Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish after a rather pleasantly pleasant day and evening, listening to the Brahms Violin concerto. It’s quite nice and in fine Mercury Living Presence stereo. That Brahms fellow could write a nice tune – of all the older boys I rather enjoy him more than most.
Yesterday was a day in which I awoke after only four hours of sleep, due to heartburn. But because I was up most of the night, I did a small rewrite of a little section of the book, to replace four lines of a song quote so that the song quote was paraphrased in prose. That worked rather well, I thought, because it suddenly personalized it more than just quotes on a page. So, now the book only actually quotes two lines from the song, twice – same two lines twice, and not having anything before that makes them stand out more.
Once up, I answered e-mails and was fascinated by the reactions to the book cover. I always figured that the cover would be enigmatic to most seeing it and not knowing at all what the book is about, but a couple of reactions took me by surprise, but when all is said and done as long as the cover evokes something I’m okay with it. And I just like the whole feel of it, but then again I’ve read the book. And of course no one really knows what the title means, which is also good. But just to state what the book isn’t: not a thriller, not a mystery, not horror, not scary, and while there might ultimately might be a tiny genre element to it, the book is basically what I hope people will find interesting, funny, warm, touching, and emotional. That is my hope.
Then I was on my way to an early lunch with dear reader Jeanne at our usual hangout. I was determined to have breakfast, but then I saw a sandwich that was similar to what I’ve been having at Corky’s – this one ham, turkey, Swiss, cole slaw, and 1000-Island dressing on rye. But it just didn’t occur to me that what they were selling was a cold sandwich. I asked them to grill the rye bread, which they did, but by the time I got it the bread was cold and so was the sandwich, so I found it a bit odd, mostly because it wasn’t like the Corky’s sandwich, which, while not hot hot, is certainly warm. I enjoyed it, but I shan’t be having it again. Jeanne, creature of habit she is, had the fish and chips, which I secretly coveted from across the table.
After that, I came right back to the Valley, checked on things, then went to Staples and ordered a printout of the designed book. From there I went to the editing room where I saw some edited video, which looked great. I had some audio notes only but I felt the picture element was fine. Then I went back to Staples and picked up the printout of the book, then went to Ralph’s. I got a small thing of potato salad and a small thing of roast corn for my evening snack. The corn was so-so, but the potato salad was tops. So, not that big a food day, which was a good thing.
Once home, I ate my food, caught up on stuff, worked at the piano, and then began carefully proofing the designed book. As always, I’m finding lots of little formatting things – widows/orphans, hyphens that should be em dashes – not a huge amount, and they’re easy and quick to fix. But I’m also calling out stuff that’s going to need a kind of handwriting font, and all those sections, about twelve in all, have to be adjusted. Also, I sent Grant the little rewritten section, which he just has to pop in – I gave explicit instructions, but it’s easy. I got about forty pages in – I’m going very slowly and methodically. I’d already done a quick pass through and caught most of the hyphen things and the indent things (a few lines are indented too far in), so that was really most of it. Now I’m just finding tiny stuff, and I changed a couple of words here and there. I also read Muse Margaret the rewritten section and she agreed that it was more evocative this new way. And that’s basically what I did all night – carefully proof whilst listening to music.
Today, I will hopefully awaken after a good night’s beauty sleep. Once up, I’ll do the usual things, hopefully pick up some packages and/or mail, and proof, the goal being to get to the end of part one. If I do, then I can do part two on Sunday and we can do our little work session hopefully on Monday at some point. Then it’s a Sami birthday dinner at one of her favorite jernts. That will be fun and I can throw food at her for having the gall to be eighteen.
Tomorrow I’ll hopefully finish proofing, and then in the evening hours I’m seeing a play and hopefully going out after for some food. Next week is meetings and meals, doing a show order and writing commentary, and at some point we’re having a little viewing party in the editing room with Richard Sherman and Larry Cohen, after which we’ll go have a nice supper at a local Eyetalian jernt.
Well, dear reader, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, hopefully pick up some packages/mail, proof, and have a birthday dinner. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite concertos of any instrument? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have had a perfectly pleasantly pleasant day that was perfectly pleasant.