Home of the Snarkmaiden

But still cold.

Yes, Minnesotans and Wisconsoners can laugh merrily at us -- I freely confess at every opportunity that Seattle makes weather wimps of us all -- but dang. As I drove to work, the radio informed me that Seattle had warmed up to 27ºF with an expected high of 30ºF. Inside the office it's like 61º and steady. So here I sit at my desk in three layers of clothes, including silk thermals, wishing for a lap blanket. I walked the dog this morning between taking my shower and blow-drying my hair, and while we were out, the wet ringlets of my hair *froze*. I've heard tales of such things, but never had it happen.

In other news, yesterday afternoon I was amused by the spectacle of watching BigName Reclusive Author driven out of his seat, off his perch, and finally right out of the room by the gentle application of rather moderate praise of his written works. Clearly, there's a reason he chooses to avoid gatherings of fans.

So Ellen Klages is teaching a YA Fiction workshop through the offices of Richard Hugo House. Cool. In fact, there are several workshops in the series that sound interesting. The James Patrick Kelly workshop sounds particularly useful. Interesting writing workshops with fine writers, available locally -- keen, right? What's not to like?

Yeah, except I've been through this before. Last year there was another such series, and so I clicked through the complex maze of links to and through the Hugo House web page, only to find that the when/where/how-much information was all buried deep in a gigantic .pdf of the poster-sized flyer for all of Richard Hugo House's workshops for the entire year, and NOWHERE ELSE. Pages and pages of scrolling later I find the eyewatering workshop fees in 3 pt. Bodoni narrow in the bottom drawer of a locked filing cabinet, stuck upside-down, in a disused toilet with a sign on the door saying 'BEWARE OF THE LEOPARD! at the very bottom of the form, with no way to find out if the workshop was already full. And so it was only with some trepidation that I again essayed the journey, drilling down through the links again, only to find that now the folks at Hugo House have managed a new wrinkle, and the link to the registration form comes back with a 404 Not Found error. So this time the particulars for signing up aren't available anywhere at all. And that, dear friends, is Richard Hugo House in a nutshell. So close and yet so very, very far.