Whatta Fiasco

I had a difficult time getting into this film. Two dissipated and self-destructive, unemployed young actors in London in 1969 represent the turning point of a generation. Sort of. Toss in an eccentric gay (and wealthy) uncle and a city boys in the country setting, and some hijinks ensue.

This is one of those sparely plotted stories with a chatty narrator who’s all too likely to veer off into a examination of issues involved in telling a story. And the dialog is not traditionally punctuated as the lines fly back and forth, interrupting each other. Add in the fact that it’s translated from Portuguese and this won’t be a book for everyone. But I can see why it’s a prize winner, and it has nothing to do with the gimmick uncurled through the title, although the grounding of that device doesn’t hurt. What matters is the life of this old potter and his dog as they navigate change.

Another holiday, another short week of practice, although it got supplemented by a trip to Emporia for a small fencing clinic. It was a fun afternoon.

Wednesday’s practice I was a bit sore after having worked out at the gym the previous two nights in a row. Clearly my body would prefer a day of recovery time. And that was on top of not having had a complete day off (with no gym or fencing) since the Tuesday before. Ow. But it was still a good practice. I had it pointed out to me again that I was center lining my attacks against right-handers, thus exposing the outside of my arm. And no I understand why I was doing it, so I can look out for it in a more concrete way. I was also working on a goal of getting just a little more distance on my lunge in bouting and that worked out well too. I got several touches that would have otherwise fallen a bit short. But I caught myself at first thinking about where my front foot was. Wrong! If you want your lunge to be longer, you have to focus on your back leg. Once I got that sorted out, it all worked much better.

Friday was a fairly lightly attended practice, but still good. After my first few touches I did the fencing brain reboot (boot to the head!) and then things went much better. Lots and lots of planned actions.

It started out well enough with a very pleasant holiday Monday. I slept in and then had a roll-your-own spa day consisting of a favorite brunch prior to some time spent sweating in the gym, both on the exercise equipment and in the sauna. Then it was time to hang out in the local coffee shop reading a good book before having a nice dinner with Ms. K and company.

And then things got crazy and did so in a way peculiar to short work weeks. Hubby had an unexpected deadline pop up which played merryu havoc with scheduling. Then a trip at the end of the week got cancelled/postponed and then the deadline got moved back at the last minute. And the environment in my office wasn’t all that much better. I came just that close to unilaterally wiping South Africa off the map because of some communication mixups. And my workstation is still acting suspect as I count down the hours toward a permanent hard drive failure. (Just break already!) And things in general around the office are as tense as tense can be for reasons having nothing to do with my projects. It’s just bad, and being short on sleep only makes it worse.

The cherry on top is that today is the last day the greasy spoon downstairs will be open. They lost their lease and will be moving to another location downtown. Good for them, but we’re likely not to have convenient lunch fare for about a month. I went downstairs this afternoon for a last shot at the salad bar, only to find that they hadn’t set out the salad bar today. Sigh.

But I had someyummy sushi for dinner last night, and I just heard word today that there’s a sushi place in the evilfood court office building a few blocks away.

Lazte Breaking Announcement: Be careful what you wish for. As I was typing the above, we took a power hit on my floor and it rebooted my workstation. Or tried to. At this point I have an UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME, Oh, yes. What a pretty blue error screen. I’m glad it’s Friday.

I’ve been seeing books by Tim Powers on bookstore shelves for years and years, but never felt compelled to pick one up. Why, oh why not? Whether or not you’re fond of the story, this man can write. If you like Neil Gaiman’s work, you really ought to read this book. And if you enjoy fiction set in mid to late 17th century London, you ought to read this book. If you enjoyed the wild abandon of China Mieville but found the vocabulary off-putting, you might find this more to your taste. Good book. And he even manages to work in some fencing.

Just what the title says. This short documentary is an introduction to Wagner’s Ring Cycle (all seventeen hours of it) through the eyes of the stagehands. Poker games. Watching basketball on TV between set changes. Sending roses to Rhine maidens. Getting the fog machine to work without asphyxiating the singers. Physically animating giant dragons. Trying to keep the entire story straight. All of it. Quite amusing and well worth the time.

Yesterday someone had parked an H3 in my parking garage at work. Commuting in an H3? The only spot big enough to hold the vehicle (because they’ve started ticketing people who take up more than one spot) was a handicapped spot. That seemed all too appropriate.

