Dancing Around the Four Sides

1) Beautiful here today -- bright blue sky with not a cloud to be seen. It was like this yesterday too, so I took the violas (Johnny-jump-ups) and a small French lavender that I had bought and potted and watered them. Layla helped by trying to eat the potting soil. :D

2) Watched the first episode of Counterpart on Starz and liked it a lot. Stories like this, of parallel worlds right next to ours, inevitably remind me of China Miéville's The City & the City (I thought the same thing about the movie Midnight Special). I always enjoy seeing J.K. Simmons, but I thought Harry Lloyd was also terrific as the bureaucrat Mr. Quayle. Looking forward to the next episode.

3) Watched the first episode of The Alienist on TNT and ... was not impressed. I thought it was okay, and I'll watch the next one, but I didn't think the characters of Kreizler and John Moore (Daniel Brühl and Luke Evans) had any chemistry to speak of and were bouncing off each other instead of meshing. I mean, according to the show's exposition, they're supposed to be friends, or at least acquaintances, and I just didn't get that feeling at all. I was also fairly unimpressed by the guy playing Theodore Roosevelt (Brian Geraghty), although apparently he's been very good in other stuff so IDK. Otherwise, this was a big meh for me.

4) Watched Wings of Desire on Turner Classic Movies the other night for the first time in years, and it was just as exquisite and talky and enthralling and goofy as I'd remembered. So much love for the angels in their big woolen overcoats! I know now that this film was the source for my idea that public libraries are sacred spaces, which I later used in the WIP of a post-apocalypse Housefic in which people worship inside the ruins of an abandoned library. It also intrigued me that Wim Wenders (and Peter Handke) were asking the same questions Terrence Malick is asking today in his films --

Why am I me, and why not you? Why am I here, and why not there? When did time begin, and where does space end? Isn't life under the sun just a dream? Isn't what I see, hear, and smell just the mirage of a world before the world? Does evil actually exist, and are there people who are really evil? How can it be that I, who am I, wasn't before I was, and that sometime I, the one I am, no longer will be the one I am?

5) And I was going to say that I'm three-quarters of the way through The Nix, but I think that quote is a good place to end. Five things make a post. :D

Yesterday went to Calloway's and bought:

2 Carnival tomato plants
2 Rutgers Select tomato plants
2 Black Krim tomato plants
2 basil plants, Eleonora
2 dill plants, Bouquet

Oddly enough, no Early Girls to be found. Greenhouse was scented with blooming lime and lemon trees.

Have not planted anything yet. Temps in the 40s/50s at night.

Well, the first day of 2017 here is GORGEOUS. 63 warm degrees (17.2 Celsius, and really, it feels much warmer than that) and sunny. Both new calendars are up (Sierra Club in the bedroom, Audubon Society in the kitchen), and there's laundry in the wash. Layla was Not Pleased about the neighborhood fireworks last night (especially when someone set off what sounded like an M-80 close by), but she's happy and fine today.

Also today, I went out on the deck and discovered that SOMEONE had stolen three ripe lemons from our little Meyer lemon tree. There were seven there yesterday; I have picked the remaining four to keep them out of GRASPING PAWS. (I am blaming the opossum who apparently lives nearby.) Oddly enough, the three ripe Satsuma oranges on the other tree were untouched. :D

So now we know who's been chowing down on our tomatoes on the vine. Mister Nightdog and I were having brisket tonight and watching The Right Stuff on one of the movie channels when we realized there was a rat in the tomato pot closest to the window. And as we watched the rat instead of the movie, he industriously severed a stem from the plant and carried it off.

"There was a tomato on that," Mister Nightdog said.

"Well, let him have it," I said.

I don't know if it was a Norway rat or a roof rat, but it was a good size and very furry. Bold little bastard.

Speaking of the film, parts of it are still very good, but I don't think the beginning has held up very well. Basically it is Sam Shepard as Chuck Yeager saying "I AM A MAN DOING MANLY THINGS," with Barbara Hershey as his wife-to-be on a horse doing a "I AM RUNNING AWAY FROM YOU ON A HORSE PLZ CHASE ME." So, yeah.

ALSO. I am reading Samantha Hunt's novel Mr. Splitfoot, and wow, so far it is very good.

SO. I dreamed last night that I was sort of a groupie in the entourage of some famous woman science fiction writer (I have no idea who it was), and we ended up at the University of Wisconsin, which in my dream was like a huge open-air tent city out in the middle of nowhere. Even the public toilets were outdoors, WITH NO WALLS, and I was attempting to use the toilet without attracting too much attention. And nobody was really paying attention, but I was still nervous. BRAIN WHAT.

