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Even in a little thing - LiveJournal.com
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This morning I went to the market and in a few minutes I'm Confluxing. I was supposed to rest in between, but my phone was turned on so I lost all but 20 minutes of my rest time to people who felt they needed to call, and Phill had to come a bit earlier to pick me up because he has family obligations, and I decided it was better to blog in these last minutes, take pain killers to tide me over till I'm drunk and save all my unsober messages for my food blog, where today I actually chronicle the progress of the alcohol. Just as well I'm Jewish and Sunday isn't a day of rest for me, because I've had about 15 minutes without stuff to do since I woke up at 7.30 am.
I am *so* not a morning person. I babble, as you can see. It's worse than usual because I ran out of coffee, last night. I drank two cups at the market, but I have none for now, when it really counts.
The good news is that I have wonderful stuff in my fridge, so it will be a good week: roast chicken tonight and then goat curry later in the week. Lambs' hearts must wait till I feel ghoulish. Then my coffee order will come (probably Tuesday) and then I'll stop whingeing about the no-sleep thing - but it was quite cold last night - less than -3 - and so I kept waking up to turn the heater on for a few minutes and I had *interesting* nightmares and.... do you think anyone will notice if I sleep during the meeting bit this afternoon and just wake up for the drinks?
I will reclaim shaped sentences when I'm more awake. In the meantime, I have five bunches of daffs unfolding in my kitchen and they make my life joyous and help my eyes stay open. I'm not quite at the stage where I'm eyeing them off for caffeine content.
Oh! I just realised!! I have Ethiopian coffee to tide me over. No use for a quick cup, because it needs to be dry fried (Ethiopian roasting method the nice lady at the restaurant taught me) but if I dry fry it tonight I have have the world's oldest bean type for breakfast. Or I could make coffee from coffee shells, but that has way too little caffeine and takes a while because of the spices. Likewise the coffee and chicory is just not strong enough, though it would normally be massively tempting. Truly, I'm not a caffeine junkie. Well, not on other days - just today.
My loungeroom has to be draped in wet sheets before I go, so I'd better make a move.
Today I was going to keep going with the anime fest, but at about 10.30 last night I lost it. By 'it,' I mean any type of connect to reality. My brain drifted in its strange inner space for a few more hours, but the body was definitely disconnected. I'd done too much, but I had a whale of a time in the doing of it.
To bring a few parts of myself back together, I've spent large chunks of today asleep. This is good, because I woke up with the theme of a horror story I've been persuaded that I need to write. By 'theme' I mean music. I want to blame Buffy, but it's all my own fault, really.
I don't know if the music will make it into the story, because my totally awesome original tune has just been pushed out of my mind by "I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee." If you don't know "I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee" then please ask me when next we meet (or first we meet) because it's one of those classic melodies that simply cannot be appreciated at any theoretical level - you need to hear it and you need to be standing precisely 3 feet away from me during the hearing of it.
My waking life today is unlike anyone else's. It's not just the bumblebee tune, either. I've been offered 4 kilos of dead goat. I see goat curry in my very, very near future. Goat curry and beef heart recipes: it's going to be a good week, but just a tad off-centre.
Some people use cards, some people use crystal balls - I seek the world's truths through food. This means that my even nearer future is going to be drunken, because it's the last testing for cocktail recipes for the banquet. After tomorrow the whole committee will be sober and serious and will produce the most awesome convention, but just tomorrow, only two of our number will have even the appearance of sobriety. My teaching backpack (totally filled with varieties of alcohol) says this, quite firmly.
Last night I threw caution to the winds and work to the winds and everything except chocolate cake to the winds* and I dogged the footsteps of Conor and Mik** and spent the evening watching Grapeseed***.
I like the second movie in particular. Contemplate a James Bond post-apocalyptic zombie superhero movie and you'll have about 50% of it. I'm hoping I'll come up with the missing adjectives on Sunday, when the Great Cocktail Test is happening****.
*The chocolate cake is almost all eaten now, so it would have been futile to waste any on the winds. I saved just enough for Donna's thingamjig tonight. I suspect I might be leaving Donna's early tonight, because there's Batman anime and I will have the chance to do the patter-patter thing again. Anime with excellent company is something not to refuse.
**They're both very tall, so all they really knew of it was the patter-patter of my feet trying to catch up.
***OK, so it was Appleseed. My mind, however, has decided it was 'Grapeseed' and it takes way too much effort to remember what it was actually called.
**** If you don't hear from me on Sunday, blame the Prohibition. Also blame twelve cocktails.
PS I need to replace the book in my handbag (by Stephen Hunt - I don't think we know each other, but he keeps sending me curious things on Facebook) with something educational, because otherwise this pretence of me being erudite will fail entrely, given my lifestyle this week.
Banquet booking
The quickness of the Conflux webmaster's hand oft deceives teh eye. The form to book the Conflux banquet is already up! I don't need to email it to anyone. I can go back to my aim-of-the-week, which is to be the world's laziest person.
Conflux banquet
If you want to book for the banquet even before the booking form goes on the web, give me an email address and I'll send you the form. I'll post a link to it here soon, though, plus a bit more information about the food.
