personal

Ah, Saturday

This morning, after I woke up, showered, and ate a bowl of cereal for breakfast, I tried finding an online video stream for Global Calgary television. Which, I think it’s safe to say, is not something I normally do. I mean, I like the occasional Canadian television just fine — your Kids in the Halls, your Slings & Arrows, your Newsrooms, what have you — but the local Alberta news isn’t the first thing I flip on when I wake up in the morning. (The television in my bedroom no longer gets any channels, now that it’s all gone digital and I haven’t, but that’s another story altogether.) But I thought I’d check, since Heather was going to be on, at around 10 AM my time, promoting Evolve, the new vampire collection in which she has a (really good) short story. Alas, although there is this, it’s less a live stream than a couple of their recorded promos. So I had to wait until Heather posted the video herself.

I thought she did a great job. A few years back, I was interviewed a couple of times on BBC Radio, and I found even that — safely ensconced as I was in the confines of my apartment — completely nerve-wracking. Heather professed to being incredibly nervous herself, but to her credit I don’t think it much shows. And, moreover, I think the book’s definitely worth checking out.

After failing to find that video feed, I ran some errands. I went to the bank, picked up this week’s copy of The New Yorker at the post office, and then I actually got a chance to read some of it for a change, while I waited to get my hair cut. (I tend to just let it grow until it starts getting in my eyes and annoying.) Then I came home, had a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch, and decided to go donate blood at the local church. I used to give blood regularly, back when I was in college and there was always a convenient blood drive in the residence halls where I lived. But even when I was still living in a college town, once I moved away from a college student’s schedule and got a job, it became a lot harder to find the time to go. There were few evening or weekend blood drives, which always disappointed me, and I think I gave blood all of once in the five years I stayed on after graduation.

Luckily, the church here usually has their blood drives on the weekend, and the weather today was gorgeous enough that I could just walk right over. The nurse there talked me into giving via apheresis, which I’d never done before, never even heard of. It takes considerably longer, maybe twenty to twenty-five minutes, and there was a long list of very unlikely but still possible side-effects I had to sign a consent form saying I’d been instructed about. (Of them, I really only experienced the tingling and numbness in my hand and maybe, very briefly, the odd smell and taste in my mouth.) Basically, they just break down the blood into its components, keep the red cells, and recycle everything back to you.

It does mean I can’t give blood again until almost July, since it’s essentially like giving blood twice, but I’m okay with that. I think next time, even if my hemoglobin levels put me again in the okay-for-apheresis category, I might just donate the old-fashioned way. I’m just a little more beat than usual, is all, and I think the whole thing took a lot out of me. (No pun intended.) Plenty of fluids, and a nap earlier this evening, helped.

Other than that…I watched the third episode of that alternate-universe variety show that somehow wound up at the beginning of the Saturday Night Live DVDs I bought recently. The one with the weird guests, the unfunny Muppets, and the “Not Ready for Primetime Players” relegated to bit parts in occasional sketches. And I also re-watched John Carpenter’s The Thing, which I’ve had a weird itch to revisit lately. (I think I’ve just read a couple of articles online where it’s been mentioned, is all.) There’s something really scary about a monster that doesn’t just kill you, but becomes you. I may use it as an excuse to revisit the original John W. Campbell short story, if not the original movie version.

And that’s really it for my Saturday.

A possibly haunted house

Today was Friday, and there’s not a whole lot more to say about it except that. I wrote a little more this evening, which is tough to do while standing up on a crowded and bumpy train, but I like where the little bit I got down is headed. It may helps me get closer to where I think the story overall is supposed to be headed.

Then this evening, I watched The House of the Devil, which is an interesting movie. It’s a pitch-perfect homage to ’80s horror and sometimes really genuinely scary. As Roger Ebert wrote in his review, it’s a movie that “understands that if there’s anything scarier than haunted house, it’s a possibly haunted house.” I’m not sure it’s a whole lot more than a skillful imitation of movies they don’t make a lot of anymore, but I enjoyed it.

Now I think it’s time for a little blind capping, then maybe the Burn Notice season finale and bed. That’s a halfway decent Friday, no?

The Thursday who was a man

Today was a lot like yesterday, just like yesterday was a lot like the day before. That tends to happen in the middle days of the week, and I suspect tomorrow will be a lot like today, except a little more Fridayish.

This evening, I met my parents at the train station in Hicksville, a couple of towns over, and we went out for dinner at a nice local Indian restaurant. My father had just been to the eye doctor to follow up on the procedure he had last week, which according to the doctor went extremely well. My father’s vision isn’t yet 20/20 in the eye, but he’s made a speedy and almost full recovery, which I think allayed some of the concerns he was having.

I did a little writing on the train, knowing that we might get home late and I might use that as an excuse not to, and I think I may be slowly getting past this stumbling block that’s kept me from moving ahead on this one particular story. (Despite having a pretty clear idea of where it’s headed and what happens next.) I think the trick to overcoming writer’s block is not to believe in writer’s block. On the walk to Penn Station this evening, I listened to Eddie Izzard in conversation with Elvis Mitchell, and Izzard talked about how the only way to overcome panic was simply not let yourself panic. It doesn’t help if you do, so you just have to force yourself not to. Easier said than done, maybe, but I’m not sure there’s a better way to do it.

(It’s a little like Jack says in this clip from the first season of Lost: “Fear’s sort of an odd thing.”)

And I watched the second episode of Saturday Night Live‘s first season, which is almost unrecognizable as Saturday Night Live. It’s a little less over-stuffed than the premiere episode, but mostly because it spends so much of its time being just a live music show. There were a couple of amusing filmed segments, and some surprisingly not-very-funny Muppets, but there weren’t any sketches, unless you count a couple of commercial parodies and “Weekend Update.” It’s like watching alternate universe version of the show, or at least very different than the standard Cliff’s Notes version you get in most SNL retrospectives. I don’t know that I enjoyed the episode, but Art Garfunkel was surprisingly good, so there’s that.

Anyway, that’s about it.

Live from New York

Today was about as close to yesterday as it could get without being a weird repeating loop in the space-time continuum. I spent it mostly reading through a revised chapter on a counseling book we have in development, and also reading through a few of the stories that keep coming for Kaleidotrope ever I since opened the zine back up to submissions in January. It occurs to me, with just the tiniest hint of accompanying panic, that the next issue has to be out next month, in April, and I should probably get some layout work done as soon as possible. I think it’s going to be a really good issue, but I need to bring it all together before that happens. And, because I’m just a little crazy, I’m still thinking about doing three issues this year, the third one coming sometime in July.

This evening, I watched the very first episode of Saturday Night Live (then NBC’s Saturday Night), since I recently purchased — on the cheap, although those prices don’t seem to be offered anymore — the first two seasons on DVD. I’d seen a lot of it, in retrospectives and the like, but I’d never seen the episode in its entirety. It was…interesting, occasionally even amusing. Andy Kaufman’s Mighty Mouse routine is still kind of inspired. But it was more of a weird relic from a time before the show really got a handle of what it would morph into. (Although, after 35 years on the air, it’s safe to say the show has morphed more than a few times.) Intriguing, if only because that first episode is so over-stuffed — George Carlin, two guest comedians, two musical guests (with two songs apiece), the Muppets, and the expected sketch comedy — but not hysterically funny.

And now, if you don’t mind, it’s time for bed.