Here in Lawrence, Kansas, home of the Fighting Sock Monkeys

I flew into the airport and kijjohnson picked me up and drove me to her new home in Lawrence, Kansas, which I've never seen before. Kij and her husband mckitterick moved here from Seattle this year to teach at Kansas State University (Kij is working with Jim Gunn of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction, and Chris teaches technical writing). Kij's first book, set in medieval Japan, was about foxes. The second, Fudoki which she just turned into Tor and will be out next October, is about cats. The next one which we'll be talking about this weekend will be about monkeys, and so she and Chris have been collecting monkeys for a while. They have a net strung up in the corner of their bedroom, crammed full of sock monkeys.

"Where did you find them all?"

"On E-bay, of course!"

Of course. It's wonderful to be here, to see how she lives rather than just hearing about it over the phone. She taught the first session of the fiction writing class she'll be doing this semester, so I came along as a guest auditor. Tonight, because it is cold and snowy here in Lawrence, I wanted something warm and filling, so we went out to a Vietnamese restaurant so I could get pho.

Kij is tired tonight--she was up till 5:00 a.m. last night burning through the ending of Lord of the Rings, the first time she's read it since sometime in her twenties. I feel incredibly smug that I just got her the BBC radio production CDs for Christmas. So we'll be going to bed early. Tomorrow we'll prowl the thrift stores together. Kij will be introducing me to Jim Gunn sometime this weekend, and we'll be seeing worldforger tomorrow night and maybe radcliffe sometime this weekend.

We're going to have fun! Once we catch up on our sleep, that is. . .

Cheers,
Peg