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The Big Despeckle...
Jan. 14th, 2013 08:45 pmI actually felt a little giddy as I completed the last line of the remaining article (which weighs in at over 21,000 target words), and if it weren't for the fact that there are other fish to fry in this world, I'm not sure I wouldn't mind tackling some more on this subject, albeit without the conversational tone in the source text.
Galina and I went for a ride, a couple of afternoons back, that took us to the Half Price Books over at the intersection of NASA Parkway and El Camino. This was at Galina's initiative, which made me a little suspicious ("Is this entity in the car with me a pod person? What did they do with my wife?"), but everything turned out well, in the end.
I picked up a copy of Ed McBain's The Gutter and the Grave, in an edition published for the Hard Case Crime series, and had every intention of reading it at the Starbucks just down the road toward JSC, but ended up speaking with Natalie instead. I instead started in on the book quietly yesterday morning, put it down after a few dozen pages and turned to work, and then finished it last night. It's was a pretty good read, and the way it contrasts with, say, Spillane's I, the Jury—which was written about 8 years earlier, in 1947—is noteworthy. Two major differences that come to mind are how McBain's hero doesn't carry a gun (can't, legally, and doesn't break the law in that regard), and whereas Spillane's tales could and did feature women in their birthday suits (for dramatic effect, natch, see the aforementioned I, the Jury), this McBain outing stops at the bra-and-panties state of undress, though not without first "treating" the reader to what amounts to a strip tease, precipitated by unbearably hot weather. And while this may be a good place to discuss mid-20th century pulp/noir, I haven't the time, right now. Bottom line? I enjoyed the book.
In any event, I'm not exactly sure what time I fell asleep—the book wasn't very long, and I'm a fast reader—but after rising this morning to feed the dogs and take them for a walk, I went back upstairs and did the unthinkable—I went back to sleep until almost 10 am. I did manage to get through the rest of the day without taking a nap, though.
I don't know if the constant rain has anything to do with it, but something appears to be killing my network speed. I'm downloading a 3-MB video file on how to use an Aeropress coffee maker, and Opera reports (and the firewall confirms) that this process is humming along at about 10 kB per second. If things don't get better by tomorrow morning, I guess I'll have to call AT&T again and complain.
Cheers...
Galina and I went for a ride, a couple of afternoons back, that took us to the Half Price Books over at the intersection of NASA Parkway and El Camino. This was at Galina's initiative, which made me a little suspicious ("Is this entity in the car with me a pod person? What did they do with my wife?"), but everything turned out well, in the end.
I picked up a copy of Ed McBain's The Gutter and the Grave, in an edition published for the Hard Case Crime series, and had every intention of reading it at the Starbucks just down the road toward JSC, but ended up speaking with Natalie instead. I instead started in on the book quietly yesterday morning, put it down after a few dozen pages and turned to work, and then finished it last night. It's was a pretty good read, and the way it contrasts with, say, Spillane's I, the Jury—which was written about 8 years earlier, in 1947—is noteworthy. Two major differences that come to mind are how McBain's hero doesn't carry a gun (can't, legally, and doesn't break the law in that regard), and whereas Spillane's tales could and did feature women in their birthday suits (for dramatic effect, natch, see the aforementioned I, the Jury), this McBain outing stops at the bra-and-panties state of undress, though not without first "treating" the reader to what amounts to a strip tease, precipitated by unbearably hot weather. And while this may be a good place to discuss mid-20th century pulp/noir, I haven't the time, right now. Bottom line? I enjoyed the book.
In any event, I'm not exactly sure what time I fell asleep—the book wasn't very long, and I'm a fast reader—but after rising this morning to feed the dogs and take them for a walk, I went back upstairs and did the unthinkable—I went back to sleep until almost 10 am. I did manage to get through the rest of the day without taking a nap, though.
I don't know if the constant rain has anything to do with it, but something appears to be killing my network speed. I'm downloading a 3-MB video file on how to use an Aeropress coffee maker, and Opera reports (and the firewall confirms) that this process is humming along at about 10 kB per second. If things don't get better by tomorrow morning, I guess I'll have to call AT&T again and complain.
Cheers...
