weather

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.

Muggy Monday

I left the iPad at home today, not wanting to risk scratching it in my bag, and also not wanting the easy distraction from work and the book I’m reading, Joe Hill’s Horns. I’m enjoying the book, for the most part, but I’m still about a hundred pages to the end and would like to finish. I didn’t need easy access to Twitter or Scrabble or whatever to distract me. But I did kind of miss having it with me.

It was pouring rain when I woke up this morning, and because of that (and because of a lousy, half-broken umbrella), I got a little soaked running for the train. And I do mean running, since I only just barely made it before the doors closed shut and the train left the station. I bought a new umbrella when I reached Penn Station, but of course up on the street the rain had all but stopped, and I never even open the umbrella once today. There was plenty humidity, but the rain was pretty much done for the day.

I’d forgotten, perhaps in my three-day-weekend, brand-new-iPad daze, that I had an author visiting me this morning. There really was no reason for the visit, other than that she and her husband were in the city for a few days — staying a block from this Saturday’s bomb scare, no less — and we’re interested in pursuing a new edition of her book. But I think our discussion went well…even if I do sometimes feel like I’m faking it, having no real background in psychology myself. Still, they seemed like very pleasant people, and it really does seem like a worthwhile project, so I’m glad we had a chance to chat.

And then I spent the next hour or so printing out instructor materials we’d put online expressly so we wouldn’t have to print them out. But it was for just one customer, and I guess not every professor is rushing to join the digital age. It was a lot of paper, but it wasn’t too difficult a request to accommodate.

After that, it was mostly art therapy until the end of the work day.

Now, though, I think it’s just about time for bed.

April showers

Today wasn’t a particularly exciting day. I spent a good part of it reading up on art therapy, editing a manuscript we currently have in development, and doing my best to stay out of the rain. The keyboard dock for my iPad was delivered today, but still no sign of the iPad itself. Apple sent me an e-mail last week, to confirm that it would be shipping in late April as originally planned, but we’re fast approaching the last few days of late April. I’m not hugely worried, but I am eager to start playing with it, no doubt ushering in Cory Doctorow’s worst fears of a nightmarish apocalypse in the bargain.

I wonder where dem boidies iz

Today was the first day that really felt like the approach of spring to me, not least of all because it was still light out when I got home from work this evening. I still didn’t sleep terrifically well last night, but at least I got in enough hours to function properly. And I managed to finish my edits on that final counseling chapter and send them back to the author. With luck, we’ll have a final manuscript ready to go into production before the week is through. After which, my involvement with the book will essentially be over and I’ll move on to the other half dozen projects that are awaiting my attention.

I also finished reading Ann Patchett’s The Patron Saint of Liars, which I liked quite a lot, although not as much as her later novel Bel Canto, which remains one of my favorite books of recent years. (Well, of my recent years. I read it in 2006.) I’m not yet sure what I’m going to read next, though I have plenty of unread books to choose from. I’ve actually caved twice this month, including today, and bought some new books. I think it’s safe to say that my no-new-books-for-2010 resolution, which was pretty silly to begin with, is now officially a failure. It’s maybe just as well.

First I bought Joe Hill’s Horns and Dan Simmons’ two most recent books, and today I bought a few graphic novels, including Angel: After the Fall. (I’m still not really sure how I feel about them continuing the series, which I thought ended on a really great note, but I’ve been re-watching it recently and figured, why not? I think they’ve done a really good job so far with Buffy‘s “Season 8.”)

Anyway, that’s about it for today.

“It flies like a truck.” “Good. What is a truck?”

It rained all day here, and so I spent most of the day inside playing computer games and just hanging out. I played a little with the dog, watched a little TV — including a little more of Saturday Night Live’s very odd first season — and not a whole lot else.

This evening, after dinner, I watched The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. I think if I’d watched it when it first came out, when I was seven years old, it would be one of my favorite movies. As it is, seeing it now for the very first time, I just find it agreeably weird. I like what Noel Murray says about it:

…it remains an occasionally incomprehensible rush of subplots, sight gags, mythology, and bizarre fashion choices, truer to the spirit of classic adventure stories than to the letter. Which may be why people who love the film feel the way they do. Buckaroo Banzai assumes an attitude of poise and purpose in an otherwise awkward universe.

Now I think I’ll do a little late-night capping — tonight is HCC‘s third anniversary — then call it a night. There’s that darn Daylight Savings Time to contend with, after all.

ETA: I neglected to add — maybe because I still can’t quite believe it — that my eyeglasses broke today. I was cleaning the lenses and the frames just snapped at the bridge. This is especially annoying because these were a replacement pair for glasses that broke back in June, less than a year after I’d bought that first pair. This was also around the same time that another pair of glasses, bought concurrently with the first broken set, themselves broke. I think I’m going to skip going back to Pearle Vision, where I bought both of the quickly broken frames and the now quickly broken replacement pair. I’m not especially rough with my glasses or anything, and this is just ridiculous. I’m back to wearing my old set, which I luckily kept, and which hasn’t once shown signs of breaking in the decade-plus that I’ve owned them.