author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Sometimes what you get is a blog post.

Which is to say, the answer to "how do you get a bikini top knit pattern down to 600 words" is the same as the answer to "how do you write a pattern for something as custom-fit as a bikini top?" The answer is, you don't. You turn back to your favorite sock knitting book and you write a mathematical method.

Gee I'm clever. I knit the dang thing with Gibson-Roberts' "C"s and "L"s in mind, and it takes me until two days before deadline to realize that's the way I'll have to approach writing about it.

But once I figured that out (which epiphany occurred over a scrumptious fish dinner at Pappadeaux, the relation of which to Highway 36 is a blog post all on its own), it got much easier. I realized what I was really writing was a blog post about how I overcame the challenges inherent in knitting functional swim wear. And I can do blog posts. Only, I usually get to break them up into two blog posts if they get too long. This one I can't, not really. If there's going to be a second article, it'll have to be accepted separately by the editor, and it's going to have to be about knitting the bikini bottom.

...which I haven't knit yet.

Well, we all know what I'm going to be doing in July!

Why yes, I've been lolcatting around lately. How can you tell? It's gotten really bad around here, to the point that, at Water World Saturday, stuff like "Can we has go faster, plz?" and "We can has acceleration!" started coming out of my mouth whenever John 'n me 'n Taylor got stuck and came loose again in one of the tube slide rides. "We're in ur tube slide, causin bottlenecks" was another favorite. As was the observation that we must have somehow gotten onto the internet because this ride was obviously a series of tubes.

John tells me I owe him a dollar for the bad joke jar for that last one, and I don't even work at the office where the bad joke jar resides. Funny, that.

That aside, my current-most writing project, aside from keeping up with the blogzes, is to somehow usefully describe the knitting of my bikini top in 600 words or less. This may or may not work. We Shall See.

I've also finished re-reading Dorothea Brande's 1934 classic, Becoming A Writer, which is oodles more useful than I remembered. Somehow all I recalled from last read-through was the "wake to write" and "schedule writing dates with yourself" advice, and I'd forgotten all about the story incubation meditation techniques. And it's been fun speculating on whether Ms. Brande would have adored laptops or despised them, based on what she says about the importance of typing and having a travel typewriter but doing nothing other than writing at the typewriter. I think she would have recommended using the laptop only for writing and acquiring a desktop computer for things like email and video games.

But that's enough of that for now. I don't want to steal the thunder from a series of blog posts on the subject of that book which I'm planning on uploading to Burnzpost.

Of late, most of my writing has been unpublishable journal entries and, like I said, keeping up with the blogging gigs. But this is in keeping with my temporary solution for the single project form of the Block. If a have a particular project I have to work on, one short story rewrite or freelance deadline that gets top priority over everything else, and inability to get started on that project causes a total writing bottleneck--then write something else. Every day. Reliably. It's the daily act of writing and not the daily product that's important in breaking through the Block.

Of course, that in and of itself won't get deadlines met. But I find that the journaling can help me ease into the high-priority project, especially if my journal entry segues into a bout of talking to myself about that project. And if something that happened the day before keeps me from concentrating on the serious work, journaling about the event or fictionalizing it into a new story draft can sometimes satisfy whatever annoying part of my brain insists on chewing on it.

In the interest of not increasing this post's category count, I'll put off talking about the ongoing behind-the-scenes website redesign (still in progress) or my new flying lessons schedule (i r gonna b legal pilot agin lolz) for another post. And maybe I'll rethink the current category list, 'cause I don't have one for flying or for The Block or... right. Later.

More later, then.

Look! (Where?) Over there! (At what?) Writing!

Triumphal fanfare, angels descend in a chorus, small children with little paper-unrolly noisemakers go 'tweeee'

So, like I said once or twice before (or maybe a few more than that), I attend a semimonthly writer's group, writing class, thingie, over which Melanie Tem and her dog Dominique preside with wisdom and exuberance after hours at West Side Books, aka The Big Purple Bookstore In Highland Square. Very informal thing. Whoever shows, shows. Sometimes manuscripts get critiqued (like my Captain Hook story last month). Sometimes not, and we just do in-class writing, or homework show-n-tell, or craft-n-industry discussions. Homework? Yes! Homework. Which you do if you feel like it. Melanie announces the homework prompt at the end of one class, and next time we meet, people who did something along those lines read it aloud.

