Okay, so today I'm driving along to work, and everyone else on the road is pretty much minding their own business, the cars whizzing down the road, the lady on the bicycle staying reasonably close to the curb and not slowing down traffic at all, and it's all moving along just fine.
Then the car next to the bicycle accelerates for a second and makes an abrupt right-hand turn.... And, yes, he turned into the bicycle, sideswiped it, and knocked it and the bicyclist over.
It would have taken the guy three seconds to let the bicyclist through the intersection, but nooo, he was so busy with his own importance and his morning commute that he assumed...I don't know. He assumed the bicycle was stationary and the second it disappeared from the corner of his eye, it disappeared off the planet or something.
The woman was riding down the street, wearing neon yellow clothes and, thank goodness, a helmet. The driver was totally at fault.
I would have stopped, but several other people did and I saw the woman stand up and brush herself off, so she wasn't badly hurt.
Also? Keyless Joe forgot his key again this morning, but at least he said, thanks when I opened the door for him. I'm trying to cut him the kind of slack I'd like to be cut if I was faced with moving to Pittsburgh.
Also? We installed a new phone/internet system here at the office a couple of weeks ago. Up until today, the days when the phones stayed up, the internet & e-mail went down, and when e-mail & internet were working, the phones kept going down. And or some inexplicable reason, the fax machines would receive faxes but won't send them. Today the phones and the 'net access are both working, but the fax machines are still funky.
After a 1-1/2 hour phone call with the tech guy, we managed to the one of the two fax machines working.
I'm just saying. It's a triumph of willpower that I'm not sitting in Starbucks swilling lattes and eating massive amounts of pumpkin bread at this moment. I'm exhausted and I've barely had any time to do any work at all today.
But I'm not whining. Whatever else happens today, no one nearly killed me as I was trying to get to work.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:49 PMBy myself, naturally. Who else?
Still scrounging through the remnants of my story files, looking for something that can be salvaged and posted, and I'm find some amazingly horrible stuff.
I see that it was 1999 when I started the sequel to Billowing Seas. I should finish that some day.
And then, once upon a time in 2000, someone put forth a challenge to write fanfic stories in the Hard-boiled Detective tradition. Five minutes in the public the library convinced me that, 'I can do that.' And, to make it all more interesting, I decided that if I was going to write an AU, I'd go all out. I'd make Mulder a Non-Believer and set the story back in the 1940s.
I was a fool.
It always looks easy, doesn't it?
Three paragraphs into the story, I remember changing the title to, Soft Boiled.
I knew when I was licked, and this had all the earmarks of a disaster. I stood in middle of the office, trying not to notice the way the redhead was giving me one of those killer looks that only a broad can deliver.All I done was point out that a considerable investment of time and money had produced myself, Special Agent Mulder, and my newly minted partner, Agent Scully. And that those who held the purse strings would no doubt frown on the idea of the two of us trekking off cross-country for weeks to poke around under rocks, looking for aliens, for pete's sake.
Not the kind you'd automatically assume -- a truckload of Mexicans hauled up to spend a few miserable weeks picking fruit before being dumped back on the wrong side of the Rio Grande. No, we had a perfectly good Immigration Bureau to deal with that situation.
If you can believe it, the report that I was staring at while avoiding the Evil Eye Scully was throwing my direction claimed that an actual outer space rocket, complete with other-world passengers, had crash landed in the Badlands of New Mexico. Worse yet, the report claimed that government agents (yes, our government) had made off with the evidence and were now covering their tracks.
Makes you wonder what they put in the water in those places, doesn't it? Looked like the whole town was sharing the same crazy story, too.
So, the word came down for someone to go out and have a look. Not that anyone was buying the alien idea, or the notion that Uncle Sam was involved in any underhanded games tampering with evidence, you understand.
No, the men with the brains and a view of the Big Picture were smelling Reds. Seems someone in the House had a bee in his bonnet about communist infiltration and something in the papers in my hand had rung a bell somewhere.
Why me? I swear, Skinner was always handing me these cases. Anything with an angle sharper than the headache after a weekend drunk.
I checked the file again, playing for time while I tried to figure how I'd gotten behind the eight-ball with my boss. The complaint was signed by four people. No doubt each and every one of them an honest and upright citizen of, I checked the locale, Aztec. A teeming metropolis with which I was determined to stay unacquainted.