I don't even know. The weather here is beautiful, and we have Early Girl tomatoes, little green Romas and Patios, lovely long banana peppers and poblanos and Santa Fe Grandes. I am still reading Nell Painter's History of White People and it is pretty interesting.

I keep forgetting to say that I watched Laurie Anderson's Heart of a Dog on HBO the other night. I really liked it, but then I'm a Laurie Anderson fan. :D

Also I finally went ahead and ordered my own DVD copy of The Drop, since I keep watching it every time it turns up on a movie channel. It's become one of my favorite films -- I think it truly is a little gem.

Three pics of Layla that I took this afternoon are under the cut.

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OTHERWISE. One of the Early Girl tomatoes is turning red, and we have three or four baby peppers on the Santa Fe Grande plants. Also we had a Great Visitation of Birds yesterday -- cedar waxwings (a wrath of waxwings?), bright red cardinals, wrens, and sparrows.

Oh, and we made this granola recipe today and omg it smells SO GOOD. We cut the recipe in half (we DO NOT NEED nine cups of granola) and substituted chopped pecans for the pistachios. It only took about 30 minutes to bake in our oven. Really looking forward to trying it tomorrow morning. :D

ETA that we couldn't wait and tried a bit of the granola by itself, and OMG IT IS DELICIOUS. :D

1) Took Layla to the vet today for her annual vaccinations. She enjoyed the car ride but was not so thrilled when she was actually at the vet's. But it was done, she tolerated being prodded and poked, and she's fine. She weighs 60.5 pounds, which is pretty close to what I had guessed and is right in line with a female Black Lab. :D

2) Yesterday went to Calloway's because they had garden veggies on sale for $1.98. Bought two poblano pepper plants and two sweet banana peppers. The two cayenne pepper plants from last year have survived the cold weather and are putting out new green leaf growth. Also some of the trees in our neighborhood are budding out. Winter? What winter?

3) What else? Almost done with We Are Here, and unless the ending is drastically bad, I think it is a really worthwhile read. Ordered another memoir from Amazon, My Father, the Pornographer, by Chris Offutt (it got a GREAT review in the NY Times). Also ordered an older novel, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, by R.A. Dick (pen name for Josephine Leslie). I watched the movie on TCM the other night -- I first saw it when I was probably about fourteen, and thought it was the most romantic thing I'd ever seen (a widow falling in love with the ghost of a sea captain!) -- and ... you know what, chiclets? It's held up really well. So anyway, I thought I would read the book. And yes, I watched the TV series when I was a kid, too. :D

On the other hand, I also re-watched the 1976 version of A Star is Born, the one with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, and ... no. Just, no. This is a movie that has not aged well. Except for one song -- Evergreen. Or maybe you had to have been there. :-)

It's actually not that bad outside -- it's 39 degrees (3.9 degrees Celsius), but the wind is blasting out of the north and so it feels at least ten degrees colder. I hung a suet basket in the backyard (there are already two seed feeders out there) for the birds. Layla helped by bringing one of her squeaky toys outside and dancing around with it. So far we've had the regular winter avian visitors -- juncos, titmice, chickadees, goldfinches, warblers. Last weekend we had a flock of cedar waxwings come through, accompanied by ... robins.

Have been reading Ian Toll's Pacific Crucible, which is the first book in a two-volume history of the naval war in the Pacific in WWII. So far it is very good. Read The Revenant (book the movie is based on) and thought it was ... okay. It was probably the most simple, straightforward adventure story I've read in a very long time, and honestly I thought the Canadian wilderness novels of Guy Vanderhaeghe (The Englishman's Boy and The Last Crossing) were much better.

Not much else. Thinking about starting some tomato seeds. Heard a screech owl the other night while walking. First one I've heard in MONTHS. Have not seen any night-time wildlife in forever.

1) Housefic coming this week. It's something I actually started all the way back in 2007 (omg) but I ran across it recently and decided I wanted it out of my hair forever. :P

2) Still walking with the pup. A lot. The nifty little pedometer I bought says I've been doing about a mile a day, which makes me feel pretty good about myself.

3) Reading Hilary Mantel's Fludd and have been really enjoying it, although I can tell you her invented village (at least, I hope to god it's invented) of Fetherhoughton is a place I would NEVER WANT TO LIVE. O_o

4) Watched the 2014 version of Godzilla last night. Visual effects were much better than the script (or most of the acting).

5) ( Gardening ...  )

There. There's probably more, but five things make a post.

Planted the cayenne peppers and the baby bok choy. This time Layla helped. A LOT. /o\