And then I thought to check the US Fencing Association web site and discovered that I’m on the national points list for Veteran 40 women’s epee. I’m number 47 out of 52 at the moment, even though I’ve only fenced in one veteran event so far. That was pretty cool.

Today was one of our semi-regular expeditions for dim sum and it was an exceptionally good version. Even the jellyfish wasn’t completely spurned. But the taro puffs were devoured, sesame balls were acquired, and the sweet tofu was incredible. Know someone who’s a tofu skeptic but has a bit of a sweet tooth? I’ve never seen a presentation of soft tofu that I was really fond of, but that’s all changed now. Silken soft tofu pillowed in a fragrant, slightly sweet, ginger infusion. Deceptively simple. I’m going to have to try making this myself. Good company can make it even better.

Later in the evening I braved the cold to make a trip to the gym for the first time in over a week. And after being away that long and spending a couple of days sick, I was having trouble getting my heart rate up to the proper range. I’m going to have to find a way to crank things up a bit to get the progress I’m looking for. Joy.

It was one of those Mondays when everything seems to go inexplicably wrong. I reached my WTF quota by lunch time, but it didn’t stop there. Part of the gremlin problem was solved when we zapped some disk rot on my workstation, but the web server ghosties are still hanging around. Joy. But I’ve nearly nailed the schedule for axing a set of databases I no longer need to maintain. Serious joy.

Then, just as things were looking up, I came down with the stomach flu on Wednesday and left right after lunch. I stayed home Thursday as well, missed fencing on Wednesday and my gym night on Thursday, but I got to see some curling on the television. My stomach is still a bit fluttery, but not enough to keep me from getting some work done. Fencing tonight? We’ll have to see how it goes, but I should be able to get some work done there.

Now I have the answer to my (unstated) question. I much prefer Elizabeth Moon’s writing to that of Jody Lynn Nye. This book has at least one glaring plot hole, and the plot in general is all over the place. But the characterization is so much better than the last book of this series I read that I can forgive that entirely. But I think I’ve had enough of this. There are some very interesting characters in here, but my rule of thumb to hesitate before reading collaborations stands.

Another St. Louis tournament, another scheduling snafu. This time the fencers showed up to find a volleyball tournament in progress in the gym that was booked back in September. Oh joy. But, as usual, the bout committee rolled with the punches and found us a place to fence. Narrow hallways with low ceilings and fluorescent lights are not ideal, but even bad fencing is better than no fencing. And by the time they got through with the first round of mixed epee DEs, we were entirely moved into the gym. The good news was that we had enough women show to have a separate women’s event in addition to the mixed event, and all without an extra entry fee.

My fencing in the women’s event was not all that great, and wasn’t helped by getting stuck in a three person pool. Not good at all, but it’s hard to argue with free. And, as above, bad fencing is better than no fencing, and after a four hour drive to get there, I would have been dragging people outside to fence in the snow if that was the only way to get any fencing done. Instead I got pretty seriously stomped in women’s pools. In my DE I held my own quite well for the first eight touches, and then she figured out what she was doing wrong (tall person not using her height) and then shut me down for a 15-8 loss for me.

I had a better start in the mixed pools, winning my first bout handily, then had some close 5-4 losses and finishing with a 5-0 loss to a very good fencer. Losing isn’t fun, but fencing a really good fencer can be fun even when they beat you soundly. Suck it up and learn. My DE was against the number seven seed and I had my best fencing of the day. (Is there a pattern developing here?) I was moving well, changing up my game, and pulling out all the tricks I could think of. At the first break I was down 9-6 and we ended in the second period at 15-10. So no great results, but I was pleased with my fencing. And through some miracle of mystery, I ended up not pulling a DFL in either event–just barely.

This event was the competitive debut of one of our pre-teen foilists. She’d only been fencing for about two months and had the gumption to get up and fence in an open event against a bunch of adults. That in and of itself was great. That she managed three touches in her DE and one of them was a very pretty disengage that caught her opponent off guard? That was golden. And then her dad finished third in the mixed epee.

Women’s Pools:
Norman 3-5
Horzmann 1-5

Women’s DE:
Beckerle 8-15

Mixed Pools:
Villagomez: 5-3
Doss: 4-5
Cronin: 2-5
Kuzmeski: 4-5
Self: 0-5

Note: Self went on to win the event. But even with only one win, my indicators (-7!) were not the worst in the pool. There’s one part of the mystery solved.

DE:
Roland 10-15