Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

I got a lovely surprise last week and earlier this week when some kind soul nominated my poor efforts as a very unreliable author but somewhat reliable reviewer on "Twisting the Hellmouth" for a couple of awards.






(Thanks to missmurchison for setting these banners up for me!)

Who'd have thunk it? Considering that I'm up against so many of the people and stories I admire most, I don't expect to last very long, but "I'll always have Paris" . . . or something like that.

Voting started today and goes through the end of December, so maybe my "Paris" moment will last a couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, my sinuses are killing me and I don't feel like going to a Christmas party that's a good 20 minute drive from my house tonight (I know, I'm such a weenie), and I just got through making a very amateurish-looking 'Chrismon' (for more details on 'Chrismon' religious ornaments, go to http://www.umcs.org/chrismons/index.htm, among other informative sites) to represent our unit of the publishing house during our Christmas worship service next week (hey! they gave us the toughest one, and left all the simpler designs to the REALLY artsy folks in the art departments and children's units, I'm sure).

However, if I was ever in any doubt about the fact that I'm truly 'at home' among people of my own kind here on the fifth floor of the publishing house, those doubts were set to rest when, a little over a week before Thanksgiving (when everyone on our unit was running around in a 'final exams' kind of punch-drunk haze of stress and overwork, in preparation for the AAR/SBL meeting in San Diego at the end of the week) I heard someone on the other side of a cubicle divider whistling a familiar tune. "Hey!" cried I, without pausing for thought, "that sounds like the theme from Star Blazers!"

When the whistler poked his head around a few minutes later, it turned out to be a VERY senior editor in my chain of command, grinning like a schoolboy. He explained that for some reason that tune had been running through his head all day, but he never imagined anyone else would recognize it. Turns out, he used to get together with a group of friends when he was in graduate school and watch "Star Blazers" 'religiously'.

Then one of the two women I work most closely with came out of her cubicle and said that was her favorite show when she was perhaps 3 years old, and the first show she remembers being a fan of. I, of course, watched it when I was in high school and college, but we could all reminisce about the fun of watching the Argo battle the Gamalons under the oh-so-cool Leader Desslok (who, now that I come to think of it, kind of reminds me of Spike on BtVS, or vice versa) and then the forces of the evil Comet Empire.

Yes, I am truly among 'my' people, here, at last.