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alfvaenA fairly productive weekend. Perhaps not more so than normal, but a lot got done on Saturday, so it felt productive because we could goof off on Sunday instead of furiously trying to catch up.
We got the junk cleared away from our backyard(see the recent blog entry for details)on Saturday afternoon, while I was doing the weekly dishes. Usually I leave the dishes for Sunday afternoon, during Luke's nap, so Sunday afternoon was unwontedly free.
I finally managed to get through the block I was having with the NaNoWriYe novel, which had me stalled or almost so for a few days, and have managed to turn the story in a direction that might be a little bit more interesting. I still haven't figured out exactly where it'll end up, though I hope that Joe Clark will end up getting held hostage by Shadow. I'm actually close to the 50,000 word mark on the novel, since I started it after the beginning of my first session this year; I've done about 5000-6000 words so far this session.
I mowed the lawn this morning, too. I've had plenty of good excuses for not doing it, but today, unfortunately, they ran out. It wasn't raining, as it had been for most of the week, and certainly last weekend; the junk was cleared out; and it also wasn't sunny and bakingly hot to make it an ordeal to contemplate. I started slow, on the front yard, where a little bit of grass is beginning to grow in the spot where the tree used to be, and after that I had the momentum to carry on to the back yard, which is probably at least four or five times the size.
One back corner of the yard probably used to be a garden plot, because it's got a buried wooden border, and tends to be full of weeds that grow higher there than the rest of the yard. It's hell to mow, and I always leave it until last. Then there's the tree(some kind of berry, I forget)that keeps sending out runners, so in the spring it surrounded by its legions of tiny treelets, which I mow down ruthlessly. There's a few that came out quite close to the patio, though, that I couldn't get with the mower and that I will have to take care of by hand before they start to become serious pains. You don't want to share the fate of your comrade in the front yard, do you, Mr. Berry Tree?
By the time I got to that nasty back quarter, though, I realized that I had rubbed off a patch of skin on my right hand, on the inside of my thumb. I don't know if it started out as a blister and then broke, because by the time I noticed it it was already peeling off and raw. That never happened before. I'm so glad I didn't have the dishes left to do, because I'd have to wear rubber gloves, and I hate them.
We also managed to get three Buffy episodes in, bringing us to the precise middle of the fourth season. "Something Blue" was hilarious, with all the Spike-Buffy engagement stuff, and Amy's momentary transformation back to humanity. "Hush" was amazing, but we were expecting that from its Emmy nomination. Also glad to finally see the legendary Tara showing up. She wasn't how I pictured her, somehow--more shy and diffident. "Doomed" was not quite as much fun, since the end-of-the-world thing hasn't been the same since it was skewered so effectively in "The Zeppo". So it was the Spike thing and the Buffy-Riley thing that was of interest, mostly.
Did I mention that we went to see Harry Potter? We managed an actual dinner-and-a-movie date(I love in-laws living so close!), and while there some cheap-theatre selections available, we decided to splurge for the exorbitant first-run theatre prices, though we skipped the popcorn. It was pretty good, especially the whole time-travel sequence. And most of the plot holes are due to Rowling. (Whose bright idea was it to create something as cruel as Dementors to guard their prison? And did Hermione have to sleep more than usual, if she was constantly time-doubling? Anyway.)
I finished the Alfred Bester short story book, which was mostly okay, though some of the pieces seemed a bit dated. Now I'm starting Charles de Lint's Spirits In The Wires, to begin my annual Aurora Award reading. I like to read as much of the eligible Canadian speculative fiction as I can so that I can try to make informed nominations. I was really disappointed in the last Newford short-story collection that I read, and I haven't read The Onion Girl, and I'm beginning to wonder if it was a good idea. While I am mostly familiar with the basic characters--Jilly Coppercorn, and Geordie and Christie Riddell--from previous books and stories, I still feel like I'm missing something. I'm getting pretty close to giving up on de Lint, I think, or at least his Newford stories. He seems like he's retreading old themes too much, or something. I was hoping that we'd get into something a little more tech-oriented, from the title, a blending of his usual spirit-world stuff with cyberspace, but it's still tied too tightly into the overused well that is Newford. We'll see. Maybe it'll improve.
Meanwhile, Simon urged me to play some Colonization a couple of days ago, so I've started on that again. This will be the fourth game of it I've started, with each of the four different colonizing powers, and none of them have I finished. I start to bog down after a while, basically. I was playing it a lot of today, and by the kids' bedtime I had had enough for now. But maybe one of these days I'll go back to one of the old games and try to actually have a Revolution and all that.
