8.8
1. Running behind this morning. I actually slept last night, close to eight hours, catching up and all that. Bad dreams, but at least I slept well. Then I awoke to a light snow and news of the 8.8 earthquake in Chile (that's eight-hundred times more powerful than the recent Haitian quake, and one of the most powerful ever measured by seismologists), and the tsunamis beginning the be felt across the Pacific. I've been watching the live feed via CNN, and sipping coffee, and trying to wake up.
2. Yesterday went pretty much as expected. I dealt with most of the line edits on all three pieces for Sirenia Digest #51: "Apsinthion (ἀψίνθιον)," "Persephone Redux (A Fragment)," and "The Eighth Veil." Spooky was in Wakefield most of the day, getting a tooth filled, and didn't get home until well after dark. Today will be spent pulling #51 together, and I'm hoping it will go out to subscribers this evening, if I get Vince's final artwork in time.*
3. Last night, we streamed Stuart Gordon's From Beyond (1986) from Netflix. I'd not seen the movie since sometime in the late 1980s. It is, of course, based on Lovecraft's rather short tale of the same title (1920). Only HPL's story wasn't soft-core porn, though Gordon's adaptation comes very close to qualifying as such. We'd call this irony, only I still contend that, no matter how much Lovecraft feared sex, he was constantly writing about sex. Anyway, the film hasn't aged very well, and is much goofier than I remember. I wish it had been played straight. The creature effects were clearly very much influenced by Carpenter's The Thing (1982), though much less accomplished. There are some nice bits, here and there, but this is one of those cases when a film failed to measure up to my memories of it.
4. I did a couple of short scenes in Insilico last night, the best of the two being an exchange between Xiang 1.5 (Victoria) and the maintenance drone Abeus. This week I have succeeded in cutting back drastically on the amount of time I've been spending in SL, compared to the last five or six weeks. There really is far too much in First Life to allow myself to fall into that trap again.
5. And here are more photos from our second day at Beavertail, on Monday. We hiked all the way to the fissure at Lion's Head. There were some spectacular ice formations:
Lion's Head (view to the east).
Yellow lichen.
Grey lichen.
Not snow or ice, but veins of calcite.
Ice falls at the western end of Lion's Head (view to the west)
Detail of the ice falls (view to the west). Probably about twenty feet from the bottom of the photo to the top.
High tide at Lion's Head (view eastward).
Spooky ponders, and huddles out of the wind (view to the north).
There were little growths of bright green moss here and there, hinting at spring.
All photographs Copyright © 2010 by Caitlín R. Kiernan and Kathryn A. Pollnac.
* Final art just arrived, as I was preparing to proof the blog entry. So, we should be set.
2. Yesterday went pretty much as expected. I dealt with most of the line edits on all three pieces for Sirenia Digest #51: "Apsinthion (ἀψίνθιον)," "Persephone Redux (A Fragment)," and "The Eighth Veil." Spooky was in Wakefield most of the day, getting a tooth filled, and didn't get home until well after dark. Today will be spent pulling #51 together, and I'm hoping it will go out to subscribers this evening, if I get Vince's final artwork in time.*
3. Last night, we streamed Stuart Gordon's From Beyond (1986) from Netflix. I'd not seen the movie since sometime in the late 1980s. It is, of course, based on Lovecraft's rather short tale of the same title (1920). Only HPL's story wasn't soft-core porn, though Gordon's adaptation comes very close to qualifying as such. We'd call this irony, only I still contend that, no matter how much Lovecraft feared sex, he was constantly writing about sex. Anyway, the film hasn't aged very well, and is much goofier than I remember. I wish it had been played straight. The creature effects were clearly very much influenced by Carpenter's The Thing (1982), though much less accomplished. There are some nice bits, here and there, but this is one of those cases when a film failed to measure up to my memories of it.
4. I did a couple of short scenes in Insilico last night, the best of the two being an exchange between Xiang 1.5 (Victoria) and the maintenance drone Abeus. This week I have succeeded in cutting back drastically on the amount of time I've been spending in SL, compared to the last five or six weeks. There really is far too much in First Life to allow myself to fall into that trap again.
5. And here are more photos from our second day at Beavertail, on Monday. We hiked all the way to the fissure at Lion's Head. There were some spectacular ice formations:
Lion's Head (view to the east).
Yellow lichen.
Grey lichen.
Not snow or ice, but veins of calcite.
Ice falls at the western end of Lion's Head (view to the west)
Detail of the ice falls (view to the west). Probably about twenty feet from the bottom of the photo to the top.
High tide at Lion's Head (view eastward).
Spooky ponders, and huddles out of the wind (view to the north).
There were little growths of bright green moss here and there, hinting at spring.
All photographs Copyright © 2010 by Caitlín R. Kiernan and Kathryn A. Pollnac.
* Final art just arrived, as I was preparing to proof the blog entry. So, we should be set.