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My thermostat says 66 degrees, which is traditionally really quite warm enough for me, but I'm here in two sweaters and fingerless gloves (and thank you, Emma, for the large stash of fingerless gloves you have made and given to me over the years! I have dry ones tonight because of that!)
My friend Bonnie's staying the night again. She's wandering off to Asia next week, but today we walked to the wharf and back and watched the seals and sea gulls being adorable. It's like I'm on vacation, because there are no jobs to apply for. The last summer's baby gulls are pretty much grown, now, though they still have juenilve feathers and behavior. The nice fellow used to call animals like that "Archies" after the Archie of the teen comics world. So these Archie seagulls are going up to their parents -- who are no bigger than they are, and making cute little baby-bird sounds and bobbing their heads in the general direction of the red spot on daddy's beak, and the mommy or daddy gull makes a parenting chuckle noise and then goes "what? No! You're old enough to get your own fish!" and flies off and the grown-up baby seagull goes "tweet! I am a baby bird! Don't leave me!" and follows. This was going on all over the wharf. I never noticed it before.
The seals, meanwhile, were all sacked out on the lower rungs of the pilings, of course, but there were a few that were barking and barking. I told Truffle, "Look, they're just like you -- they sleep and they bark. If they're not sleeping, they're barking. If they're not barking, they're sleeping." She was underimpressed, but mildly curious. She did eat something objectionable on the wharf and spend fifteen minutes after we got home trying to upchuck it, but I don't know what it was, I only became aware of it after it was too late.
My neighbor across the street begged us to try to get some of his figs because there are a lot of them and he is busy at work and doesn't have time to get them all, so Bonnie and I tried. There is an art to picking figs with a pole harvester, expecially if the fig tree hasn't been properly started off in life by a little old Italian man with a ready pruining knife and the fig tree has grown as big as a mighty oak, which is what they do if you leave them alone. The stem of the fig gets sturdier as the fig gets riper, which is just plain stupid, but you can't expect trees to go out of their way to be convenient. And of course the fig is very soft and vulnerable to the tines of the pole harvester, so if you're not in control of your technique you rip the little thing to shreds. Nevertheless we did succeed in collecting a few figs.
I am not really nanoing. I am writing. But I have to take days off to digest what I am learning about the work of a soldier during battle of this kind, and I keep having to discard chunks of work that I messed up. So it's more like normal writing, rather than intensive writing.
I went and spent a couple hours with the nice fellow's military history buff friends and learned a lot. They got what I was asking, too, and didn't insist on telling me history buff things.
One thing I keep asking myself over and over every time I learn something new about the way war was actually conducted on the ground is, why weren't there a lot more mass desertions?
Actually, I don't really want you to try to answer that question, okay? Because there's a direction that discussion leads that I don't want to go to. But if you have anything to offer me about latrines, trenches, the maintenance of weapons, supply trains, water supply, or whatall, I'm happy to read it.
I'm not, actually, writing a book that is about anti-war. It's about Yanek's experiences and evolution, how after fighting all through childhood to be a man that is respected and included, he succeeds in becoming something else, not quite human, but respectable and essential in his own right, in a new place he couldn't have imagined as a child. So war is in it, and of course war is horrible, and war is bigger than anything, but the story is bigger than the war, for Yanek.
on another front: I can sit cross-legged on the floor again.
and another thing: I have the loan modification papers, and unlike the unemployment website, they are written in normal language and laid out comprehensibly. They're still intimidating.
My friend Bonnie's staying the night again. She's wandering off to Asia next week, but today we walked to the wharf and back and watched the seals and sea gulls being adorable. It's like I'm on vacation, because there are no jobs to apply for. The last summer's baby gulls are pretty much grown, now, though they still have juenilve feathers and behavior. The nice fellow used to call animals like that "Archies" after the Archie of the teen comics world. So these Archie seagulls are going up to their parents -- who are no bigger than they are, and making cute little baby-bird sounds and bobbing their heads in the general direction of the red spot on daddy's beak, and the mommy or daddy gull makes a parenting chuckle noise and then goes "what? No! You're old enough to get your own fish!" and flies off and the grown-up baby seagull goes "tweet! I am a baby bird! Don't leave me!" and follows. This was going on all over the wharf. I never noticed it before.
The seals, meanwhile, were all sacked out on the lower rungs of the pilings, of course, but there were a few that were barking and barking. I told Truffle, "Look, they're just like you -- they sleep and they bark. If they're not sleeping, they're barking. If they're not barking, they're sleeping." She was underimpressed, but mildly curious. She did eat something objectionable on the wharf and spend fifteen minutes after we got home trying to upchuck it, but I don't know what it was, I only became aware of it after it was too late.
My neighbor across the street begged us to try to get some of his figs because there are a lot of them and he is busy at work and doesn't have time to get them all, so Bonnie and I tried. There is an art to picking figs with a pole harvester, expecially if the fig tree hasn't been properly started off in life by a little old Italian man with a ready pruining knife and the fig tree has grown as big as a mighty oak, which is what they do if you leave them alone. The stem of the fig gets sturdier as the fig gets riper, which is just plain stupid, but you can't expect trees to go out of their way to be convenient. And of course the fig is very soft and vulnerable to the tines of the pole harvester, so if you're not in control of your technique you rip the little thing to shreds. Nevertheless we did succeed in collecting a few figs.
I am not really nanoing. I am writing. But I have to take days off to digest what I am learning about the work of a soldier during battle of this kind, and I keep having to discard chunks of work that I messed up. So it's more like normal writing, rather than intensive writing.
I went and spent a couple hours with the nice fellow's military history buff friends and learned a lot. They got what I was asking, too, and didn't insist on telling me history buff things.
One thing I keep asking myself over and over every time I learn something new about the way war was actually conducted on the ground is, why weren't there a lot more mass desertions?
Actually, I don't really want you to try to answer that question, okay? Because there's a direction that discussion leads that I don't want to go to. But if you have anything to offer me about latrines, trenches, the maintenance of weapons, supply trains, water supply, or whatall, I'm happy to read it.
I'm not, actually, writing a book that is about anti-war. It's about Yanek's experiences and evolution, how after fighting all through childhood to be a man that is respected and included, he succeeds in becoming something else, not quite human, but respectable and essential in his own right, in a new place he couldn't have imagined as a child. So war is in it, and of course war is horrible, and war is bigger than anything, but the story is bigger than the war, for Yanek.
on another front: I can sit cross-legged on the floor again.
and another thing: I have the loan modification papers, and unlike the unemployment website, they are written in normal language and laid out comprehensibly. They're still intimidating.
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