How to Deal - Wednesday 5/6/2009

Yeah, so our office is on work-share again for a couple of months. The writer's strike of last year is still reverberating through the industry in that small companies like ours with about a dozen employees in that financial reserves were depleted. Then there was the lovely threatened actor's strike led by SAG, which meant that a lot of productions put off starting, so we're not getting the usual boost from increased movie production this year.

Anywhooo.... All this is to say that I have today off. Next week I'll work three days and will receive unemployment for the other two.

My advice if you're in this boat is to figure out the cheapest things that you enjoy doing and make sure you continue to do them. For me, investing a couple of bucks in a cup of coffee is well worth it. I get to sit at Barnes & Noble Cafe and look at a stack of books...and decide which ones to request from the library.


Mmm. Double espresso goodness.

Other good things to do : keep moving (hiking's cheap!), read, connect with friends, listen to music, get outside.


Grow stuff. I've started cucumbers and herbs. The big sprouts are cucumbers...they weren't even out of the soil in the morning!

Graphic Afternoon - Sunday 1/25/2009

I was back at Barnes & Noble this afternoon while Hydra ran a couple of errands and then browsed the shelves himself. Picked up a couple of graphic novels and took them to a table at the cafe and read them. I spend a decent amount of money there every year, so I feel okay about this.

I'm in a bit of a graphic novel frenzy right now. This tends to happen early each year, as the annual Best American Comics comes out and I either receive it as a gift or buy it with a gift card. I'm about half way through it and I've already put some books by graphic novelists on hold at Los Angeles Public Library.

It's a better collection this year than last year, so far. Credit this to Lynda Barry being the guest editor. She drew her introduction! Perfect! Artists I'm seeking out: Rick Geary, who does graphic versions of historical true crime stories like the Lizzie Borden incident and (hee) a biography of J. Edgar Hoover and Lynda Barry's latest book.

Today I read 30 Days of Night written by Steve Niles and illustrated by Ben Templesmith. The images are, it may be odd to say about such a violent tale of crazed flesh-ripping vampires, kind of magical. A page early on that depicts a police car in a snow storm is what drew me into the story. I've put a couple of this book's sequels on hold, but I'm concerned that Ben Templesmith isn't illustrating them...so I put the book he both wrote and drew on hold too : Wormwood.

Also read the amazing Three Shadows by Cyril Pedrosa, which I would highly recommend to anyone who's interested in reading a graphic novel that does not involve a vampire, a zombie or a superhero. This is a fable about the lengths a parent will go to, to try and save his child.

I love days like this. I wrote, I read, I watched some home improvement shows on TV, I made soup ahead for my lunches this week. Bliss.

How to Spend Your Time Off Work - Tuesday 12/30/2008

I started the day with a telephone writing date with my sister in Indiana. We catch up a little, decide what we're going to write about and hang up. One of us sets a timer for an hour and calls the other after we've written for an hour. Then we talk about how it went and maybe give each other a little feedback.

It went well for me today. I expanded a scene that has conflict and sets up more conflict. Anyway, right now it feels like a good day's work.

Went to Barnes & Noble where I sat drinking an iced tea with a shot of melon syrup and auditioned a pile of books. Skimmed F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," which has very little to do with the current film version. But it's okay. The short story reminds me of Gogol short stories, like "The Nose." Meant to be imagined, not filmed.

Went to the gym for an hour of cardio and weight machines. Did this yesterday with addition of a dip in the whirlpool. Oh, Tomasina, it's way over-chlorinated and nothing as sweet as the one at Burke-Williams. Sigh.

Called my mother and talked with her for about an hour. When I arrived home there was a UPS package from my nephew. One of his amazing Indiana photos, framed!

We called to thank him and ended up talking for an hour or so.

Wonderful to be in touch with my family. They are good, creative people.

A Perfect Saturday Morning - 11/29/2008

Ah, yes. This is why I drove down to O.C. last night instead of this morning. So I could start a fire, make a pot of tea and read the last chapters of The Thirteenth Tale.

Perfect!

No, wait.

Something's missing!



There now.

Perfection.

Savoring Sunday - Sunday 8/10/2008

It's the beginning of the end of a lovely weekend. Hydra went into town to enjoy Starbucks. I opted to haul the birds out to the front yard of the camper and read So Brave, Young and Handsome, by Leif Enger. Every time I lay down to read during the past few days, I fell asleep.

So armed with strong black tea, I finished the novel this morning. What a great read. It's been a while since I've read a writer I'd like to emulate, but Enger is one. I need to read his first book Peace Like a River. (Both titles are lyrics from songs. Know which ones?)

My breakfast reminded me of OneL's eccentric uncle. He had an alphabet wheel that he'd spin every day to see what he could eat. Only foods beginning with the letter the arrow stopped on. You'd have to hope you could find a quince every so often!

For me: blueberries, banana and bacon. Finishing up things we had with us.



