Gotta live your life.

[mrissa]

I was trying to make a list of things I would like to do in 2009, but it was not a good morning, so I was getting through, "Walk unassisted," and, "Drive," and then I was getting all snuffly. Not so much fun. It has been generally agreed around here that while we are by no means giving up on me getting to do those two things, it is probably a good idea if I come up with a list of cool things I can do in 2009 even if they are delayed in coming. I am remembering that I talked to one of you last May, and that person said something about seeing me at World Fantasy, and I said that I wasn't sure if I'd be well enough to travel alone by November. And they reacted with some horror: "But that's six more months!" It was. And I wasn't. But one of the mantras I've had this year is, "You've gotta live your life."

So. As I said, I'm not giving up on doing things that require me to be independently mobile in 2009, so you don't need to reassure me on that front. (And, in fact, reassurances are likely to get a skeptical eyebrow rather than warm thanks, because you don't, in fact, know when these things will be possible for me, and I'd rather not hear a hearty, "Surely you'll be back to your old normal by such-and-such!" when in fact it's entirely possible that I won't.) This is just the stuff we know I can do in theory. Stuff the vertigo can't rule out completely, even if it sticks around at current levels. Stuff. Yah.

1. Finish revisions to What We Did to Save the Kingdom.
2. Finish draft of The True Tale of Carter Hall.
3. Start another book: Deportees? The Water Castle? The Winter Wars? Eleven Names for Home? Something else completely?
4. loyalorvokki project, dammit.

5. Finish "Pillars of Salt and String" and "The Radioactive Etiquette Book" and "The Curvature of Every Disorder." (By this point in my career, "submit stuff" is on the list with "brush teeth" and "clean fingernails": stuff you just do.)
6. Finish "The Witch's Second Daughter" and "Twelve Things You Don't Know About Dryads" for the people they belong to.
7. Write a completely new short story from scratch.

8. Record podcast of "Singing Them Back" as promised to great-aunt, albeit now late. See whether that drives me nuts. See whether anybody listens.
9. Learn three of the Scarlatti sonatas and one of the Bach French Suites. (Piano music for Christmas FTW.)

10. Get larger loaf pans and figure out a sandwich and French toast bread recipe that suits all inhabitants of this house. If necessary, figure out these recipes as separate entities. Somebody else will have to handle the oven stuff, probably. That's okay.
11. Learn how to make lamb shahi korma that tastes like we want it to. There are a million lamb shahi korma recipes out there, which makes it harder in some ways and easier in others.
12. Perfect buttermilk biscuits. Deal with horrible fate of having to eat imperfect biscuits along the way. Wailie woe.
13. Try substituting mango into Yucatan chicken recipe. Cogitate on results.
14. Paella! It is time.
15. Figure out chocolate-strawberry cookie idea.

16. Take markgritter to Lucia's.
17. Take timprov to Rainbow.
18. Continue to do our best to keep Rice Paper and Pumphouse Creamery in business singlehandedly.
[not-19. We are going to Restaurant Alma to celebrate when I am done with PT. It had better still be in business then.]
19. Try at least four new-to-us restaurants. (This number is probably low, but so is the short story from scratch number, so.)
20. Try all types of hot chocolate and tisane in the pantry at least once each. Find suitable homes for less Mrissish types of hot chocolate and tisane.
21. Put Project Food Safari outings on the calendar promptly after each one. The good food is only half the point here; meshing busy schedules takes work, and it's been work well invested so far.

22. Take Robin to live children's theater. He really liked the last one, and it was frankly not much good. Think how much he'd love a really good one.
23. Take markgritter to live grown-up theater. NB: not the same as "adult theater," so no gnr-gnr-gnr-ing, this is not that kind of list.
24. Take timprov to rock shows and/or folk concerts.
25. Take parental types to rock shows and/or folk concerts. Possibly with timprov.
26. Have lunch at the zoo with V again. Possibly add small people or parental types.
27. Look into Landscape Arboretum possibilities with vertigo.

28. Read Simon Schama's big fat history of Britain series.
29. Read the Tony Hillerman series. Find and devour another long good mystery series. (You know how some people complain that SF is too long compared to mystery? I think one of the things they're not looking at is that mystery makes us look like pikers for long good series. We've got, what, Steve and Lois? For the long series that are really good, I mean. And they've got everybody they've got, nearly. What I'm saying is, I don't think we can argue that mystery writers aren't telling long stories, because they are, they're just breaking them up differently.)

