So I’m off for a say of Zoo walks, lunches, and shopping with my sweetie-wife.
Sunday
Tag Archives: general
Things seem to be looking pretty good.
I have finished a new short story, the first in months. I have another edited and ready to send off to a market for it’s customary rejection. I’ve had two good conventions in rather short order and I have two more coming up the as many months, so I really have little to complain about. So I won’t.
This Sunday night I plan to go out to the drive-in theaters and relive that bit of childhood memory. (not teenager memory never had a car as a teenager and only went to the drive-in once as a teenager. By myself, on a bicycle, to see 1979’s Dawn Of The Dead.) This sunday will be a double feature of CONTAGION and APOLLO 18 for $8, hell you can’t beat that.
40 hour week? What’s that?
At my day job there is overtime stretching as far as a fa’sn ire at George Lucas futzing with Star Wars, again. (yes he’s doing it again. Apparently his plan is to make the original trilogy suck so badly that the newer ones don’t look as so bad.)
I’m doing 50 hours weeks and there literaly no end in sight. It’s impact my bank account, positively, and my writing, negatively. Still I’m up for it ’cause I love me money.
Drive-In theaters
A few weeks ago while surfing around local internet sites I discovered that San Diego has two still operating Drive-In theaters. I seriously had though all of those had died away in the era of THX Dolby sound, and crisp laser projections.
This lead me on a brief internet search about the state of Drive-in theaters. Surprisingly they have a devoted following who enjoy the low prices (in San Diego you can get a double feature of first run films for $8), family friendly atmosphere, and privacy of the private viewing from your own car. (No annoying people right next to talking during the film . I once dated a girl who talked through an entire film, never went out with her again.)
Then our of the blue light lightening on a clear day this memory popped up into my mind. As a child I often went with my older brothers to a drive-in movie on the weekend. I suddenly, and vividly, recalled the popcorn being popped in our kitchen, salted, buttered and put into a large brown paper bag. (they kind groceries came in before everyone went over to totes or plastic.) Teh bag then being stapled closed to kept it warm and fresh until the movie started.
I’m very tempted to relive this memeory. Pop the corn, bag it and go to a local drive-in. I’d be the adult and I’d be driving, but some part of me wants that experience one more time.
Global Warming and particle physics
Late year I blogged about the habit of some AGW supporters using the term denier to denigrate their opponents. In that post I referred to the GCR hypothesis for global climate changed. In a nutshell it runs like this, GCR (Galactic Cosmic Rays) when present increase cloud formation, which reflects sunlight back into space before it get to earth, and this cools the planet. When GCR decrease, cloud formation drops and the Earth warms as more sunlight reaches the surface. The Solar magnetic field determines the amount of GCR reaching the Earth, so the solar magnetic field is a principle driver of climate changes on the planet.
The key here is cloud formation, a process not very well understood as the science not stands. The GCR theory is an outlier for cloud formation theory and as such the GCR aspect of global climate changes have been discounted by climatologist in general. (Note: I am not accusing people is hiding or ignoring evidence, some idea takes awhile to become accepted, provided the fact support them and they are falsifiable. To with look at the history of continental drift, once considered a crackpot idea.)
Well the GCR hypothesis for cloud formation has leapt over a major hurdle. The fine physicists at CERN have established with particle accelerators that GCR do play a major part in cloud formation. As current climate models all ignore GCR as a factor in cloud formation, and cloud formation is a critical element of climate modeling, the current models have the be redone. It is possible, perhaps even likely, that all of the climate change we have seen so far is due to increased GCR reaching the Earth as the solar cycle varies.
Getting introduced to Pink Floyd’s music
I’m nowhere near Pink Floyd’s biggest fan. I own several albums, (The Wall, Dark Side of The Moon, and Wish You Were Here) and enjoy them very much, but as you can see there is a lot I do not have. What this story is about is how I first listened to Pink Floyd.
