Tag: Costco

That’s the Way (I Like It)

Friday and we have made it to the end of the week, Constant Reader!

I am most pleased, and am even more pleased that I woke up before my alarm this morning. This, as you can imagine, doesn’t happen as often as I would like, and I was not only awake but functional, so I went ahead and got up. The kitchen is a mess this morning, primarily because I made dinner last night after cleaning when I got home yesterday afternoon, so I should probably do something about that before I leave for my half-day this morning. I am hoping to run to Costco after work today, and then come home to my usual Friday chores–primarily washing the bed linens–and perhaps getting back on track with writing. I really need to get back into the habit of writing some fiction every day. I do have other errands to run this weekend–making groceries being the most important of those–and I absolutely have to clean the Lost Apartment. I’ve not done the floors in forever, and the kitchen windows are filthy, absolutely filthy.

I also would love to finish reading Jamie Mason’s quite marvelous The Hidden Things this weekend. This is Jamie’s third novel; her first, Three Graves Full, was quite a stunning and brilliant debut, but I’ve been holding on to her second until she’d published another so I would always have one of her books that I’ve not read on deck. It really is quite odd that I do this; but I never want to run out of authors I enjoy’s books. (I’m still holding back on some Mary Stewarts, Daphne du Mauriers, and Charlotte Armstrongs)

I’ve also had a strong breakthrough on my short story “And the Walls Came Down,” which I reread this week, and think I can fashion with another revision into something quite marvelous. So, that’s also on the agenda for the weekend–and I’ve decided that each week I am picking one of my short stories for a reread and a final revise. At one story per week, it’s going to probably take me the rest of the  year to get them all done–I had no idea precisely how many short stories I have that are in some sort of progress–but at some point I am also going to have to finish the ones I’ve started and never finished the initial draft for–I also need to go through my journals and start digging out the short story ideas I’ve jotted down over the last year, because there were quite a few of those as well.

Paul and I watched the first season–there were only seven episodes–of a Netflix show called Bonding–which was actually quite funny at times and rather clever. The premise of the show is two former close friends from high school run into each other as adults; she is now a dominatrix and he’s an aspiring stand-up comedian who has too much stage fright to ever actually get up and do his act. He winds up working as her assistant, and they begin to bond and learn from each other while negotiating their own hang-ups and possible new relationships. I’m not entirely certain this is an accurate depiction of the BDSM community, or even of what a dom is like; but it was clever and cute and funny; and up till the last episode, we greatly enjoyed it. (The last episode got kind of weird.)

I also got some new books in the mail yesterday: They All Fall Down by Rachel Howzell Hall; Miracle Creek by Angie Kim; A Darker Shade of Magic by V. E. Schwab; and Upon a Burning Throne by Ashok Banker. I’ve bumped Rachel’s book to the “on-deck” position on my TBR pile; so I am hopeful I can get Jamie’s book finished this weekend so I can dig into Rachel’s.

I am also bound and determined to get caught up on the WIP this weekend, so I can start writing new chapters next week.

Or…I might just be a slug and lay around and not do a goddamned thing all weekend. It happens.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Friday, everyone.

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You May Be Right

So, the fact that I am a Luddite is a well-established fact by this point in time, so new technology and so forth always throws me for a loop. The most recent example of this for me is Spotify. That Bitch Ford ™ convinced me to give it a try, and I keep getting sucked into making playlists and remembering oh yes, I loved this album or Oh! Oh! I wonder if this artist is on here and yes, time suck. Big time.

And Apple Music is probably very similar. And I already have iTunes. But I have a thirty-day free premium Spotify account, so I have thirty days to decide if I want to abandon this or go to Apple Music.

I managed to revise another chapter yesterday. Just the one, dear? is an actual valid question; it’s true. But I went and did errands, then I had to make room for things and throw things away, and there was laundry to get done. I am probably going to run to Costco today to get it out of the way–Paul had something delivered to the mail service yesterday, and if I have the leave the house, might as well run another errand and get it out of the way, right?