30. Catch up on Numb3rs.
31. Find another series to love while biking indoors hanging on for dear life.

32. Minicon.
33. Fourth Street.
NOTE: These two are the only conventions I can guarantee I will attend this year. If you want to see me at a convention, this is what I've got. If there's a Minn-StF fallcon, I'll almost certainly go to that. Anything else is subject to health considerations, and to family travel considerations if the vertigo takes a hike like it's supposed to.

34. Begin basement finishing.
35. Have kitchen painted Roasted Pepper.
36. Have bedroom painted Polar Bear. (!!!!! Can you believe the color I want is called Polar Bear? This is going to be the best thing ever. Of course the people who made it have never looked at an actual polar bear up close, even for zoo values of up close, but never mind that; the blackened streaks that show up when I roast peppers are unlikely to be featured prominently in our kitchen walls, either.)
37. Look into color for hall/stairs. By which I mean, select specific pale blue.
38. Frame more artwork and hang, particularly two large photos by timprov.
39. Use more of markgritter's spice garden when summer comes.
40. Have at least one tree planted on our property.

41. Make charitable donations earlier this year. Last year was rough for a lot of people. Even if they recover this year, it won't be instantaneous.
42. Keep eye on Good Neighbors with Sick Kiddo. Commit soup or lasagna when prudent.

43. Ask for help when it would be a good thing to do so.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am not on the curve for TV series, is the thing. There are old series I know about, and there are new series I know about, but assuming I know about anything TV-related is not a very good approach.

I used to could bike like crazy and read a paper book. Spy novels were the best for this. But now I have to be able to hang on. (Ours is a big, solid recumbent, chosen so that timprov at his shakiest could not tip it over, or even hanging on would not work.) It isn't a sore spot at the moment, though.

I haven't got any of the Benjamin January books on my "books read" list, so that might be worth a go. I'm a little iffy about overpowered protags--it can interfere with my sense of characterization, if it feels like it has crossed the line from "statistically unlikely" to "historically impossible" or "conveeeeenient for the author." But the library almost certainly has them, and free is a good price.

I've never tried Dick Francis, either. Not sure why; my mom liked them (from the library, on the "free is a good price" theory). Which would you start with?

[callunav.livejournal.com]

The thing about Dick Francis novels is that they're all written in the first person and pretty much uniformly, although almost all of them have different protagonists, they're all pretty much the same person - to the point where I once slipped in animated conversation and said something like, "Have you read the one where he plays a small planes pilot--?" as though talking about Cary Grant (or some other actor who played roles more than characters) instead of the characters of a book. The second drawback is that there are certain formulae which can be observed after only a few books, and the third is that it seems extremely likely that most of the good stuff came, uncredited from his wife, Mary Francis. That's possibly libel, but it's really just an opinion.

Given all that...do you like to start at the peak of something? My personal feeling is that I resent reading the best thing an author's ever written first, because after that it's all downhill. I prefer to read a few things in the upper third, browse around some, and hit the best when I can really appreciate it - and to absolutely not save the weakest for last. So, my personal favorite is To The Hilt,* but, because of my preferences, I wouldn't suggest starting with it.

I would suggest starting with...oh, say...The Danger, Decider, Longshot, or Straight. That last (which has nothing in particular to do with heterosexuality) is actually one of the most solid, I think. 10 Lb Penalty is quite good, but somewhat atypical, and wouldn't give you a sense of his stuff. Whatever you do, don't read anything published after Shattered. It's dreck. It's also, coincidentally, what was written after Ms. Francis died.

I feel the need to say, these books are not good. The prose doesn't (in my opinion) suck, and overall what they are is...pleasant and unchallenging and mildly engaging. I find them comforting rereads for exactly that reason.

I do suggest that you try the Hambly. If you're willing to give the initial premise a little slack, I think you might find the combination of setting, good dialogue and characterization, and much better prose than her fantasy gets to be enough to swing you. Or maybe not, but it seems worth trying.

TV--well, you probably have, but just in case - The Avengers, while they still had Diana Rigg? So very absurd and awesome and iconic. The rest...I flat out can't believe you don't already know of and probably have an opinion about anything more modern that immediately comes to mind: Buffy, Farscape, Firefly, Babylon 5, etc.. There's the TV series of Neverwhere. And I personally have a profound and mockable weakness for MacGuyver. You might enjoy his Minnesotan good manners, if you haven't watched it already, though it is in many ways a very silly show.

