Work at home Friday! Man, I was tired yesterday when I got off work–not the fatigue, thank God, just a little burned out. I had dinner with a friend at Acamaya in the Bywater (highly recommend) and then came home to just collapse into my easy chair for the evening with Sparky the Needy (Paul did stay at the office late, so li’l Sparkster was home alone much longer than he usually is, so yes, he has abandonment issues) and catch up on the news. I didn’t work on the book because I was very tired, but I only have to work a few hours this morning and then I get to run a couple of errands before diving headfirst into the book. The house is also a horrible mess…too tired last night to do anything. I probably wasn’t great company at dinner, because I really did hit a wall, and this morning my hips and legs ache. I’m beginning to think I can’t even have a solitary cocktail anymore; I had one with dinner last night and this morning I feel like I’ve been through the wringer. No hangover–it was one drink, after all, a margarita–but the fatigue is here in a very big way. And the house is a mess, mess, mess.
Heavy heaving sigh.
But the coffee and breakfast (yay, caffeine and blood sugar spike!) are starting to kick in and my body is warming/waking up and so is my mind. Huzzah! It also looks like a bright, sunshine day outside; low humidity and sunny and warm, of course.
When Paul got home we watched this week’s South Park, which was hilarious in its ruthless political satire. I’m not sure why or when we stopped watching South Park regularly; probably in the times after Hurricane Katrina, and while I am enjoying watching again–I am not at the point where I would want to go back and watch the YEARS I’ve not seen. I fell asleep in my chair at some point, waking up to go to bed around eleven thirty. I did sleep well last night, so I am not sure where this fatigue this morning is coming from…is it because of the work week, was it the drink I had with dinner, or was it both? I feel it much more this Friday than I did last Friday, so I am going to have to go with the cocktail. I don’t mind giving up alcohol completely; I was already down to the point where I only had alcohol when having dinner with friends, usually even then only white wine as a rule…so it’s not like I’m giving up something I do all the time and enjoy. And let’s face it; I started drinking alcohol when I was sixteen–so yeah, giving it up after almost fifty years of it isn’t really that big of a deal.
There are also a lot of great football games tomorrow, so after I get my writing work done for the day I am going to probably just watch games while cleaning or reading. LSU plays at 2:30, and it’s at Mississippi; I don’t think LSU has won up in Oxford since 2019, but I could be mistaken. I know LSU lost the last time in Oxford for sure–that was that insane game than ended up something like 59-54 or something like that, with Jayden Daniels playing unbelievably well; if we’d only had a defense that year we could have gone all the way, methinks. And of course Alabama-Georgia is tomorrow, too; Auburn is at Texas A&M, and I’ve not really looked at much more than that other than Notre Dame at Arkansas (GO HOGS!). So, today I am going to do data entry, have an on-line team meeting, and then I am going to run my errands before coming home to get the house back under control and write, write, write and edit, edit, edit.
And now, I am going to go get another cup of coffee before getting to work on the laundry and opening my data entry website. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader, and I will be back tomorrow morning. See you then!
I will always love Joe Burrow, and will always be grateful for that 2019 LSU championship team. I am also super-grateful that I got to see them play twice in person.
Yesterday was pleasant and relaxing. The kitchen ceiling didn’t leak from the torrential storms (but the leak over the stairs came back; it’s always something). I watched some football games (the Alabama-Georgia game was very entertaining, if the Texas-Oklahoma State one was a massive snooze-fest) while reading Christmas Presents by Lisa Unger, which I really enjoyed (more on that later), and then capped off the evening with the Florida State game on in the background while I did things–some more reading, some brainstorming, some cleaning and organizing. I didn’t finish watching, and went to bed early. It was a nice, restful, relaxing kind of day, and that was really nice. Being forced to recuperate and rest hasn’t been terrible, to be completely honest; it’s kind of amazing how quickly I have adapted to not being active and just keeping my mind free from stressors and relaxing. The house is a mess, of course, but I am not letting it get to me and am just doing the minimum I can, with the occasional big thing–dishes, laundry, something. I’m not going to say that I’ll be glad to go back to the office, but this has kind of given me kind of a taste of what retirement will look like, and it doesn’t suck. It’s still a long way off, to be sure, but it’s also making me rethink paid time off. Is it better to do dribs and drabs with long weekends, or is it better to save the time and take an entire week away? I kind of liked this long period of not going to work.
It’s also really easy to lose track of days and dates, too. I often find myself wondering what day it is, or what the date is, and have to check. I also slept deeply and well again, staying in bed late this morning, which is also fine.
