Feeling inexplicably cheerful this morning. Emily and I are (I hope) going to go see The Manchurian Candidate this afternoon, while Ted and my Dad go try a second time to catch some fish. Yesterday they failed entirely. They believe the salmon can see the black nets they were using for dipnetting, so they're going to get some clear nets and see if that helps. Apparently people all around them were using clear nets and pulling in the fish, and as Ted said, at this point, they've spent too much money to not try again. :) So hopefully they'll catch some salmon this time! Mmmm, salmon chowder. Mmmmm.
Jai gave me a bunch of very useful notes about my Bombshell proposal, so I'm going to work on it a bit more and write another one or two chapters before sending it off. It'd be nice to have that all done by Monday, which means I have to actually write this weekend. *horrified look*
There are these people around the corner who have *zillions* of BIG HUGE raspberry bushes growing in their yards, with BIG HUGE berries on them. The bushes, not the yards. I knocked on their doors last night to ask if I could pick the berries if they weren't going to, but nobody was home. I'll have to try again this evening, because they're just too tempting to pass up, but it seems rude to just start picking off somebody's property.
However, if that fails, and even if it doesn't, one of the mailing lists I'm on had someone just post and say, "Help! We have too many raspberries! Anybody want to come pick some?" So I'll go do that Saturday morning one way or another. Mmm, raspberries!
Mmm, the bread I'm baking smells gooooood. Mmmm.
Lots of mmmm this morning. :)
miles to Lothlorien: 143.5
Oop. I went downstairs to get things together to make jam, and discovered I've only got 4 8oz jam jars, which isn't nearly enough for the 8+ cups of jam I expect to get out of the berries. Good thing I decided to check on that before I actually got started making the jam. O.O Also it turned out the jam jar lids that Mom and I bought are the wrong size for the jars I've got, so even if I'd had enough jars, I still wouldn't have lids. Oop again.
*snicker* I really am too cool for words!
Boy! Wow! I couldn't stand it anymore, because there are all these raspberry bushes on my neighborhood walk, and NOBODY was picking 'em, so I had to go pick some last night. I got a quart and a half! Big hyyyooooge berries! Commercial-sized berries! I'm going to go again later today and then I should have enough to make raspberry jam!
*peers at a quarts to cups converter* Oh! I should have enough already! HmmMMMmmm!
I got up this morning and wrote. I'm stunned, frankly. :) I finished ch. 3 for the proposal for Matrice, and now I have to do a couple of things like look up some Finnish last names and some observatories in Scotland, and then I'm good to send it off. Except I'll send it to Sarah first to read and tell me if it sucks. :)
Let's see. Must read more of Sarah's book today, too, and keep thinking about it. And and and. Um. Maybe that's all!
We gamed last night. *laugh* We're not very focused on the gaming part of gaming. We're better at the socializing part of gaming. :) But it's okay, 'cause we had fun! We got attacked by velociraptors! Skeery! But we obliterated them, muahahaha. :)
miles to Lothlorien: 140
ytd wordcount: 211,000
I was hoping I'd come up Agent Smith. :)
Hrm. Some idiot has used all the kleenex.
I think I will just pay the gallery software people to fix my stupid stupid broken gallery, because I donno what I did and apparently we can't get it rebuilt from a backup of the directory. Thank goodness I was a good elf and actually made a backup of the gallery before trying to upgrade it, like they told me to. I almost didn't. o.o
Let's see. Nothing new here this morning, except for the first time in what seems like Positive Ages, I got up before 7. Not /much/ before 7; not enough, say, to write, but before 7 anyway, and I got a loaf of bread started and cleaned the kitty litter, which both needed doing.
We went and watched The Bourne Supremacy last night, which we all enjoyed pretty well, although Emily, having only read the book a couple of years ago, could actually remember what happened in the book and was sort of frustrated with the changes the movie'd made. I hadn't read the book in a decade (deliberately, after The Bourne Identity came out, because I figured they'd make more, and I didn't want to be in Emily's position; I'll re-read them after they're done making Bourne movies) and there was one thing that SHOCKED THE HELL out of me, because I didn't remember it happening in the book. After the movie Emily told me it had not, in fact, happened in the book, which was really something of a relief to me. :) But anyway, we enjoyed it generally.
I feel like I should write some more about Writer's Weekend, but I'm not sure if I've got enough brain to. :)
Ambar. A sidekick. *laugh*
(Edit, several seconds later: OH. Ambar, a NEMESIS. That's much better. I just can't read, or something. :))
miles to Lothlorien: 137
I have entirely broken my photos directory. I hope my webhost will just restore the stupid thing so I can try to figure out what I did wrong. :P
If you'd like to sign up for the Writer's Weekend email list, you can do so here.
Not a v. interesting day here, really. I didn't want to get up at all at all at all, but eventually I did and staggered to work. Talked with Karen some, and then some again, talked with my manager some (fortunately nothing alarming, which is what I always fear when someone says, "Can I talk to you?"), and am just sort of trying to settle back into the whole routine.
It's raining. I think this won't particularly thwart my intentions of going on a walk later, but it might. We'll see.
And that's about it from the folks here at mizkit.com. :)
I'm doubting my ability to do a really full writeup of the con, so I'm going to hit some highlights and ramble happily about whatever comes to mind. It's behind a cut tag, so if you wanna read it from LJ, you're going to have to click through. :)
Arrived Thursday afternoon; Emily picked us up at the airport, after we snuck by her. We didn't even mean to sneak by her, but we managed to admirably anyway. :) Hit Denny's for lunch, gasped about the awful heat, and went to get checked in to the hotel. Emily's reservations had gotten screwed up; she didn't have a room for Thursday night and they told her they didn't have an extra one to give her. Apparently this was only one of many screwups with the hotel, but I missed pretty much all of the rest of them. So she ended up rooming with us instead of having her own room, which was all well and fine.
After getting checked in and all arranged and all, we sat around staring at one another and then decided we might as well head down to the conference, although it was much plenty early. We got registered ("C.E. Murphy," Ted wrote on his 'how did you hear about us?' card, "(wife)". *laugh*) and sat down to see who showed up. And lo, people showed up! Chrysoula was there ("Kit," she'd written on her 'how did you hear about us?' card. "What's Kit's last name?" she'd then thought to herself, and then, trimphantly, "MIZ Kit! No, wait..." Eventually, she said, she figured it out, with the help of the WW poster which had 'C.E. Murphy' written on it. :)) and when Trip showed up we all shrieked, "TRIP!" causing Trip to figure he probably didn't need a nametag, if we were going to keep greeting him that way. Sadly, we failed, most of the time, to preceed him into rooms, so we weren't really available for the identification shrieks.