"It's a bad joke." I wasn't buying any, not this year.
"Aztec, New Mexico? In August?" I lobbed the folder onto his desk. "If I want a sauna, I'll visit the baths." Warning bells tattooed my brain just a breath too late to save me from my own mouth but he didn't bat an eyelash to show that the pitch had crossed the plate.
Blogging is great. I mean, where else would I find a forum to mock this stuff?
Next we step into the Wayback Machine and step out again in early 1998. At this point, I was torn between Krycek-love and Skinner-love for Mulder. The result was...unfortunate.
A distant memory of triumph tingling through my veins along the flow of champagne.Answers sought and found, the lost regained, the dead redeemed. Unaccustomed headiness of alcohol in my blood, teasing and tormenting, lighting the beacon that draws me down this shaded alley. The pull of shadows and secrets, no more my life and yet all my life could hold and it sings to me from the distant moon-fled corners of the darkened space.
A flash of green and white and shadow and he is here. Enemy, not-enemy, the one who led and lied and prodded me into the path gilded with success.
'You left,' I told the silent figure, 'Before I could....' What? Apologize? Explain? Forgive?
How to forgive that which needs no forgiveness? This is Krycek, my enemy who has given me the elusive victory. This is my partner, a friend who betrayed and left me. This is Alex, the love who stole joy and hope and returned to fill the empty places of my heart with the answers to all the questions that defined my life.
"Are you ready for me, now?" Voice soft, husky, but never rough. A note that sings more loudly than the sweet liquor in my veins, vibrating across my soul in a jangling harmony of new questions and answers to be sought.
"You're thinking about him again, aren't you?" Skinner's sour voice broke into Mulder's romantic fantasy.
Mulder opened his eyes and frowned at the other man. "So?"
"Do you have to think about Alex Krycek every time we go to bed?"
He's pissed off. Again. Jeez."You don't like it when I think about Scully," Mulder said logically.
"Is there some reason you can't go to bed with me unless you're fantasizing about someone else?"
"But, you're practically bald!" Mulder objected." You don't think I'm going to get all excited about sleeping with some old, bald guy, do you? Besides," he said primly, "You're my boss. We shouldn't be doing this at all."
"What the hell difference does that make?" Skinner stuffed his shirt into the hamper.
"A lot," Mulder told him. "It's the intention that counts, isn't it? If I'm thinking about someone else, then I don't really intend to be having sex with you. So I'm not really breaking the rules," he finished triumphantly.
"You're a bigger pervert than I am, Mulder," his boss told him sourly.
"Oh yeah?" Mulder gave him a look. "I'm not the one who's blackmailing a subordinate to have sex with me, am I?"
"You could have said 'no'," the older man said coldly.
"Yeah...and lose my job and everything I've worked for, right?" Mulder sighed. "Come on. Get your big ass over here and get on with it.
"What's the matter with my ass?"
"Jeez, you're touchy today. There's nothing wrong with your ass, per se," Mulder said soothingly. "It's just...." he shrugged. "Not my first choice, that's all."
"And I suppose Alex Krycek's is?" Skinner folded his arms and glared dangerously at Mulder's naked body.
"It might be." Mulder smothered a smile at certain private memories of his views of Alex's ass. "It's a nice one, you have to admit."
Later that same year, I became determined to write a Case File Story if it killed me.
Mulder stared hazily at the barred wall. The air stank of unwashed bodies and other, worse things. Around him, bodies in various stages of decay twitched and moaned. After a moment, he decided that most likely all of what appeared to be a room full of corpses were, in fact, probably still alive. At least, if the noise level was anything to judge by. And the bars were familiar as well. In fact, he appeared to be in a drunk tank.What the hell?
He thought back to what he could remember of the previous evening. Scully was taking a few days off for a family wedding. They didn't have any interesting cases active. Even the Lone Gunmen, his usual court of last resort, were unavailable. And to top it off, his television wasn't working.
So he had taken a drive. Not his preferred form of recreation, but he couldn't settle down. After an hour of aimlessly turning and twisting, he found himself in Crystal City. Since Skinner was equally unavailable, being out of town for a two-week management conference, Mulder was trying to turn around and find his way back to the highway when he discovered a street full of small restaurants.
On an impulse, he parked his car and chose the quietest one. Not one of his more felicitous choices, the food was edible, but that was all. The waitress, a pretty blonde, had been sympathetic and recommended a fudge brownie for dessert, assuring him that it was well worth the money. It had been excellent. In fact, he had ordered a second one.