Today I want to get some writing done. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this new book, and it’s really time for me to buckle down, put my ass in the chair, and really start writing this thing. I also want to get cleaned up today–I really need to shave my head; I’ve not done that since before the surgery and it’s getting frightfully long for me (does anyone else remember when the length of a man’s hair was something we were judged about? Like men with long hair was such a huge issue, one that would define our culture and society) and I also need to shave my face. I was a little worn down yesterday, too–it’s hard to remember sometimes that my body needs rest still because it’s not finished healing yet–and for someone who is pretty active (or restless, anyway), getting tired doing things I normally do is bothersome. But I have another week and a day before I have to get up to an alarm and head back into the office, which is going to be the real test: can I make it through a shift in the clinic? The jury is still out.
It’ll be interesting to see what the college football selection committee will do when it comes to picking the final four for the play-offs this year. Who will be included? We have three undefeated teams, two one-loss conference champions, and lots of noise. It will be weird to have no SEC representation in the last play-off series ever, given how many times the SEC has won it–and not just with the same team, either. This century has seen national titles for Auburn, Florida (two), Georgia (two), LSU (three), and Alabama (six). Five teams from the same conference, four of them winning more than one. (This is why I laugh when people talk about “SEC bias”–well, how many national titles has your conference won since 2000 and with how many different teams? The most is two–the Big 12 with Texas and Oklahoma, the ACC with Florida State, and Clemson1, and the Big 10 with just Ohio State. There’s a reason for the bias; it’s called success on the field.) But I can see how they would pass over Alabama for Texas; Texas beat Alabama in Tuscaloosa. On the other hand, the last four titles in a row were won by the SEC (LSU, Alabama, and Georgia twice), and the Big 12 hasn’t won a title since Oklahoma back in 2002. Texas is kind of SEC-Lite, though; beating the SEC champion this year and coming into the conference next year. I saw LSU’s schedule next year and it’s brutal; USC, UCLA, and Oklahoma on top of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas A&M, and Arkansas, with Vanderbilt thrown in on top as lagniappe. No Auburn or Mississippi State, but at least there are two easy FCS schools on the schedule. Talk about a brutal schedule–and we’ll have a new quarterback. Looks like another rollercoaster of a season. This last season’s defense was terrible, but still–LSU only lost to Florida State (undefeated, ACC champ), Alabama (one loss to another one loss conference champion AND SEC champ) and Mississippi (two losses, to Alabama and Georgia); which, given how shitty the defense was, is kind of impressive. So, not a bad season, really, if a bit disappointing. But I didn’t believe the pre-season hype, either; I thought LSU was overrated simply for beating Alabama last year, and was correct. And now the season is effectively over; I have idle curiosity about the play-offs and will of course watch whichever bowl LSU winds up in, whether it’s a New Year’s 6 game or not (probably not; there are a lot of good two loss teams–Missouri and Mississippi–and they need to find a high profile bowl for Georgia and possibly Alabama, too). But it was a fun season, even if a bit disappointing for LSU fans, but I’ll take 9-3 over Orgeron’s last two years as head coach any day of the week. I am not completely sold on Brian Kelly yet, either, but he’s better for the program than Orgeron was, and he’s not insane like Les Miles, either. (Kelly, at least, knows how to work the time clock, which Miles never quite had a grasp on.)
I’m hoping the Saints draft Jayden Daniels, to be honest. This was a truly dismal Saints season–and we won’t even talk about the disappointing Tulane loss yesterday, or that it looks like they are going to lose their coach to a higher profile program, either.
I think my next read is going to be David Valdes’ Finding My Elf, which is a holiday-themed young adult romantic comedy. I met David earlier this year (he’s also a friend of my friend Kelly) on the y/a panel at Saints & Sinners, where I didn’t really belong (my feelings about being considered a y/a writer are a subject for a different time; but the short version is I write books about teenagers now and then, and because the characters are teenagers they’re classified as y/a, but I don’t write them any differently than I write for adults. Maybe I am making too big of a distinction, and this doesn’t from any sense or mentality that y/a is somehow lesser, because it’s not–there’s some absolutely terrific y/a and middle-grade work out there. I leave categorizing my work to the industry because trying to make sense of it is too much for me and I don’t want or need my head to explode.) Anyway, David was absolutely marvelous; his book You Spin Me Round was already in my TBR pile, but I can’t pass up reading a Christmas y/a romcom during Christmas season, can I? I’m also considering writing a romance myself–a gay one, of course–and already have the set-up and the opening scene written up in my head. Maybe I’ll be able to find the time to write it this next year; stranger things have happened.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Selection Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back with some blatant self-promotion later.
