Somehow I forgot to post these photos from a 2023 music fund-raiser (I forget for which group) at the local Whitehall Antiques in Chapel Hill. TYG took me. Here’s the setting for the dinner outside
Then there’s the antiques. An 1822 dressing box.
Cricket balls!
An apothecary’s chest.
A freaky looking clock.
A music box from times past.
A Regency-era barometer.
And plates.
All in all, a very cool night.
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Filed under Miscellanea, Personal
Last weekend, TYG and I decided our date would be another trip to the North Carolina Museum of Art. Our timing was good as it was the last day of Dutch masters exhibit. It’s the first time I’ve seen a Rembrandt in the flesh, I believe.
There were other cool paintings from the Dutch culture’s gilded age a few centuries back. This Gerritt Dou “Dog at Rest” may be my favorite.
Here’s another.
That winter landscape was by Jacob Van Ruisdael.
We also looked through other parts of the museum. There’s Rodin’s “The Kiss”
This photo which I liked, by Luis-rey Velasco.
This one’s just plain weird, but it works.
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Filed under Miscellanea, Personal
Though as usual it’s day-date photos. These from some while back, when TYG suggested we check out a store at Southpoint Mall selling fossils.
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Filed under Miscellanea, Personal
Back in October, TYG and I went to the Norrth Carolina Science Museum for its spider exhibit. And I took photos. If you’re arachnophobic, look away now.
We also saw multiple other exhibits including the acrocanthosaurus skeleton, a large, rare dinosaur.
And some old-school dioramas the museum keeps up and running.
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TYG is an art history minor and generally into art so one of our recent date nights was really a date afternoon at the Ackland. We wanted to catch a display of French drawings and generally check it out as it’s not one we visit regularly. Here are a few random photos.
This one above is an actual William Hogarth.
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Filed under Personal
First off, some really good news: the vet swapped out Wisp’s cast for a heavily padded bandage and says she might be fully healed by mid-month. That would be great for all of us, as we were anticipating the end of August. Wisp and Snowdrop would so like to reunite.
A new problem, however, is that Wisp’s leg is now flexible enough she can sometimes reach and chew on the bandage around her foot. This is bad, so I’m doing my best to discourage her. She’s also gotten the cone of shame off a couple of times. If worst came to worst, we could just take her to the vet for a new bandage — they’re close — but I’d rather not.
As the title of this post says, the week was productive, but it was exhausting. Not this bad—
— but yesterday, I was wiped out. I’m sleeping better but the accumulated sleep deficit and the way I’ve rarely gotten a solid night of sleep has left me fatigued. Everything seems to take more work and mental effort, and little annoyances grate on me more. Thinking is way harder.
In a perverse twist, I set up my schedule to work through my early morning rising but this week my sleeping patterns changed enough that this didn’t work out well. Partly that’s because I succumbed to temptation and read books when I could have been writing. I also did very little exercise this week, due to the way my schedule formed up. And yeah, the fatigue.
The slowed-down brain explains why I spent way more time than planned working on stories for The Local Reporter, Chapel Hill’s online newspaper. One covered a couple of relocating local businesses, one dealt with a couple of road projects. My editor was very pleased with my work so more will follow. However the next round of stories won’t consume so much time.
As for my personal writing, I put in a lot of work on Savage Adventures; finished a final revision of The Love That Moves the Sun (fixing the problems will come next week); started planning promotion for when I release Southern Discomfort and Savage Adventures from Behold the Book next year; found a logo designer; and went in to check on an old health problem (everything stable, woot!). And I have two posts on Atomic Junk Shop, one on spoilers, one on stasis in specfic.
I feel exhausted but at least I’m back in the game. I will probably feel more exhausted after this weekend as TYG is enjoying her anniversary gift of a weekend away from everything: dogs, cat, work, me (she doesn’t mean that last part in a bad way, honest!). Just reading, sleep, shopping and whatever else she feels like. I suspect adding Wisp to the mix will make it tougher than the last time she traveled, but c’est la vie. TYG’s earned it.
#SFWAPro. Cover art by Joe Kubert, all rights remain with current holder.