Another impulse, he had decided to take a walk after the meal. Somehow it had amused him at the time to explore Skinner's neighborhood while the other man was out of town. An illicit thrill. The neighborhood was quiet, but not quite deserted. The other restaurants were doing a thriving business.
He felt dizzy. Food poisoning? No, no nausea. Looking around, he realized he was lost, which seemed pretty funny for a moment. The sound of his own giggle shocked him. Stoned. I've been set up. His brain kicked in instantly, analyzing everything he'd eaten in the past few hours. He could still taste the last brownie. Nothing in the flavor or texture to give it away, but it had to be the brownies. They were the only items that had been recommended to him, the only ones that could have been prepared in advance.
The weight of his gun under his arm reassured him as he retraced his steps. The darkness deepened around him and moved oddly.
What the hell did they give me?
And then there was, Brothers in Blood. It's "circa 1500" but was actually started in 1997. Highlander, obviously. That one is so boring that not even excerpting for mockery makes it worth reading. I mention it only because about ten paragraphs into it, I'm reminded that there was a time I had something of a bathing fetish...every story I wrote, the characters wound up showering or taking a bath. Sometimes more than once.
It's weird, the things you get fixated on, isn't it?
And there, over in that folder, there's The Seduction of Duncan MacLeod. You didn't expect I'd miss the chance to slash Nick Lea's "Cory" character, did you?
And there was Games People Play, a really dreadful HL PWP.
Methos stretched his feet out to rest on the low table and slid down a few more inches on the couch. His favorite way to spend a long, rainy afternoon. A cold beer and a favorite book."Methos?" The warm breath tickled his neck. "What are you doing?"
"Building the pyramids." Of all the questions he disliked, that was one of the worst.
He knew that what the question really meant. If MacLeod had his way, Methos wasn't going to get another page read.
"I'm bored."
"That's the real problem with immortality, isn't it? What to do on a rainy afternoon. I am improving my mind. You might consider doing the same thing."
Anyhow, the good news is that I found two things that might be salvageable. Surely I can strip enough dreck from at least one of them to make it postable, even if there's only a scene left?
I mean, it's my own stupid and pointless deadline and at the moment I don't remember exactly why I decided that even though I haven't written anything in four years, I should post something new, but a deadline is a deadline.
Posted by AnneZook at 08:21 PMThis morning's netmeeting started 20 minutes late, leaving me sitting at desk, twiddling my thumbs for 20 minutes while I waited for the attendees to "call me right back."
Now I'm getting ready for lunch which isn't going to taste as well as it would have before I smelled someone else eating Japanese.
I'm fending off psychopathic coworkers who are furious because their net/mail access went out while I was on the netmeeting and unavailable. (What did they expect ME to do about it?)
I'm sincerely sympathizing with the tech people renting office space from us because the aforesaid psychopathic coworkers burst into their client meeting and created a scene about net/mail outage.
I'm holding on firmly to the idea of a vacation.
But I'm not bitching and whining, no. Not me. Not even mentioning the fact that, for the second day in a row, we didn't have 'net access when I got to the office.
Not even mentioning it.
Nor am I going to complain about the Mad Doctor who seems to have "forgotten" he was to lead a netmeeting for 8 Very Important Potential Clients at 1:00 today.
I mean, I would complain about it, but I'm now 1-1/2 hour late for lunch since I had to jump in and lead the meeting myself, and I'm starving.
Posted by AnneZook at 02:10 PMI'm at something of a loose end this morning. I arrived about 7:45, ready to dive into the day's tasks, only to discover that our internet access was out. I had to wait over an hour for anyone else to show up so I could complain about it. Unfortunately, none of the people who have arrived so far actually know how to fix it and since it's now nearly 10:00, I'm starting to get fractious.
It's surprising how much of my work is done through e-mail. If I can't send and receive e-mails, my workload seems to drop by at least 50%, which is a bit of a mixed blessing. (On the one hand, it's good to have breathing room. On the other hand, I went to all the trouble of getting out of bed and driving here, so it's a bit aggravating to sit here, twiddling my thumbs.)
Lemme see…what's new?
I've been inspired by various things to go revamp my website, so that's on the schedule for this weekend. To make said revamping worthwhile, Lynnzo and I have challenged each other to come up with something new, a story or at least a stand-alone scene, to post to our respective pages.
