ah books!

Just finished Morlante. Really funny, with great characters. It would make a funny movie... albeit a Tarantino gory funny movie. The title character is the best psychopath I've read since Hannibal the Cannibal.

They fight crime!

He's a fast talking bohemian jungle king from a doomed world. She's a cosmopolitan kleptomaniac femme fatale from aristocratic European stock. They fight crime!

3 Things I Enjoyed Today

1. The book I'm reading: Morlante. I previously mentioned that the main character is a writer living on pirate ships. Well it turns out he's a psychopathic one-man killing machine writer living on pirate ships--to get material. Funniest bit so far: Morlante has offered his killing services to three captains, who are terrified of him. While in conversation with them, Morlante picks up an apple from the table...

This is it, thought Lalonde, he's going to beat us to death with apples. [nous tuer à coup de pommes]

Morlante bites into the apple, then picks up another apple and a candle.

This is it, thought Lalonde, he's going to beat us to death with flaming apples.


2. Listening to Tori Amos singing "Famous Blue Raincoat" as I walked home. Not only because she's the Queen of Covers, but also because of Cohen's writing. I mean, check out this line:

You treated my woman to a flake of your life.

A flake! What a perfectly chosen word. Flake!!


3. Watching American Splendor for the second time.

When I saw this movie the first time I'd never heard of the autobiographical cartoon writer, Harvey Pekar. I've since read 3-4 of his collections and I love them.


Hmm... might need to add a 4th thing: Listening to my favourite Dresden Dolls song, "Delilah." Is that a FACT Delilah?

a wee bit worn out!

I've got a 4 day weekend starting Wed... meeza can't wait. We really put a lot of energy into the Buy 3 Get the 4th Free promotion... I feel like I'm all book-sold out! Lots of personal recommendations, handselling, encouraging the staff to do the same, talk talk taaaaalk... and of course between staff members, we're all recommending books to each other, comparing what we're buying. Talk talk taaaalk. I want to sit at home and read MY books. But at least it's a good worn out. A "we-did-a-great-job" worn out. As of Friday we were the leading store in the country for this promo. We have brought the books to the people! Now READ monkey READ!

Right now I'm reading Morlante, about a writer on a pirate ship, ripping people's guts out. That's all that's happened so far, anyway. It's a short book, so a good one to get me back into my French reading. I'm not ready to plunge into a Dumas or anything!

pics for kits

I'd like to buy a new camera--a little dude to carry around with me all the time. I love my Canon Powershot, but it's too bulky for daily use outside the home.

So I'm reading reviews of cameras and such, and here's one thing I find funny--people buy cameras that have stabilizers, and then complain when their shots of moving objects turn out fuzzy. Allow me to share my Moving Objects Digital Camera Advice.

A stabilizer is only meant to correct for the natural shaking of your hand when you take a picture. But to take good pictures of moving objects (sports, cats, kids etc.) what you need, on any camera, is for the shutter to open and close very rapidly. I mean, your camera could be perfectly stable, but a moving cat will still appear as a blur if you don't take into account the shutter speed.

The way I take pics of my cats is to put my camera on the multiple-shoot function (where the camera takes back to back shots, like what you see at fashion shoots on tv), preferably in daytime lighting so the camera doesn't have to wait for the flash. Then you just choose the funniest pictures out of the 5-10. Works very well.

stoopid goals!!!

Why did I set these goals for myself! Stoopid goals. Goals are haaaard. Alright, I'm going to break the bedtime rule in order to break through my writing wall.

My Life in GOALS and SLEEPS and BALANCE

I'm going to make The Grand Attempt at a new bedtime: 3 AM. I've got 3 minutes... but I want to take a shower tonight. Still, last night I took a nap after work and went to bed at 5:30, so this should be an improvement.

On the other end, I moved myself from waking up at 1 PM to waking at noon, to get in an hour or so of reading every morning. And I'm going to move that back to 11 AM. Slowly slowly. This way when I do a day shift, it should be easier to get more than 3 hours of sleep. I made a promise to myself, when school ended, to never get less than 5 hours of sleep. (Once school ended and I wasn't doing the 3 hour sleeps anymore, and was less stressed, magically I got sick much less often. Hmmm! Plus too little sleep guarantees a big headache.)

I mostly kept that for a long time, but now as a manager I have to work at least one day shift (since everyone else has to do at least one night shift... seems fair, plus it's good to see the store in daylight once in awhile!)

The bad thing is... I can so easily function on 3 hours of sleep, that's why I do it over and over. Getting old hasn't hurt this a bit (except the sick part, and the fact that the headaches have worsened over time.) I even read of some sciencey research that said (if I remember right) that night people function better on less sleep than day people do. But when you first wake up it's still horrible.

The other goal is that, when I get home at night, I split those 4 hours before bed into:
2 hours: cook, eat, dishes, read internets
2 hours: write

I haven't gotten to the writing part yet either. One thing at a time. The other hard thing will be to stop writing at 3 AM and go to bed, if the writing's going well. We'll see we'll see...

Besides the health thing, this is all part of trying to maintain my personal goals while working full-time and being a manager again. I stopped being a manager 8 or so years ago because I would come home mentally exhausted, and then it's hard to write. This time around I'm hoping to maintain some sort of balance. Because it's summer I can walk home from work, and that helps me leave behind the Work Thoughts and start the Writing Thoughts. I've noticed that halfway into my walk my brain starts to shift gears, and I leave work behind. But I'm too wussy to walk in cold or inclement weather.

The other thing that's helped is that my initial First Love Excitement Infatuation! with the job wore off about a month ago (still enjoy the job, just not all Crushing) which makes it easier to leave it behind. And I also got a couple big projects done, so I feel Organized and Caught Up. (Like 6 weeks of manager schedules. Now I can just do one schedule a week.)

Better go. Sleeeeps!