How sweet! How...bittersweet? The camp manager--we'll call her Upright--brought us this pair of cacti in celebration of our 21st anniversary. She took them from her own garden.

I love working with her. I organize the reservations for our group (about 20-35 campsites each time we go) and then co-ordinate with her about who actually showed up and whether or not they need to pay for hook-ups (electrical and water...not the modern kind!), extra vehicles and pets.

She's very straightforward and easygoing, but she has great boundaries and is able to stand her ground when she needs to. She's from Ohio originally. Buckeyes and Hoosiers. Not so different in some ways...well, anyway, she's been managing and improving the campground for more than 20 years and I admire her.



Looks like a movie set to me! That's a tunnel over a railroad track that's supposed to look like the entrance to a mountain. OneL speculates that it's for the Escape to Witch Mountain re-make that she's been working on.

Remember These? - Friday 6/27/2008

I miss the check-out cards that used to be in all the library books. I liked to look at them and see what sort of life the book had had, based on the dates handwritten in early books and stamped in red, blue and black later on.

Sometimes they had a very active early life, checked out at each possible opportunity in two- or three-week stints for a year or more. Sometimes they languished for months between readings, sometimes they experienced a flurry of attention later in life. Maybe a teacher who discovered the book or remembered it and assigned it was responsible.

There's no trail left in this book, a 1958 edition of Exploring with Fremont: The Private Diaries of Charles Preuss. There is only this pocket.

See how the fine has been changed from 2 cents, to 3 cents to 5 cents? Now I think it's 25 cents a day. Inflation-wise, that's pretty reasonable.

This book is probably experiencing a little renaissance across the country. Like me, others heard it mentioned on a recent episode of This American Life. I saw at least one other person on Good Reads who referenced it.

I worked at the Rosenfeld Management Library at UCLA in the last half of the 1990s, when we converted from a card catalog to an online version. There was a great gnashing of teeth amongst the old-timers and the new traditionalists. As much as I loved the old cards, the new system is really much more accessible and easy to use.

I was one of the people who pulled cards from the books as we checked them out, and added barcode after barcode. I was one of the people who oversaw the dismantling of the old way of doing things. It was kind of sad.

A small beautiful wooden card catalog from the management library's Special Collections room lives in my pantry now. Rather than cards it holds baby food bottles filled with spare nails, screws and house parts.

Bounty! - Monday 6/2/2008

I love the Los Angeles Public Library. I put a bunch of books on hold, some of them recommended by friends. And I found a few on the shelves when I got there.

So I walked out with seven books-- for free!

I do buy books. I like to buy books. They make me happy.

If people like you and I don't buy books, really, who will?

But I've had a run of bad luck with the books I've bought, so I'm dropping back to the library for a little while.



Bountiful food at the writing group. We eat really well... and pretty healthfully, too. Cherries, grapes, smoked eggplant dip, hard goat cheese and bread provided by Braveheart. Mixed greens salad and jalapeño cheese crunchies brought by Tomasina.




I picked up two ceviche tostadas from Lucy's on La Brea. So delicious and such a good deal!




I also brought a spicy broccoli/mushroom soup that I made up. That's Braveheart's nice cookware and stovetop.



Wow! Tomasina brought treats from a bakery! Lightly banana-flavored cupcake and...do you know what the swirly one is? A home made moon pie! (The filling inside that was the best.)

Oh, yeah. Between the library and the writing group, I went to the gym.

And between dinner/check-in and the end of the evening, there was reading of our writing and discussion. We're doing good work.

Some days life seems a little charmed.

Sitton's No Ho Diner - Monday 2/12/2008

In search of a new experience, I exited the 170 South at Magnolia. I've been reading Starbucked by Taylor Clark, and I thought maybe I'd check out the Starbucks on the corner of Magnolia and Lankershim to see if they have one of the alternate color schemes I've heard about.

But instead I spotted another all night diner! Is this area the center of the all night diner universe or what? Welcome to Sitton's 24 Hour NoHo Diner.


Many of these photos of movie and television stars are signed "To Nick." I don't know who Nick is. I would have asked my server, but as usual the shift changed at 6 a.m., and the waitress who came on duty didn't feel compelled to freshen my coffee or even smile at me, so any thought of asking questions cooled along with my brew.

Couldn't find any history on the web. Just conflicting food reviews.


You may be hoping that this is a big bowl of oatmeal. It is not. It is supposed to be sausage gravy for the biscuits. Yikes. It was a deal, I was feeling hungry and nostalgic. Luckily, the quality of this meal did not make me want to finish even one of the obviously frozen and reheated biscuits.

I mean, biscuits. How hard is that? And I don't think I've had decent sausage biscuits and gravy ever on this side of the Mississippi. Probably not so much a lost art as an art never learned. Sigh.

You're probably thinking that no self-respecting adult would order a dish like this and that it's just as well that I have to go to Indiana to indulge in the really good stuff. I hear you.



The life size plaster waiter out front was clearly the model for the menu cover.