I spent some time browsing through my abandoned story files last night, hoping to find something that could be fixed up and posted, but no luck. It's sad. I must have 200 pages worth of stuff buried on my hard drive, all of which deserves to be buried.
It was interesting to look back through it, though. In the HL file, I found my First Ever Fanfiction Story. I didn't realize I still had a copy of it. Nor did I realize that I started writing fanfiction eight years ago.
If I remember correctly, the Unfinished Opus was about 50 pages long when I came to the abrupt realization that it stunk. (Up until that moment, the pleasure of listening to Methos had distracted me from seeing that I didn't have anything to say.)
I didn't actually look at that particular text last night, you understand. There's no way a first effort isn't going to be painfully bad, it was already late, and I'd had a hard enough day without deliberately inflicting more pain on myself, but from a historical perspective, it's interesting to know the file exists.
(I'd like points for this entry. It may be mind-numbingly boring, but by gosh at least I'm not whining about things, okay?)
I also found the Penalty Box. When I was writing in HL and the characters weren't behaving themselves, I used to put them in the Penalty Box for a while.
The Penalty Box is one of those horribly bad, no-reason-to-exist-but-sex, poorly characterized, story-like trifles that sensible people are too smart to display publicly, but it used to be therapeutic to lock Methos into it from time to time. He used to give me a lot of trouble.
I found several essentially completed HL stories that never saw the light of day. I'm a bit proud of that.
It's not everyone who understands that just because something got written doesn't mean it's worth reading. I think I demonstrated remarkable maturity, don't you?
I didn't find much in the way of stories in the XF file. I found scraps of dialogue, one-sentence story ideas, deleted scenes, and one or two attempts at plots that went nowhere, but that's about it. I guess you don't wind up with as many failures if you're not actually trying to create something. XF was all about the PWP for me. There's a fair amount of really bad PWP material I abandoned, but I it's hard to regret it. I spent an average of six hours writing each story I wrote for XF, about the amount of time it took to type it. I rarely bothered with editing or beta readers, so writing in that fandom wasn't really work within the meaning of the act. More like typing practice.
(I'll bet you're all wishing my internet access would come back and I'd go back to work, aren't you? I knoew I am. DiamondGirl arrived about five minutes ago. I've got my fingers crossed that she'll work some magic on the network.)
And then, of course, there's OaT. OaT was my Last Fannish Love before I abandoned the fantasy that I was a writer.
I abandoned a lot of stuff there, if you measure in terms of page count. Two, or maybe three, longish stories that actually got "the end" stuck on them before investigation proved that I had, in fact, written dozens of pages of complete crap. What I need is a way to figure that kind of thing out before I waste a month writing something.
There are two stories that didn't quite get that far because I really liked the story ideas and refused to keep working on them when I was forced to admit that my writing was getting worse, line by line.
Hooray! Internet access! (DiamondGirl couldn't fix it, but one of the Stooges finally showed up.)
Back to work....
Posted by AnneZook at 11:44 AMHee. Hee.
Except that they're nicer than I would be, this totally captures what I think about most fanfic.
"Why are the vampires lesbians?" sales agent Cal Fagan asked. "Were they lesbians before they became vampires, or did getting bitten have something to do with it? I never understood that. And is it necessary for them to seduce their victims before killing them? Why do they 'writhe sinuously' on every other page? And what did William's secret meeting with the dominatrix have to do with anything? I'm sorry, it just seemed gratuitous."
So. Totally. True.
"I think the writer wanted feedback, but was afraid to ask for it outright," Gates said. "Well, my message to him is: Don't quit your day job. Unless you've accidentally let everyone at your day job know that you get off on lesbian vampires."
Not even then.
Posted by AnneZook at 04:23 PMDepressed. It's all gray and cloudy outside. It takes very little gray and cloudy to interfere with my disposition. I like sunshine. I can take one gray day if I'm home and curled up but I hate having to work and pretend to be all chipper and happy when it's gray outside.
This is the second gray day in a row.
What some people might think of as "fog" but what is at this altitude actually low-hanging clouds are covering most of the city I can see from the windows. Visibility is about five or six blocks. It's drizzling. It's cool. It's yucky.
It's annoying me.
