greygirlbeast | Entries tagged with breakfast

This morning, Spooky made a fantastic ham omelette (LJ can only spell the word as omelet, which figures), which I ate with pepperoncini (which LJ can't spell at all) and buttered toast, using the leftovers from Friday morning. As I ate, the thought occurred to me, reflecting on all the asshole shoppers and drivers that seem to have slithered out of the cracks the last week or five, I thought, and asked aloud, "If they're this bad at Xmas, what must they be like the rest of the year?" Or maybe it's just that Xmas makes people extra thoughtless, selfish, and whatnot. Maybe it's Consumer Jesus rebound. Regardless, Spooky makes a damned good omelette.

Yesterday? Very, very little with which to regale you lot, kittens. I didn't drink. How's that? I read stories by Sarah Monette and Paul McAuley. The only thing I really wanted to do was board the train last night and ride as far north as Boston or as far south as Manhattan. Just to see the lights, and the long stretches of mostly darkness, and to feel the wheels beneath me. That's what we didn't do, as it was impractical. I'll never understand all this time spent dodging the impractical. If life is an inflated inner tube, then practicality and caution are twin nails waiting to puncture the rubber and release all the air. Practicality and caution are twin nails, and they conspire to thwart the wild heart.

Instead, we nested. We hid. We watched Badder Santa, ate junk food, had Mexican Coke, and played a lot of SW:toR (and no, we haven't forsaken Rift, but I am mostly steering clear until the "Fae Yule" shit has passed). My Sith has yellow eyes now, which I suppose is meant to signify her descent into the Dark Side. Her eyes were the palest blue, almost white. She's a terribly vain woman, who once was a slave in the mines of Korriban. Unmentionable things were done to her there, and those crimes against her mind and body left her shattered, and seeing her eyes turn yellow only drove Varla that much farther into the shadows. But, on the other hand, Darth Zash gave her a shiny new Fury-Class starship...so, all's well that ends well.

Also, yesterday – here on Earth – I listened to lots of old music, mostly Athens-period stuff. I stewed and hated at Xmas, like the Grinch atop Mount Crumpit. But the rage has subsided to indifference today. An odd indifference. Today, I am not so much bitter as I am baffled at the shallowness of it all. This day doesn't even feel like that wicked holiday. It just feels like any other cold Sunday in Providence, which is a consolation, so maybe that's my Fury-Class starship.

Wishing For Summer,
Aunt Beast

Current Mood: flatline
Current Location: Australe Lingula
Current Music: Belly, "Stay"

Hallelujah, Noël,
Be it Heaven or Hell...

That's the best part of the Greg Lake song, so that's the only part I'm quoting. And that's being generous. Fuck you, Xmas, and the manger you rode in on.

I ought be working, as that's my usual Xmas Eve tradition, but I'm supposedly vacating. Maybe I'll clean my office. I know I'll spend the evening posting Xmas cheer, like Tom Waits' "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis" and the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York." And, of course, Spooky and I have our one and only Xmas Eve tradition: watching Terry Zwigoff's Badder Santa (2003), in which Billy Bob Thornton teaches us the true meaning of Xmas. "Fuck me, Santa. Fuck me, Santa. Fuck me, Santa." Well, that and wooden pickles. And theft. And booze.

Yesterday...er. After all the intoxicants, do I even remember yesterday? There were emails with publicity at Berkley Publishing Group/New American Library, because, you know, I'm on vacation. Only writers don't get vacations. Not true vacations. And there was a huge breakfast of ham and eggs and tomato and sautéed mushrooms. Oh, look. LJ can only spell sautéed if you leave off the acute accent. Fucking illiterate fucking internet. I read John Langan's "Mr. Gaunt." I took Vicodin for recreational purposes. Hey, my psychiatrist said it was okay, as long as I don't develop a dependency (flash back to my notorious Xanax addiction of 1988-1991). I thought about cleaning up my office, but it was too much work. I wanted some "candlelight yoga," but I was too stoned...and too sore from the fall at West Cove. I spent three hours on an LJ entry, which is sort of pathetic. We watched the last two episodes of American Horror Story (bow tie!!!), then played SW:toR (and I murdered a Darth! Also bow tie.), and I dozed while watching a documentary on how Earth's collision with a planetoid (Theia) led to the creation of the moon 4.53 Ga (4,533 million years ago, ten to the sixth, etc.). I guess that was yesterday. Oh, except for the Tiger Balm patch and two Red Bulls.

Maybe, late tonight, I'll go out and give all my money away to street crazies, and vets we can't be bothered to take care of, all the freezing and the homeless and lost and forgotten and forsaken and as good as walking dead. But not crack whores. I do not take pity on crack whores, kittens.

And now? Well, we shall see, won't we. Keep watching the skies.

Filled With Happy Juice,
Aunt Beast

Current Mood: Beavis cried.
Current Location: Australe Mensa
Current Music: Jethro Tull, "Locomotive Breath"

One of the things about being a freelancer – and here I mean the sort with nothing resembling a regular gig, the sort who lives hand to mouth, short story to novel to short story and so forth – is that there's a lot of waking-up time. You might have to worry about paying the bills, but you can take three hours to chase the sleep away. But now, because of The Secret, I'm another sort of writer, and I'm having to get used to rolling out of bed and hitting the floor running, frosty, eyes wide, bright and shiny, Cap'n. I'm getting very good at faking awake and articulate.

