21 March 2004

Last night I read the worst book I've read in research for the Not The Moose. Worse than the Nokia business book. Ughhhhhh. Hork. It was David Hay Jones's Night Times and Light Times: A Journey Through Lapland. It was so stupid. I hated the narrator so much. And since it was nonfiction, I suspect that it was David Hay Jones I disliked. He started out the book whining about how hard it was to have to consult with his wife and small children about where he went and what he did, and then decided not to consult with them anyway. And just wandered off, because he couldn't be tied down, maaaaaaan. The rest of the book was composed of either the author being snotty about his fellow travelers, all of whom were far and away his inferiors, obviously, or the author reporting the clearly boring conversations of his fellow travelers. Oh, and two brief sermons on the wonders of Saami life as compared to the horrors of agriculture and city dwelling, with no detail given on what Saami life was actually like. Oh yes, and a whine that his wife was asking him for money to help raise their children. Money! The very nerve of the woman!

So stupid. Yarg. I just wanted to find Mr. Jones and beat on him with his stupid book, shouting, "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" I kept waiting for the relevance, waiting for the interesting bits, waiting for anything, really. And the book was over and I was still waiting.

Luckily, I finished Prospero's Children and started Joan Aiken's Black Hearts in Battersea, so the day wasn't an entire loss from a reading perspective. Although I still think there were too many adjectives in Prospero's Children, and I'm not as captivated by the Aikens so far as other people seem to be. Still, it seems worth reading more.

We have only a few tiny nubs of snow left in our yard. The library gets sunny in the afternoon. I'm not wearing socks. Springedy springedy spring.

We had good tea, me and Stella and Heathah. They served us the right things, soup and little sammiches and scones and wee tarts. We wore hats. Bridget was a little angel. There was muchly much tea. We'll have to do it again.

(And I am the best Marissa ever. I learned this when Siri was trying to convince me to skip tea and stay there to play Polly Pockets with her instead. I'm not sure if I'm still the best Marissa ever now that I didn't stay to play, though. The glories of this world are fleeting, I am told.)

Stella is coming back tonight for dinner -- I impulsively invited them last night, and they couldn't but asked for a raincheck. So red jungle fowl's joy is on the menu, and buying ginger and cleaning the kitchen are on the agenda. Along with work on the book, more reading and critiquing, and so on. Suddenly my list looks more doable for today: I moved some of the stuff I knew I wasn't going to get done and didn't have to get done to next week (which starts tomorrow, but still) or the week after, or even April. After all, I have multiple weeks on my list so that I don't have to have everything looking like it's crashing down on my head all at once if it isn't actually crashing down on my head all at once. I put things on the list to try to set realistic goals, so that if I write five kilowords on the Not The Moose, finish the line edits on Reprogramming, and finish the first draft of "Michael Banks, Home From the War" next week, I won't have to sit around wondering if that's somehow enough. Because there it is, it's off the list; anything else I do is extra. That's the hope, at least. The reality is...a work in progress.

Two new stories for you to read this weekend (well, old stories, but newly published): "Endgene" and "Fair Use". I'm a little amused that "Endgene" is listed as an "Alternative" story, since I thought it was pretty straight-up science fiction, but whatever -- call me what you like as long as you don't call me late for dinner. Or the table of contents. Or whatever.