Thanksgiving Evening in Front of the Vast Waste of TV Land

"You know what movie this is?"
"Yes, it's Conan the Destroyer. I saw it when you had the info on."
"But do you know which one it is?"
"Is it the annoying one with the girl and the island?"
"I don't know why everyone disses this movie. It has Grace Jones in it."
"Grace Jones is the best part of this movie."
A short discussion ensues about the annoying and not so annoying characters in the movie as the heroes move to rescue the magical Asian character from being roasted alive.
"How is this different from The 13th Warrior?
"You're kidding, right?"
"Other than Grace Jones, of course... They both have sword fighting."
On TV, the bad guys are riding across a vast plain.
"Well, they both have villains on horseback dressed in black with skulls on their heads. And, the main characters have accents."
"They're both taciturn."
"Yes, both have taciturn main characters with accents."

For the past five weeks, I've been obsessively plowing through Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe books. I first encountered Sharpe through our local PBS station's airing of the Briitish series of TV movies which also inspired a long-term crush on Sean Bean. I'm a voracious reader but I don't think I've ever been so obsessed with a series of books and certainly not sustained an obsession through this many different books in a series. [I pooped out after initial obsessions with Stephen King's Dark Tower series, David Weber's Honor Harrington books, and Anita Hamilton's Anita Blake series.] The great thing about starting to read these books now is that I am able to read them almost completely in timeline order versus the order in which they were published. In some cases, I have pursued this order by maximizing my use of the Washington County Library interlibrary loan system. In other cases, I have driven from one library branch to another library branch and visited the adjacent St. Paul Library system to feed my habit. Internet library search is a wonderful thing. During lulls between copies of the book, I've finished a few other books. One, The Requiem Shark by Nicholas Griffin is a novel about the pirate Black Bart which I highly recommend. There's a good review of it up at Salon. Pirates - yay! Sam Enthoven's Black Tatoo, a YA dark fantasy, was next and was one of the freebies from World Fantasy. While there were a few times I looked up from the book to frown in consternation, I was nicely pulled through the book by interesting characters, surprising world building and sword fighting. Sword fighting - yay! I am awaiting the last three Sharpe novels and have to content myself with my new obsession, watching the Sharpe's movies through Alan's B-day subscription to Netflicks. Because it is his birthday gift, I am limiting myself to one of his two movies at a time which he puts up with since he knows the movie will be probably be watched and returned within 24 hours. I will plow through the whole series of movies in just a few weeks. Interspersed amongst these, we'll have our usual Alan's obscure foreign movie picks coming in at a regular pace, too. I was a little disappointed by the first two films in the Sharpe series (the Wellington character made me want to barf) but I've been told things pick up with this next one, Sharpe's Company. [I would be watching it RIGHT NOW but someone is playing something on the Gamecube. The dog is between us destroying his new rawhide bone. We all have our obsessions, I guess.] I currenlty am reading John Scalzi's The Ghost Brigades which like his previous novel, Old Man's War, has soldiers, aliens, intrigue and bloody battles. Bloody battles - yay! Unlike the first book, which I did really enjoy, the main character isn't annoyingly perfect and brilliant and always saving the day. On my bedside table waiting to be read, I have Partick O'Brian's Master and Commander and Sabatini's Scaramouche. So everything I've been reading the past few weeks has conveniently though not intentionally had battles or swashbuckling in it. I've been trying to figure out my obsession with the Sharpe books and this focus on warfare. The Sharpe books aren't as well written as some in the genre (?) but I've always been a forgiving reader if the story is compelling, the characters interesting and the writing not so bad it throws me out of the story. I think that Cornwell has hit on the right mixture of romance, intrigue and adventure for my taste and it probably doesn't hurt that I still picture Sean Bean as the main character. Another time, we'll have to have a discussion about why Sean Bean has to always play bad guys in American movies.

I was supposed to be working from home this morning but the website I need is temporarily down, so I thought I'd take some time to do a quick post-WFC rundown.

