In which Lopate suddenly wins my dorky heart

...by comparing his sister's cynicism to the Marquise de Merteuil.

This is an unnecessary blog update. But I am at work and having wandered to EA who send me to three AEs, no one has anything for me to do. I've done the mail two days in a row now out of sheer boredom and am resisting doing it again today. BAD SUBMISSIONS, PLZ.

In which I am a hazard to the process

Good evening, blogosphere! I write again out of the depths of my mother's computer because, see, the something liquid in the something layer of McGillicudy's screen did something and they had to send it somewhere to have something done...it's $200. That part I understood.

Today was my first day being an Editorial Intern! Actually, it's pretty cool. I basically do exactly what the editorial assistant would be doing if there wasn't an editorial intern to do it for her. Read submissions. Write reading recommendations. File things. Also moderate the web forum so that the kids don't scare each other.

Things I have never done before and are harder than they look: using a letter opener.
Potential disasters:
1. Tearing people's submissions in half
2. Tearing a letter from the publisher's insurance company in half
3. Giving up, opening it by hand, and tearing the top off someone's cover letter.
4. Stabbing oneself
5. Scratching oneself
NOTE: 4 and 5 are different. When you stab yourself, you get a puncture wound. When you scratch yourself it's much more mild.

Other injuries incurred: The welt on my left hand due to one of those heavy duty rubber bands. It had previously been holding a huge-ass stack of envelopes together. Yet, when I tried to put it BACK around that self-same huge-ass stack of envelopes, all hell broke loose. Your sympathy is much appreciated.

Today was a lot of learning the, uh, "ropes" (as the kids are calling it these days), but I did go through a huge stack of "humor" submissions.

I do not fancy myself an expert on the process. I do not even fancy myself an expert on good writing, and certainly not on humor-writing. HOWEVER. I am fairly certain that "not TOO terribly depressing" does not COUNT as humor. Other things that do not count as humor: "Ha ha we thought a murderer broke into the house. He didn't."

Actually I will be honest...form-rejection was scaring the hell out of me. That is the part where I, your lowly intern, try to weed out the obvious "no's" so that the lovely editorial assistant did not have to read them. But, especially because it was supposed to be "humor," I was just terrified that my particular sense of humor was just too picky / not right for the magazine and that I was going to reject what was, in reality, the most vomit-inducingly funny pieces ever.

Well that was an attractive way to put it.

I plan on getting over it, though.

And I read a couple really good stories! Okay, one. But it was really good!



Okay, since we are discussing hazards, remember how I said I had fifteen blood tests done? That amounted to 8 vials of blood taken, which has resulted in a really impressive bruise. Four inches long about that vein.

The nice part of all this is that I have no heard back from my doctor about the results of these tests. Oh, she called, let's not get ahead of ourselves. And she left a message saying basically "Oh, you're not picking up your phone. Cool. Well, I'm leaving town tomorrow. Bye!"

In the meantime, I have these swollen lymph nodes in my neck that have been there for more than two months now. Originally it was assumed I had a mild cold or allergies, then it was assumed I had mono, then three mono tests came back negative and we were about to flip our shit and get the suckers biopsied when a savior mono test came back positive. Backstory: complete.

So, having found what I thought was another swollen node in the groin area and having a freaking panic attack, and having JUST been hit with the fatigue that should have hit, like, when I still had mono, I went to my doctor a few days ago to hear the following phrases that you never really want to hear from your doctor:

"Oh, yeah, you're right. Mono doesn't really work like that."
"Don't worry, that's not another gland, that's just a cyst. Hold up. Why do you have a cyst?"*
"Well we'll do the basic test now. If it comes back wonky, we'll do a more expensive test. Tell your parents, because nothing ever comes back normal with you."
"When was your last kidney biopsy? Really? That long ago? Hmm."

