weather

Rainy Monday

Another quiet, and rainy, day at home. I took Monday off, mostly just to burn off some remaining vacation days, and I used it to do nothing more exciting than mail out copies of Kaleidotrope to contributors and subscribers. Did you know the US Postal Service has a new customs form that you only have to sign and date once? Thrilling details, I know!

Otherwise, I spent the day mostly watching some television and doing a little writing. Then again, I slept in until almost 11 o’clock, so it’s kind of amazing I got anything done at all.

Hey, it’s my day off.

And while I don’t want to jinx it, my back and surrounding discomfort seemed marginally better today. I’m keeping my doctor’s appointment in two weeks even if the pain disappears altogether. But it’s nice to think I might be getting a little better, or at least back to recent-normal.

Wet Wednes–oh, wait, never mind

It was actually relatively dry here today, with even a little bit of sun. Which is good and bad. It’s still very much summer here, with only a few hints of fall. Right now, for instance, I still have the air conditioner on. And this evening, there were a lot of mosquitoes out and about, way too many for what’s almost October. Some folks might want to keep denying global warming and climate change, but I think the rest of us will be over here in the real world. Even if it is getting unseasonably warm here.

In other news…well, my back is pretty much the same. Maybe slightly different aches and pains, but aches and pains nevertheless. I’m trying to keep active and stretching, which seems to help, but I’m still thinking about calling my spine doctor again.

Sometimes I wish I didn’t believe chiropractics was a crock.

I did finish reading Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale this morning, so that’s something at least. I liked the book quite a lot. It was a little different than I expected, and I think like any novel, especially one with sfnal elements, it’s more about the time it was written than about the future. In this case, that time was the 1980s, although the book isn’t at all what I would call dated — parts of it are still frighteningly relevant, there’s little about the dystopia that feels particularly quaint, and the book is every bit as creepy at times as Heather (who sent me the book) advertised.

I’m curious now about the movie version, which seems quite difficult to procure on DVD. I’m tempted to seek it out, only I suspect, from most of the reviews and its poor box office at the time, that it’s actually dreadful. There was a lot I liked about the book, but I would never have thought to call it cinematic.

And as to the whole “is it sci-fi or not” argument that seems to dog Atwood constantly, I tend to agree with what Jeff VanderMeer says about it. I’ve only read two of Atwood’s books now, and none of her most recent books, but I could definitely see reading more.

Wet Monday

A rainy day, with much scouring through stock photo websites at work. Which is how I can stumble across images like this and this in fairly quick succession. Seriously, that first image…it’s not NSFW, necessarily, but…sheesh. It’s not going in the book, sad to say.

Otherwise, just more rain. It was raining when I got off the train this evening, but had stopped before I crossed over the platform to the other side. Then, when I came home and took the dog outside for a walk, it started to bucket down on us. He, of course, hates the rain…but seemed convinced it wasn’t raining in the backyard. And it turns out, he was right. By the time I’d walked from one of the garage to the other, and unlocked the back door, the rain had stopped. It’s poured off and on all night, but if I’d timed this evening just a little better, I’d have stayed relatively dry.

If I should Fall

No strange burgers today, just an unseasonably warm day — the first day of fall, no less! — and more work than I expected when I went into work today. I’ve got this huge project, including lots of photo research and instructor reviews and online materials, that dropped in my lap yesterday evening right before I left for the day. I mean, I sort of knew it was coming, since the book is scheduled to publish next summer, but it involves a lot of things (like the photo research) that I really haven’t done to this extent before. Just trying to figure out some of the logistics is going to be interesting work in and of itself.

Otherwise, it was a pretty quiet day. It rained this evening, and it’s only supposed to be around 80° tomorrow, so that’s nice. (Seriously, first day of autumn is the hottest day in a couple of weeks. You have to admire Mother Nature’s sense of irony. Or fear the global warming that will kill us all…)

And, as I wrote earlier on Twitter, if you’d told me on Monday that by Wednesday the week would be almost half over, I wouldn’t have believed you. Happy and a little amazed that tomorrow is Thursday already.

Thursday

A pretty quiet day, aside from the storm that rushed through here. Luckily, I got home ahead of the storm and missed all of the excitement in Manhattan, where apparently the Long Island Railroad shut down entirely. Good times.

Other than that… I finished reading Barry Lopez’s short story collection Light Action in the Caribbean. I liked the collection, even if some of the stories (including the title story) were a little strange, and even if none exactly lived up to “The Mappist,” the final story in the book and the one that introduced me to Lopez. (I heard it on Selected Shorts, where actor Joe Spano does a great job with it.)

And I wrote a little more today, making some slow but steady progress on a short story of my own I’ve been working on lately. I’m hoping to spend even more time with it over the weekend.

Oh, and I posted the cover and contents for Kaleidotrope #10 earlier today. I still can’t believe this will be ten issues, that I’ve been publishing the zine since October of 2006. (Just as I have trouble believing I’ve worked in my office since October of 2004.) I really like this issue, and I hope you will too. (You can pre-order copies now if you’re not already a subscriber!)