It was the mid 1980s and I was an usher at a movie theater, UA Glasshouse 6 – no defunct and long out of business. I was involved with a lovely redhead and she and I were going through rough times. My shift had ended at the theater, but I really did not want to go home. I suffer from depression, and already in a black mood I knew it would get worse because she was not going to be there.
A life lobe love of movies had given me the avenue of escape through film. A good movie was my preferred method of getting away from my troubles and out of my head. It was late at the theater and the midnight movies would be starting soon. Free movies as an usher was the best benefit for working at the theater. I scanned the titles and found nothing I knew and flt strongly about, still I knew I did not want to go home.
hmmm, The Wall, My pal ray had told me that The Wall was a very good film and he and I tended to have similar tastes, so The Wall it was.
I was not prepared for a film that was entirely music and visual, but I settled in and let the film wash over me. Quickly disturbing parallels between ‘Pink’ the subject of The Wall and myself revealed themselves. We both lost our father’s when we were young, a devastating event, we were both artistically inclined, we both kept most people at a distance, had lovely redheaded girlfriends, but relationship troubles, and both given to wild mood swings. (ahh yes, One Of My Turns is a song I very much identify with.)
This movie was NOT cheering me up. I felt like I was drowning in a sea of depression and that to quote another song, “he was killing me softly.”
I made it through the screening with my wrists intact, and my head throughly spinning. The music stuck with me. The songs reverberated in my skull and while my depression lifted, as it always will do given enough time, the impact of that film and those songs did not.
Being horribly depressed is not my recommended introduction to Pink Floyd and The Wall, but it did work for me.
Quick update
So I will let everyone know how well my weekend went tomorrow. (hint, it went well.) Tonight I’m going to be out at The Old Globe Theater in Balboa park here in San Diego to see a production of The Tempest.
Lite Blogging
I expect my blogging to be lite for a while. Being so close to the end of a project is a special time and time when that project begins to consume everything in my poor little head.
So for next 2-3 weeks I expect most of my energies will be taken up with Love & Loyalty, after that a bit of decompression with a Tim Powers Novel.
Good Day/ Bad Day
Well, I am home alone because my cold has returned. I though I had completely lost this bug, but Thursday night I started getting congested again, yesterday I felt bad and today I just want to stay home and do nothing strenuous.
That is a shame because a friend is throwing a party and I really wanted to go. However every time I bend over I get dizzy and frankly it is a boorish guest who brings pathogens.
On the plus side I did finish a chapter of edits today. Normally I do not do writing work on the weekend, using these two days to recharge my spirits, but as I near the end of project it starts taking over.
I have now edited 323 or 404 pages from Love & Loylaty, then I will have another 40-60 from the inserts to edit and compile into their proper places. The End is in sight.
General Update
So Saturday concert was pretty fun. The venue was a small club and I had reserved a table for myself. (The sweetie-wife does not care for most of my music and that include Sheena Easton.) I got there early enough to order a small diner before the show, and ended up chatting with the lady at the table next to mine. (She recognized me from thr Vegas show I went to last September.)
Sheena came one and this time I had a very good appraisal of just how tall, or rather how short that lady is. My friends Sheena Easton is a hobbit. However she looked good, in fact she looked better than she did in Vegas, so either I caught her on a bad night, bad lighting, or my eyes were out of whack. This time I was nearly level with her and maybe 15 feet away at most. The set was mostly her big hits, but she mixed it up a bit and added a few songs from lesser known albums.
Afterwards I headed hom and enjoyed a nice desert of donuts since it was a night of my diet.
Sunday was a relaxing day with board and card games in the evening and yesterday my sweetie-wife and I went to the zoo, but sadly no crane chicks yet. (I think when the cranes chicks hatch one should be name Charles Foster Crane.)
Yesterday I even got another chapter of Love & Loyalty edited and tonight I expect I might get two more done. I am now hurtling towards the end of first-pass edits. After that is system integration as I shove the new bits into their places in the script, then a read through to make she integration went smoothly, then a copyedit pass by my sweetie-wofe and then finally beta-readers.