Month: May 2010

Be in Clean Life and turn thy face towards the east

A cold, rainy day here in New York, and not a whole lot to report. I started reading Fifth Business by Robertson Davies this morning, but I’m really not far enough along in it to have formed an opinion. I like it so far, though, and it comes well recommended, so we’ll see. It seemed sufficiently different from the last book I read.

But beyond that? Just cold and rainy.

Today’s Forgotten English calendar page is fun, though, offering “an excellent way to get a fairy” (at least according to a late 1600s manuscript in Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum). It suggests that one

…get a broad, square crystal, in length and breadth three inches, and lay it in the blood of a hen three Wednesdays or three Fridays. Then take it out and wash it in Holy Water and fumigate it. Then take three hazel rods of a year’s growth, peel them fair and white, and write the fairy’s name (which you call three times) on every stick being made flat one side. Then bury them under some hill whereas you suppose fairies haunt the Wednesday before you call her; and the Friday following, call her three times at eight, or three, or ten of the clock. But when you call, be in Clean Life and turn thy face towards the east; and when you have her, bind her in that crystal.

Is that all? Well, tomorrow’s Wednesday, so I better get cracking!

A mid-May Monday

Back to work today, for a pretty typical Monday. I got into the office slightly later than expected when I missed my morning train. I was running a little late already, but then I got halfway down the block when I realized I had forgotten my wallet. I doubled back, but that meant that I wouldn’t be on the 8:15 train.

And that’s about the height of the excitement for today.

I did have a slightly weird experience when a potential reviewer, who I’d e-mailed earlier that day about an art therapy proposal sitting on my desk, asked if it was me who had posted something to Twitter that morning. This, specifically. I’d had at least two art therapists in quick succession turn down doing reviews, or I’d had e-mails bounce back from them, because they were on sabbatical. This reviewer found my post by searching for art therapy news, which she does regularly, and she thought it was funny enough to ask me about it. I don’t actively hide my weblog or Twitterings from co-workers and people I work with outside the office, but it is a little odd when they find them on their own.

The only other thing I really did today was finish reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It was okay. My opinion of it largely matches up with Betty’s, I think, namely that there’s stuff to like about the book, and the title character is certainly interesting, but it really does not live up to the hype. I think it’s incredible success is due to a number of things not entirely related to the contents of the book. It hits upon some current hot-button topics, like financial crime and faltering economies, and marries that to a procedural crime novel. The fact that it’s a translation lends it a bit of mystique and prestige, at least here in the US, as does the fact that it (along with its two sequels) were released posthumously. Again, the book itself has its fair share of moments, but I found long stretches of it slightly boring and thought some characters could have been easily excised. Its incredible success is also a little baffling.

Oh, and for those of you wondering about my mom, she’s feeling a lot better. She was up and around for the first time over the weekend, and she’s got the all-clear from her doctor. She’s still tired and not too hungry, but the worst of the pneumonia seems to be past. Thanks for the well-wishes, all!

Sunday comes round again

So today…

I read some Kaleidotrope submissions, while lounging in the backyard with my iPad. The weather was just too nice to stay indoors all day, and that slush pile isn’t getting any smaller. I’m usually pretty good about responding to submissions within a couple of months, three at the outset, but I do still have some stories sitting in my in-box from February and March that need to be answered. That need to be read.

I watched this week’s Doctor Who Confidential. Because sometimes you just want to peek under the hood and see how these things work.

I got a propane tank refilled — or, rather, swapped out an empty tank for a new one — at the local Home Depot.

I went for a short walk. Along the way, I listened to this week’s episode of Studio 360, which was really terrific — Martha Plimpton’s Springsteen cover and Josh Ritter especially — but which made me sorry all over again that I hadn’t managed to get tickets to the live taping in Manhattan last week. I’ve been to the Jerome L. Greene Space before, for a live taping of the Sound of Young America — a taping that’s now available on DVD, as it happens — and it’s a really nice intimate venue. The show sounded great on my headphones, but I suspect it was even better in person.

I plodded away at the New York Times Sunday crossword, this week back on paper, since the slightly weird formatting of the themed answers made it impossible for them to offer the puzzle online (and through their iPad app). I’m not sure I like that theme, though I’ll admit it’s a clever structural trick. In the end, I think I find it simply more aggravating than anything.