*Been There Done That (Cyst in the Reproductive System Edition): Two years ago, or three, who really knows, I had a cyst the size of a lemon removed from my left ovary. But since my doctor would not say anything besides "cyst, not gland, go see your OBGYN have fun" we may get a repeat of Cyst in the Reproductive System. Which, incidentally, has nothing to do with lupus.

"Your blood pressure is perfect. GOOD JOB." Why thank you, nurse.

Other things I enjoy: Getting an email telling me that CellCept, another "Been There Done That (drug edition)" has been doing well in phase III trials. Hooray!

That is all, friends. Hopefully I will have more interest from the publishing world soon. Oh, did you all go out and buy a Eula Biss book? No? FOR SHAME!

That Time I Frightened Eula Biss with an Over-Abundance of Love

Putting yourself and thousands of books outside in the middle of June is really just asking to be rained on, as the Printer's Row book fair in Chicago has learned basically every year it exists. Pre-rain, however, my lovely friend and I wandered pretty aimlessly through the shelves, discussing what bad readers we are and trying to figure out why we are not in the loop on what's "in" right now in the bookish world. I was of course keeping my eye out for any 18th century I might have missed, but (shockingly) found nothing of great interest on that front. I did buy Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, because on my reading list I had written "Also more Bill Bryson." I also, in an attempt to personally keep Sandmeyer's Bookstore afloat(Chicagoans: buy local!)bought Drown (Junot Diaz); What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (Raymond Carver) and The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver - I had never heard of it before but my friend handed it to me and said "you must." So I will.)

Okay, but. We were wandering around this table that had "all books for ten dollars" which, you know, is good, but my book buying addiction tends to come from Bargain Books in Mishawaka, IN where I can get everything for $5 or less so I was being pretty picky. Just when I was about to leave (in a HUFF. No. Just kidding. Not huffy at all), I looked up and saw a little tab sticking out of a book saying "Eula Biss signing books TODAY" and I look down, and there is Eula Biss' book Notes from No Man's Land, and I look up and there is Eula Biss smiling around. Ladies and gentlemen, I nearly passed out. Well, I jumped. Literally. My heels left the ground. And I went bright red, and I said something along the lines of "ohmygodhiIloveyou." She looked mildly taken aback. If I could remember our conversation I would write it out, but I can't, and plus it was more me babbling at her than a real conversation.

Oh, but, who IS Eula Biss, you ask?
Eula Biss is an American essayist, who teaches nonfiction at Northwestern University. She wrote an essay called The Pain Scale, which I am absolutely in love with for several reasons. 1. I relate to it, it being about chronic pain. 2. It is supremely un-whiny while being at the same time incredibly emotive. 3. Eula Biss takes lots of outside sources and random interesting facts and puts them together to make an incredible essay. I am TERRIBLE at weaving interesting tidbits into my writing. Apart from the article I wrote about lupus where I incorporated Eula Biss. So that does not really count.

You can read most of The Pain Scale here: http://books.google.com/books?id=wKmKh7slk6wC&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28&dq=the+pain+scale+eula+biss&source=bl&ots=TL79_9RPy5&sig=hjT1H7TfKCNiOgnV6pnseu53GP0&hl=en&ei=A3EVTKfwCsKHnQf8-fn7Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CD0Q6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=the%20pain%20scale%20eula%20biss&f=false. Now. Go buy a Eula Biss book.

Having received a shiny signed copy of Notes from No Man's Land, I wandered away from the table to find where I was supposed to pay, only to realize, after Eula Biss waved merrily at me while I was hovering awkwardly near where I thought I was supposed to be, that I should've paid the woman who'd been standing next to Eula Biss the entire time. I then went back and assured them I was not walking off with the book. Sheepish look count: over 6 in the course of about 5 minutes.

Point: I MET EULA BISS TODAY!

Now. I really want to tell you all things about my last doctor's appointment, but I am also waiting for the results of 15 (fifteen.) blood tests and, really, all stories are better when they've got some sort of ending (even if it is the "to be continued" sort), so we are taking a Geek Out About Eula Biss Interlude.