This is what we brought home:
A cold - despite getting plenty of sleep and no drinking
A burned mouth from hot cheese in excellent Austin Tex Mex food that has turned into a killer toothache

Two awesome freebie bags. We could actually check these bags which allowed us to bring more home than we thought we'd be able to.
From the freebie bags:
Night Wars - Graham Masterton
Pandora Drive - Tim Waggoner
Shadowmarch - Tad Williams
From Black Rooms - Stephen Woodworth
The Mount - Carol Emshwiller - this will be a great Christmas gift for someone
Some recent F & SFs
George and the Angels - Glenn Maganek
The Fair Folk anthology
Best Short Novels 2006 - Jonathan Strahan's SFBC anthology
The Black Tattoo - Sam Enthoven - an ARC - beautiful cover
A Princess of Roumania - Paul Park - nice to see this promoted so much - another gift
Cross Plains Universe: Texans Celebrate Robert E. Howard anthology
Genetopia - Keith Brooke

We also came home with:
(Hot off the presses)
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet #19
Electric Velocipede #11
The Sense of Falling - Ezra Pines chapbook with illustrations by Mark Rich
(as well as)
The Ephemera - Neil Williamson
Summer of the Apocolypse - James Van Pelt

We were lucky to score the Neil Williamson since none of the book dealers had copies and we got one of the few Neil brought with him. Reading the first few stories on the plane going home reminded me all over again why I was so excited when I first found his writing. This collection is highly recommended.

Much more busyness so no posting lately. A couple of things making me insanely angry. The last straw was this interview of ignorant homophobe Paul Weyrich from the Free Congress Foundation by Michele Norris on NPR this afternoon. I almost slammed on the breaks in the middle of traffic, it made me so angry. It happens right away so you don't have to listen to the whole thing.

Conservative Groups Call for Accountability on Foley

If you don't want to listen to it (and I don't recommend it if you are trying for a low stress day) he said that Foley shouldn't have been in charge of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus because the Republican leadership knew he was gay and as we all know "gay men are preoccupied by sex."

Busy, busy week. I feel like I'm juggling about a million things right now. I posted at One Tough Puppy about the new job a little bit and the money-pit but lovable dog. The job is going well. I love working around animals and the people who volunteer are great. I spend a lot of my time on the phone since we're starting our annual phonathon. It is probably the hardest thing to recruit people to help with but is also our largest fundraiser so we have to keep trying. At home, I've been plowing my way through all the Diversicon books and only have two left. Alan brought me more library books today. I love how he helps feed my habit. Work prevented us from a more formal 3rd anniversary celebration tonight. We'll be doing something this weekend when we are both available and have time to relax. Tonight, we opted for pizza and a quiet night on the couch bookended by pets. Life is good.

Last weekend, we headed up to my parent's cabin in northwestern Minnesota for Friday night. The next day, while my parent's took care of the dog, we headed up to Duluth to the Northern Lights bookstore for Alan's book signing. The drive is beautiful with lakes and mixed pine and deciduous forest. We found the bookstore right on Canal Street in the peak downtown tourist area near the lift bridge and the lake walk. For a small store, it packed a lot books in and had a great selection of Great Lakes related and regional materials. I decided to treat myself to a book, although we'd recently hauled two books full from Diversicon, and went around browsing and trading through books. I found the winner, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Rufiz Zafon translated from Spanish by Lucia Graves, on their Booksense Picks shelves. It was a pick back in February when it came out. Despite its satisfying thickness, I blew through it this week. I'm still gathering my thoughts about it and will write more but I highly recommend it. It was kind of a literary mystery set in Barcelona during the 40s and 50s with a great gothic feel and compelling characters.

It was Alan's first visit to Duluth and long overdue. We poked around Duluth a bit before doing part of the North Shore Scenic Drive up to Gooseberry Falls State Park. On the recommendation of one of Alan's co-workers, we stopped for pie at the New Scenic Cafe and, tempted by the menu, ended up eating an early dinner and taking the pie with us. At Gooseberry, we toured the falls and then took the Gooseberry River trail to the lake and Agate Beach. Alan grew up next to Lake Erie, so it was nice to finally be able to show him Lake Superior, which has a quite different feel to it. We headed back in the dark to the cabin and cool sleeping temperatures. The next day we swam, read, ate good food and played with the dog until it was time to go home. After chasing squirrels and chipmunks all weekend, as well as swimming and playing fetch, he was a very tired dog on the drive home.

Very busy, very social couple of weeks passed.

We had a last minute weekend with the families of Haddayr and Karen. Wonderful people. Great discussions. Nice relaxation. Some birthday, ice cream cake goodness for Alan. What more can I say?

Alan got Netflicks from my parents for his birthday. Yay!! Now instead of checking the mail for rejection letters we look for movies. So far we've seen:

Irma Vep which was a strange but compelling movie by the director of the very twisted Demonlover. While both movies had unsatisfying endings, they were worth the trip.
and
Dog Soldiers which was an interesting twist on the traditional werewolf movie by the writer/director of The Descent. The werewolves were cheesy but the acting was strong (including Kevin McKidd from Rome) and the characters sympathetic.

Up next are Dave Chappelle's Block Party and Walk the Line. Suggestions for movies to add to the queue would be very welcome.

