I’m derelict in my duties. I neglected to post a link to my March Storytellers Unplugged essay, which went live on Saturday. Better late than never: Famous People.
I had to go to the Social Security office today to tell them I am now a US citizen. They have TV monitors running informational ads, many of them featuring George Takei dressed up like his Star Trek character, Sulu. In one of them, his female co-star tells him about the Social Security web site. “I’ll bet that’s hard to navigate,” he says. “You’ve navigated asteroid belts,” she says. “This is far easier than that.” She lowers her voice. “Even Kirk could do it.” They’re talking to the Star Trek generation, after all. The ones who saw the shows during their first live run.
Christopher Knight had an amusing, understated cameo in this week’s CSI. He was the minister at the drive-thru window of a Las Vegas quickie marriage franchise. I don’t know if there has been the same turnover of actors in the other CSIs—I don’t watch them—but the LV version has swapped out most of the original actors, except for Nick and Sara. And you know what? It’s still pretty darned good. Jacquelyn Smith was amusing as Hodges’ mother. When talking about her supposed fiance, she says, “He wasn’t a count. It’s possible he doesn’t even know how to.”
When I saw the previews for Survivor, focusing on the medical issue, I thought for sure it would be Tarzan who went down with an accelerated heart rate. I never would have guessed who it turned out to be. The only thing that disappoints me about the way this player went out is that I would rather have seen him blindsided. Just to see the look on his face. I’m not sorry he’s gone. Jeff Strand, I know, will object, because he likes villainous players. When they showed him talking about his medical emergency, still wearing his Survivor clothes (although they looked clean), I thought perhaps he wasn’t going to get yanked out of the game. And he took his idol as a souvenir. Well, why not?
And then a surprise merge, and very early in the season. They’re really keeping the players off guard. So much strategy is geared toward a merge at eight, not a merge at twelve. You’d think that things would go back to the male/female alliances, but not according to the previews. I was surprised to note that Tarzan is actually a plastic surgeon. He has some big words, though he doesn’t always use or pronounce them correctly, but I wonder if he has the same trouble remembering the names of the muscles or blood vessels that he does with people’s names.
Only three episodes left in this season of Justified and a storm is brewing. Quarles is in a corner—maybe even two corners or three, if that’s possible. He thought he had the sheriff in the bag, until Boyd pulled a pretty cool trick that used the letter of the law instead of something illegal for a change. “You are a conquistador,” Boyd says to Quarles after the fact. “But we are not your savages.” I’m not happy that they turned such a venomous and daunting villain into a drug addict, but I can live with it, I guess. He’s still pretty dangerous. The showdown with Donovan over the missing rent boy would have had more tension if I hadn’t seen the preview to know that the Quarles/Raylan face-off hadn’t happened yet, so Donovan wasn’t going to do Quarles any damage. I wonder why Wynn Duffy is still hanging around with Quarles when it’s pretty clear his day in the sun is over and he’s a disaster in waiting.
Despite all the drama, there were some funny scenes, too. The judge complaining about his wife when she was still on speaker phone, for one. The old lady who ordered a couple of milk shakes was a hoot. And Art gets some funny underplayed lines. After Raylan goes off script at the hearing, Art says, “Did that go the way you rehearsed it?” and, as they walk out of the courtroom, “Next time you tell me you’re not good at something, I’m going to believe you.” He can be a hard case with Raylan sometimes, but he backed him up when they tried to pass off a black man as Dickie Bennett. You’d think someone would’ve told Dickie to comb his hair, at least, before going to court. And I figured, from the preview, that Raylan’s warning shot might’ve gone into his boarding room.
Including my session this morning, I estimate that I spent 30 hours working on the manuscript this weekend. Productive work, too. The thing is getting close to the point where I can print it out for the first time and go over it carefully. I have 13 days until deadline. Still waiting on a couple of interviews, but if they don’t happen, they don’t happen. Some of them may come in right at the wire.
I’ve been conducting a bunch of interviews lately for my next book. Some of them have been with people who are very busy. They really want to take part in the project—it’s just a matter of finding 15 minutes or so when they are free. I was supposed to one this afternoon and another one tomorrow.
That’s pretty much what it looked like out my office window all weekend, starting Friday evening. Except it was mild enough—and my window is recessed enough— that I was able to have it open most of the time. Which was good. I love the sound of rain when I’m working. And I worked a lot this weekend. I finally feel like I have the manuscript under control. That’s not to say that I don’t have a ton of work left to do on it. But I feel like I have a handle on it, finally.
Winter skipped us this year. We had some early cold weather in November, and it has dipped down into the thirties and forties on a couple of occasions, but for the most part it has been quite temperate. This week is mostly in the seventies during the daytime and the fifties and sixties at night. Good for the budget: we haven’t had to run either the heat or the A/C much for the past few months.
It’s a little disconcerting when you put money in a vending machine and something unexpected comes out. In my case, it was a can of Coke, but the can was white. Coke cans aren’t white—they’re red. Even a colorblind person like me knows that. Except this one had something to do with saving polar bears.
I’m not really trying to lose any weight, but if that dog by the mailbox last night had had his way, I’d be about two pounds lighter in the butt. Our neighbors a few houses up were taking it out for a walk and I was getting our mail and for some reason or other it decided to leap at me and try to take a bite out of my rear end. It closed its jaws, but didn’t cut through my jeans or skin. It happened so fast that I didn’t even have a chance to get an adrenaline rush. It was almost a non-event, but when I considered it later I thought I should have at least moved away from it. But I didn’t. No harm done.
I handed in my Green Card yesterday. I am no longer a permanent resident alien in the US.
One of the benefits of coming from a Commonwealth nation is the Public Lending Right Commission. I get a check from the Canadian version every year just for having copies of my books on the shelves in Canadian libraries. It doesn’t matter how many times the book is checked out. They do a spot check of seven libraries for a particular book. I get a fraction of the entitled amount based on how many times they find it. For The Road to the Dark Tower, it was in 7/7, so I get the full credit. For When the Night Comes Down, it was in 2/7, so I got 28% credit, but the credit is reduced because I’m not the sole author. Even so, it’s free money. All I have to do is fill out a 1-page form each year and send it off. If you are a Canadian author and you wonder if your work is eligible, 
I don’t think you’ll find anyone complaining amount the amount of rain we’ve received so far in 2012. Weather experts had been predicting a dry winter because of a La Niña pattern in the Pacific. 80% of the time that leads to dry weather. This year is one of the exceptions, and everyone is grateful. We’ve had the 6th wettest start to a year on record, nearly double the normal accumulation for the first six weeks. When the next state-of-the-drought announcement is made on Thursday, they may officially declare us out of the drought. Everything is soggy, but in a good way.