the catch-u-up post

• Back from the home state. A long week, polarized. Quiet at times, "pesky" (in the vernacular) at times, loud and drunk at times (I spent a very uncomfortable night willing myself not to be sick - and succeeding but by the slimmest of margins), slow, flying by in a flash, and now over. No major shake-ups except a very much chance meeting that may have sweeping repercussions...or may never be repeated. You know how I overplay these things in my brain sometimes.
• 50° back home today after a record-breaking 90° yesterday - 80° and thunderstorms forecast here but nothing exciting happening yet. It's sort of cool and breezy now, what I would call "bright gray." Yesterday could only be termed "fucking windy"; 3 3/4 hours of struggling to keep the car on the road (much less in my lane) was more than enough of the interstate experience for one day. My vague goal for today was to bop over to the suburbs for various girlie supplies (curling iron, etc.) but it's looking like I'll get by with what I've got for a while. Driving = too damned much work.
• My beloved camera is dying. Purchased almost exactly 5 years ago as the final mutual anniversary present between my former spouse and me (yup, I still feel vaguely guilty about it, thanks for wondering), it has a flip-out LED screen. After 10,000 photos and probably an equal number of flip-outs for viewing photos that had been stored on the flash card, the screen's connection has weakened. The best I can get is a psychedelic pink swoosh when I'm taking photos. The connection for viewing photos that are stored is still fine, so I can get by for a while (yes, cameras from that era were still built with a traditional viewfinder) until I can afford to upgrade. I'm not going to get a hold-over, so I've started shopping for the next big purchase. Looks like it'll be either a Nikon D90 or a Canon EOS 50D. If you think I'll ever hold off taking pictures once I've chucked out $1200+ for a camera - think again.
• I read 4 books while I was away, each of which I'd read before. Not sure what this re-reading phase is all about, but I've gone through it before. Most of these were initially read when I was just about to separate, or separated, or newly divorced. Maybe I'm in that mode again - which makes no logical sense, given my pathetic excuse for a personal life - and this is a way of both grounding myself and sorting through some things that I've held as touchstones.
  • About the Author (John Colapinto) is a rockin' book, snappy and shocking, but I doubt that I'll read it again. It's too much a mystery, by which I mean that once you've discerned how it runs through, the joy of reading it is dimmed. The language still gets to me - Colapinto is a pastry chef with words, making them glossy or florid or stark seemingly without effort - and I flatter myself to think that someday....
  • Squeeze Play (Jane Leavy) is a heartbreaker, and glorious, and hilarious. And it ends TOTALLY wrong. Like, I gasp when I read the final scene, because there's something about it that just, ugh, GROSS-gag--clank-wrong wrong! Like the author wasn't really paying attention and used the wrong word in one little spot and just fucked it up. I seriously choose to believe that she meant the other word, because it just doesn't make sense that it went that way.
  • The Boy I Loved Before (Jenny Colgan) is one that I hadn't read before, but I'd just reread Talking to Addison and adored it, and this is by the same author. Well, "adored" is a sort of stretch - there were holes in that love, too. The main character was a bit too flaky to be believed; her lovely friends were more appealing but that made it all the more difficult to imagine that they would put up with her antics. Anyhoo, back to The Boy: an utterly stupid premise ("if I could go back...") brought to life in a funny, artful, charming way. I loved it, but only because I've wished it.
  • Finally, Leaving Patrick (Prue Leith), which I finished this morning. I had remembered the book being filled with very romantic longing and exquisite regret. I was surprised with this reading to see it also brimming with sloppy editing, completely pointless filler, and characters with inexplicable motivation. It's an absolutely shitty book, and I wanted to hate it but I can't - mostly because of lines like this: "She deserved to lose what she had failed to treasure."
• I've made a few small changes to the blog template. Took out a couple of links to defunct blogs, fixed a weird moosh in the footer, and set up a new LibraryThing widget that is a little harder to read but fits better on the sidebar. I'm thinking of adjusting the background color off the black and into a less extreme dark gray; if you've got strong feelings about it (or anything else template-related), let me know.
• I'm watching a movie on WGN (notorious for its crap afternoon offerings): Dangerous Beauty. It's terrible but very romantic. The female lead is almost a good actress. The male lead has creepy eyes. The bad guy and the nasty woman [I think I would hate that woman - the actress - in real life!] were brilliant. My favorite was the king, who imbued his 5 onscreen minutes with a lifetime of pathos. I would definitely watch this again. Yay soap operas!
• I should be doing laundry or catching up on some apartment maintenance if I'm not going to get that shopping done, rather than sitting on the couch with the computer in front of me and the TV on. Not too surprisingly, I'm profoundly unmotivated and thinking about a nap.