We got the junk cleared away from our backyard(see the recent blog entry for details)on Saturday afternoon, while I was doing the weekly dishes. Usually I leave the dishes for Sunday afternoon, during Luke's nap, so Sunday afternoon was unwontedly free.
I finally managed to get through the block I was having with the NaNoWriYe novel, which had me stalled or almost so for a few days, and have managed to turn the story in a direction that might be a little bit more interesting. I still haven't figured out exactly where it'll end up, though I hope that Joe Clark will end up getting held hostage by Shadow. I'm actually close to the 50,000 word mark on the novel, since I started it after the beginning of my first session this year; I've done about 5000-6000 words so far this session.
I mowed the lawn this morning, too. I've had plenty of good excuses for not doing it, but today, unfortunately, they ran out. It wasn't raining, as it had been for most of the week, and certainly last weekend; the junk was cleared out; and it also wasn't sunny and bakingly hot to make it an ordeal to contemplate. I started slow, on the front yard, where a little bit of grass is beginning to grow in the spot where the tree used to be, and after that I had the momentum to carry on to the back yard, which is probably at least four or five times the size.
One back corner of the yard probably used to be a garden plot, because it's got a buried wooden border, and tends to be full of weeds that grow higher there than the rest of the yard. It's hell to mow, and I always leave it until last. Then there's the tree(some kind of berry, I forget)that keeps sending out runners, so in the spring it surrounded by its legions of tiny treelets, which I mow down ruthlessly. There's a few that came out quite close to the patio, though, that I couldn't get with the mower and that I will have to take care of by hand before they start to become serious pains. You don't want to share the fate of your comrade in the front yard, do you, Mr. Berry Tree?
By the time I got to that nasty back quarter, though, I realized that I had rubbed off a patch of skin on my right hand, on the inside of my thumb. I don't know if it started out as a blister and then broke, because by the time I noticed it it was already peeling off and raw. That never happened before. I'm so glad I didn't have the dishes left to do, because I'd have to wear rubber gloves, and I hate them.
We also managed to get three Buffy episodes in, bringing us to the precise middle of the fourth season. "Something Blue" was hilarious, with all the Spike-Buffy engagement stuff, and Amy's momentary transformation back to humanity. "Hush" was amazing, but we were expecting that from its Emmy nomination. Also glad to finally see the legendary Tara showing up. She wasn't how I pictured her, somehow--more shy and diffident. "Doomed" was not quite as much fun, since the end-of-the-world thing hasn't been the same since it was skewered so effectively in "The Zeppo". So it was the Spike thing and the Buffy-Riley thing that was of interest, mostly.
Did I mention that we went to see Harry Potter? We managed an actual dinner-and-a-movie date(I love in-laws living so close!), and while there some cheap-theatre selections available, we decided to splurge for the exorbitant first-run theatre prices, though we skipped the popcorn. It was pretty good, especially the whole time-travel sequence. And most of the plot holes are due to Rowling. (Whose bright idea was it to create something as cruel as Dementors to guard their prison? And did Hermione have to sleep more than usual, if she was constantly time-doubling? Anyway.)
I finished the Alfred Bester short story book, which was mostly okay, though some of the pieces seemed a bit dated. Now I'm starting Charles de Lint's Spirits In The Wires, to begin my annual Aurora Award reading. I like to read as much of the eligible Canadian speculative fiction as I can so that I can try to make informed nominations. I was really disappointed in the last Newford short-story collection that I read, and I haven't read The Onion Girl, and I'm beginning to wonder if it was a good idea. While I am mostly familiar with the basic characters--Jilly Coppercorn, and Geordie and Christie Riddell--from previous books and stories, I still feel like I'm missing something. I'm getting pretty close to giving up on de Lint, I think, or at least his Newford stories. He seems like he's retreading old themes too much, or something. I was hoping that we'd get into something a little more tech-oriented, from the title, a blending of his usual spirit-world stuff with cyberspace, but it's still tied too tightly into the overused well that is Newford. We'll see. Maybe it'll improve.
Meanwhile, Simon urged me to play some Colonization a couple of days ago, so I've started on that again. This will be the fourth game of it I've started, with each of the four different colonizing powers, and none of them have I finished. I start to bog down after a while, basically. I was playing it a lot of today, and by the kids' bedtime I had had enough for now. But maybe one of these days I'll go back to one of the old games and try to actually have a Revolution and all that.