Diversicon was last weekend. We've only been once before two years ago when SP Somtow was guest of honor and Mark Rich was special guest. We missed it last year because we were out of town. This year we had the magnificent Kelly Link as guest of honor and very cool Bryan Thao Worra as special guest. I missed most of the panels due to absent mindedness but also because I was helping out or gabbing with Gavin at the Small Beer Press table. It's a small convention but packs a punch with programming, lots of time to meet and visit with the highlighted guests, and lots of other interesting attendees. Highlights included seeing Lyda glammed up as Tate; stocking up to feed my reading habit with two bags of used books from the dealers room; an affordable live auction with booty including more books and original Mark Rich artwork; a long chat with Eleanor Arnason (check out her new blog here); Bryan Thao Worra's awesome presentation on Laotian mysterious places (see Dark Wisdom #9 for his article on the Plain of Jars) and mythic creatures (toe sucking forest spirits!), music from Mark and Martha as Keg Salad, and a great film discussion with Andrea Hairston that included one of my favorite films, Lonestar, and a new, eye-opening take (to me) on Rush Hour. Andrea will be guest of honor next year, so you'll have to come and ask her about it.

Once again, the past two weeks reminded me how blessed we have been with such a great group of friends and writing/SF community around us. As one of my new co-workers said on the way out the door today, "Peace out, y'all!"

Discussing musical taste, that is whether someone has good musical taste or not, led to a slight disagreement this evening. I would tend to be more inclusive in defining someone's musical taste. For instance, in addition to such obvious things such as music purchased, music played and music shared with friends, I believe that songs one chooses to sing at home, out of the view of the public but in the presence of roommates or family, should also be included. The manner of such singing, and if there is also dancing, could also be considered. What do you think?

*WARNING - Hex Spoiler*








Last night I tuned BBC America for Hex and found out Cassie had died. I swear I caught the episode last week but did not remember losing the main character. I immediately zapped into on demand just be sure, and yes, the last episode showing up was #6, the one I'd watched. I sulked a bit and decided I must have missed it and they were just slow to put up the next episode. I checked back later and found out they'd put up last night's episode, #8. Same thing today, episodes #6 and #8. I feel so betrayed. I haven't felt like this since I was a kid and somehow skipped the whole Gandalf dying in Moria scene and found out he was dead when I opened the next book. I cried that time. This time I wasn't sad (she could be so mean to Thelma) just angry with Comcast or BBC America or whoever blew the surprise for me. I expected some commiseration from Alan but he already knew she was going to die having read all the episode summaries on some website or other. What's the fun of that? And why the hell am I getting so hyped up about a consistently inconsistent show I know is already cancelled without a nice series wrap up at the end?

This new job is going to do wonders for my writing discipline. With the way my schedule is structured, I need to lose a few hours each week during the day and have been alternating camping out at the two nearby coffee houses. And, in case I ever entertain the unproductive idea that I will work at my desk (not just catch up on blogs and news), overcrowding has someone needing to use my computer, desk or chair any time I'm away from my desk for more than ten minutes. I've been avoiding the heat by heading out early to make use of their free air conditioning, too. This week has taught me that although I think I can get writing done at home, I'm really just treading water since they're too many distractions.

About the new job... I'm about one week into it and am loving the work. I'm coordinating volunteers part-time for the local humane society shelter, a position that draws on my weird assortment of past volunteer and work experiences. It's amazingly close to home and I can keep my low paid but promising job with the start up company while having a steady paycheck during our slow season. Best of all, it's so good to be working in an animal shelter again.

We're back from Readercon and post Readercon activities. The air is hot and dry, our house is almost unbearable and all the lawns are getting crispy, a very different situation from water-logged Massachusetts. We lost a kitchen chair and one of my sandals which is pretty good considering I didn't have as much time to puppy proof things as I would have liked. The sandal must have been hiding deep underneath a chair or the couch. The poor chair broke at some point, then was yanked apart and then chewed. We think the dog jumped on it to get to a cat although the pulling apart could have happened first. It was the chair facing out into the room under the table and thus more accessible than the others. I did also get the good news that I have a second interview for an interesting job tomorrow morning.

