Making time, buying time, spending time, losing time, never gaining time.

Wow! And another week gone. I have to say though, the week after a vacation isn't a lot of fun. It's a bit different from when you're doing rotations, 'cos that's more or less the deal, you get your time, and then you pay for it with the other time. This is not that. I should get used to it.

Was fun while it lasted though, the vacation :). Rental cars are good. Freedom. Drives are nice. Although I never did anything much over a couple of hundred miles. Catching up with people, also good. Unexpected meetings, even better.

Finally did the thirty-party :). Sort of. It's kinda entertaining to try and explain why a perfectly ordinary lifestyle feels so unusual. The first few times. Then you figure it might be a bit of a lost cause. It's a bit like one of those jokes where you had to be there.

Did get around to reading the book for this month. It was my suggestion too! And I am going to get so much shit for it :P. I mean, it was Connie Willis, so it was fairly entertaining, funny even. But there was always the sense of a build up. But that's one of those things that kinda only works for so long. And then when you get to the last page of the book, and realize that that's all it was, just build-up, with no end, it gets really annoying.

Thing is, I had not even the faintest idea that Blackout was part one of the two part Blackout/ All Clear double! Yeah, speaking of living in a bubble. But I was on a transatlantic flight when I ran out of words and sort of gaped at the thing for a while before frantically searching the Kindle, knowing fully well that I didn't have a copy of part II on it!!! I felt like screaming. I really did.

But then I started reading Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and that calmed me down some :). Unfortunately, that's still only half finished, and while I now have a copy of All Clear, I'm back to my usual ways of somehow making time evaporate mystifyingly from in front of my very eyes without realizing where it is all going.

It has also gotten very very cold in the mean time. You wouldn't think a week could make that much of a difference. But that's the thing. It was a little warmer than it should have been a couple of weeks ago, and now it's merely slightly colder than it should be, and that makes a world of difference.

Went out on a couple of bike rides nonetheless, with mixed success. Managed to explore some fascinating new terrain while getting reacquainted with some old routes. Also hit the limits of thermal protection provided by what I currently possess. That latter will have to be rectified before further explorations can be attempted, I think :).

Now if only one of these days when I wake up in the morning, I stop feeling like I could keep on sleeping for a few decades.

Currently:3... 2... 1..

Listening to: múm - Eternity is the wait between breaths

Time out

I've been looking forward to this quite a bit actually! Life has turned a bit overly high maintenance of late. Too many things that need doing, need keeping track of, need thinking about or thinking through. You see where I'm going. And that's where a vacation comes in handy :).

Unfortunately, with an office job, a vacation never quite is that clean break from work that time off is on rotation. But at least you get to plan it with more or less some degree of freedom.

I get the feeling when I get back home in a week's time, summer would well and truly be over and the little preview of late autumn weather we're had the last couple of days will be rather more pervasive. But, in the meanwhile, it's time for some fun! And maybe catch up on some reading while I'm at it!

Currently: packed! :D
Listening to: Ellie Goulding - Burn

Just do it

At the risk of sounding like a Nike advert, I had something of an epiphany. There's always a road that leads somewhere. It's just a question of dragging yourself to the start, the rest sorts itself out.

I should do this more often. Or rather, I should start doing this again. As it is we're living on borrowed summer weather now :-).

Feeling: good

Listening to: Katy Perry - Roar

Tres

Remember the time when growing older used to be a good thing? 

I suppose when you have to convince yourself something isn't a bad thing, that says something about the situation. Even so, I like to make that effort.

I guess as the numbers grow bigger, enough time has passed for you to look back on and think about some of the things you'd have thought would have happened by now. Life, however, rarely sticks to a script. And to be honest, let's face it, people are rarely imaginative enough to dream up truly entertaining scripts, so to speak :).

Instead, there's good fun to be had when the focus is shifted to all the things that I never saw coming. Especially the ones I can smile about in retrospect :).

See, definitely worth the effort :D.

Feeling: wiser (yeah right :P)
Listening to: Poliça - Lay your cards out

The walls kept tumbling down, in the city that we love

I really haven't read that much recently. And I feel bad about it. But in a lazy, uncaring sort of way. To put things in perspective, I'd read about a tenth the number of books in this last third of the year than the third before. So when the aforementioned trip to Gibraltar materialized, I figured I'd at least put the flying to some good use.

I started reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane as we lifted off and the fjords fell away from beneath me, unnoticed. I realized, not far into the book, that I'd made a huge mistake. I'd read this. I'd loved the article a couple of months or so back. I'd even started listening to a little Amanda Fucking Palmer, just 'cos.

Like I said, mistake. I kept reading, and had the flights been any longer, I'd have finished it all before touchdown. As it was, I ignored it for the duration of my stay, and picked it up again after I'd settled in once the rock was safely out of view. It didn't take long. We were barely even halfway across Spain.

And as I looked out over the subtly changing landscape I noticed the shapes. The squared off humanness of it all feeling a little out of place. The squareness of the plateaus that looked like a giant carpenter had started planing off wrinkles on the earth but had been distracted, that fit better. Anyway, I digress. I was really mostly thinking about what I'd just read.

I'm not given to spoilers much, but there might be some veiled ones further down, so tread on at your own peril. I quite like Gaiman's writing. I loved American Gods. I loved Neverwhere more. The few others I read were quite good fun too. But this was nothing like any of those. Oh there was madness! And darkness. And light in dark places, and shadows cast by light. But he was speaking in the first person! You'd think it wouldn't really matter, but to me it did.

It was harder to allow my imagination the same free reign while navigating this book as the others, mostly because I had this uncomfortable feeling that I knew too much of the protagonist. I'd read that bloody article, and try as I might, I couldn't ignore the fact that this was him. His childhood. No matter how heavily churned, mixed or blended.

How dare he?!! Now I can't get the imagined horror out of my head. What had actually happened to Lettie Hempstock? I can't help but imagine the worst. Thing is, the worst keeps getting worse. As I'm sure no one needs reminding, real life can be so much uglier than nightmares.

No one can ever blame Gaiman for putting sweet happy endings to his stories. But usually there's nothing anchoring even the slightest part of the narrative to any reality I can imagine. Not this time. This time he's gone and planted himself right in the middle of it. And to distract myself, I wonder about the other things we never find out. Whose funeral was it anyway?

But then it occurs to me, maybe, like A effing P, I didn't get it either! Maybe all of it makes sense. Like proper, real life sense. Wouldn't that be properly awful?! I like my fantasy fantastic, thankyouverymuch. And while this indeed is, quite fantastic, and I loved reading it, it will not be my favourite. When is he going to get done with that American Gods sequel, I wonder? I do hope he turns that art-blender back to a proper ten for that one.

Currently: ruminating
Listening to: Bastille - Pompeii