ApolloCon went well, and the post-mortem is in progress, and I am up to my ears in paperwork.
I also have less than two weeks to get myself together for Azkatraz.
I've ordered postcards for the meetups and general promotion. I've gotten the prints of my Gallery art, and may print up some more postcards or business cards with those images.
I have boxes everywhere in my apartment, and no sign of getting rid of all of them anytime soon, but I do need to do some cleaning and organizing here. 

General To-Do List: ( cut to spare the f-list )

[OMG, Colin Morgan and Bradley James are teh adorable, sigh. -- ok, back to work now]

Time to get off my butt and go to the store before the day is totally gone.

As I fully expected, my well-read flist has identified all but one of my ten selections, and that one has been out of print for over a decade.
The bonus #11 would probably make Lisa dump a beer over my head if we were in the same zip code. The first line I posted is, in fact, the very first line you read on page one, but it is part of a chapter heading quote rather than the first line of story.  The first line of story is "In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul." 
I know, I know. Spill my water on the sands.

#6 was <b>The Princess of Flames</b> by Ru Emerson, which I expect nobody to have heard of, let alone read, but it is wonderful. Should you get the chance, at a library or used book store, give it a try. (Actually, if you run across it at a used book store, snap it up and I'll pay you back plus shipping, because my copy is starting to fray a bit.)

I went into my dad's study yesterday to gush about the new Dune movie (and to check for mail). I say to Dad, "There's a new Dune film in the works! This new guy acquired the rights." And he says, "Which one?" And we have a discussion about the difficulty of translating that series to screen. (Who here would love to see somebody take on God Emperor? I would! I can just see that great death scene over the canal...) Then we got on the subject of the death of Arthur C. Clarke, and since it was going around the internets I ask him, "So have you read The Nine Billion Names of God?" Because that was what everybody was linking to and whatnot.
( If you haven't read the story, then this next bit totally gives away the end. )
So after I finished gaping at him and he laughed at me (I don't know why it was so surprising - I can quote random lines from my favorite stuff, heck we all speak in quotes), I skipped into the kitchen to tell Mom that I was so lucky to have huge geeks for parents.
Later I read him and Mom a couple of Blues Brothers moments in Terry Pratchett's Soul Music. "We're on a mission from Glod!" and "Are you the Watch?" "No, ma'am, we're musicians." LOL. Total converts.

This is one of my favorite books (it has its own tag and everything!), and I enjoy seeing adaptations of it on screen, but the potential for total complete fuck-up is huge.

And hey, I need a Dune-related userpic, I think. Anybody?

Dune: Make the New Dune More Like "Lawrence of Arabia":

But can Berg make the transition from an interior-heavy flick like The Kingdom, where the Mars-Saudi Arabia parallel borders on xenophobia, to a film set in wide-open spaces where the desert terrorists are the romantic heroes? Remember, if you want to read Dune as an allegory about the Middle East (and you should), the heroes are the guys who live in caves and bomb the shit out of the developed-world imperialists who've come to suck up their spice.

So Berg's got a lot on his plate if he wants to make a truly kickass Dune worthy of the epic sweep of the novels. He needs to learn how landscape on film can speak for itself. And he also needs to give us a desert people full of heroes and justice-seekers rather than the alien villains of The Kingdom.

I got to go to my Uncle David's Christmas Party for the first time in a few years yesterday. Traditionally there is a pot-luck dinner and a White Elephant exchange. In earlier years, when I was a kid, the party was bittersweet, a gathering of near-strangers who gave us interesting gifts and then took them away again. I only ever saw those cousins at that party, and could never keep their names straight, let alone the names of their later-acquired spouses and children.
This event was smaller than it has been in the past, because so many of my cousins' children have grown up and were in college. A few cousins didn't come at all, but I did get to see two of my uncles whom I hadn't seen in a while.
I have more fun at these events now that I am an adult - I don't feel like it's my older cousins against me and my brother and Gary Lee, for one thing. I also have been living on my own in New York for the last decade, and that garners me a certain amount of family credit, I think.
It was a nice party. I actually got a nice gift out of it, too. And I was able to connect with many relatives, even though I had to check with Mom and Dad as we left to confirm their names. Hee.
Our family weekend was full of Dune, which I thought was pretty great. Dad teases me about obsessive behavior, but it was nice to watch my DVDs with Mom and discuss the stories with my parents in the car. Discussing the nature of Bene Gesserit Abomination while driving along listening to Christmas music was fun. Today we finished watching Children of Dune over brunch.

Now I really need to get myself back to a regular diurnal schedule and carve in some writing time, art time, and sewing time.

Well, I did it!
After 15 years of being a fan of Dune, reading and rereading that first classic book, rereading Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, then getting to about page 120 in God Emperor of Dune before something else more exciting came up…

I finished God Emperor last night.

And it was even good! Hee.