The decorations came down and were packed away a lot faster than they went up. Less than two hours from beginning to end.
Back to the normal writing schedule this morning. I’m trying to do two things at once, which I’m not entirely sure is advisable. I’ve had the opening scene for a novella rattling around in my head for several days now and I wanted to get it down on the page, but I don’t think I did it justice and I need to devote more of my time to the book that is due in three months.
We had a pretty low-key New Year’s. Our daughter cooked us a couple of great suppers: Greek kebabs on Friday night and chicken curry on Saturday night. Since we had to get up at 3:45 a.m. on Sunday to get her to the airport, we didn’t stay up until midnight. However, that doesn’t mean we weren’t aware of the time when it came, thanks to some fireworks in the neighborhood that sounded like a machine gun volley.
I read 60 novels and anthologies in 2011. If you’re interested in the list, here it is on my forum. Toward the end of the year I picked up a couple of books that I had started and, for one reason or another, put down. Dexter Is Delicious was one of those books and another is my current read, The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell is another. Not quite sure why I set it aside after only a few pages, but I’m now deep into it. An interesting mystery in that the protagonist is 60 years old and feeling every bit of it. The case involves his daughter’s future father-in-law, who vanishes. A few days later, the future mother-in-law goes missing, too. Somehow it all ties back to an old political mystery surrounding the alleged presence of Russian submarines in Swedish territorial waters.
I’m listed my Bag of Bones press kit on eBay. It’s great, but I don’t have any place to store it. Seems to be quite a bit of interest in it already.
We watched Bridesmaids last week. Stars and was co-written by Kristen Wiig, who I think has the makings of a pretty good actress. The movie is a little like a female version of The Hangover, by which I mean it’s funny some of the time and painfully awkward at others. Much of the awkwardness comes from Melissa McCarthy’s character (though Wiig has some bad moments, too). Also British comedian Matt Lewis as Wiig’s roommate with a cringe-worthy relationship with his sister. The best part of the movie was Irish comedian Chris O’Dowd (from The IT Crowd, who we saw on The Graham Norton Show a few weeks ago). He was a natural as the cop who befriends Wiig’s character and is obviously the best person for her.
We watched the Doctor Who Christmas special on New Year’s Eve. It was a cute entry in the always-reliable holiday tradition. Kid gets sucked into a time warp and ends up in an enchanted fortress that is about to be demolished while mom, sister and the Doctor (or Caretaker, as they know him) try to save the day. The armed foresters were a bit too Three Stooges for me, but the rest of the show was decent and the last 5-10 minutes was a tear-jerker. Humany-woomany, as the Doctor says.