I forgot to pack a lunch yesterday (deprived!) so I had a choice between braving the elements (spending the rest of the day looking like I'd put my finger in a light socket) and just skipping lunch. I'd about made up my mind to live with the light socket look when it occurred to me that I had a two hour training session coming up fast and that I'd debated lunch for so long that I no longer had time to go and get it, much less eat it.
Today I packed a lot of food, none of which I'm in the mood to eat.
You know what I hate? I hate spending two hours in a training session learning to use a new gadget when the first hour of it is spent on remedial training for people who didn't bother to actually look at the gadget before the training or even bring a modicum of common sense to using it.
It's a freaking telephone, okay? How can you walk into a training session and say you need to start by learning how to dial a call?
I swear, people do shit like that just to piss me off.
I mean, I'm old, okay? My brain cells are dying by the thousands every day or something, and even I was able to figure out how to make a call, take a call, transfer a call, and check my voicemail without expert assistance. How is it possible that the Tweenybopper, at about 23 years of age, couldn't figure these things out?
Also? To everyone who was too busy and/or too important to talk about the configuration of the new phone system before it was actually installed? Shut up and live with the choices I made. I don't actually give a shit if you don't like how it works. You had a chance to put your two cents in and you couldn't be bothered. You're not going to drive me nuts, demanding idiotic adjustments now, after the fact, so get away from me before I hurt you.
I'm not in a bad mood, though. Not really.
I mean, yeah, I'm, sick to death of hearing about the new phones and listening to people bitch because they don't work like the old phones did, but other than that, I'm not in a bad mood.
I have a lot of work I should be doing. My phone is ringing off the hook, I have, at last count, 118 people standing by, dying to hear from me about using our new product, I'm two days behind in putting my notes into the shared MIS system so everyone can see I'm actually working during the days, and I have a stack of things on my desk that I've been accumulating all week, all under the heading of, "what is this and should I be taking some kind of action about it" but here I sit…blogging.
The Head Stooge showed up yesterday (actually, he dragged me out of a meeting) to casually inquire if I'd set him up with any appointments for a business trip he didn't tell me he was making.
I'm sort of proud of the fact that I didn't explain to him, very, very gently, that you don't drag someone out of a meeting with outside vendors unless it's an emergency, that I am not his (or anyone else's) secretary and I don't actually book other people's appointments, and that since I don't actually work for him, I'm not obligated to read his mind and become psychically aware that he's considering making a business trip.
All of that is, I think, indication of a mood that's better than it might be, considering the circumstances. I even went all out and booked one appointment for him before I went home last night.
From someone who hadn't eaten anything all day except an apple, I think sitting here until 6:00 in the evening to book his stupid appointment was going above and beyond, don't you? (Ed. Yes. Way above.) (Me: I knew you'd see it my way.)
Also? Allow me to explain to all of you that if I tell you someone is ON THE PHONE, it does no good to call me every sixty seconds demanding to speak to this person. I have neither the authority nor the desire to go to someone's desk, forcibly disconnect them from another business call, and demand that they speak to you.
By the time you call me for the fifth time, the only real desire I have it to leap through the phone and throttle you. (Yes, I'm looking at you Sassy. You've worked in this office. You know what kind of nutcases these people are. Why are you making my life a misery in this fashion?)
If anyone, anyone asks me why I'm not getting my work done, I may go postal.
Okay, I could be in a better mood.
I've been re-reading the HP series this week. I hadn't actually read the books for several months but seeing the new movie put me back in the mood.
First, I was amazed afresh by the amount of material in the books that didn't make it into the movies. While not the richest, most textured universe in literature, the books are more well-rounded than I'd remembered. Also, because of the ruthless plot and character pruning for the movies, I'd forgotten how much better JKR's adult characters are than her child characters. In the movies, the adults are mere walk-ons most of the time, but in the books they're far superior to most of the 'stars' of the series.
Tuesday night, with a certain amount of trepidation, I picked up Book Five to re-read it for the first time. I remember hating it. The characters were too different than they'd been in Book Four, and I loathe torture, I loathe mistreating children, and unexpectedly coming across torturing children in Book Five nearly drove me 'round the bend when I first read the book.