The homework for tonight was to write something inspired by the seven deadly sins.

So, what the hell. I spun off "lust" and finally put on paper about three-fourths of the first draft of the Qabbalistic hostile corporate takeover story that's been knocking around in my head for some years now. "So, it's erotica," I told my classmates, "or at least erotic. Which is why I'm not going to share in until it's quite done."

"Erotic? Ooooh!"

"Yeah. A sort of erotic corporate horror story. With golems."

"...Right! OK."

See the pretty picture? That's what I wrote it on. Every once in awhile I remember my aging Compaq Contura Aero (not to be confused with the modern palmtop device of similar name), and I haul it out and charge up its battery and find a floppy drive for file transfer... and I write. And the funny thing is, stuff actually gets done.

The Compaq is not internet-enabled!

It could be. It once was. Give me a while with Telix and find me a phone number to dial and I'll possibly even remember how to make it work. But today, unlike in 1994, there aren't nearly as many dial-up text-only internet access points. Plus our telephone line gets AM radio, so, not so good for data transfer.

In any case: Light, ultra-portable, bump-resistant, Dvorak enabled, and Totally Temptation Free.

Well, almost temptation-free. Maybe 97.3% temptation-free. Because there's only so long you can play QBasic games like Nibbles and Gorilla before you're bored stiff. (I'm pretty good at Nibbles, though.)

What reminded me this time around was Maud's Blog. Maud Newton blogs splendiferously, and last month she blogged about Stephen Elliot's article in Poets&Writers: "Surviving a Month Without Internet." It wasn't so much the novelty of going off the grid for 30 days that resonated with me--I'm a total online junkie, I'm a telecommuting freelance writer for goodness's sake--as it was these excerpts:

Since I'm most creative in the mornings, I've decided no Internet until after lunch.

Divide your day into online and offline. Studies have consistently shown that people with more screens open get less done. Multitasking slows down productivity.... Dedicate at least half of your day to handling non-Internet tasks exclusively. Write a list of things you need to do when you do get online so your Internet time will be more productive.

The urge to screw around is always strongest when the work's not going well. And if you work at a computer, screwing around is only a click away. But when the work's not going well is exactly the time to turn the Internet off.

If I leave the house with the Compaq, I don't get "just one more" anything. I get Nibbles, and I get WordPerfect 5.1 staring me in the face.

And--you know what?--when I look at that computer with its tiny keyboard and its monochrome screen filled from edge to edge with WP51 exactly as it was meant to back in 1990, it's like someone turned on the Batsignal for the Muse. My poor Pavlovian association-driven brain has one last surefire writing association that I haven't totally destroyed by being lazy: The Compaq Contura Aero means Writing.

And it ain't gots no nets no more.

Bwahahahaaaa!

Ssssh.

Iz big sekret.

Hey yeah, that's right: Not much bloggage for awhile here. And look! No manuscript association. That must mean I've been a lazy ass.

In discussing that much maligned and possibly mythical creature Writer's Block, I'm not making excuses. No no-no no no no! I am having a philosophical discussion.

Go on. Believe it. And meanwhile, I've got this bridge... no. Had this bridge. It is tragically off the market at current.

So. Writer's block. The forms it takes. Let's start with Impending Deadlines of Doom.

Impending Deadlines of Doom cause this writer to go, "Oh no! I have Umpteen Thousand words to write by Tomorrow! I'd better work on that project first. But when I'm done today's allotment of Wordage, I shall reward myself by enhancing my body of fictional work!"

This sounds well and good, and it is--when The Block is not in play. I should note that The Block is oftentimes more cynically known as Total Lack of Self-Discipline. However, it is not useful for the Blocked Writer to call it this, because such terminology leads to Self-Loathing, which is another form that The Block takes.

At this point I should quote a bit from Victoria Nelson's fantastic book On Writer's Block. My copy has sadly gone missing, however. This essay quotes a most appropriate bit: "If you beat yourself because you procrastinate, your problem is not that you procrastinate. Your problem is you beat yourself." My point exactly.

So as soon as I make the work-and-reward proclamation I find myself making exactly Zero Headway on the Umpteen Thousand Word Project. Why?

Firstly, because The Block isn't particular about which writing it blocks. I find myself totally unable to start that project for the same mysterious reason I find myself totally unable to write new fiction or edit existing drafts.

