Parting is sorrow...

Moreover, there is not much sweet about it.

Galina took off on the road to Pagosa about half an hour ago, after sharing a breakfast and coffee and packing the car. She intends an intermediate stop in Dallas, at the U-Line facility, to pick up some packing materials.

As for myself, I don't know what I'm going to do right now: It seems too late to go back to sleep (unless it's for an hour or so), but then again I am not due at the MCC until 10 am.

* * *My book for the trip is Patricia Cornwall's Portrait of a Killer, wherein she lays out a case for naming one Walter Sickert, one of the leading artists of his day in England, as the infamous "Jack the Ripper." Cornwall writes a compelling case, and advances evidence in much the same way a prosecutor might.

However, the text is not so compelling that I cannot put it down. It's very easy for me to tire of the meticulous detail associated with the Ripper murders (or, to be more accurate, the voluminous detail about the mostly lack of detail).

* * *I think I will try to doze for an hour.

Cheers...

On the job...

My attempt to go back to sleep this morning was not successful, so I showered, got dressed and set off for work early. On the way, I stopped by the Barnes & Noble, and noted with a jaundiced eye that the latest in the Starfist series has come out in hardcover, in distinction from its predecessors, which arrived in the world in paperback form. In addition, I note a new novel by Mickey Spillane, albeit this tome, too, is in hardcover, and features a story with a hero named Hooker.

I bought neither book, and managed to walk out of the store without buying the latest 2600, the contents of which seem increasingly devoted to inane correspondence with readers, or any of the Linux magazines, either.

Today's work load consists (so far) of two Form 24s, which are done. I shall spend my standby time organizing terminology.

* * *The reviews of the last Matrix movie have convinced me to wait until the film appears on DVD. On the other hand, I am tempted to hunt down and watch Master and Commander, perhaps tonight. I need something to take my mind off Galina's having left.

Cheers...

Ahoy!

The two radiograms turned out to be the extent of today's action at the Execute Package, and when I called Natalie upon the conclusion of my shift, we agreed to meet at the Outback Restaurant at the intersection of I-45 and Beltway 8 for dinner, to be followed by the 6:15 pm showing of Master and Commander.

Dinner was very nice, and we made the movie with some minutes to spare.

The movie itself was engaging. I have to assume that much of what I perceived as out-of-the-ordinary was really an effort to hew to the historically accurate (which I seem to recall was one of Patrick O'Brian's long suits). My recent reading of Patricia Cornwall's book on "Saucy Jack" emphasizes the lack of septic praxis in the late 1800s, which makes it easy to imagine what the standard operating procedure might have been among doctors around 1805, which was the era of the movie - or maybe this is well and truly beyond my imagining, as I seem to recall descriptions of battlefield medicine from the Civil War era that are nothing if not physically painful to read.

And yet, in some ways, the story told in the film seemed anachronistic (i.e., out of place, out of time) given the modern stress on the outré. There wasn't a twisted individual in sight, nor were there any gratuitous sexual overtones. What I found particularly heartening was the utter lack of whining in the story. The movie stressed "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do," without making a big deal, necessarily, of it being men doing it (whatever "it" actually was). Then again, aside from some momentary glimpses of females in some of the boats that met the HMS Surprise early in the film, women played no role in the film at all.

At all times, I felt the tension in the film was "just right," except for the weak, albeit effective, resolution of the problem with the young officer who could not command the respect of the enlisted (or impressed) men. I found the ocean cinematography to be breathtaking (or perhaps I was simply sitting too close to the screen), and the character played by Russell Crowe - Captain Jack Aubrey - seemed overall to strike the proper balance between hero and mud-on-feet-everyman.

Somewhere - probably in some of the blurb associated with this film or the series of books upon which it is based - I learned that the ship's doctor is also a member of H.M. Secret Service. No evidence of this became apparent during the 139 minutes of the film, which attests either to the high level of training back in the "old days" of the Secret Service (which might correspond to the "Old Corps" for gyrenes) or simply cinematographic expediency. Regardless, I found the film very engaging, and one I think I could watch several times more.

Cheers...