Almost from the start people didn't show up to give their presentations, so the schedule was sort of slip-slidey all weekend. Despite that, though, everybody seemed to kinda pick up the slack, hanging out in the lobby and just talking. Talking craft, talking about presentations, talking about lots of things. Some catching up from last year, all that sort of thing. I was really delighted with how many people were there for Thursday night--more than I expected! Probably forty or so. Leigh Anne arrived, Sarah located me, Rill showed up; many people I knew! I met Jess Hartley, who may very well be my clone, if not my evil twin Skippy, and there was a lot of boisterous cheer.
Having gotten up at 5:30 or something, I opted to collapse into bed like a collapsey thing around 10, I think. I was v. sleepy, and we had to be up by *shudder* 6am to get breakfast before the 8am seminar. We were all glad we'd gotten up, though, because it was a Bellevue police officer and he was really very interesting. And also very, very cute. :) That was followed up by Karen's father in law, who is a law professor at UW, and that was *also* very interesting. I was really glad I'd gotten up.
I skipped Russell Davis's "Tips for the almost published" and hung out in the lobby talking to people instead, which was fun. That afternoon I did what could have been a much better point of view workshop, then sat on a panel with several other people while we discussed the topic of, "I sold a book, now what?!" (Russell Davis said, "Write the next one.")
Dr. Ola, who is from EGYPT, for heaven's sake, gave a really fun seminar on how to kill people. *laugh* Well, more or less, at least. :) She's a medical doctor and dispelled some really popular writing cliches (people do not get hit on the head, lose their vision completely, then get hit on the head again and regain it (although I had a friend in high school who did that, except I don't know how complete his vision loss was), nor does amnesia work the way people want it to. She says people don't lose their entire lives, but rather just the time around the trauma.) and then answered a lot of questions like, "So if somebody in a medieval setting lost enough blood to go into shock (a liter and a half), how long would it take to recover?" (Probably about eight weeks.), and, "Where's the best place to stab somebody so they bleed to death instantly?" (Carotid artery, although they won't bleed to death *instantly* anyway; she says that instant death from knife wounds comes from neurological shock that sends a jolt through every nerve in the body at once, which shuts the body down; that, she says, is what happens in movies when somebody dies instantly from being knifed.) Lots of good stuff. :)
Jim and Shannon Butcher's plane was delayed, so nobody was entirely sure if they were going to make it, but lo! They did! So after ten years, I got to meet Jim IRL, and we gabbed and he said he had (of course) forgotten he was supposed to be URBAN SHAMAN and I told him I'd told Matrice I'd stand on his head at WW if he hadn't read it by the time I saw him. I forgot, though, to stand on his head. No photo op. :)
His keynote speech was about breaking into the writing business, and called something to the effect of, "Outrunning the bear," based on the old joke wherein two guys are walking through the woods and come upon a bear. "We'd better run!" says the first guy. "Are you mad?" asks the second. "We have to play dead! You can't outrun a bear!" "I don't *have* to outrun the bear," the first guy says. "I just have to outrun *you*."
And this is kind of what breaking into publishing is like. You don't have to be better than published authors; you're not competing against them. You're competing, if you want to call it that, against other unpublished authors, and basically you've got to go the distance if you want to make it. You've got to go the distance and you've got to have some luck. It was a good, funny speech, and Jim and I heckled each other during it. :) (To my amusement, when he was concentrating he remembered to call me Catie, but by halfway through the speech he was calling me Kit. *laugh*)
We had a private investigator and legal messenger guy come by and give a talk, which was full of really entertaining stories, and then Jaqueline Carey gave her keynote talk, where she talked about sheer stubbornness being part of the road to publication. In fact, that seems to be a common theme. :)
We hung out and talked til about 11 that night, I think, before crashing again because of the great sleepies and the having to get up early again. The morning started with Rebecca York's talk on creating and maintaining suspense in your writing (she's a romantic suspense novelist herself), and then ... then I think I spent nearly the entire rest of the morning hanging out and talking to people, which was just *fun*. I got to talk to Jim a lot, and I had a lot of people ask me about the Luna line and about making the sale, which was also fun.
Sarah and I had a writing partners workshop that afternoon which *I* thought went *really* well. There were questions asked and we talked about the good *and* the bad of writing partners (Ted was apparently proud of us, because we actually talked about the huge, huge fight we had a few years ago when the subject of contracts came up. Whoo boy, what a fight. :)), and it was really fun. Then there was a panel on plotting, where it was determined the 5 of us on the panel all did things completely differently :) and then the evening was full of the masqued ball (I borrowed a dress from Jess and looked spiffy!) and awards. It was much fun!
Sunday, comparatively, was incredibly low key. We had the post mortem, for which a startling number of people stayed, and a lot of good ideas were brought up. Next year's conference is going to be in North Carolina, and we're kind of hoping to flip back and forth between NC and Seattle in the future, I think. After that everybody who was left went to lunch at the IHOP next to the hotel, but not quite as a unit. There were 7 in our group, and ... other numbers in other groups. :) After that, those of us who were left thought we might try to go to a movie, but the mall the hotel shuttle brought us to didn't have a movie theatre, so we grabbed some dinner and talked about some plot for Trip's YA novel that he's going to write this year (O.O!) and then went back to the hotel and crashed, tud!
So tired. Sort of blank-faced white-noise kind of tired at this point. I'm at work for the afternoon, for the brain-dead zombie value of at work. Oh, I see I've got a 3pm meeting. Ok. Guess I'll have to stay awake through that.
I have much to say and no brain to say it with. *splat*
Boo! G'morning! I'm unreasonably awake, given that it's a quarter to four in the morning! Quarter to three my time, in fact, but we went to bed at 8pm, what with the being exhausted and all, so we got a reasonable amount of sleep. Then it turned out our clock in the room was set ten minutes ahead (we only just discovered this this morning) and so we're early for check-out and thus I have a minute to type frantically. (It also explains why we were early or on time for everything all weekend, when we thought often that we were just barely going to squeak in.)
It's been a fantastic weekend. I got to meet LongshotJim for the first time after a decade of friendship, and to my vast amusement he usually called me Kit. Even more amusing was the dedication he put in one of the books I brought to have him sign. Only MUSH geeks will get this, but it said:
:waves! "Kit!"
That made me laugh out loud. :)
Weekend highlights: Evan, the 13 year old attendee, had his (130,000 word!) fantasy novel requested by Tor Books during a not-even-a-pitch session; he was just talking to Anna Genoese and she ended up requesting his novel. (*I* haven't written a 130K book! Ye gods!) Cyn, who was there last year, had Anna ask for an (as yet unwritten, I believe) book, as did Jess, whom we believe is my missing clone or evil twin. And I cannot remember the girl's name right now (it's 4am!), but at lunch yesterday she told us how on Thursday before she arrived she finally got a rejection letter from Tor, a very, very *positive* rejection letter, of the, "Sorry this took us 18 months to respond to, but it went around to three or four editors while we tried to decide if we could buy it," variety, so she was astonishingly thrilled with that, and it was followed up by having Evan Fogelburg (I may be misspelling that; I'll check later) of the Fogelburg Agency interrogate her (her words, but he's something of a force of nature; interrogation seems to be his natural style of speech) outside of a pitch session, and he was very, very enthusiastic about the book she had just had barely rejected by Tor, and told her he expected to see something on his desk from her soon. So, wow! It's been a great weekend for people!
