Tag: Amsterdam

Fever

And today I am off to the airport to head up to Bethesda for Malice Domestic. How exciting! I’ve not been to Malice in a very long time; I don’t remember what year it was, but it was also my first trip to New York for the Edgars; the two events merged into a single trip. It was quite fun. There were a lot of friends there, and I know we had a lovely after-party on Saturday night post-banquet that was so much fun my sides hurt from laughing. I don’t know that this Malice will live up to the great time I had the first time I went, but I am glad I decided to go, after a little push from Catriona McPherson once the Agatha nominations were announced earlier this year. And while I tend to not make a big deal out of award nominations, I also realized when are you ever going to be nominated for an Agatha again? Never, that’s when so bearing that in mind I decided what the hell, I’ll spend the money–which I will regret later, undoubtedly–and go.

And let’s be honest; I am not traveling for book business again for the rest of the year other than Bouchercon. (note to self: start tracking expenses for the year so you can keep up and be ready at the end of the year–something I say I will do every year and never end up doing) I’ve already checked in for my flight (huzzah!) and have my boarding pass, and it’s a nonstop, coming and going. I used to not mind changing planes when I was younger; now that I’m getting older it’s just one more ordeal as part of traveling. As much as I want to go back to Europe–we’re thinking about Amsterdam and Berlin next year–the thought of all that flying and all that time in airports just exhausts me. Maybe I can get my doctor to prescribe something for me just for the longer overseas flight that will knock me out immediately.

I have to finish packing in a moment. I was tired last night when I got home from work, and had to do stuff–laundry, the dishes–after working on the book and then tried to start gathering what I need to take with me. I have almost everything clothing wise gathered already; I just need my dress shoes and some jeans, my slippers and some sweats…and I also have to gather all the technology I need to take with me–cords, chargers, accoutrement for my laptop–as well as the books I am taking on the trip with me. I really don’t want to get ready or do anything; all I feel like doing is going back to bed, in all honesty–but I am sure once the coffee starts kicking in, I’ll light a fire under my ass and get me going. The weather is supposed to be rainy today; I think I’ve packed the right clothing for the trip. It’s going to be warm during the days and chillier at night; I am not taking a jacket with me so any out of doors ventures after dark will probably wind up being terribly cold for me.

I’ll live, I would imagine.

I do wish I would have had more time to work on getting the house cleaned and organized; I’m going to hate coming back home to a messy house. But I also took off Monday so I can have a day to reorient myself back to my life again, run errands, and so forth. I also have a doctor’s appointment in the afternoon that day–I’ll probably swing by the store and make groceries on the way home from that. And of course, next weekend I will be driving up to Alabama to see my dad–long story, too long for now–so yes, there will be lots of pressure and time issues when it comes to getting this manuscript finished. And I have another one to edit, great.

And on that note, I need to get back to preparing for the trip. Have a great Thursday, Constant Reader, and tomorrow I’ll be checking in from Malice.

Dear Jessie

Thursday and my last day in the office for the week, with no health fair to drop in for tomorrow morning. I can just sleep late and can relax with no worries about getting to the office. Our schedule is full today, for the first time since pre-pandemic, so it’s going to be a day where I probably won’t have time to breathe much.

Paul worked late last night writing a grant, so I did go ahead and watch this week’s Ted Lasso without him, and yes, I will definitely be happy to watch it again. I usually watch each episode twice anyway, and what a delight this episode was. I know there’s some grumbling out there about this season, and I will admit so far this season hasn’t been quite up to the high standard the first two seasons set–it is still quite excellent–but this week’s episode? Chef’s kiss, perfection, no notes. (If you haven’t already seen it, stop reading right now and skip to the next paragraph.) The sequence where Jamie teaches Roy to ride a bike, set to “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head”? (People who’ve never seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid might miss the reference, but it made me smile.) Absolute perfection. It never ceases to astonish me that Jamie Tartt has become one of my absolute favorite characters on the show; his journey from self-absorbed narcissist to a kind, caring and considerate person has been one of the best character arcs I’ve ever seen done on television. Then add in Trent and Colin’s scenes, where Trent comes out to him and tells him he already knows about Colin? That conversation was filmed in front of the Homomonument in Amsterdam that commemorates the queer people killed in the Holocaust or those who were later prosecuted and persecuted for the crime of being themselves, which made it all the more touching and moving. Colin’s whole thing about two separate lives, wanting to just be himself, being able to kiss his fella after a win like the other guys kiss their girls, and live his life and not be a spokesperson? Oh, darling Colin, that’s really what we all want, and it broke my heart just a little as I realized, once again, that no matter how far we’ve come, we still haven’t made it to home base. It was so heartfelt and real, I got tears in my eyes. And then Higgins and Will at the jazz club; Rebecca and her boat man; and of course the vast silliness of the team trying to decide what to do for their free night in Amsterdam, while Ted shrooms? Absolute perfection, from the very first scene to the last. It warmed my soul and when the closing credits rolled, I felt satisfied and happy. I am really going to miss this show when it comes to an end. Thank you to the writers, because that scene with Trent and Colin easily could have become maudlin and melodramatic; instead, it was honest and real and a little heartbreaking. The writers of the episode deserve an Emmy for that scene alone.