Continuing to catch up on posting photos from our dates. About a month and a half ago I took TYG to the Sarah P. Duke Botanical Gardens, which she’d never seen. Except not realizing there’s more than one botanical garden around (remember, I used to live in a very small town) we wound up at NC Botanical Garden instead. Which is cool; as you’ll see it has a great selection of native plants, particularly pitcher plants.
And some great plant names such as Appalachian false goat’s beard, rattlesnake master (sounds like someone who should be fighting Two-Gun Kid or Jonah Hex) and heart’s bustin’.
This statue appears, so to speak out of nowhere, like a guardian entity on Star Trek.
They also have a life-size chess game.
We’ll get to Sarah Duke another time but we’ll be coming back here too.
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Filed under Personal
I know I’ve mentioned that TYG and I do regular weekend dates with each other now. Some of them lead to interesting photos that I keep meaning to post, then never do. Time to fix that! Here’s some from a visit to the old Chapel Hill cemetery. With unmarked slave graves from long ago—
—and the grave of Charles Kuralt, who graduated from one of the colleges around here.
Here’s the grave of someone born in 1886. They had quite a few old ones like this.
And these are just cool.
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Filed under Miscellanea, Personal
A couple of weekends back, TYG took me to a baroque music concert in a Durham church for our weekend date. I’m not a classical music guy but I enjoyed it. And the setting was pretty.
We got to sit close to the orchestra too. Here’s an instrument.
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Filed under Personal
A line of Mao Zedong I’ve occasionally quoted is that “there is disorder under heaven but the situation is excellent.” That sums up this week. It started off frustrating but turned out much more productive than the shakedown cruise of the first week in January.
Monday I had to deal with Plushie’s puking, plus help TYG out with some stuff. That sucked up much more time than expected and chopped up the day into small bursts of time where I couldn’t accomplish anything. Tuesday TYG and I had more stuff to take care of, plus I had my dental cleaning in the afternoon. Once again the day broke up into periods to small to build any focus.
Still, I’m pleased with my work. I got another 4,000 words done on Let No Man Put Asunder, which is harder than I thought. After waffling in December, I’ve committed to keeping protagonists Paul and Mandy in the city of Blue Ivy (which I’ll probably rename) at least for the early part of the book. That means instead of having them on the run, alone, they’re having to deal with Mandy’s family, the city police department, plus the bad guys who are after them. All of that changes things up and my mind keeps suggesting more changes. Plutarch, a psionic boy from an alt.Greece is now Flavia, a Nubian slave from an alt.Rome, still psionic but also blind. She gets to keep Plutarch’s living-metal bodyguard, Talos, however.
I rewrote Paying the Ferryman and I think I’ve fixed the problems. I’m going to have my writing group beta-read the second half, however (it’s 8,000 words) to see if it holds up as well as I think, and what to do if it isn’t. I rewrote Bleeding Blue and I think that definitely works: I’ll wait until the end of the month, then make a final proof in hard copy.
The one where those missing two days hurt me most was Impossible Takes a Little Longer. I did get some work done on the book but nowhere near as much as I’d have liked.
On the downside, Adventures of the Red Leech came back from the Sherlock Holmes/Lovecraft anthology I submitted it to. I may send it out again, or save it for Magic in History, the historical fantasy collection of my own stories I plan to put out (needs a better name, though). More disappointingly, Gollancz sent back Southern Discomfort. I’m not shocked — a big publisher announces a window for unagented submissions, the competition’s bound to be tough — but it’s frustrating. I’ve hit almost all the specfic publishers who accept books without an agent and the remaining ones are currently closed to subs. Perhaps it’s time to self-publish again?
Over at Atomic Junk Shop I’ve published a late MLK Day piece and a look at the new generation of comics writers — Roy Thomas, Cary Bates, Denny O’Neil, Jim Shooter — who debuted at DC or Marvel in 1965 and ’66.
I’ll close with a look at Trixie and Snow Drop nuzzling. I wouldn’t say our cats and dogs are friends but they get along okay.
#SFWApro. Cover by Gil Kane, all rights to images remain with current holders.
