Day by Day – Page 10

Scheduling

On a writing note: I’ve been trying to start getting up early in the morning to write before work. Recently Cat Rambo suggested not allowing yourself to check your e-mail before you’d written 500 words, and adding in that parameter does seem to have helped a bit. Will see how things progress in the coming weeks; a two-day bump in word count is not a magic bullet, but I’m cautiously optimistic.

(I am also not a morning person. There is something of a learning curve associated with this “remembering to go to bed at an hour that takes the planned time of rising into account” thing.)

On a convention note: I am not going to WorldCon this year. I am not. I understand this, and have accepted it, but it makes me very sad. That said, I am hoping to be at at least one local con this fall.

On a work note: I am slowly settling into the idea of having vacation days. It’s interesting, in terms of potential. I’m very used to work with a definite end date, and the idea of definitely being able to take time off and come back after a break–a break I am allowed, no less–is something I’m looking forward to.

Myriad shades of green.

Morning glory vine climbing one of the gladiolas. If either or both of them were in bloom, it would be lovely.

Several weeks ago, the light of my life and I went out to breakfast after talking about the state of the back yard, and came back past a garden supply outpost in a parking lot, and then there was several hours of digging things up[1] and re-bordering a flower patch and putting in soil and new plants.

I am not sure if I like gardening (which I am fairly sure is usually more complex than what I do), but I found out that I actually really like removing plants I want gone and digging holes in the ground and putting in more and different plants and watering everything. It’s very relaxing.

Over the next week, we also removed half of the raspberry bush thicket and put in some assorted wildflower seeds. And then about a week later, I succumbed to the lure of a box of eight gladiola bulbs placed in the checkout line at the grocery store.

The grass isn’t getting any attention this year, but the two flowerbeds are doing pretty well; everything we planted and transplanted (except for the bleeding hearts) has actually grown. The trouble is that nothing that wasn’t already flowering is really flowering yet. The perennial sage is fine, the sweet tea is finally not dying, and the wildflower seeds are a solid carpet of green. But the only new flowers that have shown up are three tiny white five-petalled things on one of the wildflowers.

Still, it was nice to go out there yesterday and see that the morning glory vine has decided to start climbing a gladiola. I’m hoping one or both of them will still bloom this year.
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[1] We had hostas, put in several years ago. Taking them out required a pitchfork and a lot of levering. The root balls were not quite the size of my head. I am very proud of getting them out.

A disconcerting ping

A couple of months ago, I made an (at the time) sensible decision; I decided to go to the work golfing event. I wasn’t expected to be good, and I thought it’d be a nice thing to try.

A few weeks ago, I did something painful to my elbow. I made another sensible decision, and went to see my chiropractor. And I improved considerably.

(You’re seeing how these two things might interact with each other, aren’t you? Guess what: You’re smarter than I was!)

Golfing was okay – the weather was pleasant, there were robins and red-winged blackbirds and chipmunks and extremely large dragonflies. But my elbow and forearm started sparking off those tingly little ping sensations about halfway through, and they’re not entirely better yet.

I’m going to quietly bond with an icepack for a few hours. Hopefully I’ll be better tomorrow – I want to spend a lot of time on my keyboard this weekend.

A sound of thunder

There is a very large dumpster out in front of our house. It’s a temporary thing, because the neighbourhood is cleaning out the woods. (The woods have been prone to collecting garbage, half-bricks, the occasional piece of broken furniture, at least one defunct barbecue… the kind of thing it’s moderately inconvenient to keep in the house until garbage day.)

Every time a large object is thrown into the dumpster, there is a gigantic rattling clang. It was an unnerving way to wake up, and that’s just for me.

Lucy didn’t come downstairs for breakfast today. After an unnervingly long search, we found her under the bed, and very not interested in coming out. We got her out anyway, because we wanted to make sure she wasn’t hurt, and she’s fine. We put her and her food in a room that’s got no windows to the outside, and she stared at the door for a bit before settling down to eat.

She’s out in the hall now, but she is extremely cautious about the noises. Wherever she is, her ears are pointing towards the dumpster.

Hoping the noise does not go on too long.

Tiny silver skulls, and old griffins in the cold.

Beasts of Tabat by Cat Rambo

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

(Full disclosure: I’ve taken writing classes from Cat. That said, I have liked her work since before I knew to even recognize her name–may I recommend the lovely Events at Fort Plentitude, which I first read in Weird Tales–and I think my review fairly reflects the fact that, dammit, she’s good.)

Short summary: this is a secondary-world fantasy primarily set in the great strange port city of Tabat, which is about to have the Duke step down and hold elections. It revolves around two characters: Teo, a young country boy indentured into servitude at the temple of the Moons, and Bella Kanto, the gladiator whose unbroken string of triumphs in the annual Winter-vs-Spring battle have led to twenty years of long winters and late springs.

(This isn’t a children’s book, by the way. In case anyone was wondering. It’s not gratuitous, but my niephlets aren’t going to be getting this one for a few more years.)

I was expecting a straight-up secondary world fantasy–an adventure, or what you’d traditionally call a romance. There is some of that here; I think you see it most strongly in Teo. But there’s more life than there is just adventure, if that makes sense.

Second, a lot of the fantasy adventures I mentioned are about solving a problem. Beasts of Tabat is so much more than this. There are problems, yes, and some of them get resolved, but this is not a book where the Tour goes around collecting Plot Coupons and applying them to a Clearly Defined Problem. This is coming into a world in flux–on a personal level, a professional level, a social level, a magical level–and watching it turn into something new and wonderful.

(This is perhaps an excellent time to remind people of the origins of words such as “wonderful”, “fantastic”, and “terrific”. Terry Pratchett said it best.)