It was really nice to have Ted along instead of, well, not. I really enjoyed that. Much, *much* nicer than not having him along. And I got to see Sarah and Trip and Leigh Anne and Emily (ok, I've seen her pretty regularly this summer, shush) and everybody from last year and yeah. It's been a good weekend. *beam*
Ok, off to catch the shuttle now. :)
I'm going to assume that I won't be logging in in the morning, and will say goodnight Gracie here. Ted and I are off to Writer's Weekend and I don't particularly expect to have access over the weekend, so probably there won't be any updates. I could, of course, be wrong.
See you all sometime Monday!
Oh yeah. ElfQuest. The newest book is out, although I never would have found it, because I know ElfQuest is being published by DC Comics now, and I have been diligently looking at the new DC/Vertigo stuff in hopes of finding it, since it was supposed to be out in July. Ted happened to see it today, back in the corner with the rest of the ElfQuest stuff. Eric, the manager, whom we were speaking to, was surprised to see it there, and asked somebody else what it was doing there. She said, "Everybody who knows we carry ElfQuest knows it's right there in that corner."
Funny, I know they carry it and I've been looking diligently in the DC stuff.
Anyway, so there it is, the new ElfQuest. It looks like a comic-book-sized issue. Possibly 32 pages instead of 22, that sort of size. Not thick. Also not large; it's comic-book sized, rather than, say, the original ElfQuest B&W comics which were magazine-sized. (Edit: apparently it's actually 96 pages.)
And it's hardback.
And it's sealed in plastic.
And it costs twenty-five dollars.
Baby, the faith is not that strong. It's been what, five years? since EQ had anything out at all, and considerably longer since they had anything good out. I carried the torch a long, long time, but the light ain't bright enough to see my way clear to a $25 purchase of a book I can't even flip through. I didn't know it was coming out in hardback, and I certainly didn't know it was going to be sealed. I was already skeptical as hell about buying it. Now? I just don't think so.
music: Bon Jovi, Keep the Faith
Got the paperwork off to the consulate. The rest of it I'm going to leave in a pile on my desk and deal with Monday (the rest of it being Deirdre's paperwork). Yay!
Also, Ted miraculously fixed the speedometer on the Audi by filling the gas tank, which was 1/4th full, up. o.O
Gnrg! Had all my ducks in a row, or so I thought! Got the passport pictures! Got them signed by the highly bemused managers at the bank! Got passport and birth certificate and FBR certificate photocopies! Prepared to put it all in an envelope--and discovered that they require a cashier's check or money order and won't take a personal check. Arrgh! Gnrgh! Argh!
OTOH, I managed to get to the chiropractor this morning and I am well-crunched and feel better. Whew.
We went berry picking! Raspberries, and while none of us alone got what looked like much, when we put them together into one bucket it looked like a reasonable amount. I should ask Mom how much there was. Were? Whichever.
Thwarted in chiropracting yesterday. Went over, and they stared at us in bafflement and said, "The doctor's not in today." I said, "Uh, I made an appointment last week for today." They said, "We called to say it was cancelled." No, they didn't. There's no message and Shaun didn't take one. If they called, they didn't call *us*.
Battery in the Audi was dead. *snort* Although he'd warned us he'd drained it once accidentally, so okay. Now to get the speedometer fixed, although I'm sure that won't happen until we're back from Writer's Weekend.
Rewrote half of chapter 3 yesterday. Shall try to get the rest of it done today.
What else. Haven't been walking so much the last few days; the hours are disappearing somewhere. (Into City of Heroes, probably.) I'm going to try to get in 2 miles a day while in Seattle, though. That would be good.
I wonder if we should ask Mom and Dad to take Chanti for the weekend so she won't be AAAAAAAAALLLLLLLL ALLLLLOOOOOOOONE for hours and hours and hours on end.
Oh, and I got passport pictures taken yesterday. They're by far the least awful I've ever had taken. They might even border on reasonably good.
Now, off to the chiro, then the bonkbonkbonk to get a bonk manager to sign the pictures and passport app, and then...home again, I guess.
Exciting life, no?
ytd wordcount: 209,800
miles to Lothlorien: 135
That was a nice (long) lunch! Mom and I went to the Crazy Croissant with Laura and Rene Forbes, whom we haven't seen in quite a while, and spent three hours chatting. That was really nice. :) We brought them over to see my house, and Chanti was completely terrified of Laura. *laugh* Weenie dog. And that's about all I know! :)
My sleep schedule's slightly whacked. I need to be setting my alarm for half an hour earlier, or something, because when 6am rolls around I'm deep in REM sleep and boy, there is just no waking up. Staying up late is easy, though. Grah. Tired.
I ended up walking on Friday after all, a total of 6 miles, the longer leg of which I did with my MP3 player, which made it a great deal less boring. I didn't get as much walking done on the actual weekend days as I'd hoped to, but I managed 2 miles a day both days, which is better than I've done recently, so *waves a little flag* go me. :)
Friday, let's see. We watched Stargate: Atlantis, which I didn't think was very good. It's very much a first season show, without any of the strengths of the show it's being spun off from. I think they recast Dr. Elizabeth Weir because they wanted somebody whose physical look was tougher -- she looks like Sigourney Weaver's Ripley. I'll give it a bit of a chance, because I really like the scientist character they've taken from the original series and I'm hoping we'll get a fair bit of him. Won't be enough for me, I'm sure, but I'll watch it for a while and see.
Saturday I finished reading Kathleen Anne Googan's The Bones of Time, which was *much* more readable than her first book, Queen City Jazz, which I felt failed entirely to live up to its wonderful title. No, not entirely. It was just badly paced. Interesting ideas, dull implementation. But BONES OF TIME was much more readable, and I believe I'll look for some more of her books now.
*yawn* I supposed it'd be wrong to go back to bed, huh...
Then we went and bought me an Audi.
1990, 111K miles, supposed to get 18MPG in the city. Cool, huh? :) (Next time, Ted said, does that mean we have to get an Innie? Well, I said, maybe a *Mini*...!)
We went to I, Robot Saturday night, and enjoyed it lots.
ARGH, STUPID PUKING ZILLI.