I did get some work done on the book last night. I was tired when I got home–I guess I should be getting used to that by now; getting up early means flagging energy later in the day, which does make sense–but I slogged through some of it, anyway. I feel pretty good and lively this morning, though; but we have a full schedule which means I will be exhausted by the end of the day. Paul’s grant gets turned in today, so he should be home this evening, so I’ll get to revisit this magical episode of Ted Lasso before we dive in and get caught up on both Yellowjackets and The Mandalorian. I also managed to put away the clean dishes from the dishwasher and then reloaded it; so that will need to be unloaded tonight and reloaded again; we’ve gone through a lot of dishes this week for some reason. Go figure. Tomorrow is a work-at-home day, which will be lovely. I keep hoping that someday I’ll get caught up on the housework, but it never seems to happen. I really need to focus on revising the manuscript this weekend, too–it’s horrifying how far behind on it I actually am. I really wanted to be lazy this weekend, but that’s clearly not going to be an option. I need to get up every morning, do some cleaning and organizing, and then open up the manuscript and dive in headfirst. It sometimes feels like I’ve been working on this book for-fucking-ever; and I long for the day when it is finished, once and for all. It’s also supposed to rain tomorrow, which should make for a very cozy at home day.

I guess I still feel a little off-balance, more than anything else. I don’t really feel like I’ve been able to find my center in a very long time, and as such, my life has felt off-kilter for about three or four years now. I remember joking when the pandemic first shut down the world in March 2020 that “LSU had a perfect football season and broke the world,” but in a very real sense, that’s kind of what happened–they weren’t connected, simply sequential–and even that Carnival in 2020 felt wrong somehow; people got killed at the parades by falling under floats; the Hard Rock Hotel construction site had collapsed, closing down several streets around and including Canal; and of course, racism and homophobia have been running rampant during these times. It’s been a very tiring period, frankly, and getting older during it hasn’t helped matters much. So many changes, so many adjustments, so much exhaustion. I do sometimes think I am getting too old for this life. Slings and arrows, slings and arrows, slings and arrows.

However, the irony that the United Kingdom and the United States, the two countries that led the world in the war against fascism in the 1940’s, are currently sliding headfirst into fascism needs to be noted regularly. As I say to Paul all the time when the latest insanity breaking news flashing across our phones and TV screens, “I’m glad I’m old and don’t have any children to worry about.”

Anyway, I am going to bring this to a close now. Not quite as fiery as yesterday’s post, of course–I was in quite the mood when I wrote yesterday’s, but it still stands as truth–but that isn’t going to happen every day anyway. I’m so tired of being outraged and aggravated, you know?

And I do sometimes wonder how different my life would be had I not been born into a homophobic society and culture.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines, Will check in with you again tomorrow, Constant Reader. Have a lovely Thursday!

Material Girl

Saturday and all is well within the Lost Apartment. I slept really well last night, and woke up early this morning. I guess I slept in yesterday till eight so today my body was all “what the hell, dude? GET UP”so I did. My coffee is brewing, and I have a lot to do today. I have errands to run later, cleaning to do, and writing to do as well. Paul has his trainer later this morning and will probably go to the gym after; he’s been really good about that since the Festivals are now over. As soon as my toe is fine again, I plan on starting up again. It’s been over a year, and I think I can hang with returning to the gym again, testing out my left biceps, and seeing how long it takes me to get back into the groove. I need to lose some weight–I’ve not weighed in months–but my shorts are getting to the point where they don’t really fit comfortably anymore and same with my jeans; getting back into shape and starting to eat a more healthy diet can’t hurt, either.

