May 2017

“He went to Paris, looking for answers to questions that bothered him so” – Jimmy Buffett

So yeah, in May, I went to Paris.

It was just for a couple of days, over a weekend, flying in Saturday morning and flying out on Monday. My parents had a hotel reservation that they couldn’t cancel but also couldn’t use, so I wound up using it in their place.

And I really did enjoy myself. I saw the Mona Lisa, went to the top of the Arc de Triomphe, caught sight of brand new President Emmanuel Macron’s inauguration, had some good meals, and took a bunch of pictures. I’d been a little worried my extremely limited French wouldn’t be enough to get by, but Paris is an incredibly cosmopolitan–or at least touristy–city, and everyone I spoke to was very courteous and willing to switch to English when my lame attempts at more than merci beaucoup didn’t pass.

Anyway, it’s definitely a city I’d like to return to. I saw the Arch, the Louvre, and the Musée d’Orsay–which might have been my favorite–but there’s a lot I didn’t get to see in two short days. I saw the Eiffel Tower only from a distance.

Other than that…? Well, at work, we’ve had a bunch of changes, with people leaving for new jobs (and/or cities), including my boss. It’s meant some added responsibilities for the rest of us, but it’s also meant just a general sense of oddness. Y’know, things change.

Except this cough. I’ve been trying to get that to change, trying to shake it, for weeks, and so far no real luck.

Anyway, it wasn’t all Parisian holidays and post-nasal drip ’round here, no sir. I also read read some short stories, some books, saw some movies,and heard some music. The usual order or things.

The stories

  • “The Ladder-Back Chair” by Barbara Krasnoff (Mythic Delirium)
  • “Sun, Moon, Dust” by Ursula Vernon (Uncanny)
  • “The Scholast in the Low Waters Kingdom” by Max Gladstone (Tor.com)
  • “Beetle-Cleaned Skulls” by J.E.Bates (Escape Pod)
  • Whatever Tower, However High” by Julia K. Patt (Escape Pod)
  • “Paradox” by Naomi Kritzer (Uncanny)
  • Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time” by K.M. Sparza (Uncanny)
  • “James, In the Golden Sunlight of the Hereafter” by Adam-Troy Castro (Lightspeed)
  • “Rising Star” by Stephen Graham Jones (Uncanny)
  • “And Then There Were (N-One)” by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny)
  • “The Stars That Fall” by Samantha Murray (Flash Fiction Online)
  • “Yosemite” by D.S. McNab (Escape Pod)
  • “Red Kelly Owns the Moon” by Shaenon K. Garrity (Escape Pod)
  • “Rings” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman (F&SF)
  • “The History of the Invasion Told in Five Dogs” by Kelly Jennings (F&SF)
  • “But Only Because I Love You” by Molly Tanzer (Nightmare, reprint)

The books

I read three of them in May. Well, okay, technically I finished the last of them on June 1, but I’m gonna count it — and not just because the other two were maybe closer to novellas.

I really enjoyed The Sorrow Proper by Lindsey Drager, which is a meditation on books and libraries and love, with some very nice writing. I thought The Invisibility Cloak by Ge Fei was interesting. And Pyramids by Terry Pratchett…well, wasn’t my favorite Discworld book so far, but it had its moments.

The movies

I watched eleven of them in May, including three I watched on the plane back from Paris. (And am I ever glad we had to taxi for a little so I could watch how Jack Reacher 2 ends. Spoiler: badly.) Anyway, the movies I saw were:

  • A Boy and His Dog:

  • Paterson:

  • Moana:

  • La La Land:

  • Jack Reacher: Never Go Back:

  • Once Upon a Time in the West:

  • Alien: Covenant:

  • Get Out:

  • Joe Kidd:

  • Resident Evil: The Final Chapter:

  • The Emperor’s New Groove:

    • The music

    All of two songs, but I did listen to ’em.