*mutter* Where was I. Oh yes, I, Robot. I'm going to have to read the book/short story/whatever now, as it's easier to be forgiving of what they did with the movie if I haven't read the story beforehand (although to my amusement it did say, "Suggested by Issac Asimov's I, ROBOT," rather than 'based on' or 'inspired by'). Anyway, I enjoyed it quite a lot.
And yesterday we watched the other movies we'd rented, Intolerable Cruelty and The Cooler, the former of which was mildly amusing and the latter of which was not a very happy movie, although it ended happily. Sort of. There was some violence in it which I was not prepared for. Blick. :P
And then we went to Mom and Dad's for dinner, where 1. Mom had made STUNNINGLY good orange marmalade, and 2. we got off on topics of silliness, such as the peculiar game we used to play when it was time to go to bed. Deirdre and I had bedrooms across from one another's, and there was a very short hall between them. Dad would stand between our two rooms and point at one of us, either me or Deirdre or himself, and for each point we would recite one word of the Pledge of Allegiance. And the purpose of this was to do it as fast as possible and to try to make us mess up, and sometimes he would point at himself and forget to say the words, and sometimes he would psych us out and we would get more or fewer words than expected, and we always ended it with, "And justice for Paul," because Deirdre thought that's what it was, because Mom and Dad had a friend in politics whose name was Paul and she knew that and so it made some sort of sense. And we would laugh and shriek and get all wound up, which I never realized until last night, just how wound up Dad got us right before we were supposed to go to sleep. Bad, bad Daddy! *laugh*
We would also tell stories of Traebur, the 9-inch elephant. I don't remember the Traebur stories very well, except he was always off having adventures, and he would usually pause during one of his adventures to have a fizzy drink, which he would drink through his trunk, which always made him sneeze. He had a car, which was difficult to drive, because he was, after all, only 9 inches, tall, but he also had a friend who helped him drive the car. And whenever Dad would stall in the story, Deirdre or I would yell out what we thought should happen, and thus the Traebur stories proceeded. :)
So I said, "No WONDER we read in bed," or in my case by getting out of bed and reading by the hall light, "since we were ALL WORKED UP instead of ready to go to sleep!" I said that in the summer I used to just prop my windowshade open (I had a bunkbed by the window; I believe I got it moved there so that I could, in fact, read by the window light in the summertime), and that I used to cleverly hide my books under my pillow. Which was all well and fine, except for when I was re-reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and I had like five of them stuck below my pillow, and Dad came to put me to bed one night and I stretched out and stuck my arm under the pillow and a veritable rain of books fell to the floor. I was HORRIFIED. MORTIFIED. TERRIFIED. And Dad was VERY STERN and I was SURE he was going to JUST KILL ME. I laughed so hard telling this story to my parents that when I came home I was exhausted and had to go right to bed.
The End. :)
miles to Lothlorien: 132
I am in a just-constant-enough state of low-grade sunburn to also be in a constant state of itch. But I dast not itch, because that will leave great vicious white slashes of pain across my delicate skin. I could, of course, not go outside for a few days while it all healed up, but I don't think so.
Gaming last night was fun, once we got started. It took us like two hours, between dinner and trying to decide what we were going to do, to get started. :) Then we decided to dump the dingo (psy-dust) into the city's water supply, and get the hell out of town. This might have worked better if we'd considered the fact that the water would get into town faster than we would get back after dumping the dust into the water. We didn't, though, and so we had a massive fight at the docks, which Ted was sure would kill somebody, but for once, we didn't come near having *anyone* get killed. And we think we might be able to get one or two more adventures in before Coby and Emily leave, so that'd be cool. :)
Anything else? Not too much, really. I sent off requests for a copy of our marriage certificate and my birth certificate, and Ted must go find a notary public today (I always thought that was 'noted republic' when I was younger, and wanted to know why the hell the damned Republicans got to sign things and the Democrats didn't) so he can get a copy of his own birth certificate. Then, let's see. I need to get new passport pictures taken, and take my paperwork to the bank to have a bank manager sign it all. I need to fill out Deirdre's paperwork and make a printout of a marriage certificate request for her and put it all in the mail so she can send it to the appropriate places. I should put all these specific steps over on my list of thinks to do. :)
Bored to death with walking. I think I'll go biking tonight instead.
Oh, not that this is related to anything, but the lotion I use, Vaseline Aloe & Naturals lotion, had the brilliant idea to stink up their product. It's got a "new fresh scent" which is completely horrible, so I emailed them with a wail of misery, and they emailed back with an offer to send me a coupon for a product of my choice and told me which of their lotions was "considered to be fragrance free", so I guess I'll get them to mail me a coupon for the scentless stuff. *sigh*
miles to Lothlorien: 122
See, I updated my miles last night, and so today I don't have anything much to say!
Except I got all the paperwork necessary for Deirdre's and my Irish passports, and Ted's post-nuptial citizenship application. I'm going to deal with all this now.
We watched Absolon, which was every bit as bad as we anticipated, and then some. It did, however, have a Highlander reference that made Ted and I shout with laughter, and the sex scene made us say, "Well, at least she didn't stab him first..."
I also finally got around to reading Neil Gaiman's Coraline, which is the second creepiest book I've ever read. (The first is The House With The Clock in its Walls, by John Bellair.) It was quite wonderful. I enjoyed it a great deal. I shall read it again soon, I think. :)
What else, what else. It's still very smoky, but that's okay because it made going for my walk earlier much less overheated. And now it's tremendously windy, but that probably won't last into tomorrow, because it keeps doing this at night and dying down during the day. Ted says there's a prepare-for-evacuation precaution being given to the people who live on Hillside, because it's so dry and they're afraid there might be a wildfire up there. And the weather doesn't look like it's going to offer rain--forecast says Sunday might be drizzily. That's not enough to turn down wildfire alerts.
I got my ACLU membership card today, along with a window-sticker that says Card Carrying Member. I may be obliged to buy a car just to put that in the window. :)
Sent my THUNDERBIRD FALLS proposal to Matrice today. Tomorrow I'll finish up the Bombshell proposal and send that to her, too.
*laugh*! This evening after dinner, which Ted had prepared, Shaun was whining because he'd been wanting candybars lately. I said there was one over on the counter he could have. Ted said, "You could even make it into a s'more!" Shaun said, "I don't like s'mores," which was blatantly untrue since we'd just watched him eat several on Saturday when Ted made them. So Shaun corrected himself and said, "The thing is that I'm ruthlessly spoiled!"
RUTHLESSLY! We RUTHLESSLY spoil him! What he *reallly* meant was, he doesn't like s'mores enough to bother making one himself, particularly in a house where somebody else makes virtually all the food. What he *really* meant was, 'if it involves any more cooking than taking the burrito out of the freezer and putting it in the microwave, I don't want to do it!' Because he is RUTHLESSLY spoiled! RUTHLESSLY!
RUTHLESSLY!
miles to Lothlorien: 117.5
Must, must, *must* start laundry as soon as I'm done with this entry.