It was more like bad fanfic than a novel from the pen of the same author who wrote the first four novels. You know what I mean. Wallowing in character abuse just to wallow in it, not because it really adds anything to the plot. (Those of you in fandom who like character abuse probably don't agree with my assessment, but that's okay. I personally have never been able to understand how you can reconcile your protestation that you "love" the characters with the kind of pain you feel impelled to inflict upon them. I'm just saying. If this is how you treat the ones you "love" you might want to consider a bit of therapy. Or a lot of therapy, for that matter.)
(No, seriously, I know that although we use the same words to describe our reactions to our favorite characters, few of you truly view them as "real people." Most of you have no problem separating fact from fiction. Unfortunately, I'm someone with a problem that way and when I "love" a fictional character, I have great difficulty treating them any differently than I would any other "real" person. It's with the greatest difficulty that I manage to inflict even the slightest emotional suffering on my characters. I don't care for "hurt/comfort" for instance. I can sometimes manage "comfort/owie/comfort/comfort/comfort," but not often.)
But, let's stick to the topic at hand. I hate it when an author or a series gets too popular and no one edits their work any more. (Stephen King became completely unreadable in later years.) Some judicious pruning would have improved Book Five enormously. I thought that the first time I read it and I'm not changing my mind this time around.
It's like JKR couldn't remember how to build tension between characters, so she keeps falling back on having the kids squabbling with each other for little or no reason.
While I do understand that kids do squabble, I feel like I've been reading, "Harry didn't speak to _____ for the rest of the day" over and over and over.
On a more personal note, I also object to turning Sirius into an idiot who confuses Harry with his (Sirius's) dead friend and who, contrary to all of his (Sirius's) behavior up until this point, never hesitates to tell Harry to take chances and go into danger "for the fun of it." This character actually bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Sirius in the earlier books.
Okay, maybe I'm not in such a good mood.
I'll stop now.
Posted by AnneZook at 01:59 PMThey're all here today. The Three Stooges, the Mad Doctor, Sassy, and Buehler. Mostly having meetings that I'm not invited to.
I was feeling paranoid about it (I get that way) until I mentioned it to Sassy and she told me they just don't want to "bother" me with a lot of these things. I sometimes forget that I was just 'loaned' to this company for a year when Alvin, my original employer, decided it would be more convenient not to have to pay my salary for the next twelve months.
As it is, I was told to clear my calendar today for a full day of meetings, so I did. So far I've been in one meeting for about an hour and then had lunch with the group for another hour, leaving me, so far, an unexpected six hours that I've regrettably not been spending doing much work.
I sometimes wonder what's going to happen at the end of that twelve months if Alvin decides he still can't afford to pay me? I mean, it's nice an all that he wanted to be able to keep me in reserve for when he could afford me. Very flattering. But what happens if he has no money? Will Buehler and the gang invite me to stay on here? (Okay, probably not if I keep spending hours blogging on company time, but aside from that, I'm a reasonably decent employee.)
Also, we have a new phone system. The Tweenybopper and I are supposed to be "power users" which means we have to sit though a two-hour meeting tomorrow for (if experience is any guide) training that could more efficiently have been handled with a cheatsheet of instructions and a ten-minute introduction session.
I've decided to look upon the occasion as time for me to bitch about all of the things that haven't been done the way I wanted them done.
To me, business training sessions are like grade school. Remember grade school, when you sat there screaming with boredom (inside) while the class plodded along reluctantly at the pace of the slowest student in the room? Remember how material that any sensible person could absorb in ten minutes was stre-e-e-tched out painfully for hours while you sat there and wished for an invisibility cloak or an escape hatch or a really big stick to hurt people with?
Don't get the wrong impression, though. I'm blogging mostly to tell y'all that I'm not cranky today. I thought you'd like to know, that's all.
So…lemme see…what's new?
I went to see Harry Potter last week. I was…underwhelmed.
I'm not sure why they felt the need to redesign Hogwarts, but I swear I spent the entire movie on the edge of my chair, waiting with breathless anticipation to see just which student was going to get decapitated by the inexplicable pendulum suddenly infesting the main hallway of the castle.
The Whomping Willow still doesn't look like the description in the book but that bothers me less than the question of why the director felt it necessary to flash upon occasional scenes of the tree murdering passing birds.
The books are full of material there's no time to show in a movie, so I'm puzzled about why extra book material was excised so that the director could add unneeded new scenes that in no way advanced the plot or character development.
Why was the us full of talkative shrunken heads? Did anyone but me find that completely unnecessary and kind of stupid?