Secondly, because if I never produce today's allotment of Wordage, I will not have to write or edit fiction. Procrastination on the Deadline of Doom now has the "value" of aiding procrastination on the fiction.

I'm not 100% sure how to get out of that loop. My Type-A personality says, "Well, you just have to do it, dummy! Stop whining and get to work!" However, see above about Self-Loathing and beating oneself for procrastinating. My Type-A personality is not always my friend.

More on this subject to further cogitation and researching ideas.

On to The Block, Form the Second: Being Sick As The Dog.

I just happen to be enduring a round of the weekend flu-bug. It starts with a sore throat and post-nasal drip, the latter exacerbating the former. It continues with thermometers swearing that one's temperature is normal or even slightly below normal, and this despite whole-body muscle aches and chills. I have been treating myself with plenty bed rest, hot honey-and-vinegar drinks (I don't have any lemon juice in the house and I quite like apple cider vinegar), hot tea, and hot scotch toddies. And long baths.

Which I point out not to elicit e-mail of sympathy, but to demonstrate a reason why I haven't been writing.

I often look back on my year-and-a-half of chemotherapy (long story involving acute myelogenous leukemia, several fantastic oncologists, the wonderful staff of Children's Hospital of New Orleans, and Metairie Park Country Day School's willingness to accommodate all my absences) and wonder why I didn't get any writing done. Disregard that I was only 11 going on 12. I decided to be a writer at age 6. Disregard the lack of ubiquitous laptop computers in 1987. I knew how to write longhand. Why didn't I put any of that time to use, rather than spending it watching Bumper Stumpers on the hospital television?

Because I felt like crap, that's why. Even when I wasn't nauseated or fevered, I had absolutely no energy. Being in a hospital, being kept home from school, being unable to go outside--these things were depressing, and I don't mean my immune system. Thinking back to that time, I was either miserable or else celebrating short interims of not feeling miserable by, oddly enough, playing. Aside from getting my homework done so as not to fail 6th grade, I spent my up-and-about time goofing off.

Today, less sick now than then but sick enough, I find myself indulging in lot of mindless, escapist pastimes to avoid having to be aware of living in my own skin. Because living in my own skin hurts right now, thanks. Reading myself asleep helps me escape that.

This makes perfect sense, but these days I really, truly have stuff I need to get done. Thankfully, I do have some preliminary workarounds:

• Apply any and all symptomatic relief remedies so as to reduce abject misery (I am in fact sitting in the tub and sipping a hot toddy as I write this)
• Assign oneself small tasks (such as short blogging stints and non-contact brainstorming)
• Reward oneself for completing small tasks (Good for you! You blogged! You get more hot water in the tub and an hour's reading!)

My next small task coming up will be to start WordPerfect 5.1 and jot down what I brainstormed over the past few days. Nothing full-fledged or publishable. Just some short snippets of prose that might, some day, accrue substance. It's only a very little bit of writing, true, but any overtures in that direction deserve positive reenforcement

This weekend "Captain Hook" got an expositionectomy. Then it hit the email. On Wednesday I'll get to hear what my bimonthly writing group thinks about it. Since the last thing I submitted there for critique was "Right Door, Wrong Time" (and boy it's been awhile), they're probably going to get Ideas about me and my seeming penchant for Putting Children In Harm's Way. OK, well, Guillermo del Toro I'm not, but I admit that the dangerous side of faerie tales and magic is a concept worth exploring, even when--especially when--the main characters are legally minors. It's sort of a side-effect of my wanting to treat fantasy as reality. If magic is real, it plays by real rules. If magic is risky, there's no lower age limit on when you start to run the risk. Sometimes when the Goblin King steals your baby brother, he doesn't give him back.

(It's probably worth noting that I don't have children. One or two people reading this story may decide I oughtn't ever to. Which is fine. John and I have no plans in that direction. You may proceed to feel relieved.)

In other news, today is International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day! Jo Walton announced it last week in response to the entertaining kerfluffle caused by current SFWA VP Howard Hendrix (Ph.D.) screeding off about how writers who put their work on the Internet for free are no better than strike-breaking scabs, "pixel-stained technopeasant wretches" who're "undercutting the efforts of [their] fellow workers to gain better pay and working conditions for all."

