Last post o' 2012

End-of-the-year greetings.  Flickr isn't playing friendly right now, so here are a few pix of recent visits:
 Sliders at the playground:

 Cousins (Lucy, Jamie, Hannah, Megan, Elliot, Josh):

They're moving too fast to catch w/ the camera.  Some serious excitement.

Happy New Year, one and all!

Merry Christmas

It's 9:05 am on Christmas morning.  Lucy is still asleep.  Merry Christmas.

Last night, Lucy informed me that she was going to sleep late (she has a cold).  Here's the convo:

Lucy: I'm going to sleep late in the morning.
Me: That's good.  You need your rest.
Lucy: And if I sleep late, Santa will have more time.  After he leaves my toys, he can sit down in one of our chairs and rest for a while.
Me: (laughing) Yes, Santa will be pretty tired.

Well, at least she's true to her word.  You may recall that she actually slept through her first Christmas morning (she had been up all night and then slept from 8am to noon).  And this behavior is also in keeping with my own childhood stance that the presents would be there whenever I woke up, so I was going to sleep late.

So while we're waiting for her to arise so we can OPEN PRESENTS, here's a run-down of a recent Conversation with Lucy (TM):

Yesterday, Lucy was very involved in making a rope made from tape and construction paper.  She got about 20 feet into the construction process, when she ran out of tape.  Here's the conversation with Jake that ensued:

Lucy: I need more tape.
Jake: Let's wait for Mommy; I don't want to run out of tape. [Without mentioning that it's Christmas Eve and there are presents to wrap, and we can't be without tape for that!]
Lucy: Daddy, which is more important: getting you, me, or Mommy out of quicksand, or wrapping Christmas presents?

At least she has her priorities straight.

We're still waiting.  Jake's working on the second round of hot beverages.  Hopefully she'll wake up soon.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Bonus feature: Here are some of Lucy's drawings of Rudolph w/ Santa's sleigh:

Christmas-Making continues

This is Lucy's picture w/ Santa from school.  We've tried and tried to talk with her about how she smiles for the camera. Clearly, to no avail.  Here's the link to last year's photo.

The next few days feature a few fun holiday parties (woo hoo).  Meanwhile, Lucy's been drawing up a storm.

Suns, stars, and trees have been the big themes:

Stars

and stars on trees

 

May you be of good cheer!

On Meeting Literary Heroes, Part 2

So you may have already seen last night's post with my photo w/ Mr. King.  Or perhaps you woke up and picked up your copy of the Boston Globe, featuring us!

http://bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/names/2012/12/08/stephen-king-umass-lowell/wOTL2T65gxXxyZuheQsHjO/story.html

Needless to say, I had a pretty amazing day yesterday. I still can't quite believe it all happened.

It was my last teaching day of the semester.  For the last meeting of my upper-level Gothic seminar, I had students giving presentations on their final projects (on their own selected novel; three had chosen King novels).  After they had all presented, I had the unique pleasure of saying: "Great job!  Thanks for a great semester!  Now let's go see Stephen King!"  There were cheers (mine and theirs).

Next, I went to the "green room" where I got to meet Stephen King in order to prepare to introduce him before his talk to our students.  Yes, I found out late on Wednesday that I could (if I wanted to) be the one to introduce him for the afternoon for-our-students-only session.  It was terrifying and made me queasy.  I was worried that I'd be re-creating that scene from King's story "The Body" (also in the film Stand by Me) where a guy sets of a chain reaction of vomit.

So I got some pictures with King, and then a group shot (that's the one in the paper), and I had a personal, one-on-one conversation with Stephen  King.  He was incredible and lovely and amazing.  He asked me what I was teaching in my class!  He was just so so so nice.  (Did I mention that he donated his speaker's fee and all the proceeds from the talk to scholarships for English majors?)

Then I went over to the room where about 120 of our students (including my own class) were waiting to hear from King.  And I got up on stage, behind a podium and microphone, and introduced Stephen King.  I was pretty much shaking all over.  It was terrifying.  And then he came up and talked to our students and answered their questions and was just as lovely as you would never imagine someone who write such terrifying stuff would be.

And then, Jake and Lucy joined me, and we went to a reception for English faculty with Stephen King.  And he continued to be lovely and kind and generous.  He talked to Lucy.  He let people take pictures and he signed things.  (I didn't have a chance to get my book signed, but I felt like with all the photos and all the time I'd had with him, I wanted to let other folks get a chance for their books.)

Still pretty much vibrating with excitment, I headed over to the Tsongas Center for the main event: the 3000-member audience for "A Conversation with Stephen King."

Yup, that's King X3: in person, plus half of his giant head on the backdrop, plus him up on the jumbo-tron.  It was nuts.  He was hilarious.

I feel like this post isn't very eloquent, but really, I was pretty much speechless.  It's been tremendous.

