personal

The week that it was

April is a cruel-ish month. Remember when winter was a thing that ended?

It snowed on Wednesday, or maybe it was Tuesday night. We woke to find a very light dusting on the front lawn and the cars, and the train station platforms had turned to a thin but nasty sheet of ice. It was an unexpected cold snap that’s lasted all week, never again with the same kind of dramatics, with snow and ice, but it’s been a lot colder than I think any of us expected for mid-to-late April. Last Saturday, I was hanging out in the backyard in short sleeves. This morning I could see my breath and wondering if maybe I hadn’t better get a warmer jacket.

It’s been an okay kind of week otherwise. I’m finally getting accomplished things that were supposed to have been accomplished a month ago at work, so that’s good. There are still at least a couple of very big potential headaches that I’ll need to tackle again next week, but I can’t tell you how much relief I had this week when I finally handed over one of my books to production. So much relief, really, that I hope to repeat the experience again next week.

I know in some parts of the civilized world today — and even Monday — is a holiday. Not so much here, though the trains were maybe a little emptier than usual this evening. (Just a little.) I have no big plans for the Easter weekend, other than to try and enjoy it and hope the weather warms up a little.

Saturday and Sunday

Yesterday was warm enough to sit out in the yard for a little while, reading Kaleidotrope submissions. So that’s what I did. I sometimes worry than I’m being a little too choosy, after I’ve rejected a dozen or so stories in a row, and then one comes along that I don’t want to reject and I think, “Nope. Just choosy enough.”

After dinner, I watched American Hustle, which I wish I could say I enjoyed more than I did. At this year’s Golden Globe Awards, Tina Fey joked that the movie’s original name was “Explosion at the Wig Factory,” which really isn’t far from the truth. There’s some good acting in the movie, but a lot more over-acting, and a lot of over-the-top hair and costume design, all in service of a fun but kind of thin story — a very loosely adapted version of the Abscam investigation. It’s not hard to see why the film was nominated for ten Oscars last year. But it’s also not hard to see why it didn’t win a single one.

After that, I watched Area 407, which I can’t even pretend was any good. It’s exceptionally terrible, even by the low standards of found-footage monster movies, apparently ad libbed over the course of five days, and man does that show! It so very, very bad…and for that reason, it was absolutely wonderful.

I watched it with friends over Twitter, which is something we do semi-regularly — Heather has a rundown of some of the comments we made — and it was kind of magical. Heaven knows I’ve seen my fair share of terrible movies, but every now and then one comes along that’s terrible in all the right ways. This was definitely one of those, and I had a blast live-tweeting it with everyone else.

This afternoon, I went to see Captain America: Winter Soldier with some in-person friends. I enjoyed the movie, which is fun and has some nice little moments from its leads interspersed with all the acting — I don’t Steve’s ever going to get to ask out Kristen from Statistics — but there’s not a whole lot to say about it, really. I mean it’s no Area 407.

Anyway, before the movie we had our weekly writing group, and this is what I did:

“You gotta write it down,” Trevor Kettleson said. “His speech recognition software isn’t working at the moment.”

“This is the robot?” Dean asked. “Your investigator?”

“He doesn’t like that word,” Kettleson said. “Either one. It would be more accurate to call him a…’cyborg consultant.’”

“From outer space?”

Kettleson sighed, sat forward in his chair. “While technically accurate, detective, pre-judgmental language like that will only make it more difficult for Roger — “

“The robot. Roger the robot.”

“ — our consulting cyborg to adequately assist you on this case. It’s true that Roger’s cybernetic components were outfitted on a space station orbiting an abandoned planetoid, but the fact that this all happens three hundred years in the future — “

“I’m not here to prosecute your cyborg, Mr. Kettleson,” Dean said, all smiles, “just trying to get a lay of the land. Everyone who came through the time vortex was granted immunity, that’s the law. How I feel about it doesn’t matter.”

“It might matter to Roger,” Kettleson said.

“I’ll try not to step on anyone’s toes,” Dean said. “Especially if they’re made out of titanium.”

“Our firm has the utmost respect for Roger’s investigative skills. I urge you to turn to him as an asset.”

“He just doesn’t talk.”

“Oh, he talks. He just can’t process speech presently. We’re doing everything in our power to remedy that, but…well, we are talking about technology three centuries more advanced than our own.”

“And was Paige Caldwell working on this remedy?”

“Was — ?”

