Maria Lima's Blog, page 10

I discovered Letters of Note yesterday via some other blog that totally escapes me now.

This is AWESOME! (especially if you love history, as I do). Their tag line: correspondence deserving of a wider audience.

The site collects, displays and transcribes old letters – some from only a few years ago, some from much further back. The letter that utterly entranced me? To My Old Master – a letter from an emancipated slave to his previous master, who'd written requesting the slave to return to work at the farm. It's an absolutely riveting read.

This, and sites like the Library of Congress, are a chief reason I adore the Internet. In the olden days, when I was in college, writing a term paper/research paper meant HOURS digging through books, hours spent trying to find primary sources and hoping you had time.

Now, with a few clicks, I can SEE a lot of these primary sources "first hand". No, it's not quite the same as holding something in my hand, but how likely is it that I'd get to actually touch one of these letters? The most I'd be able to do is peer through the museum glass.

Don't get me wrong, I ADORE going to museums, seeing historical collections in person, but being able to find this stuff online is priceless.

What's your favorite website for historical data/collections?

The following books were read by me this weekend.

Discuss.

(Edited to add The Help)

…is like today.

Woke up to strong winds and heavy rain pounding into the window above my head. I wanted nothing more than to roll over and try to get some more sleep, but alas, I have things to do. Mostly, though, I have people coming. Grocery delivery scheduled between 9 and 11, then between 11 and 1 – oh joy of joys, the medical equipment guy is coming with my CPAP machine!!

I know it's going to be an adjustment to learn to sleep with a mask on my face, but trumping that x 1000 is the fact that I'm going to be able to get REAL sleep. Last week, when I went to the sleep doc, he informed me that my sleep study showed that I'd stopped breathing 70 times in an hour. Only for a second or so, but SEVENTY times!! Basically, that means I never actually get all four stages of sleep, so I'm never fully rested.

I can vouch for that this morning, as I feel like a truck ran me over. Exhausted, though I went to bed at 10 and fell asleep rather quickly.

CAN'T WAIT to have my machine!

It is rather frightening, too, to know that I've had this for who knows how long. My sister and BIL both have sleep apnea. I will bet anything my late father did, too. He'd often fall asleep at the movie theatre or just sitting in a chair, and wake up choking, gasping. Turns out, tendency toward this is genetic. Whee?

I'm just glad that these days, it's more readily recognized and treatable.

Speaking of machinery, my new at-home blood pressure monitor arrived. Easy-peasy digital machine. Happy to report that today's BP is 114/85. I'll be taking it first thing in the morning so as to keep a consistent log.

Since it's so gloomy today, I'm probably going to curl up with a good book or movie while I wait for people to arrive. I'd be recording, but I've sent some files off too ACX for a QA test, so I need to wait until they get back to me. (I think waiting might be the operative word for the day!)

What's your favorite rainy day book or movie?

It began with Homicide: Life on the Street, with the murder po-lice, the Waterfront, the dark and twisty tales of life in a Baltimore cop shop. Who can forget following right along with newbie Tim Bayliss as he desperately sought Edina Watson's killer in season one? How we agonized when the brilliant Frank Pembleton was brought down, not by bullets, but by a stroke? Seven seasons of awesome by Tom Fontana and based on David Simon's Homicide: Life on the Killing Streets.

After Homicide made its final bow, as desperate as Bayliss for equally brilliant entertainment, I uncovered Oz. I didn't have HBO when Oz actually aired, but was lucky enough to score DVDs via Netflix. As with Homicide, I was instantly hooked and quickly mainlined the entire six season run in less than two months.

I even got to tell Tom Fontana how much the show meant to me in a brief encounter during MWA's Edgar cocktail party one year. He probably thought I was insane.

After I finished this fix, I faced a whole lotta nothing. At this point, I still didn't have premium cable and though there were a few shows I enjoyed, none had the hard-hitting edge I craved. I needed something other than bright shiny Hollywoodized characters with improbably pretty actors. I'm not against pretty. Pretty has its place, but having gotten a taste of something more visceral, more real, I wanted more. Fabulous writing merged with excellent casting/acting. It had to be there.

Then, there it was. From a familiar source: The Wire – a different view of Charm City and yet another show that I had to wait to see until it was done and available via iTunes/streaming. My inner addict breathed more easily. All too soon, however, I finished watching the five seasons.

I cast my wandering eye about, hoping for a new fix. A new show to fill that gap. Sure, I watched other dramas, but nothing that resonated with me as much. Some tried too hard. Some not at all. How could I settle for bland polished Hollywood pablum when I'd been exposed to the real thing?

Luckily, a faint glimmer of hope began to dawn. Rumors of a hard-hitting cop show set in Los Angeles began to surface on the Intarwebz. Was it going to live up to the early buzz? Would it be worthwhile? It would air on NBC, not HBO or Showtime. Could it work or was this only another iteration of the same, boring thing?

In April, 2009, SouthLAnd's first episode aired. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Yes. This. A short mid-season show, okay. I could live with that. After all, short seasons work. The Brits do it all the time. No need for overlong 22 episode arcs with filler. Keep it short. Keep it tight.

SouthLAnd had everything I wanted. Tough, true, deeply flawed characters with non-cliche story lines. I loved it–and therefore, like too many major network shows (Firefly!) it seemd to be doomed.

After ordering a 2nd season and even before that season aired, NBC first moved, then cancelled it. I wept. I ranted. I wailed along with countless others online, including Michael Cudlitz, who plays Office John Cooper. His twitter account was my one source for information that I knew was correct. I followed his every tweet like a crack whore sniffing out her next score.

