Saturday, August 05, 2006

"'neath the sun and California wine"

I will say that I'm almost halfway through The Lies of Locke Lamora, and it's one of the best books I've read in a while. I moved things like a bed, table, and a few low stand sort of things into the flat in Richmond. That sucked, and we had to buy a whole new bed set thing, because there was just no way to arrange the bed from downstairs in the bedroom there. It would have swallowed the room. Ah well -- we still needed to buy the mattress and foundation, so it wasn't too bad. This'll be the first place (aside from hotels) where I sleep in a bed larger than a twin size.

I'm wanting to get blocks of blue and green fabric to decorate my walls there, too. I'm not sure exactly how to go about this. I suppose the simplest thing would be to cut out the blocks and attach them to a wall, but I was wondering if there was a way to attach them all to a common piece and put it up, as one? Almost like a quilt, I suppose. That would involve a good deal of sewing, though.

A friend tells me you can put the stuff up using starch. Does anyone know how easily removed the fabric would be? I have to vacate in ten months, and I'd like to get as much of my deposit back as possible.

Well, that was nicely humdrum and not quite whiny. I need to get out and see people before classes start, seriously.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

"in the garage I feel safe"

I thought I'd post this little memory vignette, as it may cause amusement in readers. My memory is hazy as to details, so -- as a friend and I have determined -- it's more an anecdote than a story.

Anyway.

I was in the writing center several months ago, indulging in the free time we get when it's not mid-terms/finals. There was a crowd of us, really, Helen and Sam and Bonaventure, and possibly one or two others. I had just reeled off some strange fact or piece of trivia, as is my idiom, and Bon said something about knowing everything. Someone -- Helen, I believe, made a joke about how I didn't know anything about underwater basket weaving.

My response was: "Actually, you know, everyone thinks you're underwater when you do that, but really you're not. You just put the basket materials underwater so they soften, then you weave it and take it out to harden."

There was the sort of stunned silence not common anywhere but around me and those like me. Only for a moment, but like the tiny moment of a bullet's passage, it was easy to feel. Then there was laughter.

"if you see a faded sign at the side of the road"

I think I have the lack of sleep madness. My knees are wailing like Jewish memorial walls, and I'm not quite sure my brain has the facility to actually type out this post in anything like a proper kind of sense. So, as I'm gibbering more than is particuarly common for me, you should probably watch out.

There may, just possibly, be a few more people than normal reading this -- some folks from the Hogwarts_Elite community added me (apropo LiveJournal, not Blogger), so they might actually pay attention. Not as though I have anything to actually say, here, but hello, all you folks.

I took a drive just an hour ago, which is a bit odd, really. My car's been sleeping the slumber of the terminally ill for several weeks now, and just returned late last week in what amounts to working condition. I sat around for most of today on the computer, and that never really leaves me feeling as though I actually did anything, so I hopped from my (new, nice desk) chair and tooled off for town and the great beyond. Really, I circled town through a few byroads and the like, then headed off down the meager bypass toward Morehead. I passed a police officer, lurking at an intersection for speeders, waved, and slung about a U-turn a few miles past. Then I came home. I left the house at a quarter to eleven, so yes, odd.

That's really just about everything that's happened today. Sad. I'm a homebody, as many of you might know, so I'm not looking forward to leaving here to be in Richmond. I'll miss my parents and my house -- and, obviously, my reasonably slacker-style summer days. I've read a little over 100 pages of my Shakespeare text, and two plays I hadn't gotten to before, but I've made no progress at all on Old English.

I think I may be done with the first draft of my thesis, though, barring the afterword and the fiddly bits in between stories. I'll have to wait until I have what amounts to a final draft before getting to those, though, and that means meetings. Hence, not being able to do that over the summer.

If I'm good, and don't slack, I should be able to do one more short story before school starts, but I'm not sure what to write, exactly. I have a notebook full of ideas, so I'll just go through it, really.

Actually, looking at the notebook now, there's something I came up with while talking to some folks in the writing center that has decent comic potential. It could be a novel, actually, but maybe I'll try it short story length. That's possibly a problem, by the way; I think a great deal of my ideas could be novel-length. A teacher actually said that, once, so I'm not alone in this thought process. Short stories are easier during school, though.

You know, almost every application I've looked at over at H_E features the person saying they want to publish a book. That's not too odd, actually -- fans of books usualy would like to write, as movie fans want to act and music geeks want to perform. It just makes me self-conscious, really: do I look like a berk1 when I mention I'm working at being a writer? I dunno.


1: It's rhyming slang -- the whole term is "Berkeley Hunt." Just guess what it stands for: remember, rhyming.

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Oh, the Elite of Hogwarts. Sigh. Spellings have not been changed to protect the drunken

Me: So on a scale between Cotton Mather and Ted Kennedy, just exactly how drunk are you?
xferinoc: wow. those are like, two of my favorite people EVER
RealDartagnan: dude
RealDartagnan: kendedy ++
RealDartagnan: thats' howdrunk
Me: I endeavor to provide satisfaction.
RealDartagnan: hehr
Me: You may need the special addendum to the scale: Billy Carter.
xferinoc: cotton maaattttthhhhhherrrrrrrr
xferinoc: ahahahaha
RealDartagnan: hahaha
flametayl: where does boris yeltsin fall on the scale?
RealDartagnan: just under kennedy
RealDartagnan: btu you haev to undrestand
RealDartagnan: russains aer preconditions to alcohol