Tag: LSU football

Sign o’ the Times

Monday morning rolls around yet again, and a new week dawns. I slept pretty decently again last night, which is unusual. The alarm went off this morning and I hit snooze, despite being awake, because the bed was so comfortable. Sigh.

The Saints won again yesterday, and with the season LSU is also having, it’s been a pretty good football season for Louisiana football fans thus far. LSU undefeated, the Saints with a single loss? The big test for LSU is the Alabama game a week from Saturday–not sure when the Saints will be tested; but the day after the LSU-Alabama game the Saints are playing the hated Atlanta Falcons. So, yeah, that’s kind of a big weekend for both teams, and both have a bye this weekend–so no football in the Lost Apartment this weekend, alas.

We watched the new Meryl Streep movie on Netflix last night, The Laundromat, and weren’t terribly impressed with it. The story rather lacked cohesion, and there were times when I was frankly bored with it. I guess the idea was to expose and talk about the ways companies and the wealthy avoid paying taxes by setting up off-shore trusts and holding companies. but the examples given with how that affects people wasn’t particularly affecting? It was disappointing. Streep was good, but just not given enough to really work with.

I read some more into Certain Dark Things yesterday, which I am also really enjoying now that I’m getting deeper into the story. It’s very well written, and I like the structure of the narrative, as well as the entire mythology of vampires in the new world that Silvia Moreno-Garcia is creating here. It’s pretty good, and I do highly recommend it. I am hoping to get finished reading it sometime this week. I want to read one more horror novel before the end of the month and Halloween; although I’m not certain Moreno-Garcia’s novel really fits into the horror genre. The book isn’t scary, but it is about paranormal creatures, and an entire world and society of them. Similarly to Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novels, she imagines a world where vampires are “out of the coffin,” and people know they exist. The fallout from this has resulted in Mexico City establishing itself not only as an independent city-state, but also as a vampire-free zone. I also like the characters she’s exploring–Atl, the modern-day female vampire, descendant of a line of vampires going back to the Aztecs, and Ana Aguirre, a female police detective in the city investigating a murder obviously committed by a vampire. So in some ways Certain Dark Things can also be considered a crime novel, which is very cool.

I love when the two genres overlap, to be quite honest.

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

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Cars

Thursday already? This new year sure is zipping by–oh, wait. 

I cannot believe it’s almost Twelfth Night and another Carnival season–and a rather long one, at that–is almost upon us. YIKES.

I managed to get another three thousand or so words written over the last two days, so I am calling that a win. I usually try to get three thousand a day, and see anything less than that as a failure. But averaging fifteen hundred a day isn’t bad, really, and if I only do fifteen hundred words a day this first draft will be finished by the end of January, as hoped and planned. So, I am looking at it as a positive, and putting it in the win column.

Welcome to Greg’s Bizarro World, where writing three thousand words a day is considered to be the standard by which all writing days are measured; where any day where the word count falls below that is considered a disappointment; where standard also means minimum, so even a standard day can be considered a disappointment and a crushing failure.

I also started editing the Scotty last night. It’s not as bad as I thought, but the manuscript is pretty sloppy. If I commit, I think I can get that taken care of by the end of the month as well. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to start doing this work, you know? Once I start, it’s never as bad as I thought it was going to be and never seems to take as long. I want to be a lot more meticulous this time, though–it would be lovely to get a relatively clean manuscript turned in that doesn’t require much more work.

I am up way too early this morning for work. I have to be there relatively early to make up the hours I lost over the holidays; so here I am up while it’s still dark outside and drinking home-made cappuccinos and hoping that I’ll be fully awake by the time i need to get in the car and drive.

Stranger things have happened!

We finished watching the first season of Killing Eve last night, and really enjoyed it. It was so much better than the previews ever showed–which left Paul and I with no desire to watch (although the raves from friends and people whose opinion I value had me curious)–and Sandra Oh was fantastic, as was the entire cast. I’d like to read the books now–because I have nothing else to do–but I am going to definitely add them to the list while we wait for another season.

So, the new year seems to be going pretty well for me so far; how’s about you, Constant Reader? I was very pleased with LSU’s season (most people had them forecast to be, at best, 6-6 or 7-5 on the year; 10-3 and probably ranked in the final Top Ten is no disgrace, and at least the three teams that did beat us–Alabama, Florida, and Texas A&M–were all really good teams) and am very excited about next season. And of course, the Saints, just like in the season they won the Super Bowl, have the number one seed and home field advantage for the play-offs. Another trip to the Super Bowl for the Saints may be in the offing; how exciting would that be?

Oh! You can also preorder Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories from my publisher right here at this link.

Seriously, it’s a wonder I have a career.

And now back to the spice mines.

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