TV

giving up, a week at a time

I have noticed something disturbing about my work habits or lack thereof. When I start feeling overwhelmed or feel like I have a lot going on, I give up on writing for the rest of the week. Instead of figuring out when the next actual available time to work will be, I look ahead to the whole week at once, shrink in horror, and spend any down time I do get rebelling and denying as hard as I can. And projecting to “next week,” when this will all be over and things will be different.

Hmm.

Something else, not related, that I have noticed lately: it is really, really easy to talk about television! Even KFC, a writing group full of book people, ended up talking about television a lot at our last meeting. And when I cast around for a conversation topic, TV usually works. Have I mentioned that Sanguinity and I are watching Twin Peaks for the first time?

It’s finally a sunny week here in Portland. On my bus ride this morning, the sky was blue with small perfect clouds in the distance. It was so storybook perfect that for a second I wondered if I might be dreaming, or part of a movie or simulation without realizing it. I am prone to this kind of paranoia on the bus, suddenly wondering if everyone but me is psychic and can hear my thoughts and so on.

Fourgates pointed me to a guy who’s testing the “10,000 hours” concept on golf! He’s at the one-year mark. I envy his metrics and coaching team.

How many inches of ramen in a packet? Cockeyed.com measured. I’m actually liking a lot of things on that website, including the costumes and how he documents failures as well as successes.

from friday evening to saturday morning


Rabbit rabbit!

The turn of the year saw Sang and me watching the end of Xena Season Four on my laptop, sitting close on the couch and sharing a pair of earbuds because the speakers tend to cut in and out. Before that we tried playing the disc on Sang’s computer, which kept spitting it out for apparently no reason. And of course before that we tried watching it on the TV, but the TV no longer acknowledges the remote, and the tracks weren’t navigable using only the buttons on the TV. BUT WE PREVAILED, with the dog standing on the couch panting loudly in my other ear to protest the gorgeous noisy fireworks set off by the neighbors.

It’s a fine line between the pleasure of working all the little tricks and oddities required by our old house and its stuff, and a feeling that it’s all one step from collapse. But we’re good, and today we ate our black-eyed peas for luck. (Thanks, Sav-A-Lot! Safeway and Fred Meyer still haven’t clued in that they should lay in extra for this week.) I baked them up with some leftover rice and cans of chiles and tomatoes, with avocado on top instead of collards for lucky green. Okay, so the avocado turned black in the oven, IT STILL COUNTS. (But maybe I’ll go have a green tomato pickle from the fridge. Just to be sure.) Happy new year!

p.s. I don’t have any favorite book scenes featuring New Year’s Eve. But the title of this post refers to Mary Stolz’s The Noonday Friends, in which Marshall, for his fifth birthday when money is tight, gets a ticket “ONE WAY FROM FRIDAY EVENING TO SATURDAY MORNING” from his parents, meaning he can stay up all night like he’s always wanted. You go, Marshall. I was happy to turn in at one-thirty.