How I spent my Christmas vacation
I slept, that most glorious of indulgences undisturbed by requirements to show up to work or even shower in a timely fashion.
I read, most specifically Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett (acquired from the sad and hollow solitary bookstore in the city with a gift card), The Magicians by Lev Grossman, and made headway into The Fry Chronicles by, of course, Stephen Fry.
I watched some of the '70s Ellery Queen tv show, the Marx Brothers in Animal Crackers (hooray for Captain Spaulding etc.), Horse Feathers, Monkey Business, and Duck Soup, and Cary Grant in The Philadelphia Story, Penny Serenade, North by Northwest, The Bachelor and the Bobby-soxer (opposite the delightful Myrna Loy and the shockingly pretty Shirley Temple), and Once Upon a Honeymoon (with Ginger Grant, a strange bit of WWII propaganda made prior to American involvement in said war, masquerading as a romantic comedy - there is actual footage of Hitler in the film).
I played far more Rune Factory 3 than any person should really allow themselves to play in the course of a week.
I deigned to attend church, once, and continued my 2010 trend of showing a marked incompetence in the realm of remembering things like meals.
I raided the local library to rescue a selection of worthy discards from dusty abandonment, including a collection of seven Rex Stout novels (having learned of the admirable P.G. Wodehouse's love of that mystery novelist, I have resolved to explore his body of work myself), an equally hefty collection of Glen Cook's fantasy detective novels which I will surely get around to actually reading at some point, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, a battered Charles Lint novel, several even more battered science fiction anthologies, an audio recording of Dashiell Hammet's The Thin Man, and two startling relics from my sleepless adolescence, audiobook versions of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Life, the Universe, and Everything read by the late Douglas Adams.
Being in a house temporarily inhabited by seven cats of various temperments, I spent a lot of time talking to cats and rubbing ears and bellies when the opportunity presented itself.
I also apparently finished a novel that should have been finished at least a year ago, if not earlier, and am left with a psychologically heavy little USB drive containing a tumbling OpenOffice document which I am at a loss to deal with in any fashion, if it should be dealt with at all.
I am not sure I want to deal with examining the entirety of 2010 itself. It was not an easy year and may be best forgotten.
I read, most specifically Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett (acquired from the sad and hollow solitary bookstore in the city with a gift card), The Magicians by Lev Grossman, and made headway into The Fry Chronicles by, of course, Stephen Fry.
I watched some of the '70s Ellery Queen tv show, the Marx Brothers in Animal Crackers (hooray for Captain Spaulding etc.), Horse Feathers, Monkey Business, and Duck Soup, and Cary Grant in The Philadelphia Story, Penny Serenade, North by Northwest, The Bachelor and the Bobby-soxer (opposite the delightful Myrna Loy and the shockingly pretty Shirley Temple), and Once Upon a Honeymoon (with Ginger Grant, a strange bit of WWII propaganda made prior to American involvement in said war, masquerading as a romantic comedy - there is actual footage of Hitler in the film).
I played far more Rune Factory 3 than any person should really allow themselves to play in the course of a week.
I deigned to attend church, once, and continued my 2010 trend of showing a marked incompetence in the realm of remembering things like meals.
I raided the local library to rescue a selection of worthy discards from dusty abandonment, including a collection of seven Rex Stout novels (having learned of the admirable P.G. Wodehouse's love of that mystery novelist, I have resolved to explore his body of work myself), an equally hefty collection of Glen Cook's fantasy detective novels which I will surely get around to actually reading at some point, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, a battered Charles Lint novel, several even more battered science fiction anthologies, an audio recording of Dashiell Hammet's The Thin Man, and two startling relics from my sleepless adolescence, audiobook versions of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Life, the Universe, and Everything read by the late Douglas Adams.
Being in a house temporarily inhabited by seven cats of various temperments, I spent a lot of time talking to cats and rubbing ears and bellies when the opportunity presented itself.
I also apparently finished a novel that should have been finished at least a year ago, if not earlier, and am left with a psychologically heavy little USB drive containing a tumbling OpenOffice document which I am at a loss to deal with in any fashion, if it should be dealt with at all.
I am not sure I want to deal with examining the entirety of 2010 itself. It was not an easy year and may be best forgotten.