’s Sly Mongoose hero – launches. (Audio of the Apollo 10 liftoff – forty years ago this month, as it happens -  from this collection of sound and video celebrating NASA’s Fortieth Anniversary back in 1998.)

Penguicon leftovers: Reheated and still tasty!

Some of the stuff we brought home from Penguicon 7.0:

Two pieces of nondescript board which arrived at the convention as one piece of nondescript board. I figure I’m now appoximately one-fortieth of a level above No Belt, but still, it was pretty neat learning to put my fist through this.

“The Book of Biff Vol. 3: Fresh Toast,” and the postcard print that sold me on the cartoon from the start. It reads, “Biff realizes that it’s tricky to eat giant-squid noodles.” This also reminds me: Saturday morning (I think), Kelsey is chilling and reading the Biff collection. She turns on the TV to check the Penguicon channel, but lands first on a Care Bears cartoon. After about thirty seconds, she observes, without even cracking a smile, “You know, the Care Bears aren’t very good at problem solving.” We proceed to mock the Care Bears and this episode’s bad guy, who is either wearing giant mechanical battle armor or the new Master Chief Bear.

My registration badge. No, there aren’t any of those informative/funny/bizarre ribbons on it (check out this photo of Beaker to see what I’m talking about), but then, we were first-timers at Penguicon, and not volunteers or guests or room partiers, and we must have just happened to not attend any classes or panels where they were being given out. No big deal – though I do admit that we both loved the “Captain Hammer Threw A Car At My Head” ribbons, so bonus points to whoever distributed those.

Penguicon Program Book: Regularly folded up, rolled up, marked up and consulted.

Tobias Buckell‘s “Crystal  Rain.” – I read this last year, and met him at a book signing in Columbus where I didn’t actually have a book for him to sign, so I’ve owed him one. And it’s a great read. (It’s also a signed copy, which I didn’t realize until after I bought it.) John Scalzi’s “The Ghost Brigades” is here for the same reason – I brought it with me to have signed, since it’s my favorite chapter in his Old Man’s War universe.

Daniel Pinkwater’s “The Neddiad.” – This author has been on my radar for awhile, but I haven’t gotten around to reading him yet. This paperback was in one of the boxes of free books in the lobby. (Speaking of free stuff, I can’t find the sheet of Ubuntu stickers I picked up. And I’ve only gotten to cover one tiny Windows symbol so far!)

A bookmark promoting Jim C. Hines‘ “The Stepsister Scheme,” which he signed in lieu of the book which I failed to pick up prior to the signing and which I still need to go buy because he was such a friendly and hilarious guy.

Munchkin Bites and two Munchkin bookmarks – We’ve played twice since returning home (I’m now batting .333 vs. Kelsey, having finally won a game), and while I’ve been thinking we need to pick up some big 10-sided dice for level counters instead of the poker chips we’ve been using, I just found these and will be doing some downloading later.

We didn’t take a ton of pictures, but here are a few. I’m pretty sure I like this one the best: