Month: January 2004

I had occasion recently to dig out a novella that I wrote my freshman year of college, the origin of which goes back to high school. It was a fantasy story, with magic and lost kingdoms and a pair of beautiful, tough, broken-hearted heroines and a somewhat-sad obsessive bad guy.

Oh, the horror. There’s almost a story there, but it’s a jumbled incoherent mess. Abbreviated scenes & skeletal action. Oddly duplicative characters. Way too much backstory for such a slim little work. (128 pages, double-spaced, 12pt font)

I haven’t finished re-reading it yet, but I’m finding little glimmers that in another time might’ve been worth persuing. That, and I see themes that have popped up in other stories: the (backstory) disaster that strikes Marien, one of the heroines, is remarkably like the disaster that strikes my current protagonist, although with a much smaller scope in the older work. (Not to mention an incidental character with the name of my current protagonist!) And there’s a certain nostalgia, remembering the person I was when I wrote it.

Morning now, and I walk the empty road
away from the city of my birth, now the Immortal City
The gods lived among us, gave us life beyond measure
but we were wastrels, and they have driven us away
Some chose never to walk the road again
some to walk the road forever, even in pain
I walk, but alone, only my song to keep me
from the fear of sorrow and memory of loss

Mom’s 60th birthday was on the fourth, and Elizabeth put together a party on the 11th. I didn’t say anything about it, because my going was a surprise, and you never know who’s reading….

Originally I wasn’t going to go because C had school — no, originally we were going to go and make a trip of it, but school started earlier than the date I had in my head. (Old habits die hard: UPS always started the day after MLK Jr. Day.) But then after I got Mom’s Christmas card, with the invite inside, I felt that I’d spend the rest of my life kicking myself if I didn’t go. So relatively last-minute plane tix and the opportunity to provide a bit of surprise. Elizabeth (and Aunt Susie, with her years of alumni relations experience) organized the whole thing, but Mom approved the guest list, menu, etc.

It was a good experience in all sorts of ways. Mom was pleasantly surprised (not at the party, but the night before). The party went off quite well, and she enjoyed it immensely. Lots of family, family friends, and some of her co-workers, all mingling to one degree or another. Great food. I took some pictures; less than I would’ve liked, but I was socializing. 😉

Also, I did a bit of driving in Mom’s van, which is, to be entirely honest, the first time I have ever driven a car in my hometown. And I got to drive Mom to and from the party, which made me feel ecstatically grownup. (Don’t ask about parallel parking.)

The weather, which everyone here asks about: almost 80 on Sunday, with a clear blue sky. I have pictures of that, too. Very strange, after the snow days of the previous week, and lovely for a little getaway. Went for a long walk Sunday morning in a short-sleeved shirt!

I had some more serious thoughts as well, about how I approach my house and the things that need to be done, and my sense of connection to my little sister, my mother, all the extended family. Called C from the party just to say, “you were right about everything; I was wrong.” Not too much more to say about that right now.

A very full three days: I haven’t even talked about the cousins, Pearl, Aunt Susie’s new house, the smell of the deodor cedars, the renovations to my elementary school, or the lunacy that is airport security.

No, still haven’t got the site back running yet as it was before. Nor have I made a decision to run away to another host. There’s a slight possibility that this weekend I’ll put some work into it, but we’ll see. Despite what I said earlier, I’m thinking about switching everything over to WordPress. The new version (1.0, finally!) looks very well put-together, and after hearing of the widespread commenting system disasters of late, I think perhaps increasing the overall diversity of the blogosphere is a good idea.

Digression: why doesn’t this happen to the LJ’ers? Is it LJ’s general lack of Googlejuice? The occasional existance of a registration requirement? Or something else?

I’m thinking that maybe I won’t even bother trying to restore my site here. They didn’t have a backup, so there’s nothing newer out there than what I’ve got on my home computer. And I don’t really want to learn how to restore a gzip’d file, and go through all the work of restoring everything, when I’m almost certainly going to have to do it all over again in a bit.

The only problem with that is that we’re in a bit of a tight/overextended spot at the moment, so I’m not too sure about the feasibility of moving for at least another week. Thus, in typical fashion, I’m proceeding by doing nothing.

Besides, I still feel like I’m in limbo. We had another snow day today; the farthest I’ve gotten out of the house is down to the mailbox to send a thank-you card to my grandmother. It felt like walking through a slushie: the snow is several inches deep in our yard, but thoroughly wet. Quite nasty. I’m accustomed to snow that appears and disappears over the course of a single day, maybe two; this is disconcerting.

And at the same time, I want to reconsider the structure of my site. It’s evolved over the last couple of years into something…I just don’t know if it’s what I really want, or what makes sense. I also want to put more emphasis on non-blog projects, especially photos; maybe some more code things?

I don’t think I’ll be reinstalling WordPress, either. For all that I’m in favor of diversity in software, it just isn’t as robust as Movable Type: much harder to customize. Although I suppose it was nice, the one time I tried it, to be able to actually understand the source code!

Last night, I was in a blue mood, and C was out for a bit; I almost just went to bed, but then decided instead to go run around in the snow. I’m very glad I did. It was amazing. The snow came up to the middle of my calf (maybe 10 inches) in most of the yard, and I could even feel that I was standing on top of some of the older snow, not all the way on the ground. The raised beds were just rounded humps in the snow.

It had switched to rain, an icy pellet-like rain, but the snow hadn’t gotten that slushy feel to it yet, and was still crisp from a whole day of light, fluffy snowfall. One of the drains for the gutter had an enormous icicle coming out of it, with water dripping off like a stalagtite. The small branches of the aspens, the rose bush, the grapevine in the chainlink fence, and my little bit of metal art in the garden were all covered with ice, a thin clear coating. I guess we were lucky, since that condition reminded me very much of the “great freeze of ’96,” when trees all over the area broke under the strain of ice, and this time, no such problems, at least not here.

I tried making a snow angel, something I’d only ever seen in movies, and was spectacularly unsuccessful. The snow was too crisp and dense for my arms to move easily, and I got quite wet, too. But all in all, I’m glad I took that run-around. The exercise, and the silliness of playing in the snow, raised my spirits.

The snow will be gone in a few days, but this one will be something to remember. (Plus I have lots of pictures!)

Later: since one of the things I lost with the crash was a very long article about my experiences of this last year (anybody got a cached copy?!), it seems only appropriate to post a page of all the site designs I had in 2003. [I’ll put this back eventually, I promise.]

Should be back up and running tomorrow evening, maybe Thursday…and looking for a new host after that, I think. (Yes, penny pinching is being overcome by perpetual annoyance.)

There has been mass crazy snow, which I’ll be writing about, I’m sure. (Pictures, too!) Probably the most snow that I’ve ever seen in a place where I live…although I think it’s starting to turn to freezing rain now, just from the sound on the window and the look of the lawn chairs on the patio.

Tonight I feel like I’m in limbo. I’ve been out of the office for three weeks, with the exception of the two days before Christmas. I know there’s a metric ton of work awaiting me, and probably an equal volume of mail, but it doesn’t seem quite real again yet. Oh, and most of that time I’ve been going to sleep at midnight and getting up around 9 am.

Sigh. Anyway, go find places on the Web that aren’t broken, and I’ll see you in a bit.