mimsy and outgrabe

A. and I spent two really quick days (really more like one) in Venice, Italy and then spent most of today traveling to the medieval city of Erice, which is in Sicily. Me! In Venice! Yay! In Erice! Yay! So far: Italian food is just as amazing as everyone believes, in Europe a glass of water is still more difficult to come by than alcohol, Alitalia DID lose my luggage and I've yet to hear what happened to it, AND I've written two poems on two different flights (and they might be crap poems, but at least I was writing). Also, the view from the hotel is fucking amazing. And no, my photos don't really do it justice. Also also, I'm running on very little sleep. The Bread Loaf Sicily Writers Conference seems great so far -- everyone who is a part of its inner workings is friendly and helpful and down to earth. Tonight the entire program convenes together for a big dinner, and then tomorrow craft talks and workshops begin. I wanted to get *something* written

Things are looking up for this old bird.  The first week of classes has come and gone and they were pleasantly uneventful, blissfully routine. I continued my morning writing ritual and wrote three new poems. And today I begin the first of what will be, with luck and perseverance and a little bit of selfishness thrown in, the first of what I'm calling Long Form Fridays. (Because, you know, like the true dork I am, I love to give everything alliterative titles . . .) Long Form Fridays are going to entail taking my butt to the Starbucks where I wrote while the kids were in camp and parking myself at a table to write for three hours. It seems like as good a place as any -- far enough away from my house and its chaos, definitely far enough from the campus and ITS noise and chaos -- where I can begin work again on my long-form projects: first, my Accountability Partners play, and after that, the verse play that's officially in Title Limbo (one of the reasons I need to sit