I think this works because of the attention paid to the characters and the small details. There’s Bella Kanto and Teo, but the characters moving around them and affected by them (I’m particularly engaged by Eloquence Seaborn and Leonoa, but you can take your pick) feel so distinct that those two feel pleasantly more like windows to the world than heroes in it. (I grant Bella Kanto is of heroic stature, but it’s not because of how she’s framed in the text.)

The growing unrest, the prejudice against the Beasts, the changes coming–this is the kind of thing that could get handwaved into a simple didactic dichotomy, and instead the depiction of what living in a world like this is like makes it interesting and involving. I am having opinions about this world, dammit, and I love it.

(There are several other stories set in Tabat, which are listed at the bottom of the page here; I’ve read half a dozen of them, and am going to go read more now that I’ve finished the novel. Just figured I should mention (1) you don’t need to have read them and (2) they’re worth checking out.)

I want to see where this goes. I need to see how it comes out. And it will be wonderful.

Into April.

More and more, I feel like I need to make decisions not on what I want to do, but on what I want to do most, and how much time I have.

Part of it’s the new job making me feel that way. I don’t think it’ll be bad; the worst thing about it is that it’s in a location I’d prefer not to work, and I can cope with that. I’m just feeling very tiredly adult about leaving a job that I was actively happy to work at for a pragmatically-better job where I might not be as happy.

(Plus I’m leaving my current position to take the new job, and I can’t actually recall the last time I left a work contract before it was due to end. I’ve refused a renewal in one case, but that’s it.)

Part of it’s that while my wrist and elbow are getting better, they’re still not all the way better; I was knitting a bit today, and I had to stop. I’ve got several projects I want to get done, and I’m at the point where I need to figure out what few I’m going to get down in 2015, and whether or not I need to frog some.

(Frogging is unwinding a piece of knitting. It’s called frogging because you “rip it” back–ribbit, get it? Similarly, unknitting more slowly is called tinking, because “tink” is “knit” backwards.)

((Thus is knitting vocabulary developed.))

Aside from that, I’m reading Beasts of Tabat and playing Below, both of which have come out this month and both of which I am really excited about. (I may have also spent the weekend watching Daredevil, which has put a crimp in my writing time.) I’ve been able to pick up a bit of knitting again, although I think I’ve over-extended myself.

Hectic times

Today’s actually been a really good day. It was a low-pressure morning, I got the tracking information for my incoming shinies, I installed and noodled around on Pillars of Eternity, and I went to go see It Follows with the light of my life. (Who discussed doing science to the monster in the car on the way back.)

Pillars of Eternity is fun; it feels a lot like playing Baldur’s Gate back in the day[1], although I haven’t yet resorted to the tactic of summoning kobolds to fight for me and then looting the short bows for resale when they got killed and disappeared in a puff of smoke. It’s a bit crunchy, it feels fairly linear so far, and it has some gleefully creepy moments that I’ve been enjoying greatly. It’ll be good to play through, I think.

It Follows was… I don’t want to say it was surprisingly good, because I wasn’t expecting it to be bad. (Following under cut due to spoilers–mild ones, but it’s a really solid movie and people should get to watch it without spoilers if they so choose.) Continue reading “Hectic times”

Wristcrunch

Well, I’m basically not allowed to type. I’m hoping very very hard that this situation is resolved by Monday morning. I can handle a weekend of no typing; I am less good with a workday of same, due to the truth of that immortal refrain “I don’t work and I don’t get paid”.

(This is not to say that I’m happy about the lack of typing, but at least my phone allows for Swype so I can ramble a little.)

Mostly I’m really hoping that the underlying issues – whatever they are – are easily resolved. Otherwise I’m going to need to start dictating writing into my phone, and I’ve got no idea what I’m going to do for editing.

Lost rules.

So over the weekend I had coffee-and-talk with Jason from Genesis of Legend, and among the meandering and many-many-lots recommendations shared[1], I had some thoughts that were turning into a post on the difference between video games and tabletop RPGs.

Then there was a Windows Update and a reboot.

(The gist of it, roughly, was that you expect to have everything necessary to play a video game, but you are expected to bring additional knowledge to the worldbuilding of an RPG–sometimes obvious, sometimes specific–and therefore they require a greater effort.)

There was also something about the difference between games (with rules) and toys (without them), which was basically a clumsy exploration of ideas expressed in one of Chris DeLeon’s essays on the topic, which are honestly very worth reading.
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[1] If anyone out there has not read Strong Female Protagonist, may I sing its praises? Right then. Carry on.

Getting sorted.

Not entirely comfortable with how quiet I’ve been this month; going to try and work on that.

Things I’ve been thinking about, and will probably attempt to ramble about in a more coherent fashion over the next month:

Superheroic powers as magical realism.
Uplifting TV shows. (This is mostly me trying to figure out what exactly it takes to make a show qualify as one. Being funny isn’t enough, and being constructive isn’t enough.)
Timing and scheduling, I guess? I’ve started work, and it seems to be going well, but I need to get back on top of my time schedule.
Cracked. It’s a police procedural that has a unit where police officers (one of whom is dealing with PTSD-related issues) are teamed with mental health professionals. It’s sort of ridiculously kind. (I was extremely suspicious of this as a conceit, and its execution has kinda smit me.)
Days. I actually haven’t talked at all about James Lovegrove’s Days ever here, I think. It is a lovely, strange, funny, and rather weird novel about a day in Days, the world’s first and (provisionally) foremost megastore.
Which might actually let me cycle back to “Evening Primrose”, and assorted other fiction with the conceit of “let’s all go live in the shopping mall”.