Today was an excellent, albeit v. long, day. I made it down to Mountain View despite the rain-induced traffic disasters, and I slogged efficiently and productively all day. I took a break for lunch with Dontae (baked potato Tuesday!), then slogged the rest of the day. I left around 5:15pm so that I could grab a sandwich at Quiznos on the way to class.
Class was excellent again; I didn't like the story that I wrote for this week, and in general find that because I've been writing romance, I'm so caught up in plot and pacing that, while I care a lot about character development, I tend to not use as much metaphor and symbolism and flashbacks and other literary techniques because they're just not part of my standard repertoire. Since I do want to write literary fiction someday in addition to romance, this is a bit disheartening -- but perhaps I would do better if I spent more time on my writing exercises instead of just turning in the barely-completed first drafts. It's hard to make more time for the writing exercises when I'm trying to focus the majority of my energies on Madeleine and Ferguson's story...but I have a couple of weeks off because I'll miss the next two classes due to my trip, so perhaps I can spend some more time on the exercises while I'm on one of the many interminable plane rides in my near future.
I left class slightly early to scurry back to the evil city and meet up with Adit and Vidya so that we could see 'Avatar' on IMAX 3-D. We bought the tickets on Friday night when we were all drunk and happy, and decided that Tuesday night was the only night that we could see the movie since Vidya is traveling tomorrow and then I'm leaving for India next week. Of course, now that the day had arrived, and we were sitting in the theatre at 10pm waiting for an almost-three-hour movie to start, at least some of us had second thoughts. But, the tickets were $17 each (imax, you slay me), and we all wanted to see the movie even if the timing wasn't ideal, so we settled in to watch.
Verdict? I really liked it, and it was a visual and technological masterpiece even if the dialogue was hackneyed and the plot was a highly-predictable mishmash of every blockbuster scifi movie in the past decade with every Pocahontas/Dances With Wolves/Lion King feel-good stranger-in-a-strange land tale. Despite that and despite some truly cringe-worthy dialogue, I thought that it was lovely, and I would be willing to see it again, so clearly the dialogue wasn't that bad. IMAX did make me a little leery -- luckily I didn't feel queasy, but there were enough shots from significant height looking out over cliffs and tree limbs that I felt just a little nervous. Silly, I know, but a good indication of how realistic they made the movie feel despite all the gangly blue people running around.
Now it's almost two a.m., and I should really get to sleep if I'm going to survive tomorrow. Luckily I can work out of the city tomorrow, so I don't have to get up quite so early; if I had to get up a six, I would be a sad panda. Instead I can sleep until eight -- yay! And so, goodnight!
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