The skies are orange this morning, with shadows blocked out on my walls in a delicate peach that suggests curling up in warmth and comfort, not wildfires ranging three hundred miles north of me.
I've redyed my stripe back to brown and cut off the anime flips. We'll see if this is enough change to keep me from cutting my hair; it certainly seems different to *me*.
Ted and I were going to go see The Terminal last night, but dinner took longer than expected, so we rented five (!) movies and watched a couple of them instead. One was the animated Riddick story, the name of which is escaping me, and the other one we watched was Chasing Liberty, which was pretty cute. About a President's daughter who's fed up with her over-protected life. :)
We also got, let's see. Oh, Absalon, with Ron Perlman and Lou Diamond Phillips and Christopher Lambert, I think. As we keep saying every time we think of it, "*That* can't be good." But we'll probably enjoy it. :) And I rented The Cooler with William Macy, 'cause I really want to see that, and we got another romcom, I think. I can't remember. Shaun won't be home this evening (he's got gaming) so we thought we'd watch a couple movies together. :)
Still headachy and still haven't written. Intend to remedy the latter, at least, today, though.
miles to Lothlorien: 111.5
It's been a good day! I got email from Barb telling me that I got a raise, and I'm now making, officially, More Money Than I Ever Imagined I Would. Okay, the truth is as long as I've had this job I've been making MMTIEIIW, but still, raises are good!
Earlier today, Shaun was playing a game with Zilli. It's a game they play fairly regularly. Shaun over-exaggeratedly sneaks up on Zilli, making claws with his hands and growling each time he takes one very deliberate step. When he's done taking the step, Zilli goes MEW! and watches intently while Shaun takes the next growly, clawy step. MEW! They usually last about four or five steps. Then Shaun scoops him up and snuggles him.
Well, today, Shaun started walking towards Zilli, who said mew! and so Shaun said, "Oh! Are we playing?" and backed up several steps to do the growly clawy thing. And Zilli watched him do this, and Shaun took his first step, and Zilli said MEW! Shaun took another step and Zilli, by this time, was looking up at the bookshelves, which he'd decided he wanted to climb. But he said, "Mew!" sort of obligingly. Shaun took another step. Zilli said, "Mew!" although by this time his attention was *clearly* elsewhere. Shaun took a fourth step, and Zilli, somewhat impatiently, said, "Mew!" and stood up to examine the bookshelves.
The cat was HUMORING Shaun! He was playing because he KNEW Shaun wanted to play, not because *he* wanted to! Cats aren't supposed to be that smart! But he was really, *clearly* humoring him! It was *very* funny. :)
And to wrap it all up, I think Warren Ellis just said he'd buy my book. That's just pretty goddamned cool. :) :) :)
Here's a novel idea for you: my new alarm clock apparently hasn't got a snooze button. It turns on, and if you hit the 'sleep' button, it turns back off again and doesn't turn on again until the next day. How's that for crazy? What's the world coming to, I ask you? I don't think I've ever *owned* a (digital, at least) alarm clock that didn't have a snooze.
This is clearly going to take some getting used to!
Oh, rock on. Hooray for Google! I discovered last Friday that my booklist file had somehow gotten chomped and I'd lost the list of everything I'd read after the 20th of June, which was the last Google cache I could find for it. I reconstructed the list just now, but on a whim went to see if Google'd cached a more recent version, and indeed, they had! I lost nothing at all! Hooray for Google! (Although I did properly reconstruct the list, I discovered after comparing the list I'd put together to the one I got from Google. :)) Hooray for Google!
Also hooray for me, 'cause I walked 5 miles today. Hooray for me!
miles to Lothlorien: 107 (a MERE 370 to go!)
First, the Bush regime is looking for a way to postpone the elections. This is exactly the sort of thing I was afraid of the minute BushCo stole the election; it's what prompted this vignette a while back (hey, Jenn, if I write that book real fast you think we could have it on the shelves by Nov. 2nd?), and I wish I could say it surprised me, but I don't think much of anything our fascist government does could surprise me at this point.
In *completely* other news, Emily and I went on an Angel binge yesterday and watched pretty much the entire second half of the season. We have now finished watching it and comments are behind the cut tag (which means if you're reading this on LJ and want to read my comments you'll have to click through to mizkit.com. Also there are Buffy spoilers so if you're very paranoid don't read it.). :)
WAUGH! Wesley! And Fred! And Lindsey! And CORDELIA. And AUGH!
And wow.
I liked it. I liked the ending, although I wouldn't have minded the final cut being immediately after Angel saying, "Personally, I'd kinda like to slay the dragon," instead of ten seconds later. Ten seconds later was fine, but I thought the dragon line woulda been a good one to go out on.
I didn't think it was a cliffhanger ending, which I've heard people complain about. But then, I didn't think the end of Buffy season 5 was, either. I think what happens(ed) next doesn't matter, because what we've seen is sort of a real acceptance of the reality of their situation. Maybe they're all going to die (things look particularly bad for Gunn), but they're going to go down fighting the good fight.
And that's the best you can get, in the Buffy universe. The worst you can get in the Buffyverse is random, useless death (Joyce, Tara); the best you can do is to die well. There are no happy endings in the Buffy world.
Which brings me, horribly and achingly, to Wesley and Fred. *Waugh*. But...Wes had earned his death. He died well. He died in the arms of the woman he loved ("Would you like me to lie to you now?" AUGH!). He died fighting the good fight, and given that .every. .time. Wesley .ever. got .anything., he lost it again...I think death might've been the kindest thing for him. He'd lost everything, and I think he got as close to a happily ever after as he could, given that he was one of the poor bastards in the Buffy universe. One of the heroes. Not, perhaps, one of the good guys, although *certainly* not one of the bad guys. But one of the heroes. He died well. It's all you can ask.
Fred. Man. *Fred*. Emily and I spent Fred's last episodes curled up around pillows wailing, "NOT FRED! You can't kill FRED!" But Fred as a character had run her course. She went from crazy mouse chick to warrior scientist woman, found love and lost it again, and finally found her one true love. Immediately after which, she died. Buffyverse sucks. But for the actor, Illyria was a great way to be able to go. Fred was done; her story was finished. Illyria had a whole 'nother story and it was a chance to play a new character. I liked that. And I'd like to think that Illyria will survive the demon fight, and that she'll become a force for good.
*Lindsey*. Out of all the deaths in 5th season, and boy were there a lot, Lindsey's is the one I'm having the most trouble with. I didn't see it coming, not until that very final scene, with Lindsey washing the blood off his hands and Loren, *poor* Loren, standing in the background with a bleak expression. I went, "Oh, *SHIT*!" at that point, because I saw what was going to happen.
And... *man*. *Man*. "You don't kill me. *Angel* kills me. *Angel*..."
