Rockin' the Suburbs

Yesterday A. and I went downtown to the March for Science.  This is the second time I've walked down a considerable length of Market Street from the Ferry Building down to City Hall.  Technically it's just over a mile, but it's up a very slight incline most of the way (going from the edge of the Bay inland) and at the speed of everyone else in front of me.  Not to mention a good hour standing at Justin Herman Plaza beforehand.  Or standing on a VERY slow and VERY packed N-Judah train.  And walking a few blocks to the bus stop to head home.  And that we got up and did our shopping today, at the speed of every other person in front of us (and leaving their cart dead center in the aisle, natch).  And walking over to Sakana Bune afterwards for a sushi lunch.

Suffice it to say, mah dogs is barkin' something fierce.  I'm even at the point where I don't want to do the laundry today, even though the machines are open at the moment.  [I usually do it Monday or Tuesday during Day Job hours anyway, when most everyone else in the building is out.]  I walked down the street for some coffee, and that's about as much as I'm doing physically for the rest of the day.

Writingwise, I've gotten caught up with outlining the original 750 outtakes for Meet the Lidwells and at this point I'm just filling in some gaps.  I had a lot of holes in the band's discography (which I'm using as the chronology anchor to the plot), not to mention the barest of endings in mind.  BUT!  I've gotten those squared away for the most part.  The only big thing I need to lay out is the timeline -- in particular, the ages of the band members, when the music was recorded, that sort of thing.  It's not set in stone, but it does make for better continuity.

In other writing stuff...as much as I'd love to pick up the 750 Daily Words again, now is not the right time.  At least not when I'm trying to get a new project off the ground.  It's annoying, yes, but I must be patient.  Once I get into the groove of the Lidwells project, then I'll be able to set aside some time and brainspace for it.  That doesn't mean I can't play around with some new ideas, though.  My hardback moleskine is starting to gather a bit of dust with the lack of stuff being put into it.  Again -- I just have to be patient.  Soon enough.

In the meantime, going to enjoy the lovely weather we've been having lately!  Slight breeze, but it's nice to be able to have the windows open to let in fresh air!  This is the time of the year when San Francisco has the nicest weather -- mid-60s, sunny and clear, slightly breezy.  Just how I like it. :)

This past weekend was one of shopping and erranding. We drove down to Palo Alto (why yes, as a matter of fact I do get the Radiohead song stuck in my head whenever we're down that way, why do you ask?) to Fry's Electronics so I could suss out cameras. While I do have a nice compact Samsung 15 megapixel point-and-click camera, I've been wanting to step up my photography game and try something a little more high end. I ended up with this Sony A58, and I'm loving it so far. There's a bit of a learning curve with all the bells and whistles that come with it, but it's gotten big reviews as a perfect starter camera if you're looking to level up.

[You can see one of my first experiments here at my Tumblr.]

In other news...Spare Oom is finally clean and back to normal, many things shredded, and all the cleaning done. I even managed to squeeze in two WordPress blog entries in yesterday! Woo! Not much else to report...the local YMCA should open back up today (it was closed for its annual powerclean and fix-broken-stuff time) so we'll be back on the treadmills again...also need to start getting some SF Symphony tickets as they finally go on sale today.

Also--HOKEY SMOKES WE'RE GOING TO LONDON IN A FEW WEEKS. Worldcon is gonna be fun and we'll get to meet up with a lot of our friends again, and I'm also really looking forward to exploring the city too! I do of course have a list of places to hit that are Beatle related. Many musical photo-ops have been planned. :)

Hope everyone has a nice week!

It's been quite the long week here in JoncWorld, busy all around. Work has been relatively calm-ish, not that many clients going off the rails, so I can't complain there. Nothing much to report, really.

