In an effort to get away, Jessica and I are trooping off, in the (probable) rain tomorrow and Friday to the lodge at Hueston Woods (one of the fine Ohio state parks).
I'm going to be away from computers the whole time (probably) and you know, I don't think I'll mind.
Today my parents came halfway down and we went halfway toward them and met at Mohican State Park's resort. We didn't have much of an agenda, but fit in some hiking, poison ivy-spotting and a couple hours of shuffleboard.
I think that, if I could put any sports-playing-thing on my property, I'd build a shuffleboard court. Then I could work on my technique, and maybe get to a strategy whereby I don't need to send the other discs flying twenty feet away to keep the other people from scoring.
Yesterday I got out of bed at six in the morning. I left the house around six thirty, and didn't get home until a little after eleven at night. I'm a little tired. The stewardess on the return flight was making sure to keep us all happy by keeping a cupful of beer or booze in front of us for the whole flight. I was more than willing to oblige her.
After all, they say that flying causes dehydration.
Come to think of it, my morning flight was also rather fluid, with the stewardess refilling my water twice and bringing me an extra apple juice.
I wasn't doing so well in the morning. I'd asked the stewardess for a water with ice so that I could put the ice into my water bottle, but she kept refilling my cup with warm water so as to melt my ice. Darnit.
Then, what little ice remained got spilled by some clumsy oaf with his knees up against the back of the seat knocking the tray table.
Yeah, I spilled the ice and about a centimeter of water all over my pants and backpack. And then I went back to reading Koji Suzuki's Spiral. This book (in translated form, as my efforts to learn Japanese have yet to advance past the book-buying stage) is the sequel to the novel Ring which was made into Ringu and remade as The Ring (about which I have written before). Spiral is the sequel to the book, not either movie, so it plays out a lot differently than it would've having followed the movie, unlike say a Lost worldesque sequel-to-the-movie-not-the-book book. For example, the reporter remains a guy and the whole smallpox thing remains.
The book picks up about a week or so after Ring ended, though this time around we follow Ando the medical examiner, not Asakawa the reporter. That shift alone seems enough to change the book from a somewhat tense thriller to more of a Michael Crichton medical/science detective yarn complete with diagrams and high-level studies of genetics and cryptography. Those aforementioned intellectual bits aren't that uninteresting and fit well into the story, but they lend a (perhaps intended) clinical and cold air to the proceedings.
It also gets a little ridiculous in the latter half to third. I realize I'm talking about a book that follows one about a videotape capable of killing people, but Spiral pushes things a little far (though I'm not going to spoil it for the, what, one other person who wants to read it). That said, as soon as it hits the library, Loop will be in my reserve list, if for no other reason for me to see if Suzuki manages to get the world back to some semblance of sense before bowing out of the trilogy.
The book took me from a couple minutes before the flight (in waiting rooms and gate) to a couple minutes afterward to polish off the epilogue, so about two hours solid to read. Unfortunately this left me with only my backup book, Screenwriting from the heart (by James Ryan, highly-acclaimed for writing movies and plays of which I've never heard) for the return trip and that is a much smaller, yet more dense, book to slog through. Not good, not good.
In retrospect, I probably would've done better to grab a grey-market copy of The Da Vinci code or some such easily-acquired tripe from a street vendor. At least then when I fell asleep in the Teterboro waiting room I would have had a "normal" book clutched in my hands.
As it was, when I did in fact nod off in New Jersey it was with James Ryan's attack on films that were not created with the characters first, or something like that. He sounded like an angry guy embittered by countless movies created with a plot or contrivance first and then with characters added to allow for actors and actresses onscreen. I agree with him a little bit, but I also acknowledge that there are some classic plot-driven movies out there, and also that movies light on character can still be full of enjoyment.
'Twas an interesting book to be reading whilst swilling beers at high altitudes, though I don't think I gained much insight into my own (eventual) screenwriting. Namely since every plot I've pursued started first with a plot or a contrivance and only then got characters yoked to it. Oops.
I'm sitting in the waiting room of a small private airline in New Jersey. The company that employs me spent at least five hundred bucks (on paper) to fly me up to NYC today for a three hour meeting that started late and turned into a two hour meeting, into which I contributed a couple comments and as many nods and grunts.
I'm really only here because my boss is in Hong Kong. The guy upstairs (in the building sense, not the religion sense) who set the meeting up really values her input (namely I think because she's not afraid to disagree with him) so I guess he took me instead. I can only hope that I did okay.
I only found out yesterday I was supposed to be coming here, and even then I reserved my enthusiasm until the whole thin was approved by all the powers that be--except that in doing so I never got around to getting excited at all. Whoops. Jessica thought that it was pretty cool, when I told her, but to me it was just going to be another meeting.
Sure, I'd only driven through or flown over NYC, and sure, it's a really neat place, but this trip didn't bode well. Its purpose was vague and my potential contributions even more so.