Readercon was fun and mellow with lots of interesting people. It suffered a little from its lack of parties, although that didn't stop us from making use of the Irish pub in the hotel. Oh yes, we spent way too much time in that bar. A desperate search for brunch one morning led a mtoley crew of us to a strange meal amidst birthday partying kids and jungle noises in the nearby mall's Rainforest Cafe. I enjoyed readings by Brett Cox, Paul Park, Patrick O'Leary, Jeff Ford and others. I'm still a little brain dead, so you'll have to excuse me if I forgot yours. The most memorable reading was for Twenty Epics which my husband hijacked to read an excerpt from the stories of everyone who wasn't present. I almost died during his rendition of David Schwartz's story because at times he sounded more like my Aunt Joyce than David doing his great uncle's accent. If you'd like to hear it for yourself, you just need to buy him a shot and hand him a copy of the book. Although I hit more programming than I ever have since my first convention, I only caught one half of two different panels because I had to sneak out to readings I promised I'd attend. I missed guest of honor James Morrow completely and only heard a few words from China Mieville one of them being, "tentacular" a great, great word. Sometime during one of "let's do shots" periods in the bar (I stayed with beer) we started up the "which SF author would you do" thing that was first played during the DC World Fantasy, I think. I had to pull in Lauren, who had just been voted onto the island, to balance out the mostly male, mostly gay panel because they kept vetoing the inclusion of guys with pony tails. If you want more details than that, you'll have to buy me a cider.

We're back from my parent's cabin a day early so we can do some work around the house. It was a glorious, long weekend and Gambit's first visit. He got to explore the woods, swim as much as he wanted to and take his first boat ride. He was very well behaved and we're pleased to have a dog we can actually swim with instead of having to watch for claws and fend off attempts to climb onto us. He's very fast and can beat me in a flat out race, although he has a tendency to keep circling back to cut me off and make my front crawl into a much slower breaststroke. There was very little barking, which with the swimming, helped win my dad over. The last few years with our old dog had involved lots of senile barking at anything that moved including every boat passing on a busy lake. Gambit's passed out next to me on the couch right now and the cats are having a little peace because he's so tired.

Being Wisconsin, where these things are legal, we had lots of fireworks. They've done amazing things for the home market and we had couple nights of professional quality shows from different cabins. It was a beautiful sight from the boat after dark and at one point there were alternating explosions from both sides of the lake. I was going to bring Mentos and Diet Coke to duplicate Greg's experiment for our fireworks but didn't need to and will save that for a weekend when we have kids at the cabin.

There were all these new buoys around the lake which my dad said were marking Eurasian milfoil outbreaks. People raced right by them ignoring the problem and chewing up the plants to spread them to other places. Lake residents formed a lake district over the last two years and have gotten funding to work on the problem, but it's going to be an ongoing thing. Once it's in the lake, it's there for good, I guess, and it still might get completely out of control ending up stifling all the native life. The other big topic was the number of large muskie on the lake and the lack of the smaller northerns. Muskie don't bite very often while northerns do so the fishing has changed. We had a number of boats just off the point by our dock saying they were tracking some huge fish on their radars there. The water gets really deep fast and a couple times I wondered what was sharing the water with me. Muskies were always the monsters of legend on our lake.

A little depressed today -- I've not been sleeping well, plus it is so damn hot. The house managed to stay fairly cool all week but it's starting to heat up and I'm sweating just sitting here. Like they tell you to do in all of the job search books and trainings, I did my follow up calls for a couple of part-time jobs I sent in resumes for earlier in the week. I really thought one was a great fit, although I could see them thinking I was over qualified. Both are in the interviewing stage of things. While I still might get a call, it's not as likely, I guess. In small breaks between loads of laundry and washing wood floors, I've been watching soccer and then a Gina Lollobrigida and Rock Hudson movie, Come September, a little confection of a movie. I've enjoyed looking at the clothes and beautiful scenery and dreaming about being Lollobrigida and having her clothes. I have a very stinky dog dreaming beside me on the couch and sleeping kitties at various elevations throughout the living room. I can't give the dog a bath for a few days because I just gave him his monthly dose of anti-tick stuff. Next time, I'll remember: bath first, then medicine. We're headed up to my parent's cabin for the first time with Gambit along. Between the woods and the lake, he'll be in dog heaven. In the past, it's been the only time my dogs have been able to run around off-leash outside of a fenced in yard. With the dog park so close by, the off-leash part won't be as big a deal but the never-endingness of the off-leashness will be novel. If he's like other dogs we've had, he'll run and swim his butt off the first day and crash the rest of the weekend. Eventually, he'll learn to pace himself so the wiped out part comes after we get home.

Being only partially employed is not the end of the world. A friend called today to say they have surgery scheduled after a quick diagnosis of breast cancer. It looks to be an easy tumor to remove and we're hoping that's what they find. It kind of puts things into perspective, though.

