It's Been...One Week?

[handful_ofdust]

...since I wrote anything besides answers to interview questions and newly cobbled-together fixit sentences for the ultimate A Rope of Thorns edit, I think. This freaking cold just won't let up; I feel like my entire head is being slowly crushed in a vise of snot. When I blow my nose, horrible squeezing sounds resonate up and down inside my entire sinus cavity, and my eyes are gummy, sticky, bloodshot. Nothing but stumble-trip, stumble-trip, with thoughts blundering around aimlessly, bouncing off my skull's mucus-lined walls.

So yeah. And naturally, I have lots I need to do--deadlines and shit. And though Cal is better overall, he's still pretty crazy, making him difficult to deal with at best. Yesterday I got rid of all distractions and he still managed to whip himself up into a dancing, yelling frenzy. And today's runrunrunday, so I think the only thing I have energy for is maybe finishing John Vaillant's The Tiger and taking it back to the library. Amazing book, both incredibly informative and beautifully written. Too bad I wasn't reading it when I could pay more attention.

Comments

[baggyeyes]

I totally understand that old sicky feeling. :( I have a cold right now, and a migraine that returned from its visit last week. I tried Cold FX, and surprisingly - to me, anyway, it seems to help. Maybe you can give it a look?

I hope you can get some extra energy for the day.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

I've known Cold-FX to work and not work, but yeah, I'll try again. Thanks.;)

[sovay]

maybe finishing John Vaillant's The Tiger and taking it back to the library. Amazing book, both incredibly informative and beautifully written.

I just read a review of it in the New York Review of Books—I'd never before seen a professional review so staunchly refuse to spoil a piece of nonfiction past a certain point. Apparently it's just that amazing.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

The primordial psychology of the relationships between predator and prey are just...well, at one point, he absolutely draws the parallel between science and poetry, pointing out that someone posited a particular motivation in a poem years before it was "proven" scientifically, but that this doesn't denigrate those findings. Rather, it seems to elevate them.

That, and the whole atmosphere of the Siberian taiga seems utterly fairytale-like--it's some sort of demented ur-forest or -jungle, stuck halfway between Russia, North Korea and China. And the people who end up there, or live there, or choose to stay there, all share some fascinatingly odd characteristics. It's...yeah, you'd love it.

[sovay]

That, and the whole atmosphere of the Siberian taiga seems utterly fairytale-like--it's some sort of demented ur-forest or -jungle, stuck halfway between Russia, North Korea and China. And the people who end up there, or live there, or choose to stay there, all share some fascinatingly odd characteristics. It's...yeah, you'd love it.

To the library!

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

I was glancing through the book when I was at your place the other day, and looked it up online when I got home.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Did you read the part about the old guy talking about "Playing Tiger", back in the mid 1800s? How because there were way too many "spare" bachelors in the areas (like him), they all used to get together, get drunk and play games like "Tiger", which was basically them taking all the furniture out of a room, turning the lights off and then hunting a guy elected Tiger, using real guns? He was shot in the arms once, but only because he slipped--they usually made sure to aim where they thought people's legs would be. "Were all your amusements like this?" the interviewer asks; "No," the old man replies, "most were more what you would expect."