About Fred

So again it’s Sunday

Yesterday I took down the Christmas tree in the living room, boxed up the ornaments and tinsel and lights, and then disassembled the tree into its many components (“branches”) and returned that box to the attic. It was exactly fun, but it needed to be done.

Later that afternoon, I finished reading my first book for the new year, My Friend Maigret by Georges Simenon. I liked it, and the nice thing about having now discovered Simenon is that the man wrote close to 200 books in his lifetime, so I’m unlikely to run out any time soon. Though I am somewhat disappointed to discover that so few of his Maigret mystery novels seems to be available in English translation, much less in this series design I rather quite like. I enjoyed My Friend Maigret, though like Inspector Cadaver, which I read last year, the book was less of a murder mystery than a leisurely stroll through the detective’s mind.

Then yesterday I watched Passchendaele. It’s not a perfect movie, though I did like it considerably more than Paul Gross’ first film as director, Men With Brooms. He and Caroline Dhavernas are both quite good in it, no surprise, and there are moments of real beauty in the film, both in specific lines from the script and in the scenery. (Seriously, I’ve been to the Canadian Rockies and can attest to their wonder, and Heather has been known to post a photo or two in her time, but there are scenes in the movie, set in the foothills of Alberta, that are just achingly beautiful.)

Again, not a perfect movie, maybe occasionally a little too on the nose about the horrors of war and a little muddled in its storytelling, but well shot and grounded in very good performances.

Today I wrote a little:

She wasn’t afraid of anything except for dying, and since that had already happened, Lisbeth said, she was fearless. Those who knew her — and there weren’t many, maybe just a few handlers at the agency — knew it was a lie, but it was a lie they were happy enough to let her keep if it meant she got results. She acted fearless, and the act was all that mattered. The results were all that mattered. If a lie was needed to keep those results coming, then so be it. She wasn’t likely to encounter the thing she really was afraid of in this line of work, not anymore, at least not if she kept her head down and focused on the job. No one at the agency was going to help her do anything else. What she really was afraid of was the thing that had killed her, and that thing was long dead as far as she or any of the official files were concerned. Fearlessness was a lie, but it was a lie that won out in the end.

That had been before Hobbs’ End, of course, and the murders that had happened there on Lisbeth’s watch. It had been a mistake to send her, her handlers said, and Lisbeth herself had been reluctant to go. The case was too familiar, too much like the events that had led to her death, five years earlier, and that had led her now to be in the agency’s employ. She had never been to Hobbs’ End, never even heard of the town, but that didn’t matter. She wasn’t afraid, she said — of course she wasn’t afraid — but it was a coincidence that hit a little too close for home.

But they’d sent her, and because the lie of fearlessness was all she had to guide her, she went. At that point it was only a disappearance, or rather two dozen, a high-school class that had vanished on a field trip. A teacher, two parents, and all of the students but one. By agency standards it was almost run-of-the-mill. There was no reason to suspect the same thing that had happened to Lisbeth five years earlier was happening again.

No idea where it’s headed yet, if anywhere, and I’m not entirely in love with the way the last sentence underlines the fact that Lisbeth is not really a character so far, just someone that this is happening to. But it was free-writing well spent, I think. Better forty minutes of mediocre, or even terrible, words actually on the page, than years of theoretically perfect words never let out of your head.

So that was my weekend. A lot of the snow has melted, first in yesterday’s sun and then in today’s rain, but I’m still glad I won’t have to head back to the office until Tuesday.

Some week

It snowed all night, and by the end of it, sometime late this morning, I think we had about the foot of snow that they were predicting all this week.

My office was still open today, however. There’s always less accumulation of snow in the city, and mass transit was running, or claimed to be. Last night, before the first flake had even fallen, the Long Island Railroad was promising to be on a weekend schedule first thing Friday morning. What that means, basically, is fewer trains and longer gaps between them, and at my station it means only one train every hour.

If the 7:28 train hadn’t first been held, and then cancelled, I probably would have made it into Manhattan this morning. It wasn’t a lot of fun getting to the station, with the snow still falling and largely unplowed, and with the wind whipping against me the entire way there. But it’s only a couple of blocks, and I’m made it with plenty of time to spare. And the station platform had actually been shoveled and cleared, by a crew still working on the opposite side, which is actually an improvement over winter storms of the recent past.

Maybe next year the trains can be running, too. Then again, maybe I’m just a dreamer.