I have often joked about getting "low man on the totem pole" emblazoned on my business cards... if they ever get around to giving me business cards. I won't even be able to complain about not having traveled anymore, as though this trip were somethign about which to write home.
I'm just tired, and it doesn't look like I going to get home anytime soon. The stewardess just came in, though, and she brought some stuff off the plane. Maybe I'm looking at some dinner here. More tomorrow.
I'm writing this, sitting in the bathroom of a cheap hotel in High point, North Carolina. At this time last night I was behind the wheel of my car, cursing the modern hotel industry's apparent utter disdain for what I had thought to be three of the defining characteristics of hotels, namely friendly service, the "NO VACANCY" sign, and having enough rooms to meet the demand.
I'm getting ahead of myself, however. Jessica and I are not in NC for some sort of vacation. We did not pack our swimsuits. You see, Jessica's grandparents live here, and grandma hasn't been doing too well. She's been in and out of the hospital for some time and apparently during this last visit the doctors did not give a very favorable prognosis. Yesterday night after dinnertime Jessica got The Call from her dad and it was soon apparent that our plans to hit the ribs festival were going to need to wait for next year's. We were on the road by around nine, having needed to get some cash and return the next several days' worth of library materials.
We might not have planned everything too well, but at least we're clear on library fines for the next several days.
What we did not plan well was our eventual accomodations. While I was aware that even with a full day's work under my belt I'd still be more than capable of a seven-hour drive through the mountains, but around midnight we decided that sleeping might not be a bad thing. Big mistake.
We'd listened to a story on NPR about the President's first visit to Beckley, West Virginia. In fact, as the reporter revealed, he was the first sitting President ever to visit Beckley, W. Va. This might explain why every single hotel room in Beckley was apparently rented. Frustrated slightly, we continued on to the next stop, and found the same lack of vacancies. So on and so forth, and before we knew it we'd run out of exits and were in High Point at five-thirty in the morning. We managed to find a hotel and check in around six. What could be easier?
Well, not quite that simple. We can probably only blame Bush for one or two crowded exits. Elsewhere we saw evidence of some district championship, NASCAR fans and a Jehovah's Witnesses convention. Everywhere we found handwritten or inkjet-printed signs in the windows saying "Sorry, no vacancy" or something to that effect.
Whatever happened to the good old neon NO VACANCY sign, anyway? Half of the time we needed to fight badly-parked cars and gravel driveways to read said letter-sized sign. This was, to understate completely, completely annoying.
But we made it. I got to meet Jessica's grandparents and also to visit a bit with one of her aunt and uncle's family who we haven't seen since the wedding. Nice folks.
As for her grandma, I've never been around a dead person except after the embalming stage. I realize that she's still breathing and talking at this point, but she's not going to last much longer. I'd like to have met her sometime before, but we cannot change the past but home to make the most of the time we have in front of us.
As for me, I should probably get some sleep.
Jessica and I went to (Paramount) King's Island, the theme park just outside of Cincinnati, today. Sometime in my youth but outside of my readily-accessed memory I was there once before, unless my parents were in the business of faking pictures of me standing in the shadow of a replica Eiffel tower.
Not likely.
Either way, it was Jessica's first visit and effectively mine too. I'd kept my expectations pretty low (I knew that there's only enough room in Ohio for one Cedar Point). That said, the park had some of the best coasters I've ever ridden. I described the park as at the same time too big and too small to somebody, and it seemed an apt description. There seemed to be about as many rides in total as what I remember of Geagua Lake (smaller than my recollection of Great America/Six Flags over something near Chicago) but the park seemed much more spread out. Heck, I didn't even see the water park section, let alone get to it, though we did get a thorough drenching on the white water canyon thing (the path to which was a good quarter mile I'd estimate, and just beyond the fence poison ivy abounded). I think we spent as much time crisscrossing the park as we did standing in line, but that was probably because we had no clear idea of what we wanted to do.
Fun we had, though. The Beast is one of the greatest wooden coasters I've ever experienced, and the Son of Beast even more so with its upside-down loop (unique in the world) and angled tunnels. Flight of fear is a tiny tangle of twisted metal inside a dark building and makes for the most harrowing two minutes of my whole day, though the hour and a half to get there wasn't so great. It could've been worse, though, as at least I had co-worker Larry and his friend Dale to chat with.
Face/Off really has nothing to do with the movie, but it's a good ride nonetheless. Top Gun blows the Iron Dragon out of the water. Drop Zone's nice and tall, but I think I enjoy the Demon Drop more. I guess I just need to get back to Cedar Point. After all, when last I was there the Mantis had just been built.
As for the other people around me, I'm still stymied by the whole words-on-the-butt phenomenon. I "get" the whole turning-down-the-waistband-of-athletic-shorts to reveal more midriff, but I just don't comprehend why people want words on their rears. Please explain it to me.
On second thought, don't.