thinmountain

I finished reading The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing and it was really good. It's short and very terse and direct and the writing at a distance could seem plain, but it's very effectively written. Later at night Mary Beth and I went to Paradiso to see "Wuthering Heights" and I did not think it was very good. I found its attempts to be edgy and shocking to feel forced and insubstantial. (I haven't read the book, but Mary Beth's major complaint was (and the movie is not attempting to be a faithful adaptation at all, very much the opposite, which can be fine, but at every point where something was changed (out of many many points), she felt the filmmakers made the exact opposite decision as to which direction it should have gone). Not much else, it's Friday and that tends to be a nice thing.

After work, I went on another neighborhood walk with Mary Beth. She got a head start as I had a meeting that ended up running over. It was just a bit cooler than it seemed like it'd be, but almost kinda "nice" weather. I wore my jacket and it was almost enough but felt like I could have used something a little warmer, though after I got going with the walking and all my body temperature caught up.

I made the online announcement about this year's Memphis Concrète and as these announcements go, it got a pretty big response (the announcements have always tended to get the biggest response). Anyway, that's pretty nice. It's out there. Also, I had been wondering if I might end up a little short with the lineup but then there was an influx of information and it's leaning towards the opposite! (Still with a good amount in the "worst" case scenario.)

I finished reading The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. It was okay. Some of it was good and some of it could get a bit heavy-handed and clunky (though there was only one "story" that was really bad...I put it in quotes as it kind of straddles the line between story collection and novel, but overall I'd say it's a novel, and especially as some of the "stories" do not stand alone and are short bits of connecting tissue for the book as a whole...anyway, structurally that's something I like about it). Also after work in the evening, Mary Beth and I went on a walk around the neighborhood. Then late at night we sat out on the front stoop and were talking and ended up getting joined by Peanut. She was very cuddly (though one still has to be careful with one's hands!).

In the afternoon Mary Beth and I went out to see The Taming of the Shrew put on by the Tennessee Shakespeare Company. They cut the original framing story ("the induction") and replaced it with their own framing story, with it taking place as a radio broadcast during wwii. It was good, not a perfect play but it has some choice dialogue. Sometimes the acting could be a bit broad, though I did find the Groucho impersonation by Petrucio during the wedding-ish scene to be pretty appropriate. My favorite thing about this production's setting was that there was a foley table for the sound effects. I will always love a foley table! (Funny and appropriately enough, I had just typed "folio" instead of "foley" twice and had to sit a second with something feeling off before I realized my mistake!) After getting back home we picked up some Huey's and chomped while watching Bull Durham, never seen it before and it was pretty good. I completely overstuffed myself on food. Then, I wanted to round off the "Shrew" experience and so before bed I read aloud the "induction" to Mary Beth (as well as the other little bit(s) with Christopher Sly).

Of course right after my last post, we started to discover the issues that came after our deployment. But we got them fixed (at least the ones we've discovered so far) without much problem and got a follow up deployment ready by the end of morning. Not a lot else throughout the day. At night I made another dumb listchallenge, this one for the books that I've rated 2.5 stars, which is kind of a weird rating number, I guess, and it's a pretty short list. The snow in the back lot is now reduced to a bit of slush.

We had our first deployment for the big rushed project I've been working on. I also had my doctor's appointment at 1. Well, I'd initially scheduled the deployment for 9:30 and figured that would be fine. But then in the morning it was brought to my attention that the time had been changed to 11:30. Well, that's pushing it but it's what should have been a simple deployment so, in theory, there should be enough time. Then the infrastructure guy who would be doing the deployment was like thirty minutes late so I was getting nervous. But we got it deployed and the jobs turned off (for reasons I'll explain shortly) and what few things tested as we could. Then I literally had just enough time to get to the doctor's. The snow/ice in the back parking lot seems to have at least thinned a little. Anyway, had my appointment. It went pretty quick. Apparently I've lost some amount of weight, which is very surprising 'cuz I've been certain I've been gaining weight. Haven't been too concerned about it either way, just was a little surprised. Also was surprised to be told my new insurance doesn't have copy and I just have to pay it all until I reach the deductible. (I need to check this again, because I could have sworn we made sure to get copay.) Anyway, I got some cds in the mail: Id M Theft Able: Exhalations in a Flash Light Beam (I'm enjoying the recycled elements for the artwork, the liner notes are glued to a PS1 Mortal Kombat Mythologies Sub-Zero manual), and in the package he even included a greeting card, for a party invitation with watermelons on it and a pop-up watermelon inside, very nice touches. Okay, then at night it was part two of the deployment. This one external system needed to have something enabled and to do that required a restart so they had to wait til after business hours. I was all thinking 8 pm but then it was 8 pm eastern time so I got a little surprised when it started happening, but luckily I'd just finished dinner. Anyway, that was turned off and they disabled their jobs and we were able to enable our jobs, ran some of them to monitor and see how they're doing. Hopefully they continue to work right and don't cause problems! Yay!(?)

The only major thing yesterday was going out to TFM on my lunch break to do our second run of grocery shopping. While the major roads are very clear, small side roads are still a little bit clear (at least one pathway clear). Our parking lot is still very snowy. Now it's a bit softer and a bit ruttier and we started getting a little stuck coming back in, but managed. Still looks about the same out there now.

I got a cd in the mail: Slow Blink: Edgelands. At night I finished reading The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood and that was pretty good. It rained during the day, helping to clear out the ice especially on the actual driven-on areas. Our back parking lot still looks pretty snow-covered (but it's finally started getting the dirty snow look...it kept it up looking pristine for so long though). I think that's about it for now.