And... *man*! See, I think he's right. Except he's not, because for Lindsey, it was always about Angel, but for Angel, it was never about Lindsey. But...but I'm not sure that Lindsey didn't deserve it to be Angel, anyway. I mean, it's like the buildup for the Methos/MacLeod fight, and suddenly Jo Schmoe comes along and chops one of their heads off. "*You* don't kill me. *MacLeod* kills me!" It's... cheating, to have somebody else do it. Bitter, bitter ashes. Somehow I think Lindsey...deserved better. I think he deserved to die at Angel's hands.
But what's also honestly shocking to me is that Angel had him killed. It was...pragmatic, but it wasn't *right*. Loren killed Lindsey in cold blood, on Angel's orders. It was an execution. And while Lindsey was, yeah, one of the bad guys...I don't know. Maybe Lindsey said it himself: Heroes don't sit around waiting to see what happens. They act. And we know that even if Lindsey's on the right side right now, very soon he's going to betray the good guys, because that's what Lindsey *does*. Every time he starts to come around, he ends up showing his true nature (he's just like Rayek) and stabs people in the back. But... man. It shocked me. And I'm not sure I approve. It would have been okay if Angel'd killed him, but... man.
There's a bunch of other stuff I want to hit on, but I'll do it later, because this has gotten v. long already and it's been all about the finale, which is obviously the last impression I was left with. Oh! Oh! Oh! Guess I'm not done yet.
"You randomly show up for coffee and the world's *not* ending?" I was *delighted* with the Connor stuff, in the final episode and in the earlier one where he was re-introduced. I'm so glad he got his life. I'm so glad he understood so quickly--instantly--what Angel had done for him. And I'm glad he proved to be his father's son, and came to fight the good fight. And finally, I'm glad that he left Angel at the end, to *live* his life, because without that, everything would have been meaningless, and it was good he understood that.
They did well; they did really, really well with all the Last Day stuff. Gunn going to help Anne (Anne! They used Anne again! I was hoping/thinking she'd show up one more time!). Ted's opinion is that Gunn really was asking Anne, when he asked her what she'd do if she knew it was all for naught, and she said she'd be ready for the next wave to hit. That he really needed to hear that answer.
And poor bloody Wesley, taking care of Illyria. And Loren singing. He knew then that he was going to have to kill Lindsey, I think. God. And Spike getting shit-faced drunk so he'd be brave enough to do the poetry slam. OH. MY. GOD. *tud* And... it was just all really, really nice.
Rumor has it that Joss wants to do four movies about four different characters, but that he won't do any of them unless he's sure he can do all of them. Spike is one of them; Emily and I figure you've *got* to do the Holy Trinity: Spike, Buffy, Angel. And the only other one who really makes sense is Faith. We'd thought the fourth might be Wes, but he's DEAD, and we considered Giles, but Faith is so much tidier, with the two vampires, two Slayers thing going on there. That would be very cool.
Ok, that's more than enough for now.
Any second now I'm going to get myself together enough to face the day, but for now I'm zombieing in front of the computer.
Gaming last night was fun. Shaun almost got killed again, and we've got a 15,000 gold piece bounty on our heads set by the Church of Pelor. It's a pity Coby and Emily are going away soon, because if they weren't we could turn this campaign into a full-out war against the church (which is what Shaun has written down on his character sheet as the number one item on his list of things to do). (This is the evil group. Hee hee.) Instead, Thursday will probably be our last game and we've all agreed that in face of certain destruction by the church, we'll probably all suddely convert. Nothing like a little enlightened self-interest. :)
I was going to go on another nice long walk this morning, but decided I was too *tiiiiired* from having walked a total of 7 miles yesterday, so I only did my usual 2.5 mile walk. I still have to walk the dog later, though.
Perhaps I'll try to get some writing done, after I've eaten something and showered. It's possible, though, that writing might turn out to be a lot like sitting in the sunshine on the back porch drooling contentedly on myself. :)
miles to Lothlorien: 101
I got up this morning with the intent to do my walk early in the day, so I wouldn't boil my brain in the oncoming heat. My walk--ie, the one I don't typically take the dog on, because it's faster and less annoying to go by myself--is usually 2.5 miles, but since I was out early I thought I might do 3 or 4. I got to the 2 mile mark and turned around, got back to Earthquake Park and decided heck, it was beautiful, I felt like walking more, and kept going the opposite direction. After a bit I came to an off-the-trail trail and decided to take it instead of staying on the pavement.
I have suddenly realized why it is that kids run all over the place when they're playing outside in the summer. It's to keep away from the mosquitoes. I was well-lathered in bug dope, and walking briskly, but inside of half or three quarteres of a mile I collected at least five new bug bites that I'm aware of and I suspect more that I don't know about will soon flush my pale, fragile skin with huge violent red dots.
Despite the bug bites, it was a magnificent and wonderful walk. I think I ended up doing about 6 miles, which isn't too shabby at all. V. pleased with the morning, I am.
We went and watched King Arthur last night, and enjoyed it a great deal. There was less Kiera Knightly in a leather bikini than I expected, and despite it being 3 minutes longer than Spider-Man, the pacing was so much better that it felt considerably shorter. I didn't think I'd like the guy playing Arthur, but I did, and Horatio HornblowerLancelot has grown up nicely. The beard went a long way towards making him !Horatio, which was a relief. Rumor has it he's been cast as Reed Richards for the Fantastic Four movie, and I think he might just be okay. Although I hope he can do an American accent.
There was a trailer for Vanity Fair, which I've never read, and now I'm trying to decide if I should read it before or after watching the movie, which has a wonderful cast, although I don't know that I'd have cast Reese Witherspoon as the lead. Everybody else they cast is actually British; why not cast Kate Winslet? Eh, but she'll probably be fine, and the romantic lead is the guy who played Edward in The Knight's Tale, so I'd go see it even if they'd cast Kathy Bates as the ingenue lead.
Arright. I've eaten breakfast so I won't pass out in the shower, I've stopped sweating so taking a shower has a point, and there are things to be done today (at least, I hope so. I wonder if we're going to the zoo?), so off I go. Zoom!
miles to Lothlorien: 97.5
ytd wordcount: 208,600
I have been headache lass for the GAH STUPID PUKING ZILLI
*sigh* As I was saying prior to having to clean up cat puke.
I have been headache lass for the last week. This is not typical, and I thought it was caused by back issues (she said, turning her head back and forth to see if her neck is still pinching anywhere. It is, but.), but I think I might have contracted a cold somewhere along the way, too. I don't typically associate headaches with colds, but I've got this sort of hollow painful nasal feeling going on too. Especially when I blow my nose. It's that "Ah, my brain has just left my head, dragging my eardrum with it, by way of my left nostril" feeling. Gotta love that.
