Feh!

Scratch the last post about feeling better.

Today my side is aching a lot. :-(

And I had to go to the doctor, since my thumb is infected. I wound up with a blister on the pad of my thumb, very painful, and it burst and got infected and I'm now on antibiotics.

Sigh.

(At least the socialized medicine system is fairly easy. I called this morning for an appointment, and since I slept so poorly las tnight I was up bright and early and called when they opened, so was able to be seen today. And a week's worth of antibiotics came to 2,41 Euros...)

I hate being on antibiotics, though, they always send my whole digestive system into chaos which makes me cranky and irritable.

Apologies in advance, therefore, to anyone I have to deal with in the next few days...

Stuff

Today I fianlly printed out the letters I'd been working on all weekend to foreign publishers in various countries, requesting appointments at the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair (or where applicable, which mostly means Greece since they're this year's guest country, at Liber, the Spanish equivalent of a national trade show, which is in Madrid this year).

Yes, I'm incorrigible, and much of the weekend was spent pursuing leads and info on possible publishers in places like Latvia or Armenia.

Sigh.

Still, despite the printer running out of ink mid-way necessitating a dash to FNAC, and then despite running out of paper (thank you, upstairs neighbors, for the half-ream!), and despite running out of envelopes after they were printed out and all signed and I was addressing, manually, all the envelops (a quick dash to the local Todo a 100--even though we no longer have pesetas any more, the stores are still around), I did manage to get everything all assembled (not only is there the personalized letters, but a copy of Sara and my latest catalog) and I got to the post office before it closed. WHEW!

This year, Sara and I printed the catalog on much thinner cardstock. Spain's mail system works that under 20grams is one price, and over 20grams it's nearly double. Last year, unfortunately, our mailing came to something like 21 or 22grams each or something. This year we were under, so sending 69 mailings to various and sundry countries came to just under 40 euros. Which was much more reasonable than I had feared.

Now, to hope that something comes from all this paperwork and assembly!

Tomorrow, my friend Ximo shows up from Valencia and will be a houseguest here until Sunday.

As they say in Spanish: donde hay confianza, da asco.

Luckily, I not only don't need to go out of my way to clean up, he will likely do so when he gets here (hey, he enjoys it, and who am I to deny someone such USEFUL pleasures?)

I did bring a load of laundry upstairs to wash at my neighbor's, who's finally back from vacation, since I haven't gotten around to buying a new washing machine to replace the one that fritzed before I went to Amsterdam. (And cash-flow-wise, now is not a good time to do so...)

And it seems I have new neighbors on this floor; the apartment next to me was vacated last week, and they've been making noise repainting and sanding the floors and so on, and tonight in the stairwell I just met Paula (but not the mentioned Eduardo) who was in the process of moving in.

Meanwhile, a really good post by lilrivkah on books about the business side of art: http://www.livejournal.com/users/lilrivkah/106694.html