I've been busy sending out resumes and doing a few interviews. Ever since my hours were cut because of seasonal slow down, I've been trying to decide whether to get a part-time job or full-time job. I've been applying for both and I guess I'll wait to see what comes up. I was feeling so lost that last week that I attended a three day job search boot camp at the Workforce Center. It was overwhelming but incredibly helpful. I've retooled my resume and started looking at my "portfolio." They really stressed that I needed a navy blue or black suit for interviewing. I'd been at my old nonprofit for so long that I didn't have anything that fit the bill. After buying and returning two different suits, I finally found one on sale yesterday at Marshall Fields that I love and that fits like glove. I also scored matching designer shoes on sale for cheap, cheap, cheap. (They said plain pumps would be best for interviewing but really, they're just shoes, right? Can't I have a little style?) I usually try on suits with skirts since they tend to fit better than suits with pants -- unless I can mix and match sizes. Last night, I tried it on for Alan and he got a strange look in his eyes and said it made me look very tall. I have to admit that it made me feel powerful. I guess that's where the whole power suit thing came from.

Jumping off from Gwenda and Jackie's comments to the post below, I've put up our first topic of conversation on 1 Tough Puppy: Cost of Pet Ownership.

We've officially joined Gwenda in the "leave your pet behind with the pet sitter guilt club." Our fabulous pet sitter, Lynn, left us a note saying that hyper puppy Gambit had caught his dew claw on the couch cover that day and it had bled a bit. She recommended checking it and seeing if it warranted a vet visit to have the nail clipped or removed. I checked it that night and the next day and it seemed to be getting better and wasn't causing him any discomfort. Then we went to the dog park yesterday. A pained yelp and a little blood later I decided it was time to head home and make that vet appointment. Another pet owner warned that the toe could be broken, which was quite painful, and recommended that I keep some pain stuff like Demerol on hand for pet emergencies. Luckily, the pain wasn't bad once he settled in and they got us in this morning - thank goodness for Saturday morning office hours. I was hoping for just a nail trim and bandage. It was that but also a sedative, local anesthesia, antibiotics and three days of E. collar. $200 worth of stuff. Ouch, especially so close on the heels of Wiscon. Of course, I hadn't gotten around to completing the pet insurance policy, yet.

So, we've instituted the BIG PLAN - 1 Tough Puppy - a blog dedicated to pet issues of all kinds. I'm hoping to provide a forum for advice and discussion and a place for recommendations and reviews of pet products. I'm hoping it will generate a little bit of Adsense revenue to help us pay down the surgery debt. It will definitely keep me from posting my long pet rants on this blog. If you are interested in joining in, let me know. Some of you have been so helpful here with support and advice and I know others would benefit from your wisdom, too.

Thanks everyone for your support. I thought I'd lighten things up a bit with the best news I've heard all week (other than personal visits by bears.)

Meerkat Manor

Oh Yeah! (Picture Alan's falsetto here.)

I won't be able to fly out to California for my uncle's funeral, although it sounds like we will probably have a memorial service here in the Twin Cities, too. I didn't get to see my uncle very often when I was growing up but I have great memories from two family trips out to Davis to see him. My uncle, Robert Price, was a marine biologist who taught for years at UC Davis and specialized in seafood technology. When I was ten, we borrowed my aunt's parent's RV and drove down the coast on Highway 1 ending up at Disneyland. We spent an amazing, magical time on that trip exploring the tide pools on one of the rocky, northern beaches. I remember looking into a tidepool and seeing nothing. Then, my uncle brought me closer and it was teeming with life. It was just like Pagoo and, at that moment, I couldn't think of anything better than having an uncle who was a marine biologist.

This was going to be a kind of Wiscon post but I don't have the energy right now. I just got bad news about my uncle. His lung cancer has progressed to the point where they're saying good-bye. One of my cousins was able to fly out to be with him and his wife. Everyone else is so far away.

Wiscon's over. The drive home was fairly uneventful once we got some caffeine into Alan. He started the drive and promptly crashed. I took over and, while falling asleep wasn't an issue, noticing something off to the side and finding the car swerving off into that direction was. He was supposed to keep me awake and, instead, I was throwing questions out to him in panic. "Who was your favorite new person? What was your best conversation? What gossip haven't you shared?" There was also some poking. "You have to stay awake!" One can of coffee drink later we were just fine. No storms. No traffic. Everyone else seems to have had a much harder time getting home.

We arrived home to a sweltering house, smelling of cat and dog. The puppy promptly peed on my sandaled foot. We had a cryptic message about our mortgage needing payment but couldn't get more information because both the bank and the mortgage offices were closed. I realized I'd lost my debit card and had to call to cancel it. Thank goodness that bank still had staff on duty. (She was probably in a country that doesn't have Memorial Day.)