Barbara Hambly's Blog, page 24

A beautiful evening at La Boheme. It's one of my two ...

A beautiful evening at La Boheme. It's one of my two or three favorite operas: love, laughter, friendship, poverty, street theater, parties at the cafe Momus, dying of tuberculosis in a garret... what's not to like? It's like "Friends" with gorgeous music and fatal disease. The woman who sang Musetta (Janai Brugger) was phenomenal. Aunt Mary (who was part of our party) was an opera virgin; she'd never been to one before, and Boheme is a good place to start. Hazel - whose birthday we were celebrating - said that the boys at the wrecking-yard where she works had offered her tickets that same night for a Monster Truck Show and were appalled when she turned them down. ("Hmmn... Opening night of La Boheme... Monster Truck Show... What to do? What to do?")

A Night At the Opera - not the Marx Brothers film, but an...

A Night At the Opera - not the Marx Brothers film, but an actual night at the Music Center with friends for the opening night of La Boheme. So, losing a few points on sleep but gaining a lot on de-stress. (A migraine yesterday and a DOUBLE migraine this morning - a second firefall starting up just as the first was clearing - indicates to me that I'm stressed and haven't had enough sleep). (The migraines are painless - ocular only - and last 40 minutes on the dot - I've clocked them. But the hallucinations make it hard to see the computer screen).

Coupled with Mother's Day tomorrow, it makes for a LOT of work needs be done today. (Plus laundry. We rapidly approach a Stage 3 Towel Crisis).

New Kitty - the beautiful Cupcake - has made herself very much at home and has learned to hop up into my lap while I work, snuggling and looking adorable. She has a pink nose and little white feet. I REALLY WILL get a Flickr account and transfer pictures there so I can post them here, when I get time. (I'm guessing, June?)

Anybody know anything about how to acquire Diablo III when it comes out? (THIS WEEK!!!)  Do you just download it from Blizz, or do you need to buy disks? (I assume the download will be one of those 48-hour endless horrors).

There's something about dropping back out of Writing ...

There's something about dropping back out of Writing World at the end of the day because I'm too tired to go on, that's vaguely reminiscent of falling back into my study chair after being on World of Warcraft for two hours; that sense of WHAM: I'm home. Only I don't go into Warcraft until chores for the day are done. When I come out of writing - very tired and slightly disoriented - there's still a whole evening of school-prep work to be done, plus taking my walk, walking the dog, cleaning cat-boxes, feeding cats, making dinner and starting wind-down procedures in a timely manner so I'll get enough sleep to wake up VERY early so I can get up to school in the morning.

Second draft is much more intense than first.

From my desk I can see, through the study window, the massive cavern of the patio, covered now in red trumpet-vine that is covered in brilliant scarlet flowers in the full-force of gold sunlight, amazingly bright.

A day to get a running start on the part I love best abou...

A day to get a running start on the part I love best about writing: Second Draft. The smells of spit tobacco and the crunch of broken glass underfoot, the contemplation of the question, "What's really going on between these people?" The aligning of dates, days of the week, and phases of the moon (when DO they leave New Orleans for Washington and how long will it take them to get there at that time of the year?)

And, later on in the story, the tedious encoding of the coded messages that provide the key to the mystery, and figuring out how much a well-off young Congressional secretary's feed-bill would be for his horses.

Rather like filling a gallon jar with live fleas.

Went back to Prince of Persia last night, only to come up against the most frustrating part of the game (and the reason I haven't played it in weeks) - the length of time between save-points. If I have only 40 minutes to play, that's not enough time to get to the next save-point, so all that leaping over chasms and dodging spike-traps is for naught, since I don't have time to fight a swarm of re-spawning monsters. It's why I've been enjoying Diablo III Beta so much: I can drop in and out of it. Prince - and the equally frustrating Uncharted - requires a committment of about 90 minutes before I can actually save progress.

I suspect they're all going to have to wait til summer... Which is not that far away.

For some reason it's easier to grade World History ex...

For some reason it's easier to grade World History exams than US History. That probably has something to do with the density of information in a US History class. As I often do, one of the questions I asked on this exam was a Time Travel question: You're an historian going to do your first study trip to the Middle Ages, what identity would you choose - peasant, lord, cleric - and WHY? And, what subjects would you need to study in order to prepare for your trip? (Thank you, Connie Willis!)

I'm always fascinated with the responses: I ask this less to test specific information, than to see how these people reason within the context of historical information.

And, I must admit, if the student is blanking on the other possible essay topics, this is a topic that most people can do at least SOMETHING on: it's a fallback.

To my gratified surprise, got GOOD work done on the screenplay, which is a work-for-hire project, adapting someone else's graphic novel. Amazed at the difference after putting the project aside. Stuff that seemed excellent 9 months ago, I now look at and go, "Do I really need to say that?" and, "Would she really react that way?" It has a nice, spooky feeling, and I'm pleased.