This guy's rather lewd and knowing expression is enhanced by the actual tobacco cigarette someone inserted between his lips.

He is no Bob.


Cool Thing: Well, maybe not so cool. Anyway, I started another blog, called Curioscopy which consists of my rather informarl movie and film reviews, which I'll update pretty much whenever I feel like it. Which tends to be shortly after I've seen a movie or read a book. I've been doing this elsewhere for a couple of years. What can I say? I apparently have a massive ego. If you'd like to discuss any of the movies and books over there, I'd love to hear what you have to thing.

No Animals Were Hurt During the Destruction of this Bowl - Monday 1/14/2008

No humans, either.

Dang it! I use this bowl almost every day to heat up our pampered birds' dinner.



I blame Barnes & Noble Cafe and their fine, fine handling of Starbuck's coffees, which led me to imagine that the bittersweet cup from which I drank was merely a taste treat and not an invitation to Lost Weekendesque jitters.

This is what the B&N Cafe looks like, by the way, at 2 o'clock in the afternoon on a Monday in January. Quiet. Except for the distant sound of scratching brought on by the dry winter air.


Is this Espresso Number 1, Espresso Number 2, or Espresso Number 3?

I defy even the lovely Carol Merrill to tell the difference after three of these babies.

The Photo Idea Index resting on the table here turned out to be a really cool browse. When the strike's over maybe I'll come back and purchase it.

Cool Thing
Thanks to Braveheart for forwarding this link to a funny, funny blog entry over at List of the Day.

Books! - Friday 11/9/2007

Gotta say. I love books.

This one was recommended to me by some very enthusiastic park rangers at Death Valley when I was up there researching for the novel I'm working on. I am so glad I picked up a copy.

Upon finishing it this morning and reading through all the extra materials at the end of the book, I went straight to my notebook to write about the ideas that it provoked. Wrote about it on Good Reads (the same review that appears here.) Wrote an email to the author himself about some of the issues the book raises about the National Parks Service.

On the surface, it's a story about the life and disappearance of Randy Morgenson, who spent 28 summers as a ranger in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. But it's also about what it takes to be a back country ranger, a job that requires long absences from home and society, and whose main perk is living in the wilderness. And it's about our National Parks Service's attitude toward these individuals.

If you've ever hiked or backpacked or even looked lovingly up at the Sierras from below, you should give this book a try. It makes me want to see the country that Blehm writes about.

The only thing that keeps me from giving it 5 stars is that it's a bit long on details and lagged a bit in the middle for me, but given the complexity of the story and Blehm's obvious commitment to getting it right, this can easily be forgiven.

Be sure and read the extra stuff at the back of the paperback version. There are some very fine nuggets there, not the least of which is Blehm's opinion about what happened and his accounting of his unique qualifications for writing this particular story.

The number of people who loved and admired Randy Morgenson, who is never-the-less portrayed as a real and flawed man, speaks volumes about who he was and what he gave to those he met.

The binder clip? That's because I take my books to bed. Sometimes it gets a little rough in there.

The Day Outside - Saturday 10/13/2007

I spent a lot of the day outside in front of the camper copying panels from Craig Thompson's graphic novel Blankets, which I'd just finished reading. Good story about first love and spiritual crisis.

Oh, and Dodger spent a lot of the day outside, too, on the picnic table beside me.



Glen's an amazing fiddle player. Just makes the thing sing. When I took this shot I thought the inscription on the back of the fiddle was "HOPE" rather than "HOPF" (the maker), but I still like it.

We were standing around a campsite, singing harmonies to songs ranging from tunes from Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? to "Ba Mir Bist Du Shoen" (Andrews Sisters) type stuff.



Hydra practices in front of our rig. Not sure we'll be able to take it out again this year. Already feeling home-away-from-home sick.

Bookcrossing - Tuesday 7/3/2007

I've been a member of Bookcrossing for a few years, but every once in a while I actually free a few books. I'm going to drop these at Aroma Coffee & Tea later today.

It's a great concept. You mark books, register them, and release them into the wild. You hope that the person who picks them up leaves a comment about them. It's only happened to me once in the 27 releases.

Hope lives...

Cool Thing du Jour #1 : Bonny Doon Vineyard's website, where I went to find information about their terrific wine labels and was not disappointed. If you click on Learn Our Ways, and then Label Artists you'll get a nice look at their label art and the people behind it.

Cool Thing du Jour #2: The amazing art of Bascove, which I discovered because she's designed labels for the aforementioned Bonny Doon Vineyard. I love her subject matter and the way she treats it. It's reminscent of Diego Rivera and of some of the industrial art of the 1930s that I adore. Check out her whole portfolio if you go.

My Teddy Book - Thursday 1/18/2007

I almost always read in bed before going to sleep at night. Sometimes in the middle of the night when I can't sleep, I get my book off the nightstand, hold it open with one hand and turn the light out, and it helps me fall back to sleep.

So, yes. I cuddle books, not bears.

Don't worry. I know.

I'm tagging this TMI, aren't I?