Well, dear readers, some bullets were dodged and not much merde hit the fan yesterday, so please keep sending those excellent vibes and xylophones. I have to tell you that for the past few nights I have had some of the weirdest dreams ever, and they’re not hard to figure out. It’s funny about dreams – most of them you forget the minute you get up, and yet others stay with you your entire life, and I don’t just mean recurring dreams. I’ve had some of the latter that lasted for decades, but interestingly a few of them haven’t made appearances in a very long tim. A very long tim? What’s next – a very long tiny? Time, not tim. Although I suppose I’ve known some long Tims in my Time, very tall Tims. I remember one very tall Tim walking by me and me singing “Where have all the flowers gone, long Tim passing. We don’t allow groaning here at haineshisway.com. I mention in Benjamin Kritzer the dream I had when my tonsils were removed – a dream I have never forgotten. I probably purged a long-time recurring dream when I wrote my short story, I’ll See You in My Dreams, because as much as I’d love to still have it, I think when I wrote about it that was it. Anyway, I’ve had some real corker over the last few days.
Yesterday, I got under six hours of sleep. Once up, I had a few e-mails to answer, saw something that kind of both amused me and irritated me at the same time, but that I’ll deal with at a later date, then the helper came by and picked up a chart that John McDaniel asked to use, and she also took two huge boxes of DVDs to Amoeba for me. I am really at the point where I’m just not willing to have these things sitting in cupboards or in the garage – it’s just too much, and as much as I like some of them, there are others I will never EVER watch again. Then I had to drive over to the home of Doug Haverty to deliver an album cover and a Playbill for our next cast album release. After that, I picked up one package and then came home. As I mentioned, I am starting to eat not so much food for the next three months. So, instead of going out, I had two tuna sandwiches on bagels and that was just right and that’s all I ate.
But the majority of the day was dealing with book stuff, starting with a telephonic call with the publisher – I have a new person to deal with, but she’s really nice and knows my deal, so everything should work very smoothly. Then I went over a few things with Muse Margaret, then entered the fixes we deemed necessary. I found a few more little things that no one had caught yet, so that was good. For this book, we’ll provide what we always do – finished and completely designed PDFs. But they can no longer do eBooks from PDFs, so you either go without or you have to prepare a Word document as I did for Welcome to My World. So, just for grins, I cut and pasted the book into the Create Space Word template, fixed the anomalies, and it’s looking pretty good. Of course, my publisher may have their own template, but it’s now easy to do. It simply means that I have to enter all the corrections as I’m doing, then when I do my final proofing of the designed book, I have to enter those corrections into the manuscript, something I haven’t done in the past. After all that, I finally sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I finished watching From the Terrace, a soapy melodrama from director Mark Robson, with a script by Ernest Lehman (from the novel by John O’Hara), starring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Ina Balin, Leon Ames, Myrna Loy, and a host of wonderful character actors. It’s a long movie at two hours and twenty minutes, but these kinds of movies simply don’t exist anymore, and so they’re wonderful to watch. The actors are wonderful, but I was especially taken with Ina Balin, who is heartfelt and beautiful. The film has beautiful photography by Leo Tover and a lush score by Elmer Bernstein. The transfer on this Twilight Time Blu and Ray is stellar. Interestingly, the “blue brigade” those types who complain about all these Fox transfers having too much blue have been completely silent on this film. I think those of us who have been fighting that fight have finally gotten through to at least a few of them. Highly recommended by the likes of me.
After that, I did some work on the computer, and watched a recent forty-six minute interview with Jerry Lewis on the YouTube.
Today, I hope for no drama, I hope for a nice, calm day and I’m also hoping that proofers two and three get me their proofed books soon. I’ll eat something light but amusing, I’ll settle on the Kritzerland show (I have two ideas right now), and then cast it and figure out who’ll be musical directing, hopefully I’ll pick up some packages, and then I’ll relax.
Tomorrow I have a work session at one, otherwise it will be Kritzerland and book stuff. Friday is busy with one thing or another, and I’m sure the weekend will be, too.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, hopefully have a day sans drama and a nice, calm day, I’ll eat, I’ll hopefully pick up packages, I’ll do some book stuff, and then I’ll relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you like and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, where I will hopefully get a good night’s beauty sleep, after which I’ll be up and at ‘em for another day that will hopefully not feel like it’s lasting a very, very long Tim.