work

Oh, THAT snowpocalypse!

It snowed a whole lot here today, and is in fact still snowing, with no sign of letting up any time soon. The photo up above is from about nine o’clock this morning. I wouldn’t want to guess at how much snow has fallen throughout the day since then, but we’ve had to shovel and snowblow the driveway and path several times just to keep it clear.

Our office closed at noon today, but I’d already decided by around seven not to go in at all. The entire Long Island contingent (all three of us) stayed home, though my father braved the railroads and snow to get to his job. He said it actually wasn’t that bad, though even he came home early, since I think it was the uncertainty of rush hour that everyone was most afraid of. There’s no telling right now what will happen tomorrow, but I suspect I’ll be pulling on my boots and going in to the office. An unexpected snow day is a lot of fun, but there’s only so many of them to go around.

Besides shoveling and playing in the snow with the dog, I didn’t do a whole lot. I wrote a little bit, finished editing what I think is the last story for Kaleidotrope‘s April issue, and watched last night’s episode of Lost. I also watched Moon, which arrived this afternoon from Netflix. I really enjoyed it. It’s a small, quiet piece of science fiction, but it’s atmospheric and Sam Rockwell’s really quite good in it. It was actually kind of nice to have the option of watching a movie in the middle of the day.

Right now, I may watch a little something else or read a little, but then I think it’s time for bed. Despite my snow day, I was actually up a little earlier than usual, deliberating about whether or not I should go into work. Though I was home all day, I’m still kind of sleepy.

Snow’s a’comin’

They’re predicting a lot of snow for tomorrow — all that we didn’t get, I guess, over the past weekend and then some — but to hear people talk, you’d think they were predicting the end of the world. My sister, who works in Washington, DC, where they did get a lot of snow already, has been snowed in at home since the weekend and will be lucky if she goes back to work at all this week. We were reminded about our company’s emergency phone number this afternoon, just in case, but snow accumulation tends to be much less of a problem in Manhattan, if only because of all the tall buildings that keep it from getting to the ground (and all the traffic that keeps the ground from being there for the snow that does make it down). The snow on Long Island is sometimes another story altogether, and the railroad seemed almost giddy this evening with the prospect of canceling trains on Wednesday. If it’s really and truly bad tomorrow, just getting to the station or getting a train into Manhattan, I may take the day off regardless.

It’s already started to snow a little outside, but it’s not all that impressive so far.

Beyond the weather, there’s not much to report. I spent most of the day working on test questions for an art therapy research book we’re developing, occasionally posting grammatical questions to Twitter out of idle curiosity and boredom. (“Suppose a sentence like ‘Lions, tigers, bears, etc. are living in these woods,'” I wrote, for instance. “Should there be a comma after the etc.? If so, why? Why not?” I think the jury’s still out on that one.) That’s just the kind of Tuesday it was.

Tuesday various

  • The headline reads, Vegetative state patients can respond to questions. This seems significantly more scientific than some other recent stories in this area. [via]
  • All I can really say to this argument — and to James Cameron’s own insistence that his actors were snubbed in the Oscar nominations — is that hey, if you want sci-fi films to be nominated more often, make better sci-fi films. Avatar an important movie (and so are Up and District 9 to some extent), but Avatar is not a particularly good movie. That’s just my opinion, but I think it’s a defensible opinion and one easily shared by members of the Academy. Maybe these movies aren’t being snubbed out of some lingering genre bias; maybe they’re just genuinely not as good.

    There’s maybe some bias against computer-assisted performances like you’ll find in Avatar, but as Mark Evanier writes:

    There may be a solid argument that in Avatar, Sigourney Weaver is “acting” her role just as certainly as she acts any roles she plays. But you can’t argue that when we see her performance, we’re only looking at the work of Ms. Weaver with the guidance of Mr. Cameron. There are a lot of other people making that character like that…enough to make it feel inappropriate for an award that honors individual achievement. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong. But I think that’s how it is.

  • Word to the wise: don’t look at porn while at work. And definitely don’t look at porn while your office computer is on live television. [via]
  • I have to say, I really loved this Previously On Lost 2: Lost In Five Minutes video. Huge props for actually covering all the big moments of the past five years — though also huge spoilers if you’ve never seen the show. [via]
  • And finally, speaking of Lost, Todd VanDerWerff (who might just be my favorite television critic at the moment) explains why, while it’s okay for a show to have a plan, it’s usually better for them to work around it:

    Could you plan out a TV show to the extent that some Lost fans seem to want the series to be planned out? As a matter of fact, you could, but it almost always ends up being a lesser series. Look, for example, at ABC’s big Lost replacement hopeful FlashForward, now off the air until March in hopes that absence will make viewers’ hearts grow fonder. The series’ creators—David S. Goyer and Brannon Braga—entered the series with a hard and fast plan for where all of the plot points would lead and for where all of the characters would go. This was one of the things that made the show so attractive to networks, who’d been burned by serials that often seemed to have no idea where they were going before. In practice, though, it’s been woefully terrible. The plot, confined by the fact that it knows exactly where it’s going and what all of the characters are going to do, can’t make any of the organic evolutions that any TV series needs to make to be successful. Everyone’s trapped and hemmed in by a plan that has no wiggle room. (A similar thing happened to the vaunted ’90s sci-fi series Babylon 5, though unplanned and uncontrollable events there forced enough of a sense of organic evolution onto that series that it had a little breathing room.)

Sometimes it just turns out that way

Sometimes there isn’t a whole lot to say about a day, especially when it’s not significantly different from any of a dozen others, and when the most exciting thing that happened was when the new edition of the APA Publication Manual arrived in the mail. (Seriously, though, my ordering this was long overdue. We have one copy in the office, luckily on my bookshelf, but also the previous edition.) I did a little work on a theories book in the morning, a little on an art therapy research book in the afternoon, and in the middle I went for a little walk around town. Same old, same old.

I also did a little bit of writing when I got home this evening. All told, I only wrote about 150 words, but that’s actually not half bad for me, and I actually think I like where this story’s going. Maybe it’s partly being inspired by Heather‘s write-up of her ongoing writing residency, and maybe it’s partly getting waist-deep into editing stories for Kaleidotrope, but it’s really nice to want to write. (Though I realize the only way to consistently get and stay there is to write even when I don’t want to.)

Speaking of Kaleidotrope, I’m actually thinking of doing a one-time third yearly issue in July. Right now, the zine comes out in April and October, with #8 and #9 planned for 2010. This would bring me up to an even ten issues (!!!), but it’s mostly because I may have over-accepted and would like to publish some of these stories and poems before 2011. The cost involved, particularly with paying contributors and postage, isn’t a non-issue, but I’m seriously considering it.

And that was my Monday.

Thank God It’s Friday, Again

Today was a long day, but there’s not a whole lot to say about it beyond that. I finished reading through some chapter revisions I’ve been kept away from for most of the week by departmental meetings, and I sent my notes back to the author for review. A good chunk of developmental editing is just reading (and in this case re-reading) manuscripts, which doesn’t exactly make for exciting recounting. Still, what it may lack in daring thrills it makes up for in opportunities to use a red pen.

Beyond that? We found and removed a tick from our dog, Tucker. And we’re expecting a whole lot of snow over the weekend. And I have absolutely no plans to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday. And, you know, that’s really about it. Not particularly exciting, but at least the weekend is here.