Halloween Observed

After a liesurely afternoon spent at the Temple Bar, Morgan and I moseyed on over to my place to get her all gussied up for a night at the circus–the “Freakaphonic Circus,” that is, which seems to be the Wild Buffalo’s answer to a Halloween costume party (I did not go, but opted instead to curl up in bed with Howards End, the cats and a studious Mitch). Morgan went as a zombie prom queen; I was enlisted to do her zombie make-up.

So, while Morgan put on dress, gloves, shoes and tiara, I dug through both our make-up bags on a quest for unflattering shades of eyeshadow and brutally red lipstick, trying the colors out on the insides of my wrists before finally sitting her down and beginning the uglifying process. I had far too much fun with this, however disturbing it may be to make one’s best friend flat-out hideous–by the time we finished I had white face paint and fake blood smeared on my jeans and forearms, plus some alarming fake bruises where I’d tested black-violet eyeshadow on myself before applying it to her eyes, cheeks and collarbones.

The whole process was an awful lot like getting ready for a real prom, but with one crucial difference–when we finished, Morgan looked terrible, and that was the whole point. I couldn’t look at her directly for very long without cringing, while she was morbidly drawn back to the mirror again and again, exclaiming, “Oh my god! I look horrid!”

Here is the finished product.

Not the loudest anymore

The tambourine alone should qualify me as the loudest neighbor in our 8-unit apartment building. Add the guitar, and the fact that Mitch and I are the only double occupants, and you’ve pretty much sealed the deal (though this summer saw the addition of two new neighbors upstairs, who are fond of dancing what could only be the polka while wearing what could only be steel-toed workboots, if one were to judge from sound alone).

I have often pitied the neighbors to either side of us, who are quiet and kind and rarely make a peep, for I fear that our over loud conversations must irriate them to no end–but yesterday when I came home I heard the low mournful sound of what could only be…a cello. Pressing my ear to the kitchen wall, I determined that the sound came not from #1, but from #3, a studio whose kitchen shares a wall with our living room. I stood with my ear to the wall for a long while, listening as our neighbor practiced (and punctuated the music nicely with a few frustrated curse words), unabashedly eavesdropping. It was truly lovely.

I stole Ryan’s survey

(Note: I know it says “one book,” but I just don’t work like that, sorry. Every single question here has many answers.)

1. One book that changed your life: Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis), A Severe Mercy (Sheldon Vanauken).
2. One book that you’ve read more than once: Oh, no. The Lord of the Rings (x3), The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger, x2), The Abhorsen Trilogy (Garth Nix, x5), Walking on Water (Madeliene L’Engle, x3), Harry Potter (x3).
3. One book you’d want on a desert island: The Bible.
4. One book that made you laugh: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (Jonathan Safran Foer)
5. One book that made you cry: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (Jonathan Safran Foer)
6. One book you wish had been written: It’s probably out there somewhere, waiting for me to read it…
7. One book you wish had never been written: Ouch, that’s rough. I’ve read books that I just flat out didn’t like, but not that I wish had never been written–maybe Left Behind? Yeah, we’ll go with that.
8. One book you’re currently reading: Howards End (E.M. Forster).
9. One book you’ve been meaning to read: Angle of Repose (Wallace Stegner). I’ve been saving that one, and I’m very much looking forward to it.

I thought about it long and hard

I decided not to do NaNoWriMo this year. I’m sad, but I think I’ll make it through somehow, even if it means I miss out on the privilege of attempting to type 2000 words a day of what most likely would turn out to be nonsense. Last year, I discovered the NaNoWriMo underworld a mere two weeks before the starting date (Nov. 1), and so, for lack of preparation managed to power my way through 50,000 words with a concept that was originally intended for a short story. Nearly seven months passed before I could bear to look at that mess of 50,186 words again.

However, reading back over my submission from last year, I actually found some passages that I sort of liked, but most of it was couched in irritatingly long (and poorly written) character descriptions, monologues that killed thousands of words apiece and were delivered by minor, uninteresting characters, plus asides from the author that tended toward things like [Holy crap! Was that really only 50 words? I guess we'd better step it up a notch...]. In the last few days, in my desperation, I figured out that contractions counted as only one word, and therefore went back and edited all my “won’t”s to “will not”s, and so on, while also padding my punctuation , thusly . Near cheating, yes, but I say it still counts.

This year was , of course , supposed to be better . I would start planning sometime in January , begin stockpiling notes and outlines throughout the year so that , come November , I would have a whole arsenal of material . Famously, I put it off . And off . And by August had only the vaguest of ideas , which I spent roughly six hours ( on an airplane ) fleshing out and then promptly dropped . By October 1 , things were not looking good . I flirted with the idea of entering anyway, but then thought better of it , given the fact that I am actually quite busy these days ( as opposed to last year, when I was only mildly busy ) .