On the plus side, though, my strawberry jam turned out beeeooooteefully, and Angie called last night to talk for a few minutes, and I read a book, so overall I gotta say life is pretty good. :)
miles to Lothlorien: 87
ytd wordcount: 207,850
I am well and truly crunched, and that's a lot better. I think that got the last of the kinks worked out. Whew. And I also got lids for the jars, so I can make jam, although, man. It might just be too hot to contemplate that right now. But I should make it tonight because that far lessens the odds of the berries going bad. That's the problem with fresh produce up here, sigh.
I should walk, or possibly bike, in an hour or so here. The down side to that is it'll mean taking a shower later, but the up side is exercise. Actually, I should take the doggy for a spin around the block /now/, so that if I walk later I'll get my 4.5 miles in for the day. Yes, all right. A course of action has been decided on. Did I mention it's bloody hot out? It's supposed to hit 79 today. *pantpantpant*
Oh! And chapter one is finished. Alisha is not sarcastic like Jo at all. I keep writing sarcastic things and it feels horribly horribly wrong. I'll have to go over the chapter again before I send it off, just to make sure I haven't mucked up her voice. Chapter two is mostly a rewrite of the original, voice-learning chapter two, so it should go pretty fast, and then ... then nothing, I'm not going to worry about it right now. Off to walk the dorgy!
Jam-making plans thwarted by a lack of lids. Curses. Perhaps when I go to the chiro I can stop at the store and get some lids.
Headachy Kit. I got up about 6:30, stood in the shower for 10 minutes, and thought 'I'll lie down for just another few minutes," but then I discovered that if I lay down, my head didn't hurt, so I didn't want to get up again. Ted got me some aspirin when he got up to bring the Jeep over to the mechanic. I have an awfully nice husband. So I took my aspirin and lay there another half hour or so and then dragged myself out of bed to come to work. So no writing so far today, though I'll get to it. I need to go back to the chiro, because my back is still wonky and stiff (I'm pretty sure that's why I'm getting headaches, which I've had for the last week, which is entirely unlike me). I pushed it too long without going, and now need more repair than I hoped for. I should learn to maintain. It's less expensive. :P
Off to make some strawberry jam now, as Ted ate the last of ours yesterday and he reaaaaaally loves homemade strawberry jam. :) I believe that later in the summer I shall see about making some jellies. Strawberry and grape jelly, at least, and perhaps peach jelly, because boy I bet that would be pretty. :)
*laugh* Which reminds me. OH! And that reminds me of Frodo's ring. Right, right, now that I've remembered, I'll start at the beginning with the first reminder. The jam-making reminded me of when I bought the peaches for the peach jam I made. The kid at the store said, "That's like $10 worth of peaches," as a warning, when I went to buy them. I said, "Yep, I know, and soon it'll be peach jam." He said, "Oh," and then said, "My grandmother makes that!" I thought that was pretty funny, as I'd never thought of jam-making as a grandmotherly pursuit. :) (In fact, I think of it as a Mom activity, since *my* mommy makes jams.)
The OTHER thing, what I've been meaning to write about for WEEKS, is that in the window at Hot Licks, there has been a sign saying, "Lost ring," with a description of a dimond ring on it, for some time. Some enterprising soul , wrote, "Please contact Frodo, 1-800-ONE-RING" on it. Every time I see it it makes me giggle. :) :) :)
miles to Lothlorien: 82.5
Finally! Words!
About 3700 words in the last couple days, not all of which are useable, but hey, them's the breaks. Nearly 3K today, and perhaps after I get done with my walk I'll go finish up this chapter, which should put me over 3K and will, well, get the first chapter of this here book done.
Yay! Words! Sadly, for the first time this *year*, I'm behind on my wordcount. Granted, I'm only, uhm. 550 words behind, but since I've been ahead since like the 7th or 10th of January, I think it's sad to be behind!
Off to walk to Lothlorien, now!
ytd wordcount: 206,450
You know, the Irish Consulate people are not the most forthcoming in the world. Upon being asked if it's possible to have passport applications sent via email, they said 'no'. No suggestion as to how to request them, then, nor, in fact, any punctuation. Just 'no'. No caps, no period, no nothing.
Perhaps the Irish have made certain the few unfriendly Irish are the ones in the consulates, so that they don't have to deal with them themselves?
Not a whole lot more to report about yesterday than what I already did. Ted and I watched She's All That, because Garrett told me ages and ages ago that it was a particularly good version of what it is (ugly duckling made prom queen on a bet), and he was right, it was. We enjoyed it quite a lot. Oh! And I read Sarah Zettel's Luna book, In Camelot's Shadow, and really enjoyed it. So that was my yesterday. :)
miles to Lothlorien: 78
Finished the synopsis. Go me! I think it might be easier to write a synopsis for a book I haven't written yet. There aren't nearly as many details to worry about that way. :) Of course, now I have to write a book from the synopsis...
Also went to the chiropractor again. My neck's sort of stiff (don't say it). It's better now than it was before I went, so hopefully it'll just loosen up and be ok by tomorrow. And, um, let's see, anything else? I haven't gone for a walk yet. I should do that.
Discover Magazine's got a follow-up article on the anything into oil guys, Changing World Technologies.
So with my unexpected day off (ok, typing with a jammed ring finger REALLY SUCKS :( ) I went to the chiropractor, which hoo boy did I need, and finished reading Dime Store Magic, which was okay. Then we went to see Spider-Man 2 again, and it was considerably better in focus, although this time the theatre was hotter than the hearth of hell. There were signs up all over the theatre saying, "Due to this being an older building and the sheer number of people buying Spider-Man tickets, the air conditioning may not be able to handle it and the theatres may be hot." Yeah, well, I don't believe they had the AC on at all. I think it would've handled it a lot better if they'd turned it on. :P
Then we went over to Mom and Dad's and had dinner. Meatloaf, yum. And homemade strawberry shortcake, double yum. :) Came home, watched an episode of The Dead Zone (on DVD), puttered around til bedtime, had dreams about nuclear war (whee!) and got up this morning to start writing. I didn't actually get any fiction written, but I did get a page-long series proposal and part of a synopsis written, so that's good. I'll work on the synopsis more later today, I think, and then if I can get a few chapters written I'll have a proposal. *waves a little flag*
*Must* do some walking today. *Such* a lazy Kit.
!
I've just discovered that I've got today off! I had no idea! Surprise vacation day! Yay!
