Oh look, it's the weekend...

And I'm post my second round of teaching at The Loft. I can't say as I feel great about how it went. 14 people signed up and 5 were no-shows, presumably due to the highway closings and the fact that all available parking spaces in the lot and the surroundings were taken up by the other classes in the building or the hotrod event at the Dome down the street. Based on feedback from last year, I tried making it a 5 hour class, rather than the original 4 hour length. This turned out not to work as well as I hoped: the energy level really tanked as the afternoon wore on, I ran out of steam toward the end and some things that made sense in the planning stages didn't take as much time as I thought they would once people stopped asking questions. I had also not reckoned on Loft class participants having a pretty uniform reaction to a class they like - it should be at least a month long with workshopping. Never mind that a. I doubt it would fill and b. I work a more than full time job plus writing plus editing and have zippo energy or time to teach a multi-week class with a ton of extra work thrown in. On the bright side, they did like it enough to suggest it. There was some good discussion and several people stopped by to mention that they thought it was useful. I also met a young woman who's an aspiring YA author and a fair way down the path to being amazing. I'm looking forward to seeing what she accomplishes. So far from awful, just not up to my hopes and expectations. Am planning changes if I offer it again next year, not surprisingly.

After that, I was off to Big Brain Comics where I acquired more issues of the Starstruck reissue, Jaime Hernandez' Locas collection The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S (Maggie and Hopey squee!) and Batwoman: Elegy. This last was an interesting new read; it's hard not to get pulled into a graphic novel where the protagonist is a lesbian (presumably Jewish, based on the menorah in one panel) who becomes a superhero as the result of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." This along with being out, slightly weird and rather Goth. Seriously. The artwork's quite striking and the story is interesting, though parts are a tad hard to follow (as in "why am I suddenly looking at a werewolf?"). Rucka does a good job with the writing overall though and it worked for me on a Gail Simonish level (this is a complement). I'd really like to see this series take off so I'd recommend checking it out if you like your stories on the grim side.

After that, it was off to Ikea where we got sundry household items like a new living room chair (if you live in the Cities and would like to inherit our wicker fanback chair, let me know this week; it's a pretty nice one but no longer practical for us) and a shelf (Ljusdal for those hoping for  umlauts :-) for my Goldies. Caught Machinery Hill at the Riverview Cafe after wrestling the chair into my car, then hit the Kingfield Farmer's Market this morning. I'm currently surrounded with sleeping kitties as I do things like get plane tix for Ptown and work on Silver Moon. It's a good life if you don't weaken...