We made it a point to get back to heading to the YMCA on a nearly daily basis, as I tend to sit on my duff here in Spare Oom for way too long. The first four days were well taken care of, and by Friday we were twitchy from work issues and decided a walk around the neighborhood was in order instead. We headed up California, cut over around 10th Avenue and walked around Mountain Lake before heading back. They've done a really good job at cleaning up the lake this past year--it was drained, dredged, decluttered, had goats eating the overgrowth (no lie--there's a company out this way that rents out goats for all your de-brushing and de-brambling needs!), and had a lot of the invasive species of plant, animal and fish taken away. Not to mention some serious filtration work, as it's right up against the stretch of Veterans Boulevard as it cuts through the Presidio, and the lake has seen its share of litter and toxic runoff through the years. It's nearly done, but they've done a beautiful job.

Today was a roadtrip up to Santa Rosa, which is always one of my favorite places to go here in the Bay Area. It's a large small city, so to speak, population around 160k, but it's spread out quite a bit. Downtown SR is a neat place as it has a large number of restaurants and shops. On Fourth Street there's Treehorn Books, a veritable Narnia of used tomes (it's good for "oh, I wasn't even looking for this, but I want this!" shopping) and up the street there's a really cool Barnes & Noble that's in a large building straight out of the 1920s, complete with a Jazz-Age style front. And just about a mile or two up the road is Copperfield's, a small local chain that saps our wallets every time we go into one of them. So yes, today was a mini-book crawl. :)

Tomorrow? We're not exactly sure. We may head to Q for brunch or we may go to Japantown, depending on what we're in the mood for. The problem with going to Q is the temptation to stop at Green Apple and buy EVEN MORE BOOKS.

There was, of course, a bit of a kerfuffle online about WorldCon this past week, but as I said on Twitter, I really have no horse in that race, so I'm choosing to not get publicly involved. I do of course have some thoughts about it, but I felt it was probably for the best not to add to everything that went on.

As for writing...? I'm happy in that I managed to get four out of seven days' worth of 750 Words done, considering. The "Townies" idea is expanding in unexpected and interesting directions, turning into some kind of pre- (very pre-) Bridgetown Trilogy story. I figured it would head in that direction eventually, but I wanted to let it expand organically rather than forcing it into a specific shape. That's why I let the 750 lag for a short while, so I could let the ideas simmer a bit. This may or may not expand into the next major project, but we'll see.

Chapter 5 of The Process of Belief was a big pain in the ass and most likely needs another go-through, but I finally got it done early in the week, and jumped in on Chapter 6. That too needed some tough love, but less in the prose and more in the editing department. There's still a lot of stage direction to get rid of, but not nearly as much as the previous chapter, and much easier to clean up. Book 3 kind of feels weird to revise, as it's pretty much Act III in a very long story arc. While it ties in with Books 1 and 2, the overall feeling of this one seems different. There's a hell of a lot more ongoing tension, and I think that's what I'm feeling with it. In a good way, of course.

I also FINALLY finished off the Blogging the Beatles series over at Walk in Silence! Yay! I admit I lapsed a bit on it, but I like how it ended, and that leaves me free to add new posts. Starting this week I'll be working on some new Walk in Silence stuff for your reading enjoyment. I should also be starting up on the Welcome to Bridgetown stuff as well, as I have a few ideas to work on there.

Which brings us to a few other web-related things:
--Will I ever update my Dreamwidth site again? Probably not; I'm thinking I'll copy the poetry posts to a document file and then shut it down, as I just don't use it anymore.
--Will I stay here at LJ? Of course--I have a permanent account. I still check it on a daily basis, maybe comment now and again, though I'm pretty much just at the weekend updates at this point. It'll remain the personal blog. I do have the other one, Scribble Diem, which I haven't updated since May of 2012, so that one I'll most likely close down at some point, as I just don't use it anymore. Maybe create one of those LJ Books and then ditch it.
--Tumblr. Yeah, I haven't posted there in some time, have I? I need to rectify that. Thing is, I haven't taken any pictures worth posting lately. Maybe that'll give me reason to start rescanning my stuff (and maybe photographing some of the larger or more colorful things) and posting those. One of my aims this year is to reignite my love for art, so why not?
--In cleaning up the Joncblogs, that'll mean that Walk in Silence and Welcome to Bridgetown will become my main go-to websites. I will endeavor to post links here and elsewhere so others are aware, of course. I have both connected to Twitter and Tumblr so they'll show up both places.