It rained a bit last night during the Druids parade, but remembering the mantra (marathon not a sprint) kept me inside and off the route until Nyx arrived. By then the rain was gone and there was a surprisingly large crowd out there on the route. I didn’t stay out there for the entire parade; there were still another six or so floats left when we called it a night, but I’d already  gotten a purse (thanks, Beth!) and a plethora of beads, among other things, and so it wasn’t a big deal to end early. There are three parades tonight (!): Babylon, Chaos and Muses. Muses is, of course, one of the more popular parades, so it will be mob-like out there tonight. Patricia Clarkson is the Muse tonight; the first woman to be Muse twice, and she gets to ride in the big shoe. I’ll try to take some pictures–I always try–but there are no guarantees. It’s also supposed to rain around five, but it’s also not supposed to last long.

I also need to do some cooking today; bacon and chicken breasts and so forth, so there’s readily available food for us to eat over the weekend; today is a good day for that. I woke up early this morning, and while it’s taken me a little while to get going, I am feeling energized and ready to get some shit done. I’ll probably start revising Scotty when I post this, and then head to Costco and get the mail on the way back.

Got to start checking things off that to-do list; today is a great day to get started on that.

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

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This Is It

I slept rather late this morning, did I not? It was a very good night’s sleep and I feel terrifically rested now. Which is a good thing, as I am braving the wilds of Costco later this morning (AIEEEE!). The objective is to get as many errands as possible done today, and to remain focused on my goals. The house is pretty well cleaned and organized; I just need to do the floors today and it’ll be good to go. The weather is also supposed to be peculiar today; from a high of seventy around noon to be followed by a nasty storm with high winds, after which the temperature is going to take a severe forty degree drop. #madness

You have to love the bipolar weather of January in New Orleans.

I watched another episode of Titans last night, the one in which we meet the Doom Patrol, and I have to say the show is really well done. The pacing is excellent; the hour (or forty-two minutes, or however long it is) flies past and the credits roll before you know it. The cast is young and attractive, and has the charisma or acting skills or a combination of the two to pull off their roles convincingly. As I said the other day, introducing a show about a team is never easy, as you have so many characters with back story that has to be told and/or explained. It’s incredibly easy to get bogged down in back story, but the writing of the show integrates the character back stories into the current story seamlessly. I am very impressed. I also watched another episode of Riverdale, and apparently missed one along the way somehow–or just didn’t remember it, but how would I not remember the appearance of Gina Gershon?–but it was fine. The show is kind of a train wreck, to be honest, and yet I find myself being pulled back to it like a moth to a flame.

I also read a bit more of Pet Sematary last night; and now that the reader knows where the story is going–yes, Louis is crazed with grief and anger, not in his right mind, surely he isn’t going to dig up Gage and take him to the Micmac Burying Ground, is he? Oh yes he certainly is!–it seems as though the train wreck of the Creed family tragedy King is writing is well on its way down the tracks. The book’s pacing also picks up dramatically along the way; the more I reread the more I am convinced that the book is actually an under-appreciated masterpiece (at least one that I didn’t fully appreciate), and I am glad I am rereading it. As much as the book disturbs me, I cannot imagine what it would be like to read as a parent. I hope to finish reading it today, and move on to the first book of the Diversity Project.

I also spent some time reorganizing and cleaning out some of my kitchen cupboards yesterday; throwing away things that have been stored in there uselessly for years; there was even a bottle of salad dressing with a 2017 sell-by date on it, and now there’s more room in the cupboards. I also need to go through the cupboards with the dishes and so forth; I’ve just been cramming stuff in there when taking them out of the dishwasher and not really trying to organize the mess very much. I am also going to do another round of purging with the book cases.

A very ambitious plan for the first day of this three-day weekend, is it not?

I also need to run by Office Depot at some point this weekend, too.

