I've finally gotten around to posting Griff's CD drive on eBay. Since I was eBaying anyway, I decided to round up a few things that have been scheduled for disposal, such as the marionette from the 'Antiques Roadshow' entry... and somehow this turned into "standing on the stepstool cleaning off the top shelf of the closet at 11:30 at night, looking for the box of leftover promo t-shirts from a website I used to run". And that turned into scanning, which turned into updating driver software, which turned into a generalized Wrecking Of Stuff, and here it is 6:04 and I'm not even through all the scanning I have to do, much less writing up the particulars. But it'll be a nice lump of stuff to get out of the house if I don't lose my mind before I can get it all listed, and the closet is much improved. Among other efforts at tidying, we've finally decided to face the fact that if we haven't replaced the VCR by this point we are probably not going to manage to do so before they stop making them altogether (the VCR went bellyup during the 2000 election and truthfully we haven't really missed it that much), so I am eBaying a handful of commercial tapes and leaving the pile of off-air-vids downstairs with a 'free to good home' sign on them -- which will be two milk-crates of crap more out of here, which is a Good Thing. Not to mention that with them gone I can finally set up my stereo where it belongs after six years of it sitting in the closet.
Unfortunately, somewhere in the process of jumping through updating hoops so I could scan the tape-boxes, I seem to have flummoxed Netscape 7.02 past retrieval (it hangs the machine upon launch); I've tried chucking out the offending update, trashing prefs, reinstalling Netscape... nothing's worked, so far, so I am forced to fall back on the despised IE5 until I can think of some other angle to attack the problem from short of completely wiping Formerly's drive and starting over (which wouldn't actually be that big a deal at this point as I'm still moving in, so I may yet go that route). Frankly I'm just baffled by this one; having things go wrong is one thing, but that it's not responding to the usual courses of therapy is odd. Something NS doesn't like may have crawled off into an unusual corner to die, is what I'm thinking, so I'll be looking around a bit more yet.
Editing progress: edited through page 22 of 243 yesterday. Very happy with results, and hope to stay on this pace; if I can get a chapter done every day or so I will be on track for having the edit done by the 24th like I want. (There are 13 chapters and a short coda; one chapter down so far and a few pages into chapter 2, I decided to knock off for the night when the Bad Guy first appears on stage so I can tackle that when I have a fresh eye for it.) The enforced break turns out to have had a silver lining of sorts, in that some of the short-term-memory files have been purged and I'm more able to look at the material cold, which is very good for the line-editing part of the process.
Tidbit of interest found whilst disposing of miscellaneous outdated papers:
I like some of the imagery although it could have been tighter. I guess prose is my natural bent.
We do, BTW, have pictures of the cool-whip-ceiling somewhere: it was so godawful that we felt compelled to document it, because we knew people would never believe us. The weird part was that it only covered part of the ceiling -- the rest was a more normal application of stucco. Between that and the six-foot-high Elvis face, it was a trip to remember, for all the wrong reasons. I miss having enough extra cash to travel once in a while, Mum and I are both naturally ramblers (I suspect that her ancestors arrived in the New World rather by accident when they went out for a walk one day and said 'hey, let's see where this ship's going'...). I keep trying to get her to write about her grandfather (this is the railroad man), who among other things ran away to China on a steamer tramp when he was sixteen; I do hope she can get some of that material set down on paper someday, he was evidently quite the character. We actually found his initials carved in the rocks at Garden of the Gods on that trip...
This was also the trip where the then-current car accquired an unflattering and durable nickname: for some time we had been noticing that whenever we parked it, we would almost always come back to find it surrounded by empty spaces; this came to a head in a hotel near the Grand Canyon, when we woke up to find the car sitting isolated in an otherwise-packed parking lot. We decided that the other cars must think ours smelled funny. That poor car got called 'Stinky' for six years...
(The present car is a Ford Focus with very little character or personality. We have made halfhearted attempts to christen it 'Blubberbutt', because its only distinguishing characteristic is a fattish trunk-lid, but this is not sticking very well. Ah, well, it took six months to find Weasel's name, the car may eventually get one...)
