[life] road trip

In about 4-ish weeks my dad and I are hitting the road. We'll be gone about three weeks, first out to the West Coast to go camping with my sister and then down the coast into the states to hook up with a friend of mine in North California, then hit the grand canyon, Vegas, Yellowstone Park, and finally back home.

I am excited. Not only will this be an awesome opportunity to bond with and talk to my dad, to see vast swathes of the continent I have never seen before, and to meet up with an online friend that I have great respect and liking for, but also, ALSO...

We are going to see Cirque du Soleil while in Vega. OMG, I am so pumped for that.

[writing] Steering the Craft

Finally got around to reading Ursula K. Le Guin's Steering the Craft, a book on writing. It's wonderful, as I would expect from Ms. Le Guin, a notably talented and skilled author.

It's actually a series of workshops for the solitary or the critiquing group. I wish that I had a working critique circle. It would be really wonderful to have a bunch of fellow fantasy authors to sit down with and hash things out, talk about the hero's journey and world building and magic systems and whatnot.

Be that as it may, I think that I will do her exercises. Even when I'm revisiting old lessons, I often learn something new.

[life] How I wish

Gawdamn I wish that I could have gone to the Sand Diego Comic-Con this year. In attendance:

Neil Gaiman
Ursula le Guin
Ursula Vernon
George R R Martin
Ray Bradbury

Plus a bunch of online friends who are going to just hang out or perhaps man a booth of some sort. When I'm a famous fantasy author I guess my agent will fly me out every year and I'll be far too busy and jaded to be excited.

*sigh*

[life] My name is Inigo Montoya.

I recently acquired a DVD copy of The Princess Bride, a movie I completely love, and which I had on VHS for years and years. I haven't owned a VHS in forever, and I was browsing through Ebay, saw it, and thought to myself, It is a crime and a shame that I don't own this movie in a watchable format.

The Princess Bride is, simply, a perfect movie. It is pitch-perfect in every way. The casting is phenomenal, the music and cinematography and effects and stunts all wonderfully executed, the acting brilliant. I can't think of another movie I like as much.

Why don't they make them like this anymore? There are alot of fun action adventure flicks that I quite enjoy ( I bought the Mummy trilogy at the same time) but none of them have quite the heart and warmth that this movie does. But then, Bride is a particular kind of movie, a fairy tale, really, that the industry doesn't know how to do anymore. Or maybe never did, and Bride is a crazy, unlikely, wholly beautiful film that will never have a successor.

Ah, well. I can always watch it again for the I-don't-know-how-many-th time.

You killed my father. Prepare to die.

[life] Grumpy old woman

So, we own one half of a duplex and my brother in law owns the other. He used to live there, but moved out after he broke up with his fiancee - who stayed in his half and now lives there with another couple and pays him rent. It's a long story, and illustrates how very forgiving and giving my brother in law truly is.

Anyway. One half of this couple is in a band. For a short period they had rehearsals in their basement over there - which is seperated from our basement by a wall with the approximate sound-baffling qualities of a threadbare sheet. They tried to be civil about it, but I still felt a bit assaulted by the way that only the base and the beat would come up through the floorboards in my office, just loud enough to make my eardrums vibrate irritatingly. It would almost have been better if we could have heard the whole of the music. They apparently found new rehearsal digs and moved the drum set out. One guy practicing guitar is easier to overlook, although I still find any noise that I don't choose to be irritating.

I come home early from a visit out to the in-laws, settle in to a quiet evening, and suddenly bambambam bam! The drums have made a return engagement. WTH. It's ten at night on a Sunday. Granted it's the long weekend, but still.

Part of me feels enraged, because this qualifies as an invasion of privacy, to my mind. I want to say, you can't practice in the basement, it annoys me no matter what. The other part of me feels like I'm auditioning for the harridan in a head kerchief who comes after the fiesty young heroes with a broom. I'm 29 for gods sake, I don't want to be all "get off my lawn!" just yet.

I can't wait to get into a real, actual house, where the only people on the other side of the wall are in my immediate family. I think that someplace out in the country, with about an acre of land, is going to be the final solution. This current state of affairs stresses me out.