Because the 7:28 train was cancelled, and there wouldn’t be another train for another hour. I didn’t much feel like hanging around to wait for it, and even heading back home, then back again to the station, seemed like a dumb idea. What if the 8:28 train was also cancelled? What if it didn’t stop snowing? What if the Long Island Railroad continued its long tradition of collapsing under even the slightest amount of bad weather?

So I texted my boss. I’d planned for this by taking my computer home with me last night, at her suggestion, and she was amenable to my working from home. Which, except for the typical sluggishness of the network connection — and a lunch break spent helping my father to clear snow from the driveway and path — was pretty much the same as it would have been from the office.

It’s been kind of a weird week. Because yesterday was my first day back since mid-December, it felt a whole lot like Monday, separate from the other days this week that preceded it. And today felt much like a Tuesday, except it wasn’t, and it felt a little like a snow day, except it wasn’t, and I’m still not entirely convinced that what today was, was a Friday.

But apparently it was. Next week ought to be a little more normal, working from home again on Monday, then back in the office for the standard four days.

It will be good to actually get back to my regular routine.

Random 10 1-3-14

Last week, or last year. This week, or this year:

  1. “Night Moves” by Bob Seger, guessed by Clayton
    To the backroom, the alley, the trusty woods
  2. “Mystery Dance” by Elvis Costello
    Romeo was restless, he was ready to kill
  3. “Phony Calls” by Weird Al Yankovic, guessed by Clayton
    Little Melvin has a natural obsession
  4. “Dad’s Gonna Kill Me” by Richard Thompson
    Charbroiled with his own Willie Pete
  5. “The Rainbow Connection” by Kermit the Frog, guessed by random passer-by
    Is this the sweet sound that calls the young sailors?
  6. “The New Timer” by Bruce Springsteen
    I hoed sugar beets outside of Firebaugh
  7. “Your Love” by the Outfield
    I ain’t got many friends left to talk to
  8. “Tightrope” by Janelle Monae (feat. Big Boi)
    I tip on alligators and little rattlesnakers
  9. “He War” by Cat Power
    I never meant to be the needle that broke your back
  10. “The Party’s Over” by Willie Nelson
    And tomorrow starts the same old thing again

Because why break with tradition? (I’ve been doing this since at least 2005.) Good luck!

Back to work

I took me a while to get to sleep last night, even though I turned in at fairly reasonable hour, but I didn’t have any problems getting back into my normal schedule this morning. In fact, I managed to get up a little early and start writing morning pages again.

Picking up my notebook again, I was a little disheartened to see that last year I’d carried the practice no further than March — I was sure it had been longer than that — but I do think it’s a good habit to get back into. And I wrote again this evening, not progressing very far on my short story, but progressing some. The forward momentum might be short-lived, since it’s only the second day of the new year, but wanting to write is better than the other thing.

Work was okay, although our local network servers were down for a good part of the morning and then again in the afternoon. It made working rather difficult, and led not just me to wonder if maybe the universe didn’t really want us to go back to work after all. Tonight, the universe is throwing a huge snow storm at us — it’s coming down pretty fierce, and the LIRR has already promised to run on a shortened schedule tomorrow (because of course they have) — so there might just be something to that theory.

I won’t know until tomorrow morning if I’m actually headed into the office. I’ll need to call to find out if the office is open, then find out if the trains are running, then make a decision about whether I can get to the train, particularly if it’s still snowing. I mean, I wouldn’t mind a snow day — I still have three and a half seasons of Babylon 5 to re-watch — but it was also good to get back to the office today, and it’s not like I don’t have actual work to do.

But we’ll see.

New Year

I’m feeling pretty much all vacationed out, which I guess is understandable, and not the worst thing that could happen at the end of a vacation. I go back to work tomorrow, and while I can’t say I’m exactly looking forward to it — going to bed and waking up at a reasonable hour? who does that? — it will be good to get back into the routine. (Assuming the snow that’s in our forecast doesn’t mess that up.)

New Year’s was pretty uneventful here. I had a nice dinner out with my parents, then watched a few episodes of Babylon 5 rather than a movie. (The Season 1 finale takes place on New Year’s Eve! Also? Yeah, this is my social life.) I watched a little of New Year’s Rockin’ Eve — though, honestly, there’s only about ten seconds of it anybody really should ever watch — and rang in the New Year in pretty ordinary fashion.

Today, I pretty much just hung out, watched some more B5, read a little, poked at the short story, and adjusted to the fact that I go back to work after almost three weeks of being out. I mean, I haven’t been to the office since last year!