Miami also won a title in 2001, but they were not in the ACC at the time. ↩︎
Yesterday was one of those lovely autumn days in New Orleans that always reminds me how lucky those of us who get to live here actually are. Oh, what a gorgeous day it was, with the temperature in the mid-seventies, the sun shining and the sky that brilliant sapphire shade of blue. As I am sure you can imagine, Halloween is extremely popular in New Orleans, and I love seeing the way people go all out in decorating the exteriors of their homes for the holiday. So, driving uptown in the early afternoon hours of such a glorious day, and seeing the lovely houses all festooned in their orange and black spectral finery was quite relaxing and joyous. The shade from the live oaks also seems somewhat spooky in October–not sure why that is, it just is.
I definitely need to take my phone and go for a lengthy walk, taking pictures.
I proofed the story yesterday–a start on getting things done–and then turned on the television for background noise…and what a crazy day for football in the SEC. Auburn was upset by South Carolina; Texas A&M took out Mississippi State (whose only win is, natch, LSU); Kentucky embarrassed Tennessee in Knoxville, Arkansas somehow took out Ole Miss; and then in the big game of the day, Alabama took out Georgia decisively for the third time in four years after trailing at half-time. I suspect Alabama is going to run the table this year and be the SEC’s best chance for the national title yet again, which means things are sort of back to normal–although the usual suspects don’t seem to be in a position to challenge. Alabama and Georgia will probably play again the conference championship game–with Florida holding an outside chance at winning the East, but would also have to run the table–it’s possible, as I doubt LSU is going to take Florida down this year. The Saints are playing today at noon, but I’m not sure I am going to watch that or not. (Again, probably have it on as background noise, while I reread Bury Me in Shadows.)
Proofing my story yesterday allowed me to reread it again as well, and much as I hate to say things like this about my own work, “Night Follows Night” is actually a good story, and I did a good job on it. I also realized that, in some ways, the in-progress story “The Flagellants” could easily be tweaked into a sequel to it; which I may try to do, just to see…but by making it a sequel, I don’t know what the crime part of the story could turn out to be. So maybe, maybe not. We’ll have to see how it all turns out, I suppose.
I have two books on hold currently at the library–both of which are research for Chlorine–and I am a bit surprised they didn’t email me to let me know they were waiting for me. I can pick them up on Thursday, and will need to remember to call and make an appointment with them so I can do so. I also need to order prescription refills for Thursday as well, so I can get it all over and done with in one fell swoop. (That might be, in fact, a good day to take pictures of the skeleton house in Uptown–they always do such a great job of decorating for Halloween.)
It’s going to be weird not having Gay Halloween this year, just as it was weird there was no Southern Decadence for the first time in decades. It’s not like I’ve attended or participated in years–or for that matter, even go out on Halloween weekend anymore–but the absence still bothers me somewhat. I also have to go up to Kentucky this year–probably for Thanksgiving–which means I’ll be able to get a lot of reading done and maybe even get some writing done as well. The last time I went up there I checked out audiobooks from the library; I’ll have to do the same again this time. Perhaps Stephen King’s The Institute, or another one of his works that I’ve not had the chance to read yet? I am not so sure that it’s perhaps the wisest thing to do to travel–Mom and Dad are getting up there, and if I am an asymptomatic carrier…yeah, so I don’t know. Maybe I should put it off until after this is all over, I don’t know.
Perhaps indeed.
I need to get back to reading for pleasure and education again, seriously. I am still reading Gore Vidal’s Lincoln, which is well-written but rather dense–it’s not like it’s hard to put it down and walk away from it–and I want to dive back onto gobbling up short stories again. I have Sara Paretsky’s short story collection glaring at me from the stack of collections and anthologies I set aside for the Short Story Project, for example, and of course the latest Lawrence Block anthology is right there next to it.
Yesterday I felt a little off–gastronomically speaking; mostly some terrible heartburn that thankfully seems to have gone away overnight while I slept, which of course had me more than a little concerned. I’ve not had that in a while–of course, I forgot to take my pills both Friday and yesterday, but even after taking them for yesterday the heartburn remained, which was disconcerting and alarming. Needless to say, I am quite delighted this morning that it’s gone away–and I should go take my pills right now, shouldn’t I, while I’m thinking about it and before I forget?
Okay, I am back now. The sun is in my eyes as it rises in the east over the West Bank–is it any wonder we are so off here in New Orleans?–but it’ll just be annoying and right in my eyes for a couple of minutes. Once I finish this, I think I am going to draft some emails to be sent tomorrow morning, and then adjourn to my easy chair with some short stories to read, as well as some of my own work to look over, reread, and correct. When the Saints game starts I’ll probably launch into the reread of Bury Me in Shadows–it’s been so long since I’ve worked on it, and so much is always going on that it’s hard for me to remember anything and everything, which is just plain wrong.
Sigh. I really miss my memory.
And on that note, it’s time to head back into the spice mines. One more cup of coffee, a Sara Paretsky short story, and then a shower to get my day going. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader.
Queer and Loathing in America 