Bwa-ha-ha.

Anyway, I'm not certified professional quality as of yet (though I'm trying!), but in honor of the day I'm finally gonna turn this Obligatory Vanity Domain into a real Author's Official Web Site. Which is to say, I'm going to build the "Recently Published" RSS for the front page (although "recently" is sort of a relative term by now) and also put some excerpts, reprints, and freebies up where y'all can read 'em.

Check back throughout the day. Changes will be on-going and stuff will be showing up. After I'm done I'll put a more general update at BurnzPost pointing out choice places one might spend one's time drinking all that free milk from the cow y'all ain't having to buy. So to speak.

21:56 MDT: Recent Publication list is now up. Sorry it took so long. Will post excerpts, reprints, and other freebies over the week.

In other other news, I am just now today turned 31. Woot. Given that 31 is not a number that brims with frothy excitement--"Yay! It's my tenth anniversary of being legal to drink in the U.S.! Let's go out for a beer!"--it was a pleasant surprise to hear that Jo had declared it a special day for all minimally techno-savvy writers. (It also being Shakespeare's birthday doesn't hurt.)

OK, enough of that. Let's go out for a beer.

And this one has no manuscript stats attached because it's just not writing related. Too bad. Not everything is.

This update goes out to anyone who's ever grabbed me by the left hand and said, "Oh no! Where'd the stone from your wedding ring go? Emergency! Nobody move!" and got my sad-eyed puppy-dog-faced story of how it's actually been missing since December 2005, on a Friday that began with an hour and a half of periodontal surgery, continued with me lying all miserable in bed, and ended with me half-heartedly helping my husband paint the bathroom and move books around. After which we discovered that my ring was without stone.

It's a unique ring. It's got a History. It started out as half of a $5 pair of one-size-fits-nobody hematite bands bought at a vendor table in the New Orleans French Market. A diamond-tipped Dremel bit for etching Meaningful Runes into each ring before exchanging them at the altar brought the total cost up to about $15. Well, hematite being what it is (brittle), my ring broke about a year or so later. I was wearing it when an automatic grocery store sliding glass door stuck halfway open as I tried to leave. I slapped at the door to make it move, and the ring flew off in three pieces. A couple years after that (and a couple income brackets higher), we brought the etched piece to Hurdle's Jewelry where Keith Hurdle accomplished the daunting task of setting it in a white gold band.

An uncharitable eye might liken the effect to that of a mood ring stuck on Bleak Despair And Sadness. But that wouldn't be fair. Mr. Hurdle really did a beautiful job. Nothing else walking out of a jeweler's shop looks quite like it. I'd get asked about it all the time. Heck, the periodontist asked me about it on that fateful day while we were waiting for the anaesthetic to take effect.

And then the dang stone went missing.

I took our bedroom apart, bared it to the walls. I looked all over the tarp I'd sat on to spray-paint the bathroom fan cover. I looked under and around the bookshelf I'd helped John set in order. No little arc of hematite showed up. I went over the carpets with a fine-toothed comb before vacuuming. I then went through the contents of the vacuum bag with my bare hands, and in a household containing two tabby cats and two long-haired humans, that's not for the faint of heart. Still no stone. Could it have come loose as I bussed home from the dentist office that morning? Could it have popped out during the fan-cover-painting project and rolled right off the balcony? Bleak Despair And Sadness!

Between recovering from surgery and hitting other scheduling obstacles, somehow we never got around to searching the guest room more thoroughly. Then, a few months later, we had a friend move in. I asked him to keep half an eye out for it in his travels. In the meantime, I tried to convince myself that it wasn't gone forever--it was safely in the guest room somewhere just waiting for us to find it.

Our friend moved out about a week ago. With the room suddenly uninhabited, John and I decided it was high time we painted those four walls. (We've been painting at a rate of about one wall per six months ever since we bought the place in August 2000. We hope to finish the job before we finish paying off the mortgage.) So today we emptied that sucker of all furniture and wall fixtures. This included the bookshelf that I was helping John reorder at the time the stone got lost. My pet theory was that the stone popped loose while I was trying to shove more books onto that shelf than reasonably could be expected to fit. I think my hand had been sandwiched between a C++ Primer and a Chemistry textbook at the time.

We proved that theory tonight. Blessed, blessed be!--we found that stone.

