A Short Journey Into Night
I slept in today, crawling out of bed around 10:30 (that's 11:30 Eastern time, which is the time I've been on for the past week). I hacked around on-line until about 12:30, and played with the cats a bit, then finally showered and got dressed.
I headed downtown to have yummy pizza slices for lunch, and to do some shopping. I didn't have a lot of luck with the shopping; found a couple of Christmas presents for my sister, but didn't find any of the other stuff I'd hoped for. I was going to stop in another CD store, but they had a big sign saying "PLEASE CHECK YOUR BAGS AT THE FRONT DESK". I almost never stop in such stores if I have bags with me; I figure, they don't trust me, why should I trust them with my bag? I will sometimes go in such a store if I think I can get away without checking my bag. I've actually never been challenged, and I kind of like the idea of just walking out if they do ask me. I really find this attitude on the part of the stores to be offensive.
On the way back I stopped at the co-op, and was delighted to find that they had the Teapot Soup split pea variety back in stock. The other varieties I can take or leave, but the split pea is delicious! I bought four. I also bought some hot cocoa mix and milk, and some pesto. The register person said I had a weird selection of stuff; I always buy a weird selection of stuff, because my eating habits are simply rather bizarre. Only when I have a yen to do some serious cooking do I ever have a "normal" load of groceries.
Actually, I have a yen to cook* something in the near future, but I don't know what.
I put up some reviews of the books I read over my vacation. I read some good stuff. Right now I'm reading David Brin's Startide Rising, which is boring as hell** for the first 200 pages, and then picks up somewhat. If The Uplift War isn't substantially better, then this may be it for my (short) Brin phase.
Bitch, bitch, bitch. Actually it was a pretty nice day, despite my griping above. I had coffee later on with my friend Karen, and we exchanged stories of our recent trips: my vacation, and her conference and sister's wedding. And I feel a little more centered after my vacation, and capable of keeping up with all the stuff I have or want to do. The real test will be to see how work goes tomorrow. I definitely need to be more mellow at work in the near future.
Speaking of which, this week I'd like to make a real stab (make that another real stab) at finishing a short story I've been stuck on for a while. I think I'm going to have to finish it before I can come up with a title for it; my previous working titles have been "The Long Run" (which describes the general milieu, but not the meat of the story) and "The Long Journey Into Night" (which is overly flowery and kind of meaningless). I think I'm going to do a first person narrative this time, since I've been having trouble grappling with the tricky emotional stuff in the story - a frequent mental block for me. Since the protagonist is female, we'll see if I can write her even remotely convincingly.
I really need to set my goal to finish a draft of this story. If I can't even do that, I'm never going to get anywhere with this writing stuff. Start small; think big later. That's the ticket.
** How boring is hell, anyway?
|
|
|
|
