Lilith Saintcrow

Yesterday I braved Portland traffic (thank God for GPS) and hopped over to Pine State Biscuits for lunch with Mark Henry, Jaye Wells, and Richelle Mead. Oh, LORD. It was great.

The food was delicious–they bake a mean biscuit over there, as attested by the size of the crowd lining up at the door. It’s a tiny place, but we scored a table. The table itself groaned under our selections, because everything looked good. I tried my first fried green tomato; I was not brave enough for the andouille corndog. Both Jaye and Mark were brave enough for that corndog, though, and pronounced themselves ruined for all other weiners for life.

You can kind of guess how lunch conversation went. This is one of the reasons I love hanging around writers. At one point we were all sitting around giving serious consideration to stalker zombies and build-your-own smut scenes. Though that was later at Tao of Tea, where we sat and had a bit of tea to wash some of what we ate out of our systems. (Note: it didn’t work. But I tried.) Anyway, if you want some good down-home biscuits (not to mention collard greens, Southern sodas, or fried green tomatoes, oh my GOD so good), Pine State is worth the trouble and the crowd. And Tao of Tea is such a neat little place!

I can’t guarantee the conversation will be as raunchy, but I can guarantee the food and tea are damn good.

I got home and did some yardwork right before a stormy afternoon rolled in. Two sessions of hail, thunder, torrential rain–March went out like a lion here in my piece of the world. This morning’s sunny, but I’m thinking the weather is playing an April Fool’s joke on me. (The Little Prince’s April 1 joke was propping a sock monkey up in my writing chair. I was uncaffeinated when I saw it, and my start of surprise made him giggle.)

In other news, I finished Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart. I realized at the end that all Murakami’s narrators are gateways–things come through them, they don’t necessarily act or react. I read Murakami because he evokes a certain mood in me, just like Duras. Sean Stewart also sometimes taps a particular mood; I’m so busy skating along the surface of the story I rarely take a look below at the mechanics of craft. Which is damn rare, for me. It seems I can’t help but read as if I’m going to edit the damn book. Which might be why I’m generally on such a nonfiction kick, occasional grammatical hoohaws and typos don’t bother me so much.

And now I must bring this ramble to a close. There’s a lot to get done today, from wordcount to correspondence.

Back into the belly of the beast I go. I’m still tasting those fried green tomatoes. And I’m happy about that.

Related posts:

1. Ring-Around-Rosie
2. …sick…
3. Green Again

Tags: fellow weirdnesses, foodening, the internets they know everything, we travel well

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 1st, 2010 at 10:57 am and is filed under Hilarity, Real Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.