So yes...busy week. Busy, but productive! And that's what counts. :)

Another rare weekend with little to no plans this time out. I have to pick up one of A's coworkers from SFO on Sunday afternoon, but other than that, we don't have much of anything else going on. Maybe a haircut and lunch somewhere on Divisadero. Woo, we're exciting people! :p

Not too much else to report here...The Great Trilogy Revision is going well. On ADoS I'm at the level where it's cosmetic work now--or more to the point, it's where I'm aware that I shouldn't tweak it any further than I have to. On TPoM it's going okay, but still needs a bit of work. Just reread Chapter 9 which I just fixed, and found that it still needs a lot of work. Like the ADoS revision, though, I'm finding that it's alternating between decent chapters and Oh God This Sucks chapters, so I've definitely got stuff to keep me busy.

I really should be reading more of the Hugo-nominated stories, but I think my brain is too focused on my revision work. I'm having trouble switching gears, plus I started reading too late. I'll see how far I can get, though...

Other than that, not too much going on. I'm already on the back end of 1967 with my Blogging the Beatles posts, so that means I'll be hitting The Beatles (aka the White Album) pretty soon. Since that's a whopping 27 songs there, I've decided to divvy it up into the four separate sides just to keep it easy to read, and easier for me to write! I do have a lot to say about that album as well...not just the background, but some of my favorite late-era Beatle tracks are on that one as well. :)

On that note...hope everyone has a good weekend! :)

A much quieter and more fruitful sleep last night, it seems. Downstairs neighbor was quiet, and I took a decongestant and put on a snore strip so I wouldn't keep everyone else (including myself) up. We are now hanging out in the living room watching NFL GameDay Live and vegging out until it's time for us to head out to the Symphony.

Here's one of my favorite interpretations of what we're going to see:



Sort of Fantasia as made by Gerald Scarfe, no? ;)


Other things...



Happy Autumn! Emm and I took a nice long walk in the Presidio yesterday, and walked through the Presidio Heights/Pacific Heights area over to Fillmore, where we cut down to Japantown for lunch. As you can see, our autumn doesn't have the change of foliage colors like New England does. It's actually the warmest and nicest time of the year for us, and the fog clears up quicker than usual out our way. Looking forward to enjoying the weather while we have it!

Let's see...what else...the revision of Chapter 6 is slow going--just like Chapter 5 did, and I think I know why. Again, I like what the scene does, but it's not written the right way. I think one of the reasons is that the character isn't really himself. This scene is from Nehale's point of view, the same person who kicked off the trilogy with an intensely strong Awakening ritual, but he seems so powerless and unfocused here. This means that I'll have to do some major rewriting of the scene to make it work. It's a chore, but it's gotta be done, and I think I can do it.

Other than that...not much else to report! Hope everyone's been having a good weekend!

Ah, Sunday comes and once again it feels like a Sunday of youth--a sort of day where there's nothing of import to do, maybe a few small errsnds, and that itch that I really should get some work done before it's too late and Monday comes. And in a few weeks or so, it'll also be the Sunday of turning on WAMH's Potted Plant countdown, another old Sunday habit.

Emm and I did a bit of shopping yesterday, and against our better judgement, went to Tanforan Mall in the early afternoon when pretty much all of San Mateo County was there. We also bent the "no bookstores for the next few weeks" rule and stopped at the B&N, primarily so we could buy the Rosetta Stone Level 1 of French. I know, I know...I took four semesters of it in college and it's part of my heritage, so you'd think some of it would have stuck in my head, right? Either way...thought it would be good to brush up on at least a passing dialogue instead of "je ne parle pas Francais" or making a hash of what little I remember from those classes.