And on that note, it’s time for me to dive back into the spice mines. Keep your fingers crossed for me, Constant Reader, that I’ll have the energy and motivation to get everything done that I need to get done today.

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Babe

It’s late Friday afternoon, and I am home already. The car maintenance stuff went extremely well, and I did some grocery shopping on the West Bank since I was already over there–and who knew there’s now a Five Guys on Manhattan Boulevard? I was torn between my usual Sonic and going to Five Guys; Five Guys won out in the end. I did console myself with the thought you can always come over here more often to shop, you know. And the Sonic is not going anywhere.

And I am now on my three-day weekend. Tomorrow I am off to Costco–woo-hoo!–and Sunday of course is the Saints NFC championship game. The city is, of course, awash in excitement today; everyone wearing the colors or a jersey, flags waving from the tops of cars, etc. I am going to try to get to Costco relatively early, come home, and then relaunch my workout program before coming home to do some cleaning and writing (I am also cleaning tonight). Sunday I pretty much assume I’ll be completely useless; I’ll be drained and exhausted one way or the other after the game…and then there’s Monday. Paul will be at work, and so I can go to the gym and spend the rest of the day writing. Maybe I can even get the Scotty finished once and for all on Monday? No, not likely; it’ll probably happen the following weekend, after which I can spend the rest of February finishing the first draft of the WIP before the madness of Carnival.

Christ, Carnival is late this year but it’s still just around the corner. #madness.

I also am going to launch myself back into the Short Story Project by reading and talking about all the stories in Murder-a-Go-Go’s, the fabulous anthology of crime stories inspired by the music of the Go-Go’s edited by the amazing Holly West. I also have my own collection coming out around the same time, Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories, so I will also be talking about those stories as well. And if I can find the time, I am hoping to work on some of the short stories I’ve written and are just in some kind of limbo, which is also kind of exciting. I am also excited to get back to watching Titans, and of course the Australian Open is also going on…and Schitt’s Creek is back. Huzzah! (So is Riverdale.)

And now tis back to the spice mines. Just thought I’d check in with you Constant Reader. I also hope you’re having a three-day weekend as well.

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Bennie and the Jets

What a lovely weekend this past one was, seriously; the Abomination in College Station aside, and even that was more of a seriously? than anything else.

I got back to New Orleans around seven pm on Friday night; there’s a time zone change going and coming, but it always seems like because of that I make better time coming home than going. It’s a mental thing, obviously; same amount of time, same amount of miles (slightly less than 1500 round trip), and yet…it seems to go so much faster. I always think–and I know this makes literally no sense–that since I am driving south and going from a higher elevation to a lower one, that it’s all downhill.

I said it didn’t make sense.

I also somehow managed to wrestle with some ideas and projects-in-progress while I was gone; whether those solutions to the problems will work (or if the problem is a real problem in the first place) remains to be seen.

But Saturday morning I had coffee with my friend Pat, preparatory to my Costco run; it was actually a most productive meeting. She helped me with some great info for a short story I am writing, and she also gave me some tips on how to do my New Orleans research (and also thought Monsters of New Orleans was a great idea). The Costco trip wasn’t as bad as one might have thought the Saturday after Thanksgiving; I assume everyone burned out on shopping on Black Friday. But Costco is never an ordeal, even when it’s crowded; which really says a lot about their management philosophy and how well they treat their employees. Everyone is always so nice and friendly and polite; compare that to the staff at, let’s just say Wal-mart, and you see what I mean.

This actually set the mood for a rather lovely weekend. I relaxed and recovered from the trip, while getting caught up on things around the house–grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry, etc. It was quite lovely. I actually finished reading End of Watch during the Abomination in College Station, and one benefit of spending time at my mother’s house? I really think my house needs a deep thorough cleaning and reorganization; i.e. my kitchen could be more efficiently set up. I also need to clean out kitchen and bathroom drawers, and as for my TBR pile–well, if I have had it for more than two years and haven’t read it, time to donate it. And if, later, I decide I want to read it…well, I guess I can buy it again if I want to read it that badly. (I’m talking big, but I know once I start going through the books I am my book-hoarding tendencies are going to re-emerge.)

