Back from Portland

I spent Friday and Saturday in Portland, where I visited my mother and spent Valentine's Day with an old flame. We went to see Love Actually which has to be the highest-pressure date movie ever made -- I defy any couple who goes to see it not to walk out ready to fuck. (Or at least, any couple which has not only recently managed to be able to spend more than 30 minutes with each other even though they broke up 12 years ago. I slept by myself in her basement.) I got up at 3:30 a.m. this morning to drive to the airport and boarded a 6:00 a.m. flight back to SF. I managed to get another 45 minutes of sleep on the plane.

Then I drove straight from the airport to a downtown hotel where a writers conference was wrapping up with a "Speed Dating for Agents" event. The idea was to get 250 writers in a room with 20 agents, and you had three minutes to pitch your book. Man, what a cluster-fuck that was. But it was kind of fun, because the energy in the room was so high and rather positive. I think all the agents were in a yea-saying mood, or maybe I just picked the right ones, because all four of the agents I talked to were interested in reading some sample chapters of my novel.

Finally home about noon. I got 6 hours sleep Friday night and three hours sleep last night; even though I took a two-hour nap as soon as I got home, I'm still utterly exhuasted, from the book pitching as well as the lost sleep.

To do in the next couple of days:
     - Go to Sara's for preseason warmups of "The Sopranos"
     - Pay bills
     - Install Quark XPress for freelance layout gig
     - Take cats to vet for checkup
     - Send my first three chapters to each of those four agents who were interested in my novel

My friend Windy got a profile in the Chronicle today, just for being a cool, stylish gal.