Month: February 2014

Sunday

[deleted]

There’s a lot I like about that, and where it took me, even if I don’t think all the things I like about it work successfully together.

This evening, I thought about sending out some rejection letters for Kaleidotrope, but I wound up watching Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters instead. I should have gone with my first instinct. The AV Club said the movie was “much like watching a shiny hammer hit a shiny nail over and over and over again. There’s something vaguely satisfying about the impact, and it throws up a few pretty sparks from time to time, but there’s nothing unexpected in the encounter between the two surfaces, and the repetition gets dull.”

I think that’s probably over-selling it, to be honest. I didn’t much enjoy the movie.

I am looking forward to having tomorrow off from work, even if I don’t plan to do anything more exciting with than send those rejection letters and maybe do some laundry.

Friday and Saturday

I worked from home yesterday, more in anticipation of a terrible commute than anything else. My boss texted all of us to say she didn’t mind if we all telecommuted, so who was I to argue with that?

The weather actually wasn’t so bad, quite sunny for a change and warm enough to actually melt some of the snow for the first time in what seemed like forever. It snowed again today, but yesterday was actually pretty nice once it actually got underway.

Still, I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to work from home. And, anyway, the LIRR was canceling trains when I first woke up, so it was probably for the best. Still, it’s a bit weird that the only day I was in the office last week was Monday, the one day a week I usually work from home.

Last night, I re-watched Before Sunrise, I suppose because it was Valentine’s Day. Never let it be said I don’t have a romantic bone in my body, even if I did watch it all by my lonesome.

Tonight, I watched the much less romantic The Counselor. The AV Club described it as “existential Elmore Leonard,” and it does sometimes feel more like an intellectual exercise than a movie, even if it’s the exercise of a decidedly gruesome intellect. It was good, but I don’t know that it was especially fun.

And that was the past couple of days. It’s a three-day weekend, which is really nice, and it’s not even supposed to snow…much.

Random 10 2-14-14

Last week. This week:

  1. “Let It Bleed” by Johnny Winter (orig. the Rolling Stones), guessed by Clayton
    I was dreaming of a steel guitar engagement
  2. “Last Night” by the Traveling Wilburys
    She was there at the bar, she heard my guitar
  3. “No One’s Gonna Love You” by Band of Horses
    We are the ever-living ghost of what once was
  4. “First Train Home” by Imagen Heap
    Temporal dead zone where clocks are barely breathing
  5. “Galaxy Song” by Bree Sharp
    And we can mingle with these nursery rhymes
  6. “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man” by Prince, guessed by random passer-by
    I may be qualified for a one night stand
  7. “Draw Your Brake” by Scotty
    Play your guitar, brother
  8. “Poison Arrow” by ABC
    So lower your sights, yeah but raise your aim
  9. “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen, guessed by Clayton
    Out of the doorway the bullets rip to the sound of the beat
  10. “You Taste Like the Tropics” by Bush Tetras
    It’s offbeat to me

As always, good luck!

Wednesday and Thursday

I can’t believe it’s only Thursday.

Yesterday, I was on back on campus again, at the second of three schools for the semester. The weather was quite cold, but all of my meetings went well and it was a good day.

Then sometime in the middle of the night it started to snow.

Actually, before that, the third school I was planning to visit today preemptively cancelled all its morning classes and office hours, and it was already looking fairly likely that the afternoon classes and hours would follow suit. Most of my scheduled appointments were in the afternoon, but still, I didn’t much like my chances. The school’s an hour away, on what promised to be icy roads, and I went to bed last night pretty secure that come morning I’d have to e-mail all my appointments to cancel.

You know, for the second time. Oh yeah, this was the school I was originally planning to visit a couple of weeks ago when I got sick.

For a while after I woke up, it still seemed really uncertain what was going to happen. I knew I probably wasn’t driving out to the campus, but did that mean I’d have to go into the office? The trains were running, or at least the network news and MTA claimed they were, but it seemed like things were just getting worse. The snow really started coming down — I joked a little later on Twitter that the flakes were as big as birds. At least I think it was a joke — and even if it turned to rain, any commute seemed like a wet and sloppy mess waiting to happen.

So I decided to text my boss about working from home. And maybe five minutes after that, I got an e-mail saying that the office had closed because of the weather. So the whole thing was kind of moot.

I managed to re-schedule all of my appointments save one, which will just need to be moved from morning to afternoon, and I’m going to try again in another two weeks. Of course, after sickness and a foot more of snow, the universe may be trying to tell me something. (Then again, I thought that last year when I contacted over a hundred faculty at one school and got no appointments. And that place turned out to be my very successful Tuesday.) Hopefully the third time will be the charm, and the school (or I) won’t catch fire or something.

I didn’t do a whole lot today. More shoveling and snow-blowing than was probably wise, especially since there’s more snow predicted on the way. Actually, there’s a chance of snow and rain from now until well into next week, so I don’t think we’ve escaped this just yet. I read a little, did a little work — I mean, I did have my laptop up and running already — and that’s about it. I have no idea if tomorrow’s snow will be enough to close the office again, or even just to keep me home. It’s been a long enough week, and I’m tired enough, that it seems strangely unfair that today wasn’t Friday.

Basically, I’ll do what I did today: figure it out in the morning, I guess.

William Faulkner’s Sanctuary

I really enjoyed reading William Faulkner’s Sanctuary. It’s one of his earlier novels, and of those I’ve read I think one of his most poetic. Faulkner can be something of an acquired taste — it took me several attempts to acquire it myself — and does require close attention to even figure out what is going on. (Even after I’d finished, the Wikipedia entry for the book held some surprises on that front.) Often, Faulkner is more about the rhythms of the language than the simple straightforwardness of a plot. But I submit that when those rhythms are really working, there’s nothing like them.

For instance, there’s this:

Screenshot 2014-02-13 at 5.34.45 PM

And this:

Screenshot 2014-02-13 at 5

And this.

Screenshot 2014-02-13 at 6.21.45 PM

None of which tells you what the book is about, but at the same time maybe tell you everything. I’m moving on to something different, I think — Phillip K. Dick, I think, though he can be no less an acquired taste sometimes, a difficult read. But I really did like the book a whole lot.