notes on a Saturday
In bullet points today, because why not?
- On the recommendation of jadelennox , I spent some portion of last night and a large chunk of today reading Suzanne Collins' book The Hunger Games. It's not quite as good as Flora Segunda but it comes darn close, and that is saying an awful lot if you are me. (For those of you who have not heard me rant about the fabulousness that is Ysabeau Wilce's book Flora segunda, I am not sure whether to apologize for not having made sure that you read this book right now or tell you to be grateful that you haven't heard my extreme fan girl ranting.) Some of the things that I liked about tThe Hunger Games are similar to what I like and about Flora segunda, a female protagonist who is more concerned with getting things done than with being nice, appropriately confused un realistic depiction of teenage romance, and some world building that takes modern details, familiar to the readers, and build them into something new, strange, and the familiar all at once in terms of style, the hunger games is much more like Nancy Farmer's the house of scorpions than it is like wilce's book, in vocabulary, emotional tenor, and world type. Wilce's book is set in a sort of steam punk alternate San Francisco, while both Farmer and Collins are looking forward to an America which is far more desolate and Orwellian than the one we see with Flora. All comparisons aside, the book was good enough the fact when we got back heartbeat today I told Tish that I wouldn't be good for anything until I had finished it, and certainly wasn't about to volunteer to leave the house again until I had turned up last page.
- we spent the afternoon Art beat and while it is still one of my favorite Somerville traditions, I was saddened to see how much sparser an event it was than in previous years. It was clear that the economy was having an effect both on attendance and on the ability of vendors to come and display their wares. I spent a large chunk of this week's babysitting money on a new frippery from galvanized headwear, too little notebooks from Albertine press, and keychains of an ammonite, an octopus, and a trilobite. I was glad to be able to use some of my own hard-earned money to support local artists.
- People keep asking me "how's married life?" And in general, my reply is "wonderful!" However, I do have one pet peeve: I hate being called Mrs. I may be taking Tish's last name, but that doesn't mean that I am subsuming my entire identity into the married state, any more than I subsumed my identity into being in this relationship when I first entered into it. While I fully recognize the important social and legal ramifications of my marriage, I don't want to give those ramifications yet more power by assuming a title that marks me as a married woman. Thank you for your understanding and please consider this my personal feminist public service announcement for the day.
- Thank you for all your offers of help support and sympathy that you left in my last post. My arms are finally mostly recovered from a cortisone shot, with only a slight twinge in my right elbow remaining. I'm sure that with time and practice it will get less weird to speak my thoughts aloud into the machine, rather than typing them. I keep thinking that if I were still doing any acting the process of transitioning to using dictation software would doubtless help my enunciation and pronunciation for stage work. As it is, I am determined to think of this process as beneficial to both my students and my older relatives who are beginning to be hard of hearing.