I got some good work done on the revision yesterday; my goal is to get it finished this weekend and turned back in so I can get back to work on another revision I have to get done quickly. This one will require a lot more work than the other, so here’s hoping I can get it all done in April. I really do want to get these out of the way so I can go back to the ones I really want to be working on. I went down a Michelangelo wormhole this week, thanks to the stupidity of the David statue controversy, and I really want to write that book at some point–not quite yet, I don’t think; it’s also going to require another trip to Italy. Paul and I are thinking about doing an Amsterdam-Berlin jaunt at some point; I’ve always wanted to see both cities. I’d also like to do Greece and Spain before I die, too; Egypt is probably never going to happen (Mom always wanted to see the pyramids), but that’s also fine. Who knows? I could die in my sleep tonight, too. And of course, I have always wanted to go to France, too. Heavy heaving sigh. Ah, well. As little as I enjoy traveling domestically, not so sure how I will do on another international flight.

We finished watching season three of Outer Banks last night and it was terribly disappointing. I’m not entirely sure what went wrong with this season, but it was nowhere near as fun as the first two. Without giving spoilers, the treasure hunt that has been the basis of the first three seasons ends with the third; with a potential set up for a fourth season that’s a whole new treasure hunt coming at the very end. I’m not sure if the magic will return, but I suspect the writers ran into the problem that so many do; you have to keep going bigger, and eventually it becomes farcical. The writing was particularly bad in this third season; so much that didn’t make sense, and of course they wasted the first half of the season setting up the second half, which then felt incredibly rushed and nonsensical and stupid. It was disappointing, of course–we’d been looking forward to its return, too. Ah, well. Now that A Knock at the Cabin is streaming, we’ll probably just watch movies tonight; The Pale Blue Eye is also something I’d like to watch.

And what a night for LSU yesterday, as the women’s basketball team won to make it to the National Championship game for the first time in school history, where they will be facing Iowa. That game is tomorrow–I also think it’s Iowa’s first time playing for the national title–but I am not sure that I’ll watch. I used to love basketball, but stopped watching when they kept changing the rules to try to make it more exciting. LSU’s Gymnastics team is competing for a shot in the final four in that sport as well; not sure if they’ll make it out of the group of eight, but you never know. GEAUX TIGERS! And the baseball team is kicking ass this year, too. Looks like that athletic director that replaced the idiot one who went along with all the program abuses (I also like to remind people he was the same guy who blew the Duke lacrosse case) knows what he’s doing.

I also want to spend some time with Margot Douaihy’s Scorched Grace this morning (her last name is pronounced like Hawaii–only with a d. Doo-wa-eee), which looks fantastic. I am taking books to the library sale this morning, and want to do some more purging over the weekend, too. I’m starting to feel. like i have my life back again–the gym is the last piece of the puzzle to snap back into place–and I’m kind of enjoying myself again. It’s been quite a ride since Mom’s initial stroke–the grief still sneaks up on me every once in a while–but I also hadn’t realized what a subconscious weight her health had put on my shoulders. I don’t clench up and my stomach doesn’t knot when I get a text message anymore. I guess with all the other weight I was carrying around from other things I didn’t really notice? I think my compartmentalization is probably not as healthy as I would have liked to believe. But you know, you live and you learn. I’m realizing a lot of things now about life (mine in particular) and seeing things I couldn’t see before. I think the past few months, with everything going on with Mom and all the writing I had to do and the readjustments at my day job, was just so much that I just was kind of coasting along, doing what I needed to get by and trying not to get overwhelmed by focusing on one thing at a time. I also think, hard as it was to be a Festival widow this year, that it was probably good for me to have all that time in the evenings to myself. I could have been a lot more productive, but I think that was also part of the grieving process?

I just feel sort of like I’ve been asleep for a long time and have finally woken up.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader; I certainly intend to!

Christmas Alphabet

Thursday and working at home today. Huzzah!

I got some very good work done yesterday on the book, as well as an invitation to write a story for a tribute anthology, which meant it was a very good day. Today I am working at home, and am also very excited because finally, at long last, I have found Johnny Tremain on a streaming service! And while it disturbs me to no end to actually have to pay to rent it, but I’ve been wanting to see it again for a very long time, and I think I can cough up the couple of bucks to pay for it.

I’ve long wondered where my interest in history came from, and when I saw Johnny Tremain available to stream at long last on Amazon Prime the other day, it hit me: when I was in the first grade, at Eli Whitney Elementary School in Chicago, one afternoon we all gathered in the auditorium and they screened the movie for us. It was my first time seeing anything to do with American history–at that point, I was aware of the Civil War (I was from the South and lived in Chicago; of course I did) and who Washington and Lincoln were, but it was watching this movie–about a teenager in Boston during the period leading up to the American Revolution, that triggered my interest. This was when I started looking for books on American history at the library instead of ones about dinosaurs, and I was in the fourth grade when I finally got a copy of the book (I didn’t know it was a book first) from the Scholastic Book Fair, and it remained a favorite of mine for the rest of my life. I’ve always, always, remembered watching that movie and wanted to see it again; but it wasn’t until recently that I realized that it was the trigger that led me to my interest in American history, and from there to history in general. I am sure, since it’s a Disney picture made in the 1950’s, that it’s very rah-rah patriotic–there’s a thirty minute clip from it on Disney Plus that I tried to watch out of context, but it was so…hit you over the head with AMERICANA and FREEDOM and LIBERTY that I couldn’t really watch all of it; I am hoping that the entire movie won’t be such blatant propaganda, but then again, it was during the height of the Red Scare and it probably was intended to indoctrinate (white) children with a pro-America mentality; patriotism to the nth degree.

