Stained Glass Wings

6:32pm: initiate victory dance now, comrades !
We have just crossed the border, gone for lunch in Vermont, and formally Re-Entered Canada. Also, the nice chap who processed us said that the Permanent Residence card a) should get here in a month and absolutely will within two and b) is not vital for getting back into the country, it makes it quicker but showing them the paperwork we got today and explaining that we still await the cards is workable.

(Strange country, the US. There were signs in the bathroom at the restaurant we ate in saying "Employees must wash hands." Where I come from we wash our own hands.)

1:11pm: got a song for me ?
I have an unsettled stomach, which I think is mostly stress. Damn it.

Had a quite productive meeting with $intern2 this morning, though. Also, the editor of the textbook for which I wrote much of a chapter, many moons ago, says it is going to the publisher next week, so that may become a physical publication soon.

49th Parallel is really good and very very weird. It has some of the best supporting parts ever; Laurence Olivier's French-Canadian trapper would be a caricature if Olivier were not so good an actor, also Anton Wolbrook's Hutterite elder, Raymond Massey's Canadian soldier, and Leslie Howard's decadent author. I'm still mulling on it; for all that it is, particularly in the opening sequences, much more conventionally filmed than much of Pressburger and Powell's later work, there are clear early signs of the directions in which their visual style would go.

10:28pm: writing: The Third Ether
part 2: 22,912 words.
total: 49,635 words.

Through pass on part 2, more or less. This I am calling a wrap for the first two sections. no, I have no idea what I will be working on next.

11:35am: midway through the dark forest of my week
*deep breath*

Weekend just past: Congrés Boréal. A very great deal of fun. Hanging out with papersky, grimmwire, tournevis, James Morrow, David Hartwell, Kathryn Cramer, Michael Swanwick, Karl Schroeder and lots of other cool people. I kind of headached out on Sunday and had to go home and lie down, and had no brain for anything more demanding than Harry Potter, which was a real irritant.

Weekend to come: janetmk visiting; the Plan is to go to Plattsburgh on Saturday, and activate our permanent-resident visas on the way back in. I am trying with mild-to-moderate success not to fret myself into a small cinder about this. As a gesture of faith that there will one day be lemon-soaked paper napkins all will go smoothly with the visa stuff, I have invited my interns to dim sum Sunday morning.

papersky has a new computer, and the monitor that came with it was switched onto the media-watching computer at home on Monday; this dislodged a sound card, and Z spent much of yesterday evening fixing that and related things, so we have not yet got to watch The Year of Living Dangerously or 49th Parallel.

Workwise, I would seem to finally be getting somewhere with what $boss1 actually wants from the detailed report on how we could transfer Louse-related stuff to some other institution before the middle of 2010; there is to be a meeting on that towards the end of next week. Also, the long-delayed useful seminar actually happened, and was indeed useful. We are finally through to the manual curation part of the current Louse release, a mere two months late. I am glad I have such wonderful family and friends, or I might be starting to feel rather down.

2:49pm: and I still hear you scream, in every breath, in every single motion
In re first para of last post; no it hasn't.

Cheering distractions welcomed.

2:28pm: glide down the highway, shimmer and shine, slide on the chrome and plastic
Louse population process pulled out of ground, bits appropriately redone, and seems to have been brought home to a point where manual curation can begin; furthermore, because the failure is only in one set of aspects of how the whole thing works, despite all the messing around this is still a very clean release and the remaining bit should go both very fast and very smoothly.

Other things still up in the air; even more things than in the previous post, actually. But feeling better about them and have a better handle on them.

Also, it amuses me somewhat that in the process of aiming specifically for a single-city-culture victory in my current Civ 3 game, I'm doing better at early conquest than I have in either of my more conquest-oriented games. Maybe I'm temperamentally suited to play the Sumerians, or maybe just getting better at it.

9:40am: you'd better hope and pray that you wake one day back in your own world
The Louse population process has nosedived into the ground again. The intended release date for this release was a week ago, and we have not even got it to the point where we can begin to curate.

Z's intensive-science course plus exam is end of July/beginning of August.

Somewhere, yesterday, a malevolent butterfly lined up its consequences and trembled its wings ever so slightly in my direction. A whole lot of things that had a tentative configuration then jumped in the air, and are hanging suspended, pulling rude faces at me when they do not think I am looking.