Update: there are a ton of great pictures from the event (including a classic Lucy image) here:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151143527007694&set=a.10151143371472694.441998.11833797693&type=3&theater

Update: The university is keeping track of all the press (not surprising) but has also begun posting video.  If you watch, right at the very start of the 5-minute promo, you'll see the end of my intro for the afternoon event: https://www.uml.edu/News/stories/2011-12/king-scares-up-great-night.aspx 

so there's this

Also in the Boston Globe here:
http://bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/names/2012/12/08/stephen-king-umass-lowell/wOTL2T65gxXxyZuheQsHjO/story.html

On Meeting Literary Heroes (Part 1)

While I was an undergraduate, I was a teaching assistant for a class called "Quests and Journeys."  In that class, we read a collection of stories by Joyce Carol Oates called Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?  I loved it.  What was particularly exciting was that the author herself was coming to campus to do a reading and talk, and sign books.  I went up to her at the end of the talk with my book in hand, which she graciously signed. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: I taught this book this semester! It was great!
Oates: You look way too young to be teaching.

Sigh.  But the campus paper's photographer was there, so I have this documentation:

I guess I *do* look a little young there.  But still.  I was disappointed.

So my next author encounter was with Margaret Atwood.  I was working an awful summer job at a glass factory (there's a longer version of that story, for another post) and a friend let me know that she was going to be reading at a Borders bookstore about an hour from my house.  I had just pulled a full shift and was exhausted, but I had to go.  I drove all the way there and arrived in time to hear the reading (she was terrific and funny), and then go up and get my book signed.  Here's how that exchange went:

Me [barely able to speak, clutching my book]: Will you sign my book?
Atwood: Yes of course. [and she signed my prized hardcover copy of Cat's Eye]

Many years later, I wrote an article about a "witch" named Mary Webster.  This Mary Webster was in fact an ancestor of Margaret Atwood, and Atwood wrote a poem about her called "Half-Hanged Mary."  In writing my article, I really wanted to include some of her poem.  I managed to do this by getting permissions from her publisher (for which we had to pay).  In the process of doing that, I had some correspondence with Atwood's assistant, and I asked if I might send Atwood herself a copy of the article.  She expressed interest, and while I tried not to get too excited, I was thinking, way down deep in the corner of my heart, that maybe, just maybe, Margaret Atwood would read something that I had written.  A few months later, I received this in my mailbox:

This is likely the most exciting thing, ever, to happen to me, writing-wise.  And possibly otherwise, too.  Margaret Atwood read something I wrote.  In fact she "very much enjoyed reading it."  I'm still kind of speechless about that.

About a year after I received the note, I went to another of Atwood's readings, and again got her to sign a book.  I wrote about that in another post here.

So why am I bringing all this up now?

Well, this Friday, something's happening that's Kind of a Big Deal.

Stephen King is coming to campus.  I am taking my class (the one on the Gothic novel) to see him in a small afternoon talk for students, and I am going to his big arena lecture in the evening.  But it appears that sometime in between those two events, I am likely going to be at a small-ish reception where I will likely (I can barely type this) meet Stephen King.

If only I could tell my thirteen-year-old self this.  Dear Thirteen Year Old Self: I know you just received about a dozen Stephen King books for Christmas this year, and that you literally spent all of Christmas Day, 1987, reading Misery.  Just wait til 2012.

Stay tuned for updates, photos, etc.

Making Christmas

This past weekend, we went to the Lowell Humane Society for their Christmas Bazaar and Pictures with Santa.  Check it out:

Awesome.

In other news, we have our Christmas tree up.  Here's what it looks like (w/ Lucy this morning):

That is one super-excited child.  Seriously, she was bouncing off the walls from Thursday night about getting the tree (which we got on Saturday and didn't decorate until Sunday).  She just squeals with delight about Christmas decorating and preparing.

Lucy has been spending lots of time underneath the tree, making Christmas cards.  I'd love to say that you could expect one soon in your mailbox, however, she has been very possessive of her cards and artwork of late.  I'm not sure what's going on with that.  She's been making lovely cards and drawings, but insisting that they are for her or for me or Jake.  She's nearly had a fit when I've suggested that we mail them off to our friends and family.  So here, for your enjoyment, I'm presenting virtual versions of some of her recent creations.  Apparently she's holding out for big collector money once she's famous.

Around Thanksgiving, Hand Turkeys were a recurrent theme:

Prior to that (Halloween) she was on a role with these very cute cats:

She's also into hearts, particularly done with her new metallic-glitter markers:

And this is her interpretation of a Star-On Machine (from Seuss's The Sneeches):

The one recent time she relented on the not sharing artwork was this card she made for our friend Marie; her beloved dog Bizou died this past weekend, and Lucy drew this to cheer her up:

So that's all kinds of heartwarming and whatnot, but here's the conversation that followed:

Lucy: How old was Bizou?
Bridget: She was 16!  That's very old for a dog.  She was a good dog.
Lucy: Yeah.  When Carter dies, we can get a bunny.

Yup, just keeping it all in perspective.

More holiday updates to come, but for now I wanted to get some kind of December post up.  Happy Holidays!