I was carrying one of the cement blocks from the guest room to the kitchen when I saw the little arc of hematite lying on the living room floor. It must have been stuck to one of the blocks, or sitting inside it, and then fallen off as the block was being transported.

After a year and a half, my wedding ring is complete once more.

I have to keep telling myself that every fifteen minutes. Bleak Sadness And Despair gets to be a habit after fifteen months, y'see. I have to keep reminding myself that we found the stone, I have it back, and that the proper emotions are in fact Delirious Joy And Happiness.

The stone and the ring are in a sandwich bag waiting to be taken back to Hurdle's for reassembly. I may also finally ask to have my engagement ring assembled. The ring is a gift from both of our mothers: John's mom gave me the band, which had been her mother's; and, seeing that the original stone was long gone (strange how generations fall into parallel), my mom, a most knowledgeable and obsessive collector of gemstones, gave me one of her tanzanites to crown it. It's about time I had the stone set and the ring sized for actual wearing. And yes, it's kind of unusual to wait until one's ninth year of marriage to start wearing an engagement ring, but what's one more unconventionality, more or less?

My wedding stone came back. We found my wedding stone. Hooray!

This has been the best Saturday ever.

The lack of manuscript stats associated with this entry doesn't mean a lack of writing. It means everything's in first stages of first drafts, so that it feels a little premature to enter them into the manuscript database. But though I haven't yet managed to make the 2 hour BIC routine a constant, I have...

• Woken up, grabbed my laptop, and wrote a short Western/ghost story to share with my writing class (no title as yet)
• Revised said story on the bus to said writing class--chose to take the bus, in fact, for the sake of being able to write while in transit
• Sat at Page Two in Gunbarrel after picking up the tax returns (I am too much of a coward to do them myself) and wrote a Lovecraft-ish short-short (working title: "Ties That Bind") concerning why that man on the 208 might have that tic which requires him to list every member of his very Scottish extended family
• Upon being unable to sleep thanks to a badly timed Waste-O-Scotch Hot Toddy (2 oz. Glenmorangie, sherry finish; 6 oz. steaming hot water, 1 tbl honey), grabbed the laptop and wrote for a solid hour in bed on the other trunk novel, the one I haven't touched since 2001
• Upon waking up this morning, returning to the trunk novel for another 3 hours straight, ceasing only when I'd run out of plot

Even when the results aren't publishable yet or in fact ever, there's something magical about actually acting like a writer, dammit, y'know, by writing. It makes me a lot less of a grouch. All that pent up dissatisfaction just goes away, or doesn't have the chance to accumulate itself in the Pending queue in the first place. That's my theory, anyway: When I'm being a total grouch, it's really me I'm mad at. When I write, I'm a lot less mad at me.

This, of course, does not address the portion of my grouchiness due to being unable to sleep. And then when I finally got to sleep, being woken up by various household environment factors. That grouchiness has nothing to do with not writing and is entirely justified.

In other news, one of my best friends has been attempting to detach herself from the tentacular crappiness that is the Cricket wireless company. Apparently they have a tendency to keep billing you after you tell them to cancel your account. Then they bill you for reinstating your account long enough to cancel it for real. And then they bill you for the bill.

If you or anyone you know is stuck in this particular hell, here is the number you want: 858-882-9999

It's long distance, but unlike the toll-free customer service line, it gets you on the phone with a real person. This is obviously something Cricket doesn't want you to do, and I thoroughly expect them to change this number as soon as they realize that actually customers know it and are using it. "Argh! The customers are penetrating the bureaucracy!" Yes.

Back to basics. Back to what the folks at AbsoluteWrite.com affectionately refer to as "my daily two hours of BIC".

BIC means "Butt In Chair." Two hours means exactly that. And daily is as simple and as scary as it sounds.

I figured I'd get back into that routine Tuesday evening on the train. Got my laptop charged up in the cafe car, and then from 7 PM until 9 PM, I sat in my coach seat and wrote. Or stared at the screen and thought, what the hell comes next? But mostly wrote.

And thought, "This is what I need to be doing every day."

I ain't gonna lie. It's a daunting thought. Daunting enough that for the rest of the week, including today, I found excuses not to BIC. Excuses like, "must sleep" and "yay! Home! Spend time with my sweetie!" and "Urrr... early..." and "Must dig up financial info for tax returns" and "Paying work first" and... and... and...

