Organizing your writing life

THE WASHING OF THE CELL PHONE: Yes, that's right, I washed my cell phone last night. After coming home from the loverly poetry reading by Reb Livingston and Carly Sachs, I decided to do some laundry, including the pair of jeans I was wearing. While I remembered to remove my wallet, key card and business card holder, somehow my little cell phone eluded me. The clothes had gone into the last spin cycle when I started looking for my phone. I searched the apartment, then went out to my car. Nada. While searching under my seats, I thought about the phone being in the washing machine. I ran back inside, yanked open the lid and fished around in the water. Sure enough...there it was.

I took the back off the case and immediately removed the little SIM card that stores all your phone numbers and data. It looked remarkably dry, so I thought at least it might be salvageable. I knew the phone itself was toast. There was water inside the screen; it sort of looked like a lava lamp. Something else I noticed was that there was a bright red circle at the bottom of the casing that I had never noticed before. I searched the internet and found out that circle is normally white, but when there is water damage to the phone, it turns red. Sigh.

I took the phone in to the local "wireless" store and waited around for an hour to get help. The guy was able to retrieve the numbers off my SIM card, but not all of them. Most of my international phone numbers are gone and many of my local ones, too. Turns out when I was storing numbers, I wasn't always storing them on the SIM but in the phone itself. Doh! And, stupidly, I didn't have a back up list for most of these numbers. Don't be surprised if you get an email from me in a day or so, asking for your digits. On the plus side, my plan allowed for me to upgrade my phone to a shiny new one with a lot more capabilities and it only cost me $30.

Back to Reb and Carly. They were totally worth the hike across the Emory University campus in the cold, and since hiking in the cold is one of my least favorite activities, you know this must have been some good shit. And it was. I almost want to say they were delightful, but Reb would probably make a face at me calling her "delightful." How about "sexy bitches?" Bruce Covey hosted the evening, held in the parlor of Dobbs Hall. Reb was funny and sarcastic (my fave characteristics!) and we agreed to meet up for a drink in the bar at AWP. I wasn't as familiar with Carly's work, but loved her reading from The Steam Sequence, poems about a woman in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. I was also pleased to see Laurel Snyder in the audience and we chatted after the reading. Reb said AWP is a good excuse for socializing and partying. Two of my favorite activities.