11:44pm: writing: The Third Ether
part 2: 22,694 words
total: 49,417 words

I have had an inspiration for the sorcerous duel and the complicated technical issue that remain to be resolved; skip the very last scene entirely, and go to the next bit, that's five years later, and fill in what needs filling in of it from later. that would leave part 2 and part 1 almost exactly the same length, too. [ There's a prologue also, hence the arithmetic not fitting the numbers above. ]

I credit The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp with this inspiration.

11:40pm: books for April
( the cruellest month, &c. )

1:33pm: there are other worlds than these
Happy birthday daharyn, with big hugs and wishes for things to come together in the best possible ways.

Watched Gorky Park last night for the first time in several years, which fills me with the desire to reread all the Arkady Renko books. Also, I hadn't noticed until now, but it is actually doing a realistic take on the mismatched-cops-have-to-work-together story without any of the usual mismatched-cop tropes, and with some really phenomenally good acting. Cool.

3:49pm: Reading ? Comprehension ? A Jedi craves not these things.
The seminar which looked like it might actually be useful for a change ?

Postponed again, because it would seem people didn't grasp that if there's an hour-long thing scheduled to start at 15.00, the room containing it will not in fact be free at 15.30.

2:23pm: "No, I don't think 'For The Love of God Montessori' is an appropriate name for a school."
Happy birthday to j4 and addedentry, 30 4EVA or something.

The interns are here. They have been started on their projects. They were, indeed, here before I had even put my bag down; trying to be a bit early kind of fails when the metro is a bit slow. For an hour of meeting with them straight off on getting in to work, while trying to caffeinate as I went, it went pretty well. A couple of other Louse-related things are also, finally, starting to go pretty well.

It's been a good, relaxed weekend. Good writing; watched Gallipoli yesterday afternoon with papersky, which is brilliant, though partaking fully of the ways in which the First World War is a bit of a downer; played Civ, my shot for a one-city cultural victory with the Sumerians is coming along nicely, though in building the support structure for that I seem to have done ancient-age conquest rather better than I usually do. Also dim sum, with embryomystic and a visitor WINTMKOLJ, which was fun.

Oh, and go ye and oog over this link c/o dr_jen: Science-themed tattoos.

9:41pm: writing: The Third Ether
part 2: 20,732 words. Which is a hair under 4,000 new.
total: 47,471 words.

What I thought was two scenes was one, of people sort of slowly having the serious conversation while at the same time having a different trivial conversation during the gaps, which... I hope works, am not at all sure of, and need to leave to settle. Also, go unexpected plot element, go unexpected thematic consistency.

There is no avoiding it, though, the next scene is the sorcerous duel. Thinking about this suddenly makes me think I'm not so stuck with Nine Children as I thought I was.

1:20pm: passports arrived back in the post
So now we have to sort out leaving the country and re-entering and getting the visas signed and stamped. Then they send us Permanent Residence Cards. Then we can leave the country in the normal sort of way. *sigh*

1:46pm: all the power in the universe conspires to carry you
Good things thus far today:
- small, rather messy child spontaneously offering me large messy chocolate cookie-oid thing on the walk to the Metro
- starting to read The Blue Sword on the metro and loving it
- cello, oboe and violin in Snowdon playing bits of Carmen
- most of the department are away at their retreat, so my team get to do our thing uninterrupted
- Adoptive Big Sister positive about hosting me during the symposium in Dublin, which will a) be restorative and b) be more practical than staying with uncle J at that point. I get on with him very well indeed, but getting into the middle of Dublin from his place for a morning symposium session would be way too early for me.

10:47am: Midway through the dark forest of my life...
Happy birthday dakiwiboid and my UnTwin, birdofparadox.

4:09pm: grump
Just what one wants to see on the first of May; a frost warning.

1:41pm: count pointercount
Took longer than I'd thought, but I have finally answered everyone who responded to the meme in my last post; that was kind of cool.

The current ongoing Louse release is bogging down more and more in ways which are extremely frustrating, and which are much of why I am not posting so much as sometimes.

The student interns have started to arrive, though mine are not in until next week. Unfortunately, the general spottiness of the Monday seminar organisation seems to include a collapse of its previous function of formally introducing new people, so I have no idea what any of their names are.

