I was one of the millions of people who had Farrah plastering their walls in the 1970s. Not just the famous poster, but pretty much every poster available. I’ve always been partial to the one at the right (left in some browsers!), from the set of a forgettable movie called Sunburn. My college friends and I made a trek to an outlying movie theater in Halifax to see Saturn 3, which offered as its raison d’être a brief glimpse of Farrah’s breast. Just one of them, mind you, but it was enough! I never considered her a terribly strong actress. Even her most acclaimed roles were simply okay in terms of performance. I think they garnered accolades because they were better than anyone expected them to be, or because Farrah’s presence drew attention to societal issues in a way that few other people could. And yet I would watch her in pretty much anything she chose to do. She was fascinating. Glamorous. Sexy. And brave—there’s no denying that the pose she struck in her famous poster was a gutsy one. We saw the recent documentary, also brave, and it was hard to watch at times because the disease and time had ravaged those familiar features, the ones that had adorned my bedroom walls for years. Still, when I saw the news on CNN when I got to the gym a short while ago, I felt all the wind go out of my lungs for a second. Her passing wasn’t as unexpected as, say that of Lady Di, but I felt it all the same.
I bit the bullet and upgraded my WordPress installation from 2.6.3 to 2.8. Instructions that begin with multiple warnings to back up your files and your database and then say 1) Delete all files, followed shortly thereafter by “except…” I’m sure there were choruses of “oh, shit” from people who didn’t read to the end of that sentence in the instructions. The upgrade took about 30 minutes altogether, and went off without incident. I would say that the new version seems snappier than the previous one. Beyond that I haven’t had a chance to explore new features.
I received the ARC for Chelsea Cain’s third novel, Evil at Heart, from Amazon Vine yesterday. Looks like the publisher is going all out for this one. The ARC even contained a CD with an extract from the audio version. I enjoyed the first two novels in the series, Heartbreak and Sweatheart, and the latter is reviewed at Onyx. Looking forward to diving into this one.
A while back, Charlie Huston offered some of his early novels as free pdf downloads. I grabbed them at the time, but as I did I wondered when I would spend the time reading these books on my computer screen. Certainly I had no intention of printing them out. Then it dawned on me this morning: this is a perfect situation for my Kindle. So I e-mailed them to Amazon’s free conversion site and got the PDFs back as Kindle files, which are now on my reader and ready to go. Though pdf conversion is still considered an experimental feature, these seemed to go over pretty well.
I received a sample contract for the project I’ve mentioned the past couple of days. All looks to be in order. Now I just have to figure out what to send them.
My goal this week is to lose “a ton” of calories (i.e., 2000 calories). My workout goal when I go to the gym is to burn 400 calories and go at least 3 miles on the elliptical trainer. If I hit 400 calories but not 3 miles, I keep on going, and vice versa. Most weeks I go two or three times, but I’m trying to make it a daily thing during the week, and I’m four for four so far this week.
My car’s thermometer read 118° when I got into it after work yesterday afternoon. The real temperature was 104°. Ouch. Same deal today. The forecast is for a gradual trend toward sub-100 temps over the next few days. Even a 30% chance of rain today. No signs of any yet, though.
We watched New in Town, with Renée Zellwegger and Harry Connick, Jr., OnDemand last night. Cute and predictable, with a few logic gaps here and there. J.K. Simmons’ performance was worth the price of admission alone. Having just watched him in the most recent episode of The Closer, the transformation couldn’t have been greater. Some of the expressions that came out of his mouth were hilarious. Zellwegger’s charm is starting to wear off a little. Her Jessica Rabbit face isn’t drawn quite the same as it used to be.
Speaking of The Closer, three episodes, three interrogations, no interrogation rooms. This week, Brenda got the job done in a hospital room. It’s like she’s taking her show on the road. Mixes things up a little.
Coldplay is offering a nine-track live album for free download on their website. I’ve never owned any of their albums and am only slightly aware of some of their songs, but this is a neat gift and a veritable greatest hits album. Good workout music, I discovered at the gym today.
