I also look like I've lost about 15lb, now the swollen neck has gone down, and my head is on a normal-sized neck again.
This is what I've done since I got home: I've slept.
Sometimes I've growled at poor Lorraine.
Her: "What you do want to drink?"
Me (in the saintly tones of the soon-expiring): "Anything".
Her: "How about a lemon, ginger and honey drink?"
Me (even more saintly and further from this world): "Anything."
She goes off and makes a hot drink, carefully adds ice cubes to stop it being too hot, brings it upstairs.
Me (on the point of death, like a perfect Victorian child): "Thank... you..." (Takes one sip. Stops sounding saintly.) "Ow! That hurt! What the hell did you put in here? Lemons? Are you trying to kill me? Why didn't you warn me you were putting lemon in this nightmarish concoction? Oh you claim you did, you, you Lucrezia Borgia of assistants! Ow!" and so on.
For some reason, she hasn't murdered me yet.
The most exciting thing I've done since I've got home is -- because I wasn't up to reading aloud yesterday evening -- I found the video of Sunday in the Park With George. It's currently Maddy's favourite CD, and she knows much of it by heart, and walks around singing "artists are bizarre, fixed, cold, that's you George you're bizarre, fixed, cold, I like that in a man, fixed, cold..." which can be a bit disconcerting from a nine year old, although will be useful knowledge for her in case she ever meets any French pointillists when she grows up. So I put it on for us to watch. I ate some lukewarm tapioca and drank some lukewarm chicken soup, cuddled Maddy, and stayed awake for the next ten minutes, while Maddy explained who everyone was and what they were going to do next.
"Hang on," I said, thinking through cloudy layers. "You've only ever heard the CD. How do you know this stuff?"
"Daddy," she said, in that infinitely patient dealing-with-idiots tone of voice that children only use around their own parents, "the CD does have notes, you know."
"Right," I said, and fell asleep.
...
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of links and things I'm meant to put up, but it may take a while for me to catch up (particularly because, when I've finished posting this, I'm going back to bed). The only one that can't wait -- a huge congratulations to Brian, Tzipi and Ben at Comix Experience. http://www.comixexperience.com/ben.htm
And for the people worried that the LiveJournal feed at http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=officialgaiman is down, LiveJournal, in a burst of "it's not a bug, it's a feature" seem to now be checking syndicated feeds once a day.
On the other hand the unofficial feed (without the titles of these feeds) at http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=gaimanblog does seem to be having problems.
Sooner or later I have to fix things so the titles of these posts show up on the journal itself. They contain extra information, or something, after all (there was even one of them which contained some "Snow Cherries" lyrics).
....
And this came in from Rita Rouse (RRouse@plcmc.org), who ran the Charlotte event, and was passed on to me:
Hi, Lorraine. I have an odd problem that I 'm not even sure you can help me with, but I thought I'd ask. After Neil's presentation on Saturday (he was FANTASTIC, by the way), we found a beautiful leather-bound journal that belongs to an unnamed owner. There is writing in it but no name. Do you know of a Neil Gaiman chat room or message board where I might post that we found this? Or some other way to let folks know that we found this? So far, no one has contacted me, the library or the venue about it, But it's a beautiful book (with some very personal writings) so I know the owner would like to have it back. Any suggestions are very welcome. Thanks for any help you can give.
Rita
Labels: Best Of, comix ecsperience, Livejournal, Maddy, The Fabulous Lorraine, Tori Amos