So. No NaNoWriMo for me. Last year’s winning season lives on in my memory, glorious as ever, and I dare not try and top it–so here I raise my fist in the air and cheer once, good and loud, for all the brave souls who are gearing up for the Mad Month. Ra!

Event Review (Greg Brown at the Nighlight): There’s always that one really drunk guy

In case you were curious, the Greg Brown show last night = awesome. I have to admit that I was a bit nervous to see the man with the sexiest voice I’ve ever heard live, because it was quite possible that he’d turn out to be old and goofy-looking and thus my image of him would suffer, even if just a little–but as luck would have it, my fear proved to be unfounded. The guy was great-looking, alright, and he was wonderful live. We were lucky enough to get scooted toward the front in a sold-out Nightlight show, so I was actually able to watch him play that guitar and sing those dirty blues, and I have to say it: though I don’t swoon easily, when he started rolling up those shirt-sleeves, I did swoon a bit, nevermind that he’s older than my dad, and married.

And as for the really drunk guy, well, he was there in the front corner, whistling and shouting nonsense through the whole set, passing Greg Brown (and Bo Ramsey, who accompanied Brown on the electric guitar) half-empty drinks and wobbling his way through the packed crowd to stand dead center in front of the stage. It seems to be a trend at most of the shows I’ve seen–the one really drunk guy who gets good and obnoxious and irritates everyone else who isn’t too drunk to care. Oh well. Greg Brown more than made up for it.

Nevermind

No wind. No sailing. No tales of swash-buckling adventure on the high seas. Sorry.

Things could get interesting

See, I have this tremendous fear of deep water–and this afternoon, Mitch and I are going sailing in a wee boat on Lake Whatcom. Will report back later.

I never met a bookstore I couldn’t navigate

(…except for maybe Sam Walton’s in Salt Lake City. And I haven’t been to Powell’s yet, so I don’t know about that one.)

I only make it to Barnes & Noble approximately twice a year, and usually only then when I’ve received a gift card for B&N, or when I’m in the company of somebody else who is shopping for something specific–as was the case yesterday, when I found myself in Barnes & Noble with my friend Betsy. She took off to ask an employee for help, and left me standing half in the aisle between Sci-Fi/Fanstasy and Christianity, digging through the C.S. Lewis selection. An elderly gentlemen was rooting through the same shelf as I was, so we periodically switched places as I worked my way up the shelf, and he, down. Finally he announced, “I really thought they’d have a copy of The Hobbit here somewhere, but I don’t see it.”

Now, it happens rather often that, when I’m in bookstores browsing, somebody invariably mistakes me for an employee. Maybe it’s because the sight of somebody drifting aimlessly up and down an aisle in the search for a specific author that I know is in the next aisle over evokes a deep sort of sympathy in me, and more often than not I can’t help sidling up to them and saying, “Excuse me–did you say you were looking for Jane Smiley?” and steering them politely into the S section, rather than the J.

But I have no idea what it is that makes people approach me as I rummage through the Ian McEwan selection and ask if I work here, but this has actually been noticable enough to warrant a job offer from Henderson Books on two separate occasions. Maybe it’s my tendency to compulsively straighten books–I don’t know.

So, anyway, by the time Betsy came back to where she’d left me, I was off in some back corner of Sci-Fi/Fantasy, helping my new friend find Tolkien, while discussing some fascinating little-known facts about Tolkien that I recently discovered while reading his biography (for example: did you know that he wrote the Elvish language “Quenya” first, and that The Silmarillion and, eventually, The Lord of the Rings, sprung up around it as he created a mythology of the people he supposed might speak his language?). I think there’s probably a calling in there somewhere.

All the small things, indeed

At work I’m getting an early start on addressing office Christmas cards. See, every year we send out cards and gifts to the other doctors in town, and it falls under my job description (which could be summed up as “miscellaneous”) to address the cards and deliver the gifts. It’s great fun.

And yes, I know it’s only October, but that just goes to show you how much I love writing with glittery gold pens on holly-festooned envelopes.

Good day!

Remember those 16 boxes of books? Well, they fetched a whopping $90 worth of trade credit at Michael’s Books, and what the good folks at Michael’s didn’t offer trade for turned up this morning in the free book boxes.

So.

What did I buy with my credit? Try as I might, I only managed to do away with $44 dollars this morning, which means I have $46 left to spend in a liesurely fashion (which will no doubt include a fun day of bookshopping with my dad, who gave me the credit but will have to help me spend it). Today’s finds:

Par Lagerkvist: The Holy Land

E.M. Forester: Howard’s End

Thomas Merton: Learning to Love (Vol. 6 of Merton’s journals)

Humphery Carpenter: J.R.R. Tolkien: a biography

John Knowles: A Separate Peace

Cathleen Medwick: Teresa of Avila

-and- the first three books of Brian Jacques’s Redwall series.

Yes, I’ll be busy for a while.