I know myself all too well.

I also read  “The Book of the Lion” by Thomas Perry,  from Bibliomysteries Volume Two, edited by Otto Penzler:

Dominic Hallkyn played back the voicemail on his telephone while he took off his sport coat and hung it up to dry in the laundry room. The smell of rain on tweed was one that he knew some people might say was his smell, the smell of an English professor. The coats–tweed or finer-spun wool in the winter and seersucker or summer-weight fabrics in the late spring or early fall–were his work uniform, no different from a mechanic’s coveralls. He wore them to repel the skepticism of the young.

The first couple of calls were routine: a girl in his undergraduate medieval lit course has been sick, so could she please hand in her paper tomorrow? Of course. He had plenty of others to deaden his soul until that one arrived. Meg Stanley, the Department Chair, wanted him to serve on a Ph.D. oral exam committee. Unfortunately, he would. Reading the frantically scribbled preliminary exam and then asking probing questions in the oral would be torment to him and the student, both of them joined in a ritual of distaste and humiliation, all of it designed to punish them both for their love of literature, but it was part of his job.

Thomas Perry is another luminary of the crime fiction world whose work I’ve neither tasted nor sampled until now. One of the lovely things about anthologies, such as this, is that you can get a taste of an author’s work, a feel for their writing style, without the commitment to reading an actual full-length novel, and you can then decide whether you wish to add the author to your must-read list. “The Book of the Lion,” a tale of academic/rare book intrigue, certainly got Perry added to my list of authors to explore. In this story, our stuffy professor Hallkyn receives a mysterious phone call from a man who claims to have discovered a rare copy of an even rarer work; Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Book of the Lion,” a romantic history of Richard Couer-de-Lion that has been lost to the ages. The value of such a book, of course, would be in the eight figures at the very least; it’s worth to literary scholarship perhaps even higher. It’s a sort of historical treasure hunt story–this reminds me of William Martin’s Harvard Yard, which involved the search for Love’s Labour’s Found, a long-lost Shakespearean play–and also had several delightful twists.

So, yes, Mr. Perry has been added to my list.

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The Streak

Yesterday was, for the most part, a great day (do NOT mention the travesty/joke that was the LSU game last night; that entire officiating crew, including the booth, should be fired with extreme prejudice. I am not one to blame officiating for losses, but LSU won the game three times and they kept giving A&M just one more chance. Fuck. Off. It’s very hard to not begin–after so much of this the entire season, and not just against LSU–as corruption from the SEC office on down. Greg Sankey needs to resign. NOW.). I got up early and started trying to play catch-up (I was unplugged for most of the week) and then had coffee with my friend Pat, who is a noted historian and a terrific person. I was picking her brains about New Orleans research and she also had an experience I wanted to know about as background for a short story I am writing (“Please Die Soon,” if you must know), and we wound up spending almost three hours chatting, and she also gave me some more ideas for Monsters of New Orleans, which was a lot of fun. We met at the PJ’s on Maple Street in a part of Uptown I’m not sure what to call (Uptown? University? Riverbend?) but it was quite nice to see a part of New Orleans I rarely go to–and discover things–like there’s a lovely breakfast place next door to PJ’s, along with a Christian Science Reading Room (who knew?) and a Starbucks across the street (“Caffeine Alley,” I joked). So after we were finished, I went over to the Starbucks and got some espresso beans for the house, and an insulated travel mug. From there it was about a ten minute drive to Costco, and then back home. I finished reading End of Watch, did the laundry, cleaned and organized the kitchen, and started organizing and doing things in the living room while football games played in the background.

One thing about staying with my family–my mother makes Joan Crawford look like a filthy hoarding slob–was all I can see is how dirty the Lost Apartment is, and how irrationally and inefficiently organized it is. So, yeah…I’m working on that, and probably will today as well.

