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| at Barista, Alberta St, Portland 1805.19 |
H Mom,
Yesterday, I spent some time in Portland with my lovely wife who had an appointment at her salon.
We ate at the RADIO ROOM, which I have been wanting to try.
I had a fantastic burger with pork belly and a "Radio Mary." We tried the house special pickle platter, featuring pickles and pickled vegetables with a mustard dip. It was all right, but we had hoped for something a bit more special.
We sat on the lower patio, corner booth in the picture below, which is in the middle of the photo.
I love these outings to Portland with Liesel. While she's in the salon, I go to Barista (see photo up top) and have an iced latte and do some work. Yesterday's Kotlin post was made at Barista. Good Internet, and one of the other patrons and I shared supervision of gear for bathroom breaks.
Also, in the photo above, I am listening to the Cubs game, which went to extra innings before the Cubs lost in the 11th.
I like this picture of me. Rockin' the 1987 Dungeons and Dragons shirt. Yellow. I tend to wear yellow a lot in the spring.
Hi.... so I just came back to my computer, and the image above was shown on the screen saver. I have seen this image a couple of times in the last few days, so it seemed like a sign. This is my all-time favorite story buy Adrian Tomine who does the comic Optic Nerve. This story was originally published in mini-comic form. I would like to get scans of the entire thing as I would post it. A lot of my things are packed away, still, or still in Michigan, though I am pretty sure I have a copy of this story in one of his books, which are here and shelved. I forget the name of the story, but it's short, just a few pages, maybe six. I believe this is the last page. Tomine conveys some much without any exposition or dialogue. The regret of the woman for sleeping with this man is very evident. If I remember the story, it's a relationship that's lingering. Maybe she breaks up with him and sleeps with him one last time. But these panels make us wonder what she will do next. It think it's a beautiful sequence.
I promised some original content today. I am a day behind finishing this one off as it is now Monday. I have promised myself about fifteen minutes of writing before I do some work. I will probably finish this one in a bit of back and forth today: work some, write this entry some, and so on.
I am not feeling especially verbose, so this one may end up short.
I finished Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? and have moved on to vN by Madeline Ashby as pictured here.
Here's the Amazon synopsis: "Amy Peterson is a self-replicating humanoid robot known as a VonNeumann.
For the past five years, she has been grown slowly as part of a mixed organic/synthetic family. She knows very little about her android mother's past, so when her grandmother arrives and attacks her mother, Amy wastes no time: she eats her alive.
Now she carries her malfunctioning granny as a partition on her memory drive, and she's learning impossible things about her clade's history - like the fact that she alone can kill humans without failsafing... File Under: Science Fiction [Von Neumann Sisters | Fail Safe Fail | The Squid & the Swarm | Robot Nation]"
I like it a lot so far. The opening chapter was published as a short story and had made a copy of it but didn't get to reading it. Madeline Ashby hit my radar when I read Company Town recently, which is a strongly-plotted, character driven, speed thrust of a novel. I loved it. I read Company Town traditionally, with my eyes only, but I am listening to the audio book for vN.
Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? -- my previous audio -- was a project as it's the third book in the Shadow Police series by Paul Cornell. After some reading online, I learned that universally it was recommended that new readers ingest the previous two books -- London Falling and The Severed Streets -- before reading the third. The books are all well written and have intriguing elements, but I found the audio book to be slow at times, especially a long section in the middle of the second book. Still, I would recommend them all to anyone with a taste for police procedurals and the supernatural.
For my new traditional read (by which I mean non-audio), I am deep into Nick Harkaway's Gnomon, which came highly recommended by Warren Ellis. I engaged in this read after finishing Rachel Armstrong's Origamy, also recommended by Ellis, though not as enjoyable, and my friend Helene Dunbar's new book Bommerang, which was very enjoyable, an engaging, powerful, reasonably quick read.
Here's the Amazon synopsis for Gnomon: "A Best Science Fiction Book of 2017 -- The Guardian
From the widely acclaimed author of The Gone-Away World and Tigerman, comes a virtuosic new novel set in a near-future, high-tech surveillance state, that is equal parts dark comedy, gripping detective story, and mind-bending philosophical puzzle.
In the world of Gnomon, citizens are constantly observed and democracy has reached a pinnacle of 'transparency.' Every action is seen, every word is recorded, and the System has access to its citizens' thoughts and memories--all in the name of providing the safest society in history.
When suspected dissident Diana Hunter dies in government custody, it marks the first time a citizen has been killed during an interrogation. The System doesn't make mistakes, but something isn't right about the circumstances surrounding Hunter's death. Mielikki Neith, a trusted state inspector and a true believer in the System, is assigned to find out what went wrong. Immersing herself in neural recordings of the interrogation, what she finds isn't Hunter but rather a panorama of characters within Hunter's psyche: a lovelorn financier in Athens who has a mystical experience with a shark; a brilliant alchemist in ancient Carthage confronting the unexpected outcome of her invention; an expat Ethiopian painter in London designing a controversial new video game, and a sociopathic disembodied intelligence from the distant future.
Embedded in the memories of these impossible lives lies a code which Neith must decipher to find out what Hunter is hiding. In the static between these stories, Neith begins to catch glimpses of the real Diana Hunter--and, alarmingly, of herself. The staggering consequences of what she finds will reverberate throughout the world.
A dazzling, panoramic achievement, and Nick Harkaway's most brilliant work to date, Gnomon is peerless and profound, captivating and irreverent, as it pierces through strata of reality and consciousness, and illuminates how to set a mind free. It is a truly accomplished novel from a mind possessing a matchless wit infused with a deep humanity."
I can't do much better than this description. I have hit the alchemist part, which I much prefer to the shark-obsessed Greek business man, though that was okay. It's an enjoyable novel with a great deal of amazingly well-crafted writing on a sentence level. I am not blown away or gripped securely in its maw, but I am not bored either.
WHAT ELSE........
I played Ultimate today at Vancouver pick up for the second time.
Wisely, I stretched my groin a lot before and a little after and I am much less sore. I was wrecked for three days the last time. This time I just a little sore. I need more working out and playing, though. It's time to get my bike re-assembled and back in service. This week promises to be dry and very warm. I need to find some good bike trails for longer rides, too.
Though I am writing from the next day, Monday, not only can assure you, Mom, that I am not too bad after my day of Ultimate, but that I am going to take dogs for a walk at this cool park in Longview. They did not get a walk yesterday. Also, I foolishly took Ibuprofen PM with a sleep aid prior to playing Ultimate, which really knocked me out as Liesel and I tried to watch a movie from 7-9 p.m.
I finished my grading and did not do much back and forth, practicing task switching. I am still having trouble with task switching.
I could provide more updates, but this feels like a good sized post and it's time to walk the dogs.
See? I do original content sometime... :-)
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Reflect and connect.
Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.
I miss you so very much, Mom.
Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.
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- Days ago = 1051 days ago
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1805.20 - 10:10
NEW (written 1708.27) NOTE on time: I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of your death, Mom, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of your death, Mom. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom.
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