everburning

No, not the album by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the TV show with David Duchovny. I picked this one up while in Seattle as my hotel room actually has a DVD player. (I also got Rescue Me and MI-5 as they had a buy two get one free deal.)

I’ve just finished Californication and I loved it. The show is great. The characters are well done and, while Hanks an asshole, you still root for him. This one is highly recommended.

I’m looking forward to season 2 (thankfully it’s coming back, this summer apparently).

As you may or may not know, I’m back in Seattle again for a couple weeks for work. I think this is actually my first Seattle trip where it isn’t grey and wet. The weather today is sunny and clear and reported to be more of the same tomorrow (although I may spend tomorrow hiding inside).

For those of my reading public with short attention spans, the following involves a 12km walk, beer, perusing books, buying books followed by 2-3 more kms of walking through another University referred too as UW. This was then capped off with some TV on DVD, some more drinking, some glass smashing and some more drinking. You may now feel free to skip to the comments section.

The rest of you, here we go.

Given the good weather, and Stacy constantly expounding on the coolness, I went for a wander to the University district. The wander itself was fun, a little tiring, but fun. I started out at the hotel, the W downtown, and stopped off at a hat store on Union. I acquired myself a jaunty chapeau. I’ve been looking for a hat for a while and I think I finally found something I like.

After that, I set off. Walking, walking and a little more walking proceeded. I got some good photos, of which I’ll be posting a selection to Flickr at some point. After about three hours I made it to Big Time Brewery in the University district. A tasty sandwich, four or five glasses of water and a pint that didn’t really do it for me later, I set off again.

This time the destination was the University bookstore. How can I resist a place referenced as having a fantastic Sci-Fi section? Words to turn a mans crank.

While I didn’t get any Sci-Fi books I did get a few others. One is for Stacy which I won’t mention until presented. The bookstore had a collection of Edward Tufte books. I picked up a copy of The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within and The Visual Data of Quantitative Information. I got through the first at dinner but, we’ll get to that. I’ve heard that Tufte has some fantastic books on data visualization and am hoping to learn something about presenting information.

After the bookstore I wandered into the University of Washington. I’ve got to say, the University of Washington has a really nice campus. Lots of cool buildings, lots of large trees, lots of goodness all around.

Have I mentioned just how sunny it was during this whole process? Well, consider it mentioned.

So, after the tour through the University my feet were in the process of holding a referendum to cede from the union so I caught a taxi back to the hotel. In the taxi I realized just how far I’d wandered from downtown. When you can crush the head of the buildings in the distance you’ve walked too far.

After Skyping Stacy I watched a couple more episodes of Californication before wandered out to the Rock Bottom Brewery for some dinner. I read through The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within over dinner. While I’m going to hold off giving any conclusions until I can read the ending with less beer in me, the overall idea, and analysis, of just how fucked PowerPoint presentations can be was fascinating. After dinner I got the beer sampler. In typical style after drinking, I piled the glasses together. This proceeded to the pile toppling and one of the glasses shattering. I managed to make my escape before anyone noticed the three whole glasses, one pile of glass shards and two whole glasses in a line on the table.

All in all a good day. I’ve spent the last few hours turning brighter shades of red but it’s a good burn.

Emeralds are pretty jewels. The emerald city isn’t so different.

You know, I liked this book. If you had asked me when I initially started reading you probably would have gotten a different answer. The one main issue I had through the book was the short sentence writing style. Everything is short sentences. That’s the one thing that drove me up the wall with The Mirrored Heavens. Don’t get me wrong, that style works really well in the action sequences in the book. Just not for an entire book. I stuck with it because the story was interesting and I wanted to see where it went.

I’m glad I did.

This is the first novel by one of Stacy’s fellow Clarion West 2007 class mates. Stacy had picked it up when it was first published and mentioned I’d probably like it.

If you’re looking for a good sci-fi book, lots of action, interesting plot lines and can get over the short sentences, I’d say give it a whirl.

So, Stacy is participating in the Clarion West Write-A-Thon this year. If you’d like to sponsor her you can head over to her post and see how you can pay pal it up.

Clarion was a great experience for her last year (at least it seems that way to me) and I’m glad she’s helping out this year. Along with pushing her own writing along in the process.

So, go speed-writer go. I’m looking forward to reading the short stories at the end of the six weeks.

I bought Stacy a book on ideas for free writing exercises a while ago. She did a couple then it got back-burnered.

Well, I finally convinced her to pick it up again, and post the results on her blog. The first one is available now.

I really liked this story. And no, Basil, I’m not just saying that ‘cuz we’re married. There were certain turns of phrase and plot twists that I thought really worked.

I’m hoping she’ll put a few more of these up as the weeks go by.