...and "What the hell am I going to do with over 3,000 words of new rough draft every day? I'll never get it all revised and publishable! Not to mention publishED."

Seriously. Those 3,339 words of "Little Beanie"? Two hours. That's all it took.

The combination of being a fast typist and a verbal thinker is its own source of writer's block. I feel a little like the leading lady in the I Love Lucy episode with all the chocolate. That conveyor belt is clicking away and producing lots and lots and lots of truffles. An Aladdin's cave full of truffles. More than I'll ever be able to package. Or eat. Ever.

Kinda scary. But no excuse for not producing all those metaphorical truffles. Especially not when I'm supposedly trying to pursue a successful career as a metaphorical chocolatier. And in the end, who doesn't like truffles, right?

(Well, I could take or leave 'em. I prefer salt-water taffy. Or those flaky little vienna wafer rolls. But still.)

Sometimes it sounds like I'm making myself a lot of work. You ever read The Neverending Story? Remember Bastian's debt to Fantastica? Every story you start, you have to finish. And if you spend two hours every day writing new material, how many stories is that?

Sometimes, though, I remember it also means I'm adding to the riches in Aladdin's cave. Two hours every day creating new material? Define prolific. Sometimes I feel rich.

So. Tomorrow morning. (Yes, on a Saturday. "Being a writer means you don't get weekends and holidays.") Tomorrow morning, 5:00 AM to 7:00 AM. Finish "Beanie"? Finish "Trilobyte"? Start something entirely different? Dunno. Whatever comes of it, my butt will be in that chair for two hours.

"Daily" has got to start somewhere.

World Horror Convention 2007 is over now, bar the drinking. And there's still a good deal of drinking going on, if the population of the hotel lounge is any indication. By all accounts, it's been a good WHC.

"Captain Hook" finally got some peer review here. I hadn't planned on it, actually, but when I arrived Saturday at the Twilight Tales Open Mic critique session, intending to be part of the audience, I was immediately accosted with, "So are you gonna sign up?" with a clear subtext of do, please! And I thought, well, I do have something appropriate...

Boy, howdy, was that a good thing. I mean, right up front, it was educational, that crawling in my stomach as I realized I was reading aloud three whole pages of exposition to an audience more patient than the story deserved. But had I read it aloud alone, I probably would have just come away with "Yes, that's a heavily front-loaded story. I need to cut that." What I got from this critique session was much more concrete: which three sentence clauses of the exposition were actually needed, where to put them, and then how to collapse this scene with that character dynamic to improve the whole immensely. Eric Cherry deserves a round of kudos for being such a swell critic. He MC'd the events and acted as critique facilitator, leading off the discussion with his exceedingly insightful comments.

I was relieved to hear that the ending worked. Reactions ranged from "I didn't see that coming" to "I saw it coming and I hoped it wouldn't happen." This is a very good thing. It's always a good thing when the critiques reaffirm your own assessment of which bits succeed and which bits need work. It's also good when you can make an audience of veteran horror readers flinch.

Later that night I read for the Twilight Tales Flash Fiction Contest. I didn't place this year, but I didn't expect to. The story I read had only been written over the past couple of days, after all. Simply that I produced new fiction in time to perform it Saturday night made me feel proud of myself.

Today and Friday (once I arrived) were more relaxed. Attended a panel here and there (in addition to his other stellar qualities, Mort Castle is a brilliant panel moderator), stuck my head in at a few parties, ate out a little, saw a very small corner of Toronto with my very own eyes. Did a little knitting show-n-tell with fellow stitchers (including the designer of the dread Knithulhu!). Today, a local couple (the Knithulhu designer and her husband) led me via street car and subway to an excellent Irish pub at King and Brant Streets. I wish I could have seen more of this city, but I don't wish it enough to exchange my Amtrak tickets for a later date and check into a hostel. I'm ready to go home. I feel like I've been traveling non-stop, even though I've been in the same place since Friday night. I'm missing my husband and our cats and our home and the coffee house down the street. I guess there's a limit to how long I can drift before I get antsy.

Getting on the Maple Leaf tomorrow morning at 8:30. Should be in Denver by the same hour on Wednesday. Might check in on Tuesday morning from Chicago. If not, I'll say hi when I get home.