While the radio silence has been radioishly silent

Horrendously negligent in posting lately, due to CBA (Creeping Blog Apathy) and similar issues. If I had, in fact, been posting, I would have written about the following at length:

* Celebrating lbitw's birthday in standard classic bar-crawl fashion after work Friday, along with rafaela, jenphalian, nchanter, knoggleknot, and a couple of LJ-less SCA types. Much pool-shooting, gratuitous flirting and inappropriate conversation ensued. I voluntarily consumed an alcoholic beverage, of the candy-like girly-drink variety. Good times.

* Celebrating botia's birthday yesterday over good Indian food, along with rafaela, icarusfallen8, blimix, light_in_motion, zimarra and hoppytoad79. Much anagramming, snarking about the other brithday party in the building and inappropriate conversation ensued. More good times.

* Getting up at 6 this morning to go chase and/or be chased by Abbey and Nik, the Kidling Brigade. Enjoyed slushies, library prowling and much exasperation in attempting to get a certain small someone into shoes and out the door. Yet more good times, and the main reason why I only have enough brain power for a brief synopsis here.

Other than that? Still here. Still alive. Still not King. C'est la vie.

Well, phooey.

I got an e-mail from the New York Times about the three puzzles I'd submitted last month. He liked the Sunday puzzle, but had a problem with one of the theme answers and the high word count (both of which I kind of anticipated); he'd be willing to look at a revision. The other two? Rejected outright. Crud.

*sigh* Oh, well, back to the drawing board. The Sunday one I'll probably revise completely from the ground up; it was one of the first large puzzles I did, and I could probably do better with it. Most of the themeless puzzle's problems are in one corner, one that has a lot of wiggle room, so I might try tinkering with it, too—but there's one abbreviation that he couldn't accept in a somewhat touchier location, which might be tricky to fix. The themed daily could probably be submitted elsewhere (he basically wasn't crazy about the theme). And then there's the bulging folder of other puzzles I have ready to go, some of which I'm not totally embarrassed by. So, much to do, much to do!

...



*sigh*