Unfortunately, somewhere in the process of jumping through updating hoops so I could scan the tape-boxes, I seem to have flummoxed Netscape 7.02 past retrieval (it hangs the machine upon launch); I've tried chucking out the offending update, trashing prefs, reinstalling Netscape... nothing's worked, so far, so I am forced to fall back on the despised IE5 until I can think of some other angle to attack the problem from short of completely wiping Formerly's drive and starting over (which wouldn't actually be that big a deal at this point as I'm still moving in, so I may yet go that route). Frankly I'm just baffled by this one; having things go wrong is one thing, but that it's not responding to the usual courses of therapy is odd. Something NS doesn't like may have crawled off into an unusual corner to die, is what I'm thinking, so I'll be looking around a bit more yet.
Editing progress: edited through page 22 of 243 yesterday. Very happy with results, and hope to stay on this pace; if I can get a chapter done every day or so I will be on track for having the edit done by the 24th like I want. (There are 13 chapters and a short coda; one chapter down so far and a few pages into chapter 2, I decided to knock off for the night when the Bad Guy first appears on stage so I can tackle that when I have a fresh eye for it.) The enforced break turns out to have had a silver lining of sorts, in that some of the short-term-memory files have been purged and I'm more able to look at the material cold, which is very good for the line-editing part of the process.
Tidbit of interest found whilst disposing of miscellaneous outdated papers:
No-Budget Motel, Route 66
What sin does an East Indian commit
to end up in Shamrock, Texas?
Perhaps it's the Elvis fetishism
(at least, I assume it is He,
since few others merit graven images on black velvet;
it's impressive, if completely unrecognizable).
I've never seen a portrait that large,
and sincerely hope I never do again.
Stubs of ladders betray the lawn in the center of the elderly motor-court:
the pool has been filled in.
(I wonder what it did?)
We sidestep the now-inexplicable fences and retreat to our room.
There's a gas heater in the bathroom,
pink enamel, circa 1930 or so.
Seems like a dangerous way to heat a motel.
The electric heat isn't much preferable.
The tiny violets patterned on the sheets are a strange and
surreal touch as we turn down the bed.
Last night we stayed in Grants,
New Mexico,
in a respectable motel from the heyday of 66
with too much neon and a talkative proprietor
who has relations near our own small town,
two thousand miles away.
Tomorrow, Missouri,
and a Scottish Inn with a bathroom ceiling decorated in
three-inch peaks of petrified cool-whip
or convincing facsimile of same.
(Also run by an East Indian.
This makes four motels out of eight.
It seems to be some sort of conspiracy.)
But tonight,
we sleep in Shamrock,
under the watchful eye of The King,
and dutifully say our prayers:
Please, God, whatever the proprietor did,
lead me not into it.
Good night, Dick.
Good night, Jane.
-- 1996
I like some of the imagery although it could have been tighter. I guess prose is my natural bent.
We do, BTW, have pictures of the cool-whip-ceiling somewhere: it was so godawful that we felt compelled to document it, because we knew people would never believe us. The weird part was that it only covered part of the ceiling -- the rest was a more normal application of stucco. Between that and the six-foot-high Elvis face, it was a trip to remember, for all the wrong reasons. I miss having enough extra cash to travel once in a while, Mum and I are both naturally ramblers (I suspect that her ancestors arrived in the New World rather by accident when they went out for a walk one day and said 'hey, let's see where this ship's going'...). I keep trying to get her to write about her grandfather (this is the railroad man), who among other things ran away to China on a steamer tramp when he was sixteen; I do hope she can get some of that material set down on paper someday, he was evidently quite the character. We actually found his initials carved in the rocks at Garden of the Gods on that trip...
This was also the trip where the then-current car accquired an unflattering and durable nickname: for some time we had been noticing that whenever we parked it, we would almost always come back to find it surrounded by empty spaces; this came to a head in a hotel near the Grand Canyon, when we woke up to find the car sitting isolated in an otherwise-packed parking lot. We decided that the other cars must think ours smelled funny. That poor car got called 'Stinky' for six years...
(The present car is a Ford Focus with very little character or personality. We have made halfhearted attempts to christen it 'Blubberbutt', because its only distinguishing characteristic is a fattish trunk-lid, but this is not sticking very well. Ah, well, it took six months to find Weasel's name, the car may eventually get one...)