Probably you won’t hear much from me

for the next couple of weeks because I am going to be doing Christmas Traveling. Six nights with one side of the family, seven nights with the other, with intermittent internet. Also, good food, gifts, and fun times.

Merry Christmas!

That was a lot of food

1. Many Food. I just got back from a trip to see friends and family during which time I was either eating out or eating in. Turkey and ham. Mexican and Italian. Two kinds of apple pie.

2. Plus Some Shopping. I also did Black Friday shopping, although no doorbusting. I bought I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett, though it is not yet clear how the protagonist Tiffany Aching, witch, intends to do so. No matter. There are Nac Mac Feegle, so the book is spectacular. If you don’t know who the Nac Mac Feegle are, you need to read The Wee Free Men right away.

3. But Mostly Words. Oh yeah, and I also wrote nearly ten thousand words during the duration of the trip. Despite having been in the car for almost six hours today, I’m exactly on schedule with my word count, at just shy of six thousand words to the end of the novel. That’s the end of Chapter Nine and all of Chapter Ten. Four days left. I plan to finish on the twenty-ninth, but if not, it’ll be the thirtieth. Either way, I will have written a novel that I quite like and for which I have serious and exciting revision plans in December and January.

Christmas Books

Thanks to everyone who has made my Christmas a literary one. Among many excellent gifts, I also received several exciting books, including some by Jane Austen, Terry Pratchett, Connie Willis, Doris Lessing, and Mary Robinette Kowal. I will have lots of promising reads for 2011, and I hope to be more diligent about reviewing them…as soon as I get back to my regular Internet.

Until then, happy early new year!

September 5

I reread Ann Patchett’s Run today.  It was still as beautiful and elegant as I remember, a picture of family that leaps over class, race, religion, and politics.  At the end, everyone is simply together, physically and in memory, and I find that lovely.  I can’t think of anything that would be better to say about the book than that.

Halfway

We’ve halfway moved!  For the next several days we will be ferrying our lives between the old apartment and the new apartment, which is tedious but cannot be avoided.

Somehow we have to buy more bookcases.

But now we have an honest-to-goodness library to put them in.

[I am reading Rereadings, essays by writers who revist books they loved, edited by Anne Fadiman.  It is group therapy for book addicts: clever and insightful, and almost as comforting as rereading old favorites.]

What I Ate Today

• A hamburger, decorated with cheese, lettuce, and ketchup.
• A handful of potato chips.
• Some cantaloupe.
• Two small strips of brisket.
• Two baby corns-on-the-cob.
• A slice of turtle pie.
• A slice of chocolate cream pie.
• A piece of chocolate fudge cake.

And then it poured rain and everyone was sleepy.  Happy Fourth of July!

The end.

On Chess

Alas that I have had little success lately in my games of chess online.  Behold:

• 30-Jan-09.  Lost to tedbru.
• 27-Jan-09.  Lost to annikah.
• 09-Jan-09.  Lost to tedbru.
• 04-Jan-09.  Lost to tedbru.
• 17-Dec-08.  Lost to annikah.
• 10-Dec-08.  Won over tedbru.

The perceptive will realize that I haven’t won a game since the tenth of December (except for the three or four I won during the Christmas holidays, playing in person).  I’m not entirely certain why this is, though I’m quite unhappy about it.  Perhaps I base my moves in part on the body language of my opponents?  Or perhaps the online setting doesn’t feel as real and needn’t be taken as seriously as a physical game?  Or (it can’t be) perhaps I’m getting worse?

Chess is a game of logic and strategy, requiring knowledge of the abilities of your pieces and of the ability of your opponent – there are no cards or dice to sully the game with chance.  If you lose, you’ve been out-thought.  If you win, you’ve really won.  I like the purity of it, the moments when all your careful study and calculation locks into place.  If he goes here, then I’ll take him, and he’ll take me, and I’ll move so, and he’ll have to move so, and then I’ll have him. I know few of the nuances of offense and defense, the balance of power, the foray into enemy territory or the laying of a subtle trap; but the little I know of it, I like well.

‘Queen’s gambit’ really means something to me who has done it before.

It’s not the recent losing I mind especially; though it would be foolish to deny that I had much rather win, I really do love just to play.  But this apparent sign that I’m not playing as well or as earnestly as usual makes me a little disappointed in myself.  Mental self-discipline is always something to strive for: no matter how much you have, there is more to be attained.

Well, then.  I will be thinking harder this time around.

*snickers evilly*