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Thursday, August 8, 2002

My vidding stuff just arrived! EEEEEeeeeeeee! And the fabulous Carol S. is going to come over tonight and help me get everything set up! <jittering around like a mad thing>

I've been wasting a lot of time today researching picayune details for the story, but I can't help it, I love doing picayune research. The collection of links I've bookmarked under "Stuff for Story" is just staggering at this point, and I keep adding to it. Today, while trying to find the average ice-out date for the Mackenzie River at Inuvik, I came across a Yukon News review of a wholly obscure novel, "Mackenzie Breakup," by Jean Kadmon, billed as "A tale of love and adventure on the northern frontier." It's set in an engineering camp (the Canol) in Norman Wells. From the (rather incoherent) review: "A constant thread through the story is an Athabaskan Indian caribou spirit, Betsune Yeneca, who would undoubtedly swat the swarms who came for oil. Nevertheless, thousands of men and women converged on the two camps in the Mackenzie Valley. One was a young, adventuresome redhead whose personality resembles that of the author." (Uh-huh. Mary Sue is alive and well and living on the tundra...) My favorite line from the review, however, is: "When the females weren't on the job, it's easy to imagine the social chaos. Lust, and even sometimes love, stalked the camps." Heh.

And, apropos of a great many things, I just have to say that I am feeling happily overwhelmed today by how lucky I am in my friends. People are so damn good to me, and I don't entirely get it, I don't feel worthy of it, but I'm grateful for it.

My 40 days of freedom are more than half over, and I haven't accomplished a tenth of what I'd hoped to, but that's not a problem, really. The days are starting to cool down, the words are flowing steadily, the anxiety/depression tag team seem to have gone on hiatus. All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

Posted @ 03:50 PM CST [Link]7 comments

Tuesday, August 6, 2002

Whooo. On a roll, 2300 words cranked out this morning, pivotal scene nailed into place. Rough carpentry so far, but I can plane and sand it later. Now the fiddlier task of dovetailing in all the leadup-to/fallout-from scene in question. Deep breaths, break for trip to the gym and lunch, then onward.

I'm a bit stunned by the sense of lavishness I have in this time-off existence. Get up and go to bed whenever I feel like it. Hit the gym during the quiet off-hours of midday. Handle errands when there are no long lines. Sit on the deck for half an hour just looking at cloud formations in the sky. Time, the greatest luxury of all.

I did have to go in to work yesterday--I got finagled into being on a hiring committee to fill a staff position. God, I so hate doing hirings, not because they're onerous or anything, but just because they're so heartwrenching. Yesterday we were interviewing someone who'd driven in a fair distance and been put up at a hotel; she was carefully coiffed, dressed in a nice suit, she'd clearly worked hard on her interview responses, she really wanted the job. It was so easy for me to picture her, packing to come down here, going through her wardrobe, looking for exactly the right outfit and shoes, making sure everything was pressed and coordinated; and then alone in her hotel room, getting ready, rehearsing silently to herself, putting on her makeup. She did a good job, but she's probably not going to place any higher than strong #2 in the list of candidates. A really nice woman, from a hard-luck background, who's clearly worked like hell to make something of her life.

There's a vulnerability about the naked hopefulness of job applicants, a pathos, that just wrecks me. They've all tried so hard, and only one of them can win. I hate having to make decisions like that, having to tell all the others, "You did good, you did fine, it's just that we had someone else better."

Aagh. It was her suit that killed me, I think. It was so clearly an interview suit, so crisp and hopeful. I'm sure she bought it with care, calculating the expenditure against the need to make an impression; I'm sure she had it hanging in the back of the car all the way down here, in plastic, to avoid wrinkles.

OK, now I'm a mess. I'm off to the gym to lift weights, and get a grip on myself.

Posted @ 01:49 PM CST [Link]7 comments