I mowed the back lawn.

And that’s about it. Time, I think, for bed.

Saturday

Let’s see what I did today.

I mailed out a couple of issues of Kaleidotrope to new subscribers, although I can’t shake the feeling that I did so earlier in the week and just forgot to make a note of it. If that’s the case, a couple of people are getting an extra copy of Issue #6 — an issue which, as it happens, is proving to be maybe my most popular back issue thus far. It’s a good issue, make no mistake. It’s got Heather‘s short story, “Replicate Fade,” for starters, which Locus quite liked. And there’s a story in it from the very recently Nebula-award-nominated* Rachel Swirsky…who, as it happens, also has another story in the upcoming, am-I-really-doing-an-issue-in-July July issue of the zine.

I went to the bank.

I watched this week’s episode of Community, and enjoyed it enough that I decided to re-watch last week’s incredible paintball episode.

I went to see Iron Man 2 with friends. It was just like the first Iron Man movie, only less so…in a more-so kind of way. It’s entertaining enough, but it does feel a little overcrowded with details for sequels and spinoffs and other Marvel properties. They really do seem to be pushing this Avengers movie, as if it were really happening and not just a lot of talk that’s contingent on a lot of other things falling into place. Like the Thor movie doing well, like the Captain America movie getting made, like people forgetting how lousy the Ed Norton Hulk movie was, et cetera. As long as it’s got Robert Downey, Jr., at the heart of it, Iron Man is a lot of fun but I do wish they’d pared down a few of the bit players and cameos. (Except for Stan Lee’s, that is. The man does seem almost clinically insane sometimes on his Twitter feed, but I loved his very brief cameo in Iron Man 2. Excelsior!)

I mowed the front lawn.

I watched this week’s episode of Doctor Who and liked it quite a bit.

And that’s about it. Doesn’t seem like a whole lot when you add it all up like this, but it was a pretty good day altogether.

* The awards are are being simulcast as I write this.

Friday

I started off today with an early-morning dentist appointment, for my six-month checkup and regular cleaning. It went well, in so far as there’s nothing wrong with my teeth, no cavities or gum disease or even too much tartar, but the whole thing took considerably longer than I’d expected, or at least had hoped. I spent more time in the waiting room than anything else — although, admittedly, I spent some of it reading reading an interesting article in the latest issue of Discover, about the possibility that DNA-embedded viruses are the root cause of schizophrenia (as well as bipolar disorder, multiple sclerosis, and some other diseases).

I spent considerably less time actually in the dentist’s chair, except for the time when I was getting my teeth x-rayed, which seemed to go on forever. (I have a narrow mouth, the technician cheerfully informed me, as my gag reflex conspired against the both of us and made a couple of repeat attempts necessary. She also informed me that these were safer than medical x-rays, a lower dose of radiation, and we could take up twenty of them without it being a problem. I’m not sure about that math, even if in general she’s probably correct, but dear god, I thought, we’re not actually going to test this awful theory out, are we?)

I was a little annoyed when I scheduled my next six-month appointment and the receptionist asked if I’d like another 8:30 appointment. “Well actually,” I wanted to tell her, “my appointment today was for eight o’clock. You just kept me waiting around for forty-five minutes.” (Doctors and dentists seem like the only people who can get away with this kind of thing.) But I just scheduled an appointment late in the day, some Thursday in November.

After that, I came home — my dentist is just five minutes away, actually — and killed some time before my late train into Manhattan. I took the dog out to pee, played around with the iPad, and spoke with my mother, who’s feeling considerably better. She’s still not 100%, but she’s much more alert, and she was even up and around a little bit today. I think the worst of the pneumonia is past.

I got into the office around 11:30, which is always a weird thing to do, and an hour later we had our annual — or semi-annual; I forget how often these things happen — recognition luncheon. It wasn’t quite as swanky as the one we had last September, which was on a boat. But there was good food, and we each got $10 gift cards for Target, so I can’t complain. Of course, I’ve never actually won one of these recognition awards…and those came with $100 gift cards… Oh well. There’s always next time. One lives (and works) in hope.

Beyond that, not much to report.