16 May 2003

Sometimes I really hate the little notes. The ones that say things like, "louhi baby early Ansa," but actually mean "at least 1000 more words, brilliantly placed but you don't know where. Ha ha." I think the "Ha ha" is implicit in half my notes to myself; the other half have an implicit "woo hoo." Hmm. Actually, it's probably more like 75% in each case, with some significant overlap.

I spent last night trying to disentangle a reference to "a golden reindeer for Sampo Lappelil and a white reindeer for Yrjö Kokka." I think I have it most of the way figured out, but I had to try to pick apart pages in Danish and Swedish to get there. Swedish is really the best I'm going to do on a lot of Finnish stuff, because it isn't in English, and I don't speak Finnish. (Oh. Wait. I don't speak Swedish, either. But I come a lot closer, is what I'm saying. With Swedish I can go, "Oh, it's about, um, the flowers, and Midsummer! Okay, and this bit has something...iron in it?" And then look up the bits that confused me. Whereas with Finnish, if it isn't about finding the toilet or the train, buying lunch, or feeling dizzy, I'm pretty much out of luck.)

So I keep coming up with these lovely little 2-4 word notes that make more work for myself with this Not The Moose Book. The nice thing is, I also keep working pretty well on it. I'm hoping that the latter eventually takes care of the former. I already know that editing this thing is going to be huge. That's okay. Work is good stuff. I can handle work. It's the non-work that gets me every time.

I also find that I've been writing fragments of short story, a different one each day this week. I'm trying not to force this to become more focused. I think maybe my brain needs an element of random outlet. And this way, I have more story for when I want to go back to it, which I will, at some point.

I've also been thinking about a fun new collab -- not with Timprov this time. My first non-Timprov collab. I have a fairly good notion that Karina will not start yelling at me to go faster. Which is exactly what I don't need right now, the yelling. But also what Karina doesn't need. So. Hooray for the fun and relaxed collab. (Timprov never yells at me to go faster, either, that's not meant to be a contrast. Sometimes he yells at himself to go faster, but there's only so much I can do about that.)

Somebody is shooting space aliens in our parking lot. At least, that's what it sounds like. It's better than the car alarms that sound like giant squeak toys...marginally....

I finished reading A Game of Thrones and moved on to A Clash of Kings. This is an awfully lot of George R. R. Martin in not such a very large amount of time. I'm eyeing my book piles and wondering what would be a good antithesis for me to read next. Maybe something David will lend me. I don't know. I didn't make it to the library yesterday. Sort of because Mark needed the car, mostly because I didn't feel gung-ho about it enough to squeeze it in between the grocery store and Mark's departure for work(s). Anyway, I doubt I'll make it to the library today, either, because I'm going up to David's for lunch, and then Amber is coming over here for dinner. Timprov is making arroz con pollo for the first time, and we have to go get a little saffron sometime today, too, even though we went to the store yesterday. Even though we own half the food in the world again, including another four pounds of (cleaned, hulled) strawberries. We got the wrong spice, so we have to go back for more. Not a big deal, though. We're capable of getting to the grocery store and back. But it does mean no library books for me. I'll raid the David library. It'll be good.

Okay. Some work before I head out. Have a good Friday.