Saturday, March 17, 2012

once i rose above the noise and confusion

Today was v. quiet and hermity, which was lovely - perhaps I'll spend the whole weekend in hermit mode, since I do enjoy my hermit time. I dragged myself down to the gym about fifteen minutes late to train with Alyssa, since I was exchanging emails with my agent about whether to move forward with the professional formatter or do it myself, but Alyssa was still nice to me even if my legs are now super sore. That's not entirely her fault -- getting drunk and wandering around the Tenderloin in flipflops (which I've avoided wearing ever since destroying my feet by wearing flipflops all around Tokyo two years ago) certainly didn't help matters. Then I had a salad in the gym cafe, stopped at Office Depot to buy padded envelopes (my life is so glamorous), and came straight home to avoid what I guessed would be apocalyptic Friday afternoon traffic given the rains we've gotten.

Once I got home, I made some coffee and tackled the giant heaps of mail and receipts that have been accumulating for months while I was finishing up SCOTSMEN. I think I found all my tax documents, and I reorganized my file cabinet, so that was all good (albeit kind of a sad way to spend a Friday night, unless you, like me, take pleasure out of organizing things). I intended to organize my tax documents tonight as well, but I decided to take a break and read a book instead. I made it about a quarter of the way into "The Forge of Christendom: The End of Days and the Epic Rise of the West", and I must say that it's a fascinating page turner (if such things can be considered fascinating page turners). Reading about Otto going after the Hungarians was fabulously entertaining...or maybe that's just me. Anyway, the premise of the book is that when the first millennium didn't bring the end of the world, Christians had to start building their own Jerusalem on earth, thus laying the framework for an improbable rise to dominance given how utterly backward and awful most of Europe was at the time. And maybe I enjoyed it because the author's prose is very Lord of the Rings-esque, with all sorts of talk of shadows and powers rising and descriptions of pagan barbarians that kind of make them sound like orcs (and a first chapter that was even titled "The Return of the King").

But still, it's fascinating. And in case you hadn't guessed, it's research of a sort for the gargoyles project, which I keep turning over in my head -- it's time to add some more ingredients to the stew, even if all I can do is stir things up for the next week or two before buckling down on Ellie and Nick. 1000 AD is before the time that matters to the gargoyles story, but it's an important foundation anyway, and I do enjoy reading about the end of the world.

Now, though, I must sleep, so I can do my taxes and write five guest blogs and take care of all sorts of other silly tasks. Goodnight!

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