Now I have to get back to listing ingredients for our final drinks test. This week is very, very, very infused with Conflux for me.
Today is strange and curious.
The good news is that my Food History blog is up and running again. The even better news is that I may be teaching food history (Literary Banquets) the end of this month (Canberrans check the ANU Guide for details - I have spares and can post them to those who give me their addresses).
The best news of all is that the chef at The Marque is a very good listener and will produce the Conflux Prohibition Banquet for $70 a head and that Karen Herkes (Chair of Conflux) is an equally good listener and has agreed that people don't have to attend Conflux if they are just interested in the banquet (in other words, if you love your food history but not your speculative fiction, then you and your friends can book just for the banquet in October). There'll be booking forms online just as soon as we sort them out. I'll post a more detailed guide to the whole thing maybe next week, on my Food History blog.
I had a rather serious scare healthwise last night and spent most of today languishing, but it's all over now (except for the fatigue), thank goodness. I am very thankful for the wonders of modern medicine. I didn't get to hospital, but I probably should have. I should read my own blog, too, because those days I really complain tend to be followed by illness.
I have 17 books to put away, but I forgot to write all the titles down. I'm no way near caught up with my reading, but hey, 17 books is a good start! When I've caught up on my reviews and things I shall have even more books away and my lounge will be just a tad less like a maze. I think I may have 10 books to go, but I only have until Monday to read the non-history side of things. This week is busy, but next will be frantic.
Tomorrow night is anime night! Yay!!!!
Thank you for yesterday's niceness.
Today, alas, I'm my normal self because we have a problem with wind in Canberra. All that fresh air ought to be good, except that the wind brings with it allergens and headaches because the autumn allergens haven't quite been processed through the regional biosystems yet and because the wind is weather-change stuff and weather-change stuff makes me ache.
The weather also brought with it early onset PMT. I can't tell what causes which aches and allergies, to be honest; everything has meshed together neatly in my body and my body thinks it's part of a rapidly-failing scientific experiment. Yes, I know my body is deluded, but you try telling it that. It just won't listen.
PMT ought to be banned. Nights containing just two hours sleep ought to be extended till the sleep deficit no longer exists. And I probably need a special cupboard this week so that no-one has to deal with me. Unless you're addicted to snark. I am so very good at snark today that I could win an Olympic medal in it.
There is good in this grump. The whole shebang makes my body heat diminish and at 36.1 degrees means that I need no heater and - in fact - no leggings. Just as long as no-one drops in unexpectedly I can pretend it's coming on for summer already and celebrate the luxury of warmth.
This all started last night, to be honest. My immediate solution was to watch To Kill a Mockingbird again, but Gregory Peck reminds me so much of a glamourised version of my father that I gave up after a few minutes and bugged my best friend to tell me about early childhood in the South, instead. Eventually she had to go to work and I was left thinking "I need to do something special this August." My father will have been dead twenty years. So much for an immediate solution. My tear ducts got a workout, though. I can report that they function as promised, even if other parts of me are in need of repair.
I guess this means that my emotions are trigger-happy today. I'm not sad, though, just PMTish and hurting. I don't need sympathy. I need an agony aunt column.
Would anyone like to join me in another "This aspect of my life sucks" whinge session? It worked very well last time. We all got a bunch of plaints out of our system and went on to have good weekends. And it's July - we are all in great need of good weeks.
In the meantime, I shall find a way to make coffee (you don't want to know what happened to my coffee pot - it will live, but it so needs significant deodorisation before I use it again) and contemplate my secret chocolate hoard.
I don't actually want to eat chocolate - I just want to relish my hoard. I wonder if I have dragon ancestry? Or don't chocolate hoards count?
Something really nice has just happened to me. I say 'just' but that's because I have this moment caught up on back blogreading (don't even ask about back email!): http://alysonhill.wordpress.com/2008/06/28/catch-up-2/
Thank you Alyson!
My blasphemous article meets with the editor's approval. More than approval. Both of us are happy. You'll have to wait till August to read it, though. Also, I might need to hide somewhere very secret for a few days when it comes out. Lovers of a certain variety of history will not love me.
Is there other news today? No, not really. Unless you want to know what I'm cooking for dinner or have any idea of what the equivalent of senses are for humans getting a feel for time. I meant to do lots of things, but I discovered that QI segments are on YouTube and I spent large chunks of the day arguing in my mind with some of the answers. Fry and his team tend to use the technical (UK) government definition of things as the only definition of things. This means that their world is way less interesting than mine, especially in the realm of biscuits and cakes.
I guess I ought to remind myself that today is not a day off and I have to make up work missed tonight. I don't want to. I want to frivol every single night this week, just to put up a good pretence of being human.
May I just say how very much I love my friends. What could have been a very bad week was quite special, thanks to thtem.
I promised updates on my reading. I've changed the order a bit and things have added to the list, so there is very little overlap between my initial list and what I'm actually reading. In fact, the only overlap is the review books, and even they've changed a little. (and if this post makes sense, it's no thanks to my brain, which is apparently on holiday and has forgotten to send me a postcard to say where or even when it will be back)
Yesterday I read a Louise Cooper novel and William Morris's Old French romances and today I read a Catherine Asaro book.