Anyhoo...also picked up David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and aberwyn's fourth Nola O'Grady book, Love on the Run. Looking forward to reading both! So yeah, if you're wondering about the 'no bookstores' rule, it's because I've decided that my birthday present to emmalyon this year is to go on a Book Crawl.

Yes, a Book Crawl. I know how dangerous that sounds, believe me! :p

Our plan is to make the rounds of some of our favorite North Bay bookstores like the multiple Copperfields (including the one in Petaluma that we haven't gone to yet), the new-and-used stores in Santa Rosa, Sonoma, and maybe even Napa. Yeah, I know. This is wine country, we should be stopping at all the vineyards and so on, but we're bibliophiles, not oenophiles. We even did a small book purge to clear up space for possible new purchases! It's gonna be a hell of a lot of fun. :)

Other than that, our weekends have been relatively quiet and unexciting, which is totally fine. After Emm's DC trip and Outside Lands the weekend after, it's been nice to have a few weekends where we do as little as possible except hang out and relax. I figure the rest of today will be a walk to Laurel Village to get more coffee, and a few other boring errands. Such is Sunday.


One last thing! Thanks to listening to KFOG on the way home yesterday, we were introduced to a local band that sounds all sorts of awesome: The Novelists. They're sort of quirky acoustic alt.folk and kind of similar to Ben Folds, and on the strength of one song, I now want to download the album from their site. Well worth checking out! :)

The weekend has arrived! And I'm quite happy about it. The work week wasn't exactly a crazy one (although there were a few frustrating moments of work WTFness), but I'm happy it's the weekend nonetheless, because we have some fun events planned.

Today is going to be a hot one in the city, which is actually a rarity. It's supposed to get into the triple digits inland, which means it'll at least get up to the 80s here. It's actually kind of nice when it gets toasty here, because it doesn't get humid, and there's always a breeze from somewhere. So yay for nice days off!

So today we'll be heading down to Fillmore Street, either by foot or by bus, we haven't decided yet, to do some shopping and lunching. Japantown is actually a short walk down Fillmore from California, so I can head over to Kinokuniya and pick up the last volumes of Fullmetal Alchemist that I need (and the next of Saturn Apartments, which I'm finding quite lovely). After that we'll have lunch at Inferno Pizza, which Emm says had a wonderful beer list. I can't promise anything, but chances are good that books will be purchased on the way home.

Tomorrow we're going to the opera to see John Adams' Nixon in China, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing it. I've been a fan since hearing it in college (and remembering Main Street Records in Northampton was all over it when it was released back in 1988), and I quite enjoy Adams' stuff (check out his Short Ride in a Fast Machine, which I could probably describe as "contains every single instrument in the symphony, including the small bits of stuff they found in the back cupboard, and playing the equivalent of exclamation points"). He's quite diverse and experimental, but a lot of fun.

I think somewhere in between I might get some writing done as well... :)

Man, I don't know what happened, but today I am just full of determination to get way too many things done. Perhaps it's the self-nudge I gave myself when I bought that new bookcase and ended up shifting Spare Oom around a bit. Ever since then I've been itching to get all sorts of things done. I'll be honest, the last few days have been deliberately lazy and decidedly unproductive, at least where writing is concerned, as I needed to unwind from the hell that was last week.

So today I've finished the laundry, vacuumed the apartment, washed the kitchen floor, went outside for an abbreviated walk around the neighborhood to buy stuff at the corner store (and get coffee, of course), checked to see if my scanner still works with the new PC (I haven't used said scanner for at least a few years, and the answer is "yes", though the photo-tweaking software it came with is out of date and doesn't jive with Windows 7)(no worries there, I have PhotoShop, so it worked out!), and it's just hitting 3pm now. I'm wondering what else I need to do today before it gets too late.