We had a v. busy but pleasant weekend. Saturday we went to H2Oasis, an indoor waterpark that opened up here, to see my friend Heather and her family as they went through Anchorage. H2Oasis is pretty cool, and we had a good time, although it's not really a place I'd suggest going to catch up with people you haven't talked to in several years. :) Among other fun bits Jai's daughter helped me jam the #@$! out of my right ring finger. One doesn't appreciate how much one does with that finger until one no longer can use it properly. I've been pouring milk left-handed the last few days. o.O But aside from that, we had a good time, and it was nice to see Heather, albeit briefly. Probably we will meet up again this weekend to go to the zoo, and then perhaps I will actually *see* her child, the back of whose head I saw once, but otherwise, I couldn't prove he existed. :)
Saturday night we gamed, and 2 of our 4 characters got dead, but we had fun anyway. Next time, though, we'll just set the house on fire and let the people all come to us, instead of going in to them. Hmph. :)
Sunday we went out to my aunt and uncle's modest cabin by the lake and had a 4th of July barbeque. Ted was amazed at how nice it was to not have to cook. :) Aunt Eileen made her Astoundingly Yummy Salmon Dip, and my cousin Erik made the hamburgers and Mom and I, mostly, roasted hotdogs. And we played a lot with my cousin Maggie's two oldest boys, Louie and Derek. They are insanely cute little kids. Beeeg blue eyes and Derek's very blond and Louie's older and less blond, but boy they're cuties.
Derek took a shining to me and wanted me to play dolls with him, which seemed to mostly involve flying the dolls around and shooting each other out of the sky and then rescuing each other. I don't like dolls very much. I started doing things--which seemed perfectly reasonable to me, honestly--like saying, "Here she goes, flying into your ear! There she goes, flying right through your head!" My mother, upon observing this, first laughed in sort of mystified horror and then said, "Catie never was very good at playing dolls."
Eventually, because it was the 4th of July, it began to rain, and we all packed up and went back up to the house, where Louie and Derek, who were absolutely exhausted, started wanting their bedtime rituals, although it was only a quarter to five. So they got their bath and then came downstairs, Louie bearing a book titled Chewy Louie which he handed to me, so I read it to them. Aunt Eileen came downstairs, presumably after getting the bathroom cleaned up, and said to my Mom, "Louie wanted me to read a story, so I told him to get his book and to go ask Catie, she'd read it to him. Louie said, "Which one is Catie?" Eileen said, "You know which one Catie is!" Louie thought about it for a moment, then said, "Is she the one in the green shirt who's laughing?"" Eileen said, "I didn' t know what color shirt she was wearing, but I knew she was *certainly* the one laughing!"
*beam* I love being me. *beam*
Well! I have the day off! So I'm going to go take advantage of that! *zoom*!
miles to Lothlorien: 77
"Loki, Eris, and Coyote walk into a bar, and the bartender says, 'Order, please.'"
(by way of laura anne gilman)
miles to Lothlorien: 76
I'm working on the THUNDERBIRD FALLS synopsis, and I'd just like to take a moment to say, damn, but archetypes are weird things. There's a scene in this book which, when I wrote it, I thought, I need to check out the Tarot meaning of the card that would, rather coincidentally, match up with this scene. And, having just done that, the card behind the scene is unbelievably appropriate to the scene. I certainly didn't remember on any conscious level what that card meant, and I didn't start out writing the scene with the intention to draw the parallel, but wow, it's freaky appropriate. Hello, superconsciousness.
I *almost* made 77 miles to Lothlorien. I made 75, with yesterday's walk. But instead of walking more yesterday, Emily and I watched some more Angel when we got back from Spider-Man, so oh well. Onward!
miles to Lothlorien: 75
I'd like to tell you that I enjoyed seeing Spider-Man II, but that would mean I would have had to have actually *seen* it, and I only saw about half of it.
Usually the half that was playing in the middle third of the screen, but sometimes, suddenly and without warning, it would be the half playing on the left third of the screen, or, equally without warning, on the right third of the screen.
After about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes of the infuriating focus changes, I went out to find a manager. The girl behind the counter said, "Theatre three?" to me before I spoke. I nodded, and she said,"We're working on it." Apparently the other twenty people who had already left the theatre had gone to complain, too.
Now, if someone is working on fixing a focus problem in a film, I would expect one of several things to happen: 1. the film gets shut off. 2. the film goes through some really *wild* focus fluxuations while they try to fix it. 3. the theatre manager comes in, apologizes, and hands out refunds or free tickets because they're not going to be able to fix the problem in a timely fashion.
None of these things happened. Throughout the course of the film, people kept getting up and going to talk to the manager. No one actually left, because god damn it, we all wanted to find out what happened in the story. But every climactic moment was blurred. We could not see reactions. And the theatre did nothing about it.
I was almost certain that most, if not all, of the paintings during the credits were Alex Ross paintings. I wanted to stay through the credits to see for sure. But the credits were literally unreadable. It was like trying to read them from sixty feet away without my glasses on, except I was wearing my contacts.
Ted and a couple of others were the first people out of the theatre, and they found the first theatre employee they could and asked to see a manager. This poor girl was about 18 and it was her first day at work. She led them over to an employees only door, which she opened and leaned in, trying to get a manager's attention. When she turned to look at the two or three people who'd followed her, she discovered they'd turned into a mob of forty or sixty pissed-off theatre goers. The poor kid blanched in horror. One guy said, "Damn, I forgot the torches."
The manager, who didn't look like he was more than about twelve himself, came out, turned around, went right back into the employee room, and came back out with emergency tickets (I kid you not, that's what they say on them) and started handing them out in 2s to everybody who was standing there. He didn't say anything, just handed them out.
Which is mildly satisfactory, but dammit, they should have fixed the goddamned problem and avoided the pissed-off mob.
So while I more or less enjoyed the film, and there were some moments of grace in it that I really truly loved, it was somewhat overwhelmed by the infuriating presentation. I thought, like the first movie, that this one was too long. It seems somewhat absurd to complain about too much character development, but when they *finally* finished Doc Ock's origin story I was like, "Thank GOD, we can get on with the STORY now."
The fight scenes were wonderful. Kirsten Dunst, for all that I don't like her MJ much, had some very good moments, and I was relieved she was cast as the correct character in the stage show she was doing within the movie (I shall put who she was behind a cut tag, so that in case anybody thinks that's a spoiler, they don't have to be spoiled), and Aunt May was terrific. Better by far in this movie than in the first one. Doc Ock was, in fact, very good. And Jameson was perfectly wonderful all over again, but overall I thought the movie was too long. (Shaun, not surprisingly, was bored out of his mind and walked out before the end of the film. I don't know why he does this to himself. :))
So anyway, I'll go see it again, probably this weekend, on Regal Theatres' dime, because I want to see what happened. :P
The play MJ was in was The Importance of Being Ernest, and when I found out that was the play she was in, I had a few horrified moments while I waited to find out if she was playing Cecily or Gwen, because it would have been *all* *wrong* for her to be playing Gwen. Fortunately, she'd been cast as Cecily, and I was very pleased about that. Emily agreed; Ted, Shaun and Coby thought we were nuts.