too hot to think of a title

So hot last night in the Dangerous Writers' basement. Everyone in shorts and tank tops but me, and why did I somehow think being in a basement would mean it couldn't get all that hot? Yes, there's something in science about heat rises but there's also something in science about cramming lots of bodies in a room under a flank of hot lights. Sitting there in the crammedest spot in the whole place, my back against the wall and John at my left and Brad at my right - my god, Brad's got on some sort of button-up long-sleeved shirt.

I never much mind feeling hemmed in, but at 4 o'clock yesterday, workshop about to start, the air in that place felt like a hot bag of wet cement. I don't know if you can have a hot bag of wet cement, but I was having one of those panic thoughts like, I don't know if I can do this. Sit here trapped at this table for four hours.

Of course, as much as I'm a wimp, I'm also a wimp, so I wasn't about to get up and say, OK, I've got to leave. Even if I did have to have some sort of claustrophobic heat wave freak out.

But seriously, the magic of a good story. As soon as the pages started going around the room and we started reading, I forgot about the claustrophobic heat wave freak out. I have to hand it to the table. Stories so good you could read them under a hot bag of wet cement.

our lovely heat wave

Reports vary.

105?

107?

111?

I like that last one. That's a good and pointy number.

now i've got to come up with a post title too?

So, I've been wanting to make a little blog for a while now, and the thing that's stopped me has been a title.

I don't know why, but I'm so very not good at titles. When my short story Shanghaied was published in the book Portland Noir this summer, my proposed title, which I agonized over for a long time, was so boring the editor chose a title for me. I've been walking around trying to come up with some perfectly ingenious name for my blog that would totally exemplify me and all that I love in this world, throwing out all sorts of lofty stuff, chickening out with all the lofty stuff because it felt like I was trying to say I had a lofty brain, paging through favorite old books for quotes, forgetting I was looking for quotes and just reading instead...

Then last night, with a half hour between Lana Turner and picking up Stephen, I just decided to cut the lofty and the name of my blog would be The Name Of My Blog.

The idea of that made my brain happy. I jumped on the site and put it in.

Taken.

Taken?

Alright, then... My Blog Has No Name.

Taken?

I started just throwing random stuff out.

dsfgsej

Taken? Really?

I don't remember all the weird, random stuff I threw at the blog engine - Blogus Titlus... My Blog Really, Really Has No Title... Mrs. Mollywoggle And Her Poodle, Captain Stud (no, I didn't actually try that one), but time was a-wasting. Somehow since I'd started this, I decided I had to find a name before I left to pick my husband up from work. At the last moment I tossed out something that had been rolling around in my brain the whole time I'd been trying to come up with a title. Something I'd kept coming back to but kept discarding because it seemed too... yes, lofty.

And lo and behold, whaddya know, surprise-surprise, and yada yada yada.

So, I took it.

So, now I have a blog with a title. And I get to agonize over blog post titles whenever I want!