Q: Karma, Bank of America said no fraud happened after your purse was stolen, implying that you were lying about everything. Whatever happened with that?
A: Well, many people told me to stop banking with them–I don’t have a checking account there, but I do have a credit card with them that I mostly use when traveling, and that’s what got stolen.
Having learned about the power of Twitter from Denise, I took to it. BOA agreed to re-open the case. They gave me a fax number.
So I went back to the 1990s in a time machine (i.e. headed down to the FedEx). I spent thirty minutes trying to send my materials (police report, etc.), to no avail.
Then I walked over to BOA. A very nice banker said she would fax the stuff for me.
It didn’t work.
So she had to call corporate and was put on hold for about 10 minutes. They gave her the same non-working number. While she was on hold again, she joked to me that they just didn’t want to approve my case.
I pretended that was funny.
They gave her another number, and she faxed the materials.
Nothing has happened since then . . .
Q: Karma, how’s your back?
A: We should probably move on. It’s just not good.
Q: Well, speaking of the way your body fails you, how did your comedy show about your chronic pain go?
A: The show was amazing–the crowd was wonderful, and I managed to really tighten it up since the last time I did it. There were lots of questions after–and a lot of hugs. That’s normal after a comedy show, right?
Q: I’m sorry I missed it.
A: That’s not a question.
Q: Okay. Am I sorry I missed it?
A: You’d better be. You can hear me talking about it on Davisville. I’ve also been asked to talk to a group at Sutter Hospital in Davis. And since so many people missed it but wanted to see it, I’m going to try to do the performance in Davis in Spring.
Q: And right after Spring quarter, you’re heading to Oxford, right?
A: Sort of. I have several conferences before then–CCCC, PCA/ACA, MELUS, and the Comic Arts Conference at WonderCon. And I’ve been asked to talk about Atwood at a conference on Canadian women in Bordeaux in mid-June, so I’ll go to that and then head to Oxford, after some time with loved ones in London.
I’m really excited–I love this class–what could be better than teaching fantasy literature in Oxford?–and I feel like I’m going home to teach it. I just gotta get a lot of things organized/changed and finish replacing some of the stolen stuff from my purse before I leave the country for a few months–I just picked up my replacement glasses today.
I am taking the second summer session off, though. I don’t remember the last time that was true–but it’s a break I need.
Q: Will you spend it with your blind kitten?
A: And the sighted one. Thoth’s the one who thinks I’m his mom and suckles my ear and sleeps on my face. He’s also way more demanding–when the vet was giving too much attention to Graymalkin The Blind at their first appointment, Thoth walked over to her and licked her face to steal some of that back.
Q: Anything else readers should know?
A: Two of my students were selected for Prized Writing, and one won an honorable mention. One of my winners wrote his creative nonfiction case study in graphic novel format–a first for a publication that’s been going for three decades, so I’m so excited!
The Stand-Up Club is performing on 3/1. And I’ll be performing with the Stand-Up Class on 3/19. By the end of this year, I will have two more books out. By the end of this month, Melissa and I have to send some revisions back to the publisher after peer review.
One of the reviewers said s/he would never assign our book and doubted our credentials because of our use of dashes (i.e. we use dashes instead of commas sometimes) and because we engage our audience with a few colloquialisms; s/he said that while she understood that students would like our book, it was a bad model (because s/he would never let students write something non-academics would want to read).
I’m fairly certain that soul crushing criticism is why my back isn’t working right now.
Reliving that has made me tense up. Time for another anxiety shower.
Well, you do use more dashes than Emily Dickinson. Just saying.