Here’s a shot from the screen when it was announced!

It was a great evening even before this announcement.  Bella author Karin Kallmaker won two awards–it was a great night for Bella.

Bonus:  the award for best mystery was presented by none other than Kate Clinton, so I got to meet her (or at least hug her and say thanks).

Double bonus, the incomparable Mark Doty, who has been a great inspiration to me for years because of the beauty of his writing, also won a Lambda for poetry, and it was a huge honor for me to follow him to the podium.

Triple bonus:  I have to admit, I found the clutch to be most serviceable for the evening.  Thanks to YOSista for loaning it to me.

ADAM LAMBERT WAS HERE TODAY!!

My informant was wrong–he was on the Today Show today, which I found out when I woke up and turned on the t.v. at 9:30 this morning.  I dressed and pretty much ran to Rockefeller Center.  Missed the outside singing.

Sad.

BUT!  Adam and Kris were on the Kathie Lee and Hoda show at 10, and though I didn’t hear them sing live or really even see them through the window (because the KLG and Hoda show is upstairs) I could see the studio lights and I knew they were there.  Plus, we could see them on the outside monitors.  Therefore, I can faithfully claim I was within 50 feet of Adam and Kris.  So that’s a grand thing.

I ate in Rockefeller Center and took the B train uptown to St. John the Divine.  Wonderful.  I could spend a whole day there.  Grabbed wonderful food to go from an Amish Market and found a free place to post and check the internet (none in my hotel!  In NYC!  Can you believe it?) So now it’s back at the hotel to shower, rest, change and GO to the Lammy event!!!

What a day it’s been already. 

Won’t be able to update until sometime tomorrow when this little free internet spot reopens!

 Left the midwest in an astonishing downpour–the kind where it rains so hard it sounds like rocks are hitting your car.  Also a damp spirit as I heard from a friend that ADAM LAMBERT was on the Today Show this morning and I’d miss him by just a few hours.

 New York is drier, but overcast and foggy.  I walked down to the Empire State Building (which is right across the street from where the Lammy Awards Ceremony will be tomorrow night) and couldn’t see anywhere near the top.

I had a bagel with Nova lox for breakfast in Grand Central Station, so I feel like I’ve arrived.   Then I went straight to the New York Public Library, where I’d never been before.  They have many treasures, including a Declaration of Independence in Jefferson’s handwriting, and a  great collection of 20th century dime novels and comic books.  On the third floor, in the hall outside the great reading room, was a great timeline display of the gay rights movement, particularly focusing on Stonewall and the Liberation of Christopher Street.  Reading the weeklies, the fliers, and the letters from folks fighting the good fight in 1969 and 1970 was quite moving, especially in light of the horrible Supreme Court decision in California yesterday.   Topped the visit off with a visit to the Children’s Reading Room, where the original toys that inspired A. A. Milne to write Winnie the Pooh are housed.  That was a lovely surprise for me!

I also walked by the Episcopal Center, home base of the national church offices and checked out their little bookstore. 

Ate at Don Giovanni’s–great home-cooked Italian food, huge portions, relatively cheap.  It’s on 44th near 9th–one restaurant I always visit whenever I’m in NYC.

Walked up Broadway and down 5th in the evening–including time in the brand new Times Square pedestrian mall.  The city has put lawn chairs in the middle of the former street.  It’s a blast to sit an watch people and signs and traffic and everything.

Tomorrow will be fun!

The luggage is all packed and sitting in the hallway, causing earth-shattering consternation to the household pets.  One of the cats even stole my wallet this morning, but I found it before he dispersed the credit cards all over the back porch.  They love their sitter, but the luggage still freaks them out.

Flying freaks me out, but I’m promising myself not to expend the energy tomorrow when I leave the house at 3 a.m. (!) to get to the airport on time.  I’ll need all my focus just to get in the right lines and not wind up in Maui.  Which wouldn’t be bad, but it isn’t where the award shindig is happening.

Last night I put on my ceremony clothes and made sure I would be comfortable and functional.  Why in God’s name are women’s dress clothes never both?  The clutch I borrowed will barely serve–it’ll hold a lip gloss (my fancy make-up for the evening) and maybe a phone, but not a phone and camera.  And of course, the clothes have no pockets.  I won’t get started on my fashion rant here.  It’s only one evening.  I’ll survive.  In fact, I’ll enjoy it–I’m really looking forward to the whole to-do.  What an experience it will all be!  Cocktails at 6, awards at 7, after party at 9:30.   More social life than I usually have in a month.