In the midst of grading exams, I have acquired a new kitt...

In the midst of grading exams, I have acquired a new kitty - currently hiding on top of the linen cabinet in the bathroom. Her foster mom assures me that this is normal behavior for her and she'll come down in about 2 weeks. She is, as far as I can tell, a beautiful, fluffy, year-old tuxedo-cat - LONG white whiskers and little white mitts - and I go in and speak to her reassuringly several times a day. She merely regards me accusingly, though at 4 a.m. this morning she had a long conversation with Gus through the door.

I'll get pictures of her, as soon as I acquire a new camera, the old one (about 7 years old) having ceased to work. When I have time I'll set up a Flickr account and start posting pix here and on Facebook, but now I'm sort of rationing my time and energy for the stuff that really counts: Mr. J Goes to Washington (working title), the screenplay (work for hire), and much grading of exams.

I apologize to one and all for speaking ill of The Thirte...

I apologize to one and all for speaking ill of The Thirteenth Warrior. I can only assume that I saw it under adverse circumstances, or that my not liking something (and I don't know what) about Mr. Banderas's acting causes me to remember it poorly. (I know he's a very fine actor, and have seen him in excellent roles. I just don't care for his acting.)

I'm guessing that what Mr. Cage thought when he was handed the script for Season of the Witch was, "Oh, good, something with which to pay the IRS!" And, Cage and Perleman were huge fun to watch together in that - um - epic.

A student asked in class last night, "What film can ...

A student asked in class last night, "What film can you recommend for mini-paper #3?" (The mini-papers are, just read an article, visit a museum, read a book, watch a movie that has to do with the time-period we've been covering in this section of the course). This section of the course is Middle Ages and Renaissance. I suggested The Lion in Winter, Name of the Rose - they were delighted to hear that I'd count Holy Grail (SOMEONE in Monty Python - I think Terry Jones - is a serious medieval scholar and did his homework on Grail legends), or any Robin Hood movie including Men in Tights - and from there we got onto the subject of True Medieval Stinkers: The Long Ships, El Cid, King Richard and the Crusaders, The Thirteenth Warrior. (I forgot to mention Season of the Witch, which is right up there...) I said Mongol was definitely okay, and added, "If you want Genjhis Khan, the Worst Movie In The WOrld [except for Showgirls] is the 1951 (I believe) film, The COnquorer, with John Wayne as Genjhis Khan."

It all comes under the heading of History Can Be Fun. (If you can call The Long Ships history...) History can be entertaining. It isn't all dates and awfulness.

I also said, the games Prince of Persia and any of the incarnations of Assassin's Creed are okay, too... I should have mentioned Dante's Inferno as well. Also the mini-series someone made of The Arabian Nights a couple of years ago, each tale set in a different culture of the many-faceted world of Islam, from Western China on through Africa and all stops in between.

They may not remember the name of the last Merovingian King of France or the circumstances of his dethronement by the Carolingians, but they'll remember putting the movie Beowulf into the context of the history class.

Lordy! Spent the day doing the scenes I've been circl...

Lordy! Spent the day doing the scenes I've been circling for weeks: the whole chase-fight-rescue-redemption that concludes the action of Mr. J Goes to Washington (working title). As sometimes happens, writing who does what to whom, in what order, why, and in what circumstances, has helped me enormously to focus on what is the primary relationship in the book: What is this book really about? Knowing that, I can now start the re-write knowing who of the sprawling Dickensian multitude needs to be portrayed in more detail, who needs to be played-down . And, what scenes need to be added - the equivalent of doing re-takes.

Writing a series is different than writing regular books. SOmeone once told me, "All the good stories are stories of redemption." In a series, it isn't always the central character who gets redeemed (which would get dull and repetetive, like wondering how come Miss Marple's friends ALWAYS drop dead). In a series, it's often one of the guest-stars who gets redeemed, or re-made: the hero just gets run through the wringer, which is his job.

Sometimes this isn't clear until I've nailed the armature in place.

So now I get to put the whole thing down and go teach 2 classes tomorrow... and then I'll be grading exams for a week, o joy.

The Grass is Always Greener...

One of my neighbors, on my usual route of daily walk, has had an artificial lawn installed. Not one of those sod-carpet laid-in-chunks lawns... this appears to be actual artificial grass, finer and less plasticy-looking than astroturf, but definitely artificial of some kind. It's almost papery to the touch and you have to look pretty closely (it was twilight, and I'd have looked silly kneeling and examining), but it's a VEHEMENT shade of green.

Bringing home to me once again that the planet that I now live on is not the planet I grew up on. There's something very Logans-Run-ish about the time and effort that went into making fake grass that looks so real... to say nothing of my recollection of an editorial note on one of my Star Trek books that the floor of the Enterprise bowling-alley was NOT to be made of real wood (presumably contributing to the endangerment of oak-trees?).