Watched Amelie on DVD last night and some of the associated special features; Jean-Pierre Jeunet in conversation about the film is definitely towards the more interesting side as DVD extras go.

As if to intentionally provide contrast for my fretting about the symposium in Trinity, this building is currently housing a 40th anniversary symposium for the University's Department of Theology and Religious Studies, if I am reading it right.

3:16pm: enfolding sunny spots of memery
Because a lot of the memes I post are ones designed to get people to say things about what they think of me, have one that works the other way around:

Comment and I will:
1. Tell you why I friended you.
2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a colour, a photo, etc.
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
6. Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.


I am cutting the "in return you must post this" because I don't like memes that do that, but by all means do if you like.

(ETA: I'm having a hard time with the "something I've always wanted to know", because I either ask, or it feels like the kind of thing that would better come up in conversation; if I give up and start being silly at some point, that's why. Also, "when will you (next) come to Montreal ?" applies to far too many people to use here.)

2:12pm: fixed points
So this is what it looks like at the moment:

May 9-11: Boreal.

June 1: Nothing paper-related can go to Esteemed Journal of Choice before this date. Damn it.

June 12-22: Fringe.

June 25: Leonard Cohen concert.

July 1: deadline for paper abstract at EJoC.

May 5 - July 31: I supervise two student internships.

August 6-10: Worldcon in Denver, to which papersky will be going, probably on the train so transit time will factor in as well.

August 29-31: Farthing party.

September 15: Deadline for paper at EJoC, presuming they accept the abstract, concerning which I am reasonably confident.

September 17-20: Genetics 50 symposium at Trinity College. $boss1 has OKed me taking time to attend this, and taking some time off afterwards to spend in Hyperborea; much organisation remains to be done here. When I figure out how much of that time will be in Britain and how much will be in Ireland, I will contact people and/or post here appropriately wrt socialising possibilities.

Points still to fix:

Z has a two-week intensive science course to do at some point over summer in order to retake and pass Grade 10 science. It would be really nice to know when this was.

My father suggests that if I am coming to Ireland in September, my mother might come here in earlier summer. I recommend against July because it will be too hot for her; I think she would like the Fringe.

Several potential visitors, for whose edification I am mostly posting this list.

2:16pm: weekend; balance
I wonder whether I should do a userpic that's half my "good alone time" one and half "good socialising" ?

Friday I poked at writing, some things fell out, and while I think I did about 800 words it wasn't in a way that really connected up to anything so I didn't think to post it at the time.

Saturday papersky and I went to a sale at a second-hand bookshop, and picked up a sizable haul, lots of stuff for papersky, a few presents for people, and a Dante Club for me which I nearly did not pick up becuase of confusing it with The Dumas Club, which sucks. 50c is enough to risk on something that looks like its potential failure modes are in the bestsellery direction.

Sunday papersky went out to play Scrabble, Z and Z's gf, despite saying they were going out to the drum jam that runs all day, actually went out only about twenty minutes before papersky got home, so instead of Wild and Crazy Home Alone Stuff I watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Also reading, Civ, communication, and cleaning up the apartment happened in appropriate proportions, and a reasonable amount of sleep, though I am less than whelmed with the mastodon children celebrating spring by playing on the fire escape by my window and in the alley out back of the apartment, early in the mornings, in ways that include lots of squealing and thundering up and down.

Also, spit-roast pork and roast potatoes from Coco Rico; really quite astoundingly delicious.

3:34pm: writing wittering
( cut for project planning )

11:37am: observations
It would seem that wearing my sushi-bear t-shirt because of it happening to be the next clean one on the pile is liable to prompt a plan to go have sushi that evening. This is no bad thing.

It would also seem that my subconscious thinks there are huge unexplored American Southwest-type deserts in Bavaria, and wants me to have long dreams about exploring them with zorinth. (Like Peter Fleming with more bickering.)

The Deserts of Bavaria sounds like a Yes album.

3:18pm: *twitch*
I just got spam claiming to be from April Patterson.

It is hard not to suspect this of being in some way james_nicoll's fault.

It was in Russian, so I have no idea what she was trying to sell me.

3:03pm: subjectless phrasing on the mechanics of argument
I feel the sudden desire to find an appropriate issue X such that I can do a post headed:

"Issue X: False Dichotomy, or Distinction Without A Difference ?"

Perhaps fortunately, none come to mind.