And I’m spending an extra two days in New York City, which I’m really looking forward to.  I hope to walk a lot, shop, eat cheap city food, and visit some Episcopal sights (always researching for Lonnie’s future adventures!).

I’ll update from there if I can, otherwise, check back in a few days!

This time next week I’ll be pressing my outfit, putting on the non-walking shoes and stuffing my phone and camera into my borrowed clutch to head off to the Lambda Literary Awards celebration in New York City!

I don’t really know what to expect, though I look forward to seeing my wonderful writing colleagues Karin Kallmaker and Ruth Perkinson again.  I met both last summer in Phoenix at the annual conference of the Golden Crown Literary Society’s annual conference.  (I am sorry I can’t attend that this year s well.  But in the future, I hope!)  I also look forward to meeting colleagues I’ve worked with electronically, but never met.  It will be fun.

Writers need their sleep.  And so do we all, especially if we’re learning new things. 

I feel vindicated.  I’ve always been a 9-hour-minimum sleeper, at least, if I want to be alert and functional.  In college, I told people sleep was my Number One priority.  Then studying.  Then social life.  I was a real charmer then, as now!  Still, I stay healthy and mostly on top of things, even if I always felt guilty about being lazy.

But I just go my hands on a new book, Brain Rules:  12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina.  And it has a handy and fun website you can check out to get a taste for the book.

Anyhow, he explains that we need sleep time for our brains to process what we learned during the day.  “Sleep well, think well,” he says.  He says naps are a good thing!  Love him!  Can’t wait to read the book.

It’s about a teddy bear who has willed himself to live only to be arrested for being the most heinous terrorist mastermind.   Yes, really.  As the official website says:

Emotionally gripping and intellectually compelling, Winkie introduces the most memorable protagonist since the Velveteen Rabbit, and—with the help of a lesbian Moslem cleaning woman, a stuttering attorney, and a Lacan-spewing bear cub—brilliantly exposes the cruel absurdities of our age and explores what it means to be human in an increasingly barbaric world.

It’s a strange book.  I loved it.  Mostly I wondered what sort of creative bravery it took to write it and to believe that it had a chance in hell of getting published.  If I had an idea like this I would never, ever believe it would see the light of day at a publishing house.

I would love to have seen the face of the agents/editors who first saw this thing.  How many times (if any?) was it rejected?  Who had the guts to buy it and what made the risk worth taking?  Kudos to those visionaries.

This, of course, reveals a great deal about my own writing life–particularly the stuff I don’t write.  I’ve often thought that’s a problem.  Now that I see it written out like this, I feel that more strongly than ever.  I need to write my winkies too!  Even if I don’t think there’s a chance they’ll ever get published.  I should let the world decide that, not me.

Hm.  Quite a little pep talk for myself.  What do you think?  Do you guys give yourselves pep talks?  Do you writers out there write your winkies?

I rather like that phrase, that call to arms:  WRITE YOUR WINKIES!

I wonder if Chase would mind?

I voted 101 times for Adam last week.  I’ve never voted more than a dozen times in a season before this one.   Then I bought tickets to see the tour.  Next, I’ll buy an Adam Lambert t-shirt.  I probably should check the web . . .

I haven’t gotten all geeky-fan about anyone in a long time.  It’s kinda fun.  Now I know why all those twelve year-old girls do it!  What a rush!  It’s gotta be good for burning calories.

Last week’s Entertainment Weekly had a super-smart cover story–it claimed to be about Adam, but it was really about the silencing that surrounds so many gay or maybe-gay folks–and the impact it has on all of us when they can’t share their lives the way everyone else can.  Something I feel every day.  Probably many of you do too, living in a heterocentric world.

Did anyone out there besides me not know that May 2 is “Brothers and Sisters Day?”  A day to be thankful for our siblings.  To send e-cards to them.  To call on the phone.

It would be easy to go all cynical and call it a marketing ploy by card companies.  Maybe so.  But I don’t object to being called to be mindful of the value of my siblings in my life.

I’m thinking it would be fun to call my sibs and ask them each to tell the funniest story they can think of about our grandparents.  They’ve been gone for many years and we all loved them dearly and it strikes me that sharing those fun memories would be a great way to honor one of the things only brothers and sisters can share.

Plus, maybe they’ll help me remember some good stuff I can use in a book!