I need to start digging through all the emails that piled up while I was gone, and I also need to pay bills and update my checkbook. Heavy sigh. But I’ve slept well since coming home, which is lovely, and today I have to make a grocery run, which I will do later this morning.

One thing about driving across country is one is reminded precisely how beautiful this country actually is, or how incredibly vast. New Orleans to Kentucky is over seven hundred miles and takes about twelve hours to drive; and that’s not even close to being halfway across the country. As I drive through Mississippi, Alabama, a small piece of northwest Georgia and through Tennessee–particularly Tennessee–I cannot help but marvel at how beautiful it is; the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee between Chattanooga and Knoxville in particular at this time of year as the leaves are turning. Every time I drive through there I wish I had more time, so I could stop at Scenic Lookout points and take photographs so I can share the amazing beauty with you, Constant Reader.

On the other hand, one cannot help but notice the Confederate flags mounted on the front license plate frames of pick-up trucks and BMW’s and Hondas. This always saddens me when I see it; this clinging to a horrible past and ignoring what that flag actually means to most Americans. Its use, to me, is basically saying fuck you, slavery was a good thing to everyone who sees it, and rather defiantly, at that. As I drove home on Friday, after seeing a proliferation of these on the highway between Fort Payne and Birmingham, an idea for an essay came to me (“Song of the South”) about the “heritage not hate” mentality, and developed that thought even further after talking to Paul about the trip when I got home.

I have so much to write, and so very little time to do it in. Heavy sigh. Sometimes it feels to me that time is nothing more than sand held in my cupped hand on a windy morning at the beach; the grains slipping out of the palm and through the fingers as I desperately try to cling to it.

Heavy sigh. I also want to write up A Game of Thrones and End of Watch.

But I did read short stories while I was gone, and next up is “Mystery, Inc.” by Joyce Carol Oates, from Bibliomysteries Volume Two, edited by Otto Penzler.

I am very excited! For at last, after several false starts, I have chosen the perfect setting for my bibliomystery.

It is Mystery, Inc., a beautiful old bookstore in Seabrook, New Hampshire, a town of less than two thousand year-round residents overlooking the Atlantic Ocean between New Castle and Portsmouth.

For those of you who have never visited this legendary bookstore, one of the gems of New England, it is located in the historic High Street district of Seabrook, above the harbor, in a block of elegantly renovated brownstones originally built in 1888. Here are the offices of an architect, an attorney-at-law, a dental surgeon; here are shops and boutiques–leather goods, handcrafted silver jewelry, the Tartan Shop, Ralph Lauren, Esquire Bootery. At 19 High Street a weathered old sign in black and gilt creaks in the wind above the sidewalk:

MYSTERY, INC. BOOKSELLERS

NEW & ANTIQUARIAN BOOKS

MAPS, GLOBES, ART

SINCE 1912

As you can clearly see, Constant Reader, Mr. Penzler only recruits the upper echelon of crime writers for his Bibliomysteries, and few literary names have as much luster as the highly-acclaimed Joyce Carol Oates. Again, Ms. Oates is an enormously prolific and gifted writer; I’ve barely scratched the surface of the Oates canon but her work often leaves me awestruck and inspired and more than a little humbled.

“Mystery Inc.” is another one of her toothsome tales of darkness; the main character in this story owns several mystery bookstores in New England and has decided that this lovely bookstore in a small town on the New Hampshire coast is the next one he wants to acquire. The loving descriptions of the store, the artwork and rare books for sale make it sound, in Oates’ delightful prose, like a place I’d certainly wish to visit and somewhere you would have to pry me out of with a crowbar. The main character covets the store, and rarely have I ever read such a story of covetousness I could identify with so completely. But the main character not only wants the store, but has a dark plan for acquiring it. And, as always in an Oates story, things in the store might not be what they seem on their surface; the store has a dark, ugly history which the present owner shares…terrific story, absolutely top tier.

And now, back to the spice mines.

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