What on earth was the point of the choir? Was the director intimidated by threats of the religious organizations denouncing the books? Or was the inclusion of frogs (or were they toads?) some kind of subtle insult that I failed to understand?
Why was Dumbledore standing at a podium and why was the podium decorated with a Ravensclaw eagle?
Why keep Hermione and Ron outside of the pub so that time had to be wasted for Harry to expound on what he heard? Were they afraid that at 2 hours plus, the movie might run a bit short if they didn't include some completely unnecessary exposition?
Why did the Dementors float around like milkweed pods caught in a high wind? Did anyone but me think of the Indiana Jones movies when they saw that particular special effect?
But I'm not in a bad mood. Not at all.
We went to the Renaissance Festival on Saturday. It was a gorgeous day for it. Mostly sunny with just enough clouds to keep the heat down.
(Now there's a mystery for you. How did they manage to build that site in such a way that no matter where you go, you're walking uphill? I swear the place was designed by Escher.)
I ate…not as much as I have in the past, but I ate a fair quantity of ridiculous things. I mostly go to the Renaissance Festival for the food. I love a buffet.*
This year, about fifteen minutes after we arrived I managed to drop an artichoke and pour about a cup of butter down the front of my shirt and my shorts, which put a bit of a damper on the rest of the morning, but whatever. I had Steak Onna Stake and Sausage Onna Stake and an artichoke with butter (they replaced my dropped one) and…I think that's all. I used to manage about three times that much. I think that stupid diet made my stomach shrink or something. (Not that I'm complaining. It made my butt shrink, too.)
And I had my tarot cards read. The lady took me for $25 to tell me there was a mature man wanting to make a commitment in my future. And that was after I told her I had no interest in marriage. She seemed sorry about it, though.
She predicted financial fortune three ways from Sunday. If there's a card that means fortune in the pack, I drew it. Apparently I'm going to be swimming in wealth some day soon.
She also said I work with a man who is a bit of a flake (Buehler, I'm looking at you) but that I should be nice to him because he's going to do something really good for me.
I had a good time, in spite of being all greased up.
* On a recent trip to San Francisco, I paid $50 for a buffet, purely on the strength of the view from the restaurant windows and the fact that both caviar and paté were featured on the menu. I figure I ate about a dollar's worth of each, and had about four dollars worth of "the view" from where I was sitting, but it's all experience, isn't it?
For instance, I learned that no matter where you walk in San Francisco, you have to make sure to stay near the trolley tracks because it's sure to be uphill on the way back to your hotel. Imagine walking up a playground slide. I did that for three, solid blocks at one point.
I also learned that if you ride the trolley early enough on a Sunday morning, the money-collector isn't always at work yet and sometimes you get a free ride. Mostly it costs $3, though.
I had a good time, which is unusual for me on a business trip.
Posted by AnneZook at 04:23 PMGood grief.
Posted by AnneZook at 04:24 PM1 hr phone call, cranky client, beginning 8:30 this morning.
1 hr writing up notes from phone call with cranky client at boss's request.
1/2 hr explaining notes from phone call with cranky client to person who sees there ARE notes but is too good to read them. Additional 15 minutes wasted while he explains to me why cranky client's concerns are needless instead of calling cranky client himself to try and explain what I have, so far, failed to get cranky client to understand.
1 hr no-computer-access while IT figures out why my computer will not talk to internet. Expert called in, drives in from Boulder, computer inexplicably commences working 60 seconds after he arrives in office. Stupidcomputer.
1/2 hr trying to get nice client's cranky computer to connect to web conferencing. Failed.
1/2 hr explaining to all and sundry why I didn't have copy of "web conferencing troubleshooting guide" yesterday and become an expert in the 1/2 hour notice I had that a meeting was going to be held.
1/2 hr talking w/various people and trying to decide if new phone system project is on schedule or not, if anyone is waiting on anything from me, etc. Still have no answer and do not understand what is happening with phones. Don't care much at this point.
1/2 hr listening to new client explain that her IT person is in Iraq and she doesn’t know if their system can accept our software or not but if I can explain technical details she will go see if she can find someone to talk to about it.
1/2 hr playing phone tag with miscellaneous other people I'd hoped to talk to today, including 15 minutes spent ragging at coworker about people who are preventing me from getting any work done.
1/2 hr banging head on wall because if you're psycho, everyone leaves you alone.
Posted by AnneZook at 03:57 PM