So, we’ll see how that goes, won’t we?

I got some good work on the book done last night, after which I was very tired, so I climbed into the easy chair (with a sleeping purr-kitty in my lap) and finished reading A Caribbean Mystery. (More on that later.) I also started reading Nightwing: Leaping into the Light (based on a recommendation from my friend Alex, who always knows whereof he speaks) and it reminded me (again) of why Nightwing is and always has been my favorite super-hero ever since I was a teenager (since he evolved from Robin into Nightwing); and it also finally hit me last night precisely why that was the case; it should make for an interesting blog entry when I get to it. I have so much writing to do–and fortunately I am in a creative state of mind these days, which needs to be more laser-focused. I am pretty confident I will get the book finished in time now, as well as everything else I need to do. We need to make a Costco run at some point, and of course there’s always mail to pick up, dishes to do, floors to clean, and laundry. I also have condoms to pack, and so much reading to do. I inevitably always have more than enough books on hand so that I will never run out of things to read–and that’s not even taking into consideration the ebooks loaded into all the reading apps on my iPad. I slept really well last night–a lovely side effect to being exhausted yesterday–and my shoulder is starting to feel better–at least I can move my arm without feeling a stab of pain, but I do want to keep resting it for another few days before attempting the gym again. I think tonight I might also walk around the Garden District taking pictures of Christmas decorations, which is always a lovely thing to do; one of the many things I love about this city is how it dresses itself up for any and every holiday, which makes it always seem so festive here.

I also have all my Christmas shopping done, and I actually did my Christmas cards last night as well. Now if only my house weren’t such a mess, I could claim I was winning at life!

Paul and I have decided that 2022 is going to be a year dedicated to living our best lives, and we’re thinking about taking another jaunt to Europe (pandemic permitting); but Amsterdam and Berlin will be our destinations. I’ve always wanted to visit both–there’s really nowhere in Europe I don’t want to visit, really–and the appeal of the art museums in both, plus Amsterdam is primarily a walking city, is a hard pull to resist. I’m thinking we might even take the occasional weekend getaway to a panhandle beach, why not? I have to do some traveling for my career (pandemic willing), and I am sure Paul will want to come to Minneapolis with me for Bouchercon, since we both lived there (he lived there much longer than I did; I only lasted eight months, and only agreed to live there on the guarantee it would be eight months and then we would move to New Orleans–other than the weather I really liked it there) it makes sense for him to come with. He works so hard, and he really does deserve to have down time where he can just relax and have fun.

Yesterday at the office I was walking out of our cubicle area to a testing room because one of my clients had arrived. I had noticed that the Crescent Care shirt I was wearing fit rather nicely; I have three of them in purple (one for every clinic day) and one of them, for some reason, fits better than the others and looks more flattering when I wear it. I actually had just thought about it again when I stood up from my desk (“hey, my pecs looks HUGE in this shirt”) and as I walked out, our nurse (hired in July) was sitting at the front desk and she said, “You know Greg, I can see the potential that you were fine when you were younger.” Fifty year old me would have been offended (“what? I look old and tired now?”) but sixty year old me accepted it in the spirit it was intended–a compliment–so I just laughed and replied, “thank you, I was.” Like I said, ten years ago I would have let that hurt my feelings; now I saw it as a compliment–if worded a bit bluntly–and it amused me. Even thinking about it, I am smiling about it.

I do wish I hadn’t been so insecure and self-conscious when I was younger. I also wish I could transfer this very mentality to my writing. I don’t get Imposter Syndrome as much as I used to–more maturity of age, perhaps?–but I do worry about whether people will get what i am trying to do when I write. I worry about unintentionally offending people more than I ever used to before (trust me, if I am trying to offend you, it’s pretty fucking clear); and I am trying to be kinder, more aware, and to exercise empathy as my default rather than getting offended myself. I don’t know how well I am succeeding, but I certainly don’t have my Julia Sugarbaker tirades are regularly as I used to.

Interesting.

Maturity, or just tired?

And on that note, tis off to the spice mines with me.