Odyssey Prep: Nineteen days to go!

That’s how long I have until I expect to be arriving in Manchester. It’s exciting, and there’s still rather a lot to do.

I got some shopping for the dorms done today at Walmart. Nothing too exciting, mostly stuff that I’ll be able to take home and use around the apartment, but didn’t want to take the stuff that I’ve been using recently because it’s too old and grungy:

• Bedsheets
• Foam mattress pad. (This is one I didn’t have before, but Jeanne specifically suggested them for the student mattresses, and I thought it was probably a good idea. I need a decent night’s sleep!)
• Pillow cases
• Bathmat
• Tea towels
• Laundry detergent capsules
• Scrubbing brush for dishes, pots, and pans.

Isn’t it so glamorous? 😉

I need to go back to the textbook soon, figure out what I think about the Tolkien essay.

The (first!) Kansas stories binder.

Well, it’s less than 36 hours before I leave to go to Kansas, now.

As I may have mentioned, all of the participants have sent out their 3 stories to be workshopped now, and the workshop leader, Chris M, suggested that we should have printed them all out and bring the printouts with us. Earlier this week, I started to think about such little practical questions as ‘Do I have enough printer paper? What will I take all these printouts to Kansas in?’ So I stopped at Walmart when doing an after-work practice driving session with my brother on Wednesday, and picked up:

1. a 500 pack of laser and copier paper.
2. a 1 inch 3-ring binder.
3. a new 3-hole puncher.
4. some binder dividers.

I got most of the stories printed out Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, but I didn’t begin to punch the holes or put them into the binder until tonight, and I quickly realized that the one binder wasn’t going to be enough. I’ve punched out and inserted 245 pages by my count, but the binder’s nearly full, and the 24 stories in all total 475 pages.

I do want to get everything into two binders if I can, especially since the schedule given is that half of us will get their stories critiqued on any given afternoon, in the same split, so I can have one binder for the on-days and one for the off-days. It actually looks like my best strategy will be to get a larger binder, (an inch and a half?) for the group that I’ve started on, since that one has some longer-winded scribes, and keep the one-inch binder for the other side.

It’s starting to settle in on me just how much writing we’re going to be going through, and it’s something very different than I’m used to organizing at one time. I’ve grown accustomed to the idea of running off half a dozen or more copies of my own story to take to one of the critique groups here in town, but Kansas CSSF is obviously a very different kind of thing.

So, I’d better get myself to the store early tomorrow.