Is it just me or is this blog slow to load lately? I don't know if it's a function of my internet connection, but it seems to be taking a long time. Same with the Word Press dashboard page where I pen these entries. Slow, slow, slow. I'd assume it's just that my hosting site sucks but I haven't changed it and I don't think it was this bad before. Maybe I'm just growing more impatient . But if you're having problems with it, I'd like to know. Comments, please! Let's see, where were we? A little update, since it's been a while since I last blogged...
Chris and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary on Monday, although the official observation was last night, when we headed into The Big City (Detroit) to see Eddie Izzard at the Detroit Opera House. The venue is really beautiful, incredibly renovated, absolutely gorgeous in that over-the-top sort of way. It's also pretty huge, which becomes overwhelmingly evident when a sole figure takes the stage and the entire sold-out crowd goes mad with applause.
Izzard was incredibly funny although, sadly, not in cross-dress for this tour. Not that it would have made much difference, since our seats were way up in the balcony and he could have been wearing Kabuki masks and we wouldn't have been able to tell. It's a credit to his literate, rapid-fire style of comedy that he was able to hold us all rapt, keep us doubled over, alone on a stage without set, even when we couldn't make out his facial expressions.
He's just such a vibrant, energetic person, an equal opportunity skewer-er and this tour his focus is on religion, civilization, man's inhumanity to man throughout the ages. You'd be hard pressed to find another comedian with his grasp of history, which is all then filtered through Izzard's insane brain, slathered with a hefty dose of psychedelic imagination and delivered with frenetic energy and generous helpings of ad libs.
What else, what else? Me, I've been a little on the "meh" front lately. For those who are keeping track, I'm still coping with the fall out from getting off Effexor (my fibromyalgia medicine). I've been off it for a couple of months now, but apparently it can take many, many months -- and, given how long I was on it, perhaps more than a year -- for my system to really "reset" and learn to function without it. It's improving, I think, but I'm still ridiculously weepy, and often irritable.
I'm adjusting more to the new pain meds; don't get quite as tired as I did before. In fact, the past few nights I've battled some wicked insomnia which has left me feeling hit by a truck during the day. But I suspect that's in large part due to my ongoing battle with sugar, which I -- for those keeping score -- I am currently losing in a big way. Blech.
I'm gearing up to head up to Camp Michigania at the end of next week for the Bear River Writer's Conference. My workshop is led by Elizabeth Kostova, she of the ridiculously best-selling vampire novel "The Historian." (I know, I know, I'm the least vampire-oriented girl on the planet, but I thought she might be a breath of fresh air.) I thought it was going to be sort of a straight-up fiction-writing workshop but apparently the title -- which I didn't know before I signed up -- is "Fiction and Painting," and will explore the similarities between the way painters paint and writers write. Huh. Guess we'll see about all that.
I'm still more jazzed than anything about the prospect of meeting (or at least being in the same room as) Amy Hempel. I'm going to take my copy of her collected short stories and see if I can't weasel a signature. I'm such a dork that way! Yeah, but only that way.