personal

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.

Wednesday

It was unseasonably cold here today. Maybe not as cold as in some parts — my father said yesterday the news was reporting snow in my old central Pennsylvanian stomping grounds — but chilly nevertheless. My mom is still sick, but with the confirmation today that it is pneumonia, we’re hoping that rest and antibiotics will have her feeling better soon.

Meanwhile, my day was about the same as yesterday, except for a “brown bag” lunch we had at work today. We have these on occasion, where they invite a guest speaker and give everyone who attends the talk a free lunch of sandwiches or pizza. Today was the latter, and a talk on book publicity. It turned out to be a fairly interesting topic, with an engaging speaker — neither of which are guaranteed when attending these things. Of course, it was helped along by visual aids that included a clip of one of his authors on The Colbert Report. But hey, that and free pizza ain’t half bad.

In other news, I stayed up much too late last night watching yesterday’s episode of Lost, which a lot of people seem to have really hated. Honestly, I can see where they’re coming from — it focuses on two (relatively) minor characters and offers a lot of non-answers (or simply more questions) as answers for the show’s central mysteries — but the truth is, I really liked it. There are plenty of answers I wish it had given, plenty of mysteries that I wish had been explained. But I keep coming back to something Noel Murray wrote in a comment to his AV Club review:

For me it goes back to the idea that the story keeps repeating. It doesn’t “explain” anything necessarily — if anything, it raises more questions — but in a show where incidents and images and lines recur, the idea that even the central “hero” and “villain” of the piece come from a fractured background just like the 815ers makes the endgame more meaningful. It’s no longer a war between Good God and Bad God. It’s just a continuation of an ancient struggle that makes even the people who claim to be doing the right thing into terrible, terrible people.

Lots of people, including Murray, have been insisting for a long time that the show can’t help but disappoint in its final season, that anyone looking for some perfect closure or understanding of exactly what happened is going to be let down. I think “Across the Sea” may be the first time that’s really sinking in for some folks.

Me, I really enjoyed the episode. I don’t know yet what exactly it means for the last few hours to come, but I’m eager to find out.