spring rain

When you don't have a raincoat, and you leave your umbrella in the car parked far, far away from the front door, the best kind of friend will wrap you up in a bathrobe and a jacket to try and stay dry. This was actually surprisingly effective.

The creekbed behind the house is roaring, a sound like white noise or air conditioners turned on full blast. During the day there were off and on showers, and a fine mist. Shortly after 7:30pm, it started raining hard. Big sheets of raining at forty five degree angles, thunder and staccato bursts of lightning. Driving home, the burst was so bright and prolonged it washed out every street light for blocks. It looked like the sky was on fire. In the parking lot, water was pouring in steams but you could see where the laundromat drained out because it was faintly steaming in the chill rain.

Time for sleep, broken by flashes of lightning.

(no subject)

Book People release party for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows! I am thinking this sounds like a lot of fun. The past two books, we picked them up at midnight and read through them like crazy in Metro back when it was a haven of all night coffee and smoking. I remember finishing order of the Phoenix at 7am and crying. I remember pacing the length of the upstairs chain smoking and holding my copy of The Half Blood Prince. I am so not ready at all for the end. I'm just not.

questions from cedarlibrarian, and other stuff

1. You get to go back to college! Where do you go, and what do you major in?

Tough call. If I could get away with it, I'd go to Columbia to double in Slavics and History. i loved Columbia when I visited there to talk about graduate programs. As I was saing just today, aside from UT it is one of the few colleges I've instantly loved. But the other option is to run away back to Prague, enroll at Charles University and study Czech literature and film. the more I think about it, the more I think Charles is the place to go. It's a tough school, and there's no air conditioning, but you can hang out the windows to smoke and the film archives in Prague are astounding beyond measure.

2. Aliens have landed in your back yard! What do you feed them?

Oh dear. First I will offer them some Shiner, as a long interstellar drive probably calls for a cold beer at the end. I'll make some homemade salsa with Evelyn's recipe and have breakfast tacos, pork tacos and fajitas. Then I will give them pie. Lots of pie. Peach pie, chocolate strawberry pie, lemon chiffon pie, coconut meringue pie, and apple pie.

3. Your favorite TV show was just canceled! What's in your angry letter to the network executives?

Dear Fox,

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. While I've always understood your programming choices to be slightly schizoid and often divorced from anything resembling reality, that ordinarily works out for the best. (The decision to air the series Profit springs to mind as a moment of genius years ahead of its time.) However I am currently wondering if your staff has been pilfering Limbaugh's pill bottles and the stash of the guys at Fox News. I am specifically concerned by your cancellation of House MD.

Are you seriously suggesting that a show about a drug addict running rampant in a hospital setting is too outre for your viewers? Are you really concerned that the blatant sexual innuendo and implications of some seriously twisted relationships is too much? Was it the use of the word 'motherfucking cocksucking sonofabitch' just too much in primetime? You've got to be kidding me. you're the folks who brought us such highbrow class acts as The Swan, The Simple Life, Mad TV and Greg, The Bunny. After years of inflicting crap like The O.C., Stacked and Temptation Island, I think you guys owe us one. (And while you're at it, talk to Matt Groening and figure out what the hell is going on with The Simpsons, okay?)

It is my sincere hope that someone in your office will sober up long enough to put House back on the air where it belongs. Seriously. If you guys keep pulling stunts like this, it's not going to be pretty.

most cordially,
-Me

4. You've won $5,000 in the lottery! You must spend it on something you don't need. What do you buy?

How about a quick jaunt to Saint Petersburg? Would that count? If trip isn't exactly a thing, I'm going to buy a fur coat, a new suit, a new tiara and a shiny new handgun. I don't really need these things but I'd sure like them.

5. You have to live in a book for a week! What book do you live in, and why?

I'm agonizing over this question. More than any question I've been asked in ages! Do I run for Peter Hamilton, Bradbury and Asimov so I can go to space at long last? Do I grab hands with Danny Smiricky to dance to American jazz music disguised as revolutionary in Communist Czechoslovakia? I could go to Fionavar, to Middle Earth or to deLint's much more magically real world. This is such a difficult decision.

After staring out the balcony for a long time and running my hands over the bookshelf, I've decided to spend a week in The Miracle Game by Josef Skvorecky. I want to spend a week in the Prague Spring of 1968. I want to spend a week hoping the the world can change for the better. I want to be idealistic and believe, and let Danny take me out drinking at night. When I first went to Prague in 2001, I read this book in the middle of the night and realized that life was actually real. It has been my favorite for many years now.

You know the drill, comment if you want questions.

I ate lunch with Mike today. It made me want to quit working for the state and go back to the corporate world just for a real damned cafeteria. Hah. There's a reason why that company has topped the list of best places to work for eight years running.

The sun came out this afternoon, and it is in the sixties. Everything is slightly damp, which is good. Tyler said the lake was up almost a foot from last night's storms. Now we just need a solid month of that to get it back where it belongs. I've got all the sliding doors open to the stillness of the afternoon. I'm going to sing "Я Твоя Не Первая" until I have it memorized and bake pastry. This is a trial run for the lingonberry batch I promised Mike for later in the week. I want to make sure I get the dough right.

Just so you know, just so you know.

Yeah, yeah, I post four hundred times a day. I know. This is probably the only important one I'll write today. I've been thinking about it since last week when I learned someone I knew died a useless, terrible death. You never know, I suppose, so it makes sense to be prepared.

For the record: I'm an organ donor. Tell them to take anything and everything. God knows my liver will be useless one day, but I'm sure they can use some of the other pieces.

For the love of all things, don't bury me. No funeral service in a graveyard, no terrible visitation around a casket. Don't put me in the ground. Take whatever's left of me and have me cremated. If you can, send me to one of those places that will turn my carbon bits into diamonds. I can't think of anything better than being turned into a shiny stone when I'm dead. If you really want to keep a little piece of me in a box or a jar, that's alright. (Just don't buy those weird things they sell in funeral homes. Find something cooler to stick me inside, okay?) Otherwise, let me go here in the hills and wide open sky.

I promise to try and write something down to do with all my books, and whatever else I end up with down the road. I'll try to make sure it all gets settled so it won't be a hassle for folks to deal with. On the extremely rare chance that I die with lots and lots of money, you had better not fight over it or I will haunt you. I mean that. We all know things run much smoother when you listen to me.