“Dr. Caldwell. The victim. Was she spending a lot of time working directly with Roger?”

“Well…I — it was one of her projects, yes. It’s been a team effort. Certainly you don’t think that’s what got her killed, or that Roger — ?”

“You said yourself she didn’t have any enemies.”

“That I knew of, yes. But, detective, that’s a very wide leap to naming Roger as a suspect.”

“I’m just thinking out loud, Mr. Kettleson” Dean said. He stood up and moved towards the door. “If I start making allegations, believe me, I’ll put them in writing. I wouldn’t want Roger to miss them.”

Three hours later, with the cyborg’s pneumatic-powered hands at his throat, Dean Hendricks thought he might have made a mistake.

“Make it look good,” he croaked. “We need her to think you’re really trying to kill me.”

Silently he cursed himself, remembering Roger’s speech recognition problem. He just hoped the cyborg remembered the plan. Those steel-tipped fingers were pretty tight around his windpipe. But they weren’t going to flush Caldwell out of hiding if they didn’t put on a good show.

And that, pretty much, was my weekend.

Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome

Third time really is the charm.

After unexpected snowfall in January, then unexpected illness last week, I finally went to see a Broadway musical last night.

I actually don’t go to the theater all that often, despite this being the third attempt in almost as many months — and the second in less than a week — but my parents had for whatever reason purchased tickets to see Cabaret, starring Alan Cumming and Michelle Williams. So they trekked into the city and I met them a couple of blocks from my office for dinner.

My father still isn’t always feeling well, so he unfortunately opted to head home before the show, walking over with us to the theater but then taking the subway and train back. It’s a shame, too, since he was feeling better not long after — I called him at intermission — and the show was really very good.

I had only a passing familiarity with the show, and then only with Joel Grey’s lead performance in the original. Cumming’s quite different in the role, less elfin and more dirty, and the musical definitely has a very risque edge. But Cumming and Williams were both terrific, as was all of the supporting cast, and I had a great time.

The rest of the week — is it really Thursday already? How? — has passed by very busily at work. I do a little bit of writing every day, even if yesterday proved the exception, and I watch a large amount of The Good Wife on streaming video. (Cumming’s in that, too, as it happens, but playing a very different character.) A night out at the theater notwithstanding, I lead a rather boring life.

Sunday

A quiet day. Not that yesterday wasn’t, really, but at least today was relatively free of health problems.

I had my weekly writing group and wrote this:

The city below them lay in ruins, or at least it did from the vantage of command, where the smoldering rubble flickered in the static of the ship’s main viewscreens.

“You can’t put much stock in that,” said Tendall. “Those images are from at least twenty-four hours into the future.”

Bergen grunted, it seemed in assent, but then just ask quickly she asked, “And how many hours until we make actual landfall?”

Sighing heavily, Tendall said, “Thirty-seven. Even if we push the engines to the breaking point, we won’t be back in same-time for another day and a half.”

“So we’ll miss being concurrent with the disaster?” Bergen asked.

“That’s assuming it happens, ma’am,” Tendall said. “But yes. I’m afraid if these images are the future, we won’t exit the probability stream in time to prevent this disaster from happening. Or even to ascertain its cause, most likely.”

“Can’t we turn around, then?” Bergen asked. “Or exit the stream earlier?”

“You’ve never flown in a timeship before, have you, ma’am?”

“No,” she told him. “We don’t have much call to in the Ambassadorial core. This trip was…unexpected.”

“Well, we’re fighting more than the usual tug and drift of spaceflight,” Tendall said. “We’d just as likely tear the ship apart if we tried adjusting course once we’ve entered the stream.”

“Can’t we even send a message ahead?” Bergen asked. “If we know in twenty-four hours the capitol city is going to be destroyed, we have an obligation to send them a warning.”

“You’re free to talk with engineering about that, ma’am. I don’t see how it would work, but that kind of physics is a little above my pay grade.”

“You seem remarkably calm. Don’t you have family in the capitol?”

“I’ve had family in most of the cities I’ve seen destroyed in the future, ma’am. After a few relative-centuries, I’m afraid it’s an occupational hazard. If I let not being able to do anything about it bother me, I couldn’t pilot the ship.” He offered her a smile which he knew she would not return. “I suppose that’s why time-flight isn’t recommended for you folks in the core.”

I dunno. The prompt was “When we lose our innocence, how do we regain it?” Yeah, I dunno.