personal

Tuesday

So it looks like it’s probably pneumonia, which will hopefully respond to antibiotics and start to pass. I think my mother’s been feeling pretty miserable the past couple of days, certainly since we got home from Maryland on Sunday.

My day, by comparison, was pretty standard. I got the okay for our company’s “summer hours,” whereby I’ll work from 8:30 to 5:15 four days a week in order to leave at one o’clock on Fridays. It doesn’t go into effect until mid-July, but I stayed until 5:15 today to make sure it still left me enough time to make my regular train. And it does, if only just. I probably won’t often get a seat on that train, but that’s okay. Standing is sometimes better for my back, and it does mean I get to read more instead of nodding off in the evening — which I do all too often. I’m still reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which is a weird mix of genres, not all of them super-exciting, but I am enjoying it so far, some three hundred pages in.

Other than that, not much to report.

Monday

My mom’s still not feeling well, but she has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, and my father’s been staying home to nurse her. He also picked up the dog from the kennel this afternoon, where Tucker has been since Friday evening — since dropping him off Saturday morning, before six, wasn’t an option. He’s clearly happy to be back home.

Beyond that, it was pretty much just a normal Monday. My new iPad case arrived in the mail, and I really like it so far. It’s a different kind of case than the one Apple sold me, in that it doesn’t open up, to be used while the iPad is sitting inside it. But I like the look of this case a lot more, and it seems to offer the same, if not a higher, level of protection when carrying the device around.

I sat on the couch with the dog this evening, using the iPad (I don’t think he likes it), and watching tonight’s episode of House. I’m not entirely sure what to think about House anymore. I’m growing increasingly less forgiving of the show’s faults with each passing episode, and I’m starting to wonder if maybe I should just bail on it. I thought that tonight’s episode was considerably better than the show has been in awhile, but mostly because it was nice to see Andre Braugher again and bring the focus again squarely onto House, the character, like they did in the powerful season premiere. (A premiere that, I’ve thought more than once, maybe should have been a finale.) The episode mostly discarded the elements that haven’t been working so well, or at least pushed them to the sidelines, which was a welcome relief, but also underlined why those elements are such problems. I think House is proof that a show can be acted very well, and even be written well, scene to scene, and still fall apart when it doesn’t know what to do with its characters. When it forces them into relationships that don’t make sense, into behaviors that are inconsistent with their past actions, or into scenes that exist only to keep those relationships and behaviors going.

There’s one more episode left in the season, though, so maybe they can turn this thing around yet.

“Nothing is less real than realism.”

As part of a Mother’s Day present, we spent the weekend in Washington, D.C., where the Phillips Collection is hosting a special exhibit of Georgia O’Keefe’s artwork through May 10th. The title of this post is actually taken from a quote by O’Keefe, who wrote:

Nothing is less real than realism — details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis that we get the real meaning of things.

My mother is a fan of O’Keefe’s work, so my sister got purchased six tickets, with her husband and his mother joining us as well. (Of course, the museum didn’t actually check our tickets when we entered the special exhibit, but that’s another story.)

It was nice, even if it did mean we had to leave New York around 6:30 Saturday morning, and even if my mother isn’t feeling particularly great now, on Mother’s Day proper. (I’m hoping it’s just a stomach bug and a fleeting one at that.) We had a nice visit, and the weather was particularly pleasant all the time we were there.

It’s surprisingly cold and windy in New York for this time of year, and I’m mostly just watching some television, like this week’s fun but silly episode of Doctor Who (I’m worried they may be laying on the “big bad silence is coming” bit a little too thick, but if nothing else Matt Smith continues to really amuse and impress me.) I actually did this week’s Sunday New York Times crossword on my iPad in the car ride home — along with reading a fair amount of Kaleidotrope slush — and if that alone isn’t a good enough reason to have bought one…well, okay, it’s probably not, but it is easily one of my favorite apps so far, enough that I purchased the year-long subscription.

Anyway, it’s back to work tomorrow. I fear I managed to make this weekend sound less interesting than it was, but it’s been a long one, with a long car ride home, and I’m a little tired.

Happy Mother’s Day, everyone!

Friday

I didn’t sleep terrifically well last night, thanks to some odd (and at times oddly violent) dreams, and I was reminded throughout the day why I prefer taking Fridays off from work and taking a three-day weekend. Alas, that’s not always an option.

For the most part, today was the same as yesterday in terms of work, copying the edits I’ve made to the art therapy manuscript to the electronic files I’ll send back to the author. As much as I’m a fan of e-books (and I am), I still find editing much easier with a red pen on a printed page.

I actually have an early start of it tomorrow, so I think I’m just going to turn in for the night. Here’s to more run-of-the-mill dreams.

One rabbit, two rabbit, three rabbit, four…

I finished reading a couple of books today, both that art therapy textbook I’m helping develop at work and Joe Hill’s most recent novel, Horns. I liked both of them. I think the former, once it’s finalized with figures and an accompanying DVD, will be a valuable resource for any beginning art therapist. It’s also pretty accessible (albeit not immediately of interest) to anyone else. Horns, on the other hand, was entertaining but also kind of problematic — in different ways from Hill’s previous book, Heart-shaped Box, though I still think he hasn’t quite written a novel as good as his short stories. (I’ve also really liked his comic book work so far.) Maybe it’s that Horns spends so much of its time in dark and evil thoughts, in its characters worst impulses — that is, at least in part, what the book is about — makes it a lot less fun than it might otherwise be. But Hill has a knack for creating immediately interesting characters, with whom we empathize, and I can hardly fault him for writing a book that occasionally made me uncomfortable. It’s a little messy around the edges, maybe, even more so than Box, but Hill remains a writer to keep an eye on.

On the way home, I bought a copy of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo at Penn Station. I have plenty of books already — hence my short-lived “no new books” policy — and a brand new e-book reader in the form of my iPad, but…well, I’ve heard good things. I’m not really far enough along in it to say whether I’m enjoying it or not, but I am intrigued.

And beyond that, it was just an average Wednesday. The most interesting thing that happened today was reading about the Centzon Totochtin, divine rabbits, and the Aztec gods of drunkenness. It’s for a book on excessive drinking, whose cover designs were circulated around the office this morning. I particularly liked this image somebody drew and put on their blog.

Me, I just put this here.