Also yesterday, I emptied out that second wooden crate (the one that was underneath the Spare Oom window) and everything is now in the large blue storage bin, which is now sitting next to my bookcase. Everything is now in one area, ready to be sorted, instead of all over the place. The next-to-bottom shelf of the bookcase is now full of manila folders containing random semi-sorted writings, artwork, and other Joncswerk that I'll need to go through. That stuff will stay on the shelf, just in better order once I'm done with it. I haven't decided what to do with that now-empty wooden crate--I may either use that for additional closet storage, or I may keep it in Spare Oom for non-writing files.

But yeah...if this bit of determined creativity is going to stick around awhile, I'm not going to complein. :)

Ah, the long weekend finally approaches. It's been a hell of a week and I've been waiting for the holiday weekend to arrive.

So! What's on tap for the weekend, then?

--Today we're driving down to the Pescadero/Half Moon Bay area, which we haven't gone to in some time. We'll be lunching at Duarte's Tavern (we haven't gone there in ages), and yes I WILL HAVE MY OLALLIEBERRY PIE. We'll head back by stopping at the roadside farmstand (if it's open) and the awesome Ink Spell Books in HMB. I don't believe we had any other plans for shopping, but we'll see.

--The usual errands of cleaning and perhaps a bit of food shopping...nothing too exciting there. Although I really should make a conscious effort to continue straightening up Spare Oom. There are some books we can donate to the library and clothes (and things) we can donate to Goodwill, pictures we should hang, and bins to sort through.

--Downloading. I promised emmalyon I'd download some new albums she's been looking for, so I'll either use eMusic or Amazon for that.

--Writing, of course. Nothing new to report at the moment, but I may have an update at the other writing LJ soon.



Other than that, I plan on sleeping late, doing some walking around the neighborhood, and attempting to relax. Hope everyone has a good weekend! :)

Man, I have been lazy with the posting lately!! I haven't even posted any poetry at Dreamwidth (or written any lately, for that matter)...well, I have my reasons...been busy doing all sorts of things around the house, as well as focusing mostly on the A Division of Souls revision. To wit:

--Spent a good day yesterday starting to box up books for those who requested titles from the Great Book Purge. I seem to have run out of smallish boxes, so I may need to improvise. We'll see what happens. On the plus side, Spare Oom is looking a little cleaner, though the loveseat is still piled up with boxes and packing material.

--Spent even more time shredding paperwork I should have gotten rid of a few years ago...mostly bills and whatnot that are over two years old. Once that's done I can go through the plastic bin that's full of random stuff and file/shred/save/etc.

--Ran a few computer cleaners on my Spare Oom PC...been a little while since I've done so. I usually don't like running other things while I'm doing that (it kind of defeats the purpose), so I let that run in the bg while shredding. Emm had the radio going in the other room so I got to listen to that music while getting things done.

--Laundry done! I keep meaning to divide this up over the course of two days--once midweek and once on the weekend--so I don't have an overabundance, but I keep forgetting to get quarters. Still...glad it's done.

--Shopping done! We did quite a bit yesterday...went to the seaside Safeway to get the bulk of it (and on the way, saw the new Fresh & Easy that's slowly being prepared for opening up on 32nd Ave and Clement (long story short, it used to be an Albertson's before they up and left like the Baltimore Colts a few years back)). After that, we took a walk up Clement for errands, stopped in a few stores on the way back, and got all our veggies at the Grande around the corner.

I didn't get any vacuuming done, but I'm sure I can get that done soon. Though it takes twice as long now as it did in our old place, considering that it took me about ten minutes to vacuum the entirety of our old place, I think I can spare a half hour at some point during this coming week. ;)


And so today, we'll be spending the rainy afternoon inside, watching Anne Sofie von Otter at the SF Symphony, which also means lunch at Max's and the temptation to buy even more books at Books Inc. around the corner. It's an afternoon show, so I'll have plenty of time upon return to get some more writing done tonight. I also want to write a writing-LJ post too, so I think I may be able to squeeze that in somewhere. This definitely feels like a Sunday I'm used to: wet weather, an afternoon out, some last minute work, and the nagging feeling like I'm forgetting something. ;)