kaleidotrope

Something like a Sunday

It’s Memorial Day weekend, and the weather’s just been lovely, sort of perfect sit-in-the-backyard-with-the-iPad weather. Beyond that, and the ever-growing Kaleidotrope slush pile that I’m still trying to get through, I spent today watching Doctor Who Confidential and some of the special features on the Mystery Team DVD, finishing the New York Times Sunday crossword (for a change), meeting up with a friend for our weekly writing group, and reading the rest of Fifth Business by Robertson Davies. Heather, who sent me the book at my birthday, calls it “the bane of every twelfth grade student” in her native Canada (where the book is largely set), but I kind of liked it. There was a long stretch, in which nothing particularly happens, when I wasn’t so sure that was going to be the case, but I can actually see going on and reading the other two books in Davies’ trilogy. Not right now, of course — I feel like I need a good shot of science fiction to counteract my recent readings — but at some point in the future.

My more immediate future, however, involves maybe watching a little television, maybe reading a little more, and going to bed.

Gales fully spanged

Time to spang my gales and write a quick recap of what did today on my day off. Except I spent the day doing mostly the same sort of thing I did all weekend, which is really nothing much. I watched last night’s Lost series finale first thing on my iPad. (I tried watching it on my laptop, but I wound up with a virus I had to clean up, and ABC’s player app is actually really good.) I don’t really have a lot more to say about it than the very little I said about it here. Except for the AV Club’s write-up, I’ve been pretty much avoiding reviews of the episode, preferring instead just to have enjoyed it. At some point, I think I’ll revisit the commentary, just as I plan at some point to revisit the series in its entirety, but for now, I’m just amazed the show is actually over. I don’t think I’m going to go into crazy withdrawal (thanks Betty), but I will miss the show. It really was like nothing else on television. (And the few shows, like FlashForward, that have tried to be like it have mostly only adopted the superficial elements. It was never about the mystery, but about the characters those mysteries happened to.)

Okay, maybe I had a little more to say about it. But, for now anyway, that’s it.

Other than that, I spent the day mostly just lounging about, reading some, trying to get caught up on Kaleidotrope slush submissions. I think I only have a couple of stories still hanging around since February, but those couple really do need to get read right away. I try to keep my response time down to a month or two if at all possible.

It’s back to work tomorrow, for a grueling four-day week.

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.

“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!