Of course, today's not quite finished, which leaves me hope that maybe I'll get more reading time after Dr Who (Dr Who!!! yay!!!!). I really need this, because after I totalled the seventeen books I was going to read I then found a whole heap more that need to be read before they get put away. I don't have unlimited time, either (as well as the reading yesterday, for instance, I wrote a blasphemous article about the Princes in the Tower - I am a bit nervous, waiting to see if the editor likes it), but the reading is fun and I'm making slow headway. Some are books I've wanted to read for a while, some are for reviewing, some are for other kinds of work. It's my quiet time before the fiction-writing storm and before teaching starts up again.
I don't often report my dreams, but this one you need to know about.
I was sitting at a cafe with Liz Argall (Liz, what were you doing in my dream - inquiring minds want to know?) and I was very enthusiastic. We had been discussing how some short stories related to other short stories and I had been using paper and diagrams to describe some amazing theory about short stories as linked sets. (The theory never actually appeared in the dream, so it's no use asking for it.)
"I think that next year the Conflux Short Story Competition should be for duologies." I drew two boxes and linked them with an arrow. They were bigger boxes than the ones we had used for the earlier diagrams, to reflect that I was talking about books. I felt very smug as I made them three dimensional. I can't draw for nuts, which explains why so few almost-straight lines made me smug.
"Two volumes?" asked Liz.
I nodded.
"That's interesting," she said. She started drawing one box, which was much nicer than either of mine and just a tad bigger again. "That could be done if you..." and I woke up.
I think this was reminding me to remind you that the competition closes tomorrow. Not only does June only have thirty days, but Australia reaches an end of those thirty days before almost everyone. The word limit is still 2,000 words, despite the yearning note my dreamself had in her voice.
Liz, if you care to finish your dreamsentence, I really want to know what you were going to say.
There are so many memes around and I've been avoiding them like the plague. I was going to avoid the 100 books one because I looked at it and my first response to it was to list all the books I hadn't read and all the books I'm ashamed of not finishing. This is not a wise response, so I'm doing it (sort of) properly.
I need to read the rest of the list, I guess, though not yet. I'm stuck halfway through my own list.
It's my own fault - yesterday I hurt all over and so when fabulous time with friends presented itself I jumped upon the offers eagerly. It's the lesson in how to have a good day when not even pain relievers work and I thank my friends kindly for their time and understanding and senses of humour and intelligence and insight. This friendship thing happened two days in a week that would otherwise have been a shocker because of end of term and overdoing it the weeks preceeding.
Celebrating with memories of books isn't such a bad thing under these circumstances, is it? Then I can spend the rest of the day meeting new books. The livre du matin is one of Sophie Masson's.
That 100 books meme.
I think I've read more than the 6 books that the average person has supposedly read. I don't think I believe in average people. I haven't italicised the books I intend to read because I intend to read every book I can get my hands on - it all depends on the length of my life and the durability of my eyesight. I haven't underlined the books I love because I'm a lazy git. It would be so much easier to underline the ones I hate - there are way fewer of those. And there are a few books I never finished and will have to get back to another day, so I have noted them for my private embarrassment. If you want to know if I didn't finish the ones you didn't finish, then just ask
I wish I knew what these 100 books were a top list of and how it was put together. I find the lack of contexts a tad annoying. It's a meme, though, and one of the functions of memes is to produce mild annoyment.
THE MEME
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them
5) Put a star next to those you've only partially read.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
I've been thinking recently about the choices we make for our lives. I blame Iain Triffitt for this, personally. He made me think. He made me wonder how is it that most people come out of acute suffering damaged but still human, and just how and why a very few emerge as monsters. I keep fretting about what sort of choices there are in lives of torment and how they are made. I fret because I want to understand, but there is no way I want to go through any of those experiences myself.
Of course, I blame Sharyn for bringing related subjects up in conversation and making me realise that I still haven't solved this particular problem. My first reaction, in fact, was one of vast relief. None of the Shoah survivors I know and have known have ever chosen the monster route - all of them have chosen to remain decent human beings. As they grow old, they pay new prices of pain for what was done to them, but each and every one of them has still chosen humanity above monsterhood.
I need to read more Primo Levi. I think maybe he understood it.
Conflux and food and food history blog - enough updates to sink anyone into somnolence
Food history blog
You wanted my disorderly mind to post news in an orderly fashion? That was a faint hope and now it is gone. Besides, minds need exercising and doing things backwards is entertaining. I always read Locus backwards, for instance and find it *immensely* entertaining.
My other blog is still down. I'll post a major Conflux food update when the Food History blog is running again, but it might take a week or so. The owner is being rather clever and, faced with giant problems (my personal favourite was the biggest spam attack in the history of my personal universe) is turning a potential catastrophe into a major equipment update. This means there won't be posts from most 451 bloggers until it's done (as I read it) but at the other end the whole system will be way more robust and everyone will be happy.
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