I actually slept eight and a half hours last night.

Yesterday, I worked. A lot.

I just got word of the Decemberists EP that comes out on November 1, and there's the new Tom Waits next week. Music madness!

This morning, Spooky kindly made me eggs and bacon for breakfast. These days, left to my own devices, my usual breakfast is a can of Campbell's vegetarian vegetable soup. And now I have my sugar-free Red Bull, so all is right and Ceiling Cat is in his clouds, rubbing shoulders with the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

I wish I had a good Hallowe'en party to attend this year, But, likely I shall not. Likely, we shall attend the Molten Masquerade, the annual iron pour at The Steel Yard, where over 500 pounds of liquid steel will flow beneath the night skies of Providence. It's hard to think of a better way to welcome Samhain. I mean, hard to think of a better way to welcome Samhain that doesn't involve nudity. And a sacrificial Scientologist.

A favor, please. If you've received your copy of Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan (Volume One), please leave a comment to that effect (and your location, if you don't mind). I just like watching my new books spread, like a pandemic.

Last night, after work, after Spooky went to the farmer's market, after meatloaf, we played RIFT for...a while. And then we read more of Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis' Wildwood. While Spooky read aloud, I used astronomy "apps" on Kermit to explore Mars and then the Moon. Ah, and yesterday I also managed to read four (!!!!) papers in the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology: "A new Barremian (Early Cretaceous) ichthyosaur from western Russia," "A Carboniferous emblomere tail with supraneural radials," "The first temnospondyl amphibian from Japan," and "New evidence of large Permo-Triassic dicynodonts (Synapsida) from Australia."

And that was the best of yesterday. And now I will leave you with five more randomly chosen "behind the scenes" photos taken by Ryan Anas during last weekend's shoot for The Drowning Girl: A Memoir trailer. However, these are so random, I think I'll add captions:

( Ryan's Behind the Scenes, Part Two )

Current Mood: okay
Current Location: Candor Chasma
Current Music: Brown Bird, "Fingers To The Bone"

My favourite breakfast seems to have shifted from Campbell's vegetable soup to Koyo ramen (ginger/lemongrass, with some fresh veggies thrown in). This morning, I ate them to the thump-thump-thump of Spooky's Morning-Thirty Blue Kitchen Discotheque. She had some New Order disc turned up loud to try to force her eyelids open. I'm not sure it worked. She seems to have contracted my insomnia.

I was a good nixar yesterday and did everything on my to-do list for 1/9/06. We made it all the way through "Alabaster" and "The Well of Stars and Shadow," after an hour of annoying printer drama. I tweaked "Bainbridge." I had a nice talk with Bill Schafer (subpress) and then another, much later, with Ted. As for "Bainbridge," I've probably reached that point where it's time for me to leave the story alone. Every time I look at it, I see something I want to change. Which is not to say the something needs changing. It's a compulsive sort of thing, a deeply rooted belief that even though I can never make it perfect, I can always make it better. But this may not be the case. So it's time to leave it alone. The word count stands at 15,794 (up from 15,606 a couple of days back). Today, we'll read through "In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers" (which will appear in Alabaster under its original title, "Les Fleurs Empoisonnées") and "Waycross," which is a bit more reading than we had to do yesterday. And I have to resolve the question of the afterword. Bill Schafer reminded me that, at one point, I'd been thinking about reprinting "On the Road to Jefferson" as the afterword. And it would be nice to see that piece in print again and in hardback, and using it would save me work, but, on the other hand, it only speaks to the inspiration for one of the stories ("Les Fleurs Empoisonnées"), and I think Anita could probably do a pretty good job with her more comprehensive afterword. So. We shall see. Also today I have to decide what will be the subject for the first vignette for Sirenia Digest #2, because I need to write it tomorrow (and probably Thursday, too). I have something about slugs stuck in my head.

I did get a little bit of the amazingly warm weather yesterday. Before I started working, I sat on the front porch while Spooky walked the cat. It was easy to pretend it was March instead of January. It's still sunny and warmish today. Also,

faustfatale e-mailed me a very funny octopus story yesterday, and also a link to a very fine website for cephalopod aficionados, TONMO.com : The Octopus News Magazine Online.

Anyway, no amusing anecdotes from me today. No angry rants. No lamentations. Too much frelling work to be done. But do please have a look at the eBay auctions. The Dry Salvages is really quite nice, and don't forget that the copy of In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers now being auctioned is the last copy we'll be offering. It's signed by both me and Dame Darcy. And, of course, the auction for letter X of Frog Toes and Tentacles is still under way and features the "cozy" that Spooky and I made, black crushed velvet lined with red silk, a perfect match for the black-leather binding and crimson-foil embossing of the lettered edition, with a hand-embroidered red X. Lastly, it is my understanding that any Tuesday which falls on the tenth of January in a year with the numeral six in it is an ideal time to subscribe to Sirenia Digest. Just click here. Also, if you subscribe between now and midnight tomorrow, I'll even throw in a free copy of the trade paperback edition of Silk. How can you resist?

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Nightwish, "Walking in the Air"