Oh! Muppet Show DVDs? Might be worth checking out. Someone recently posted a YouTube clip of Rita Moreno singing with Animal on the drums which reminded me that I need to watch it again, because I watched it as a kid and therefore only got about a third of the humor, if that.


* The other thing about Dick Francis is that part of the formula is that with very few exceptions, the character gets attacked/injured/beaten up in almost every book. In fact, generally, there's some violence in the first quarter of the book, and then much more at the climax. To The Hilt is pretty strong on this front. If you would like to read Dick Francis, but you are not willing to read slightly understated descriptions of physical assaults, say so, because there are some decent ones in which there isn't significant physical violence, though they're in the minority.**

** Yes, yes I have read them all. Yes, all of them. Except for the collection of short stories and the autobiography. Yes, there are dozens.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Oh! And speaking of ridiculous, the Amelia Peabody mysteries? I only really love the first one (Crocodile on the Sandbank, but other people tolerate the later ones much better than I do. There we have a historical setting to be taken with a peck of salt, in contrast to the Benjamin January novels with which they have, in any case, nothing in common.

The story is ridiculous, the setting...probably varies by reader...but the voice is flawlessly itself and a hell of a lot of fun.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have not read them, no.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Interesting that you're generally picking from the second half of the Francis oeuvre; me, I'd have recommended starting with some of the earlier ones, when they were still putting the formula together. Fond as I am of the '80s books, I think the '70s ones have more energy. With all the caveats you cite.

And yes, we will say "they", because Dick has indeed acknowledged how very much Mary contributed to the books. I believe it was her decision to keep her name off them, and to stay generally in the background (I believe this because she was my cousin, Mary Brenchley as was, and It Is Known, in that family way that may or may not be reliable).

And yes, the recent ones have been dreck. But, y'know, he's 88. And still missing Mary. And now collaborating with the boy Felix, onto whom - all the evidence would suggest - the family writing talents have not been passed, whichever side they might have come from.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

(ETA: I really liked your using "they" and then, annoyingly, in writing this comment, unthinkingly fell back into long habit and said "he" throughout. I won't go through and change each one, but I'm glad I at least noticed. I'll work hard to make it "they" in future conversations, since I think you're right that it's a better choice.)


Interesting. I only had his word to go on and didn't know how much credibility to put into his saying that it had been her choice not to receive credit. I also felt like the plunge in quality from Shattered to Dead Heat indicated that her role had been more significant than he had seemed to imply in the interview I read. But yes, I suppose that could have been grief and any number of other factors, and everyone has turkeys sometimes. I would be glad to think better of him, since he's been one of my standby authors since I was in my teens, so thank you for the info.

It's true that some of the earlier books have more energy. I might push Enquiry, In the Frame, or Smokescreen, for instance, or Rat Race which I'm not sure is really much good but which I really like anyhow. And there's the first Sid Halley book. But I feel like he really became a better writer - sort of filling the frame, not just sketching the story in - around the time of Banker and The Danger. In fact, I see Reflex as an early and slightly disjointed (but still good) move in this direction, and Twice Shy as a strong attempt to move that way which, I feel, really failed. But it's an interesting failure, if you're looking at a writer's development rather than a book to be read on its own merits.

Also, I have to admit, the gender stereotyping in many of the earlier ones pushes me past me level of tolerance on most days.

But yes, I see your point, and Forfeit and For Kicks are still some of my favorites.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We have a couple of seasons of The Muppet Show that timprov and I have enjoyed watching, but I've never gotten to The Avengers. Of course I know of it, but I've never actually watched. I'm not a Buffy or Firefly fan (tried them, bounced hard), but I have Farscape on my list to try. And I love B5 particularly seasons 3 and 4.

Have you seen the Mythbusters MacGuyver special? It was pretty cute.

[seabream.livejournal.com]

I suspect that someone else may have already mentioned Steven Moffat's mini-series Jekyll, but I don't recall you having mentioned it here, so I am doing so. I very much like most of the dialogue, the pacing, the cinematography and James Nesbitt, though there are perhaps four shortish bits which I see as being clumsy and/or overacted. That said, I think that you've said that you can bounce off of 'clever', and there are a few plot/ethical decision tree points which could drive one batty if one refused to run over them at speed, so this isn't an unreserved recommendation.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, I'd never heard of it before. Unfortunately neither has my library.