Then, out of the blue, there was hope. Rumors began to fly that the show wasn't dead yet. It was only sleeping…and the rumors turned out to be true. Suddenly, TNT stepped in, picked up the back half of the 2nd season, and miraculously, treated the show how it needed to be treated. It cut the budget, trimmed things up, but my fix was back on and I could breathe easier.

SouthLAnd returned for its fourth season last week to my great delight. I need these characters. I need these stories. They satisfy something in me that wants to see cops do their best…or maybe screw up, but pay the consequences. Good things, bad things, real life things. It gives me balance. About a year ago, I even posted about how controversy can be a good thing, based on some online discussions about Officer John Cooper's sexuality.

Just as with the Tom Fontana/David Simon oeuvre, this is not a pretty show. There's no gorgeous blonde detective with high heels and fancy suit and too much makeup prancing about. The women and men look like working class people, not over-polished talking heads, just flawed characters doing their best to keep their lives together doing a thankless job. They're you and they're me, seen through the lens of a hand-held camera on the manufactured stage of a police precinct. Nope, no shiny here, just real people.

This is my reality TV. Not competition shows, nor ridiculous dating shows, nor any of that ilk. Give me well-scripted, well-acted drama and you'll hook me every single time.

Sure, some days, I just want to cuddle with my kitty and watch mind candy like Glee, but others, give me SouthLAnd and the complicated, fabulous characters and storylines. Make me think. Make me feel. Inspire me. This is my drug of choice.

How about you? What shows evoke strong emotion/inspire you?

A blog post today over at Book View Cafe (which linked to an article) got me to thinking about a conversation I had some years ago with Dana Cameron.

It was the deadest of the dead dog Sunday evenings, after the close of Malice Domestic. I'd planned to stick around for one drink, then found myself chatting with Dana until nearly 11:00 that evening, in the tapas bar.

Can't recall exactly when this occurred, but I know I was plotting out my 2nd book, so you do the math.



Over some lovely Macallan, we discussed how we were both "high-functioning introverts" – a term which, if we did not coin, we used for the first time that night. Dana and I are both extremely socially capable. We can function in a crowd, whether as part of one or in front of one. We even enjoy it…for a certain amount of time that is flexible, depending on the situation.

At a convention, we're both "on". As writers, as panelists. We get no down time, unless we escape to our respective hotel rooms–a practice that I've come to embrace wholeheartedly.

We're not shy, far from it. The main difference between us introverts and extroverts is that my idea of a wonderful weekend consists of me spending time alone, recharging my energy. For an extrovert, being alone is anathema and they'd rather be around tons of people.

Neither of us are right or wrong. That's just the way we are. I don't think I'm breaking new ground to hazard a guess that most writers tend to be introverts.

The older I get, the easier it is for me to play hermit and sequester myself at home. Then again, with the awesomeness of the Intarwebz, I'm never really out of touch. I email/chat with friends. I catch up via Twitter & Facebook. I'm as much in touch with folks from NZ and Oz as I am with my local buddies. It's totally brilliant!

That said, I do sometimes get a bit stir-crazy (witness the snowpocalypse of a couple of years ago, where I was stuck in my then < 400SF studio for 10 solid days). That's where the day job and my interaction with real world people comes into play. It's a balance that I've come to rely on. Four days in the office, three days at home. It works for me. It keeps me sane enough to deal.

How about you? What keeps you sane if you're an introvert? Or if you're an extrovert?

I'm still here. My goal to do a blogpost daily got derailed by a digestive system upset thanks to new/old meds (all of which list various digestive issues as side-effects). I've spent the last several days just feeling rather miserable and doing a lot of sleeping.

A bit better today, but still rather out of whack, so I'm working at the job from home – thank goodness I can do that.

Hoping that this will clear up.

So, what's new in your world? or the world–now that I think on it, I've been offline and have no clue what's been happening.

For some bizarre reason, I keep rescuing kittens in my dreams.

A few nights ago, it was at the seashore, and I rescued them using a weird trapping type of machinery. Sort of a cross between a humane cage trap and one of those glass-enclosed claw machines at the arcade, only instead of a claw, this one just had a sliding wall that came down and trapped the kitties inside at the edge of the ocean. Go figure.

This early morning's dream was perhaps less weird, but still with the kitties. I (and some friends) were at my house (which, evidently, was a refurbished old church). We had to be sure to not let the cats out, but then someone had moved some construction panels and one of the kitties fell down into an unfinished basement. There was only some framing for stairs, so we (me and faceless friend) coaxed the kitty to climb up the two-by-fours and then we boarded up the hole in the wall again. There was something else about working at the house, and the cats roaming around but that's all fuzzy.

My twisty mind, let me show you it.

In other news, the cardiac doc visit went well. She scheduled me for an echocardiogram, but doesn't think I have any heart issues. My numbers are good; family history is good, so this is mostly to rule out the possibility of sarcoid in the heart.

Today, I visit the sleep doc for followup. I suppose I'll get the prescription for the CPAP machine, since that's what was indicated in the sleep study results. Severe sleep apnea, oh, my!

And, on that note, I need to finish eating breakfast so I can skedaddle to the doc's office.

Y'all be good!

I like traveling to new places. Discovering other cities, other cultures, historical sites: totally my thing.

Usually, the Lima/Condit travel troupe (aka, me, sis & BIL) plan a getaway week somewhere fun. It's our combined birthday/Xmas gift to ourselves/each other.

This year, we're eschewing the long trip in order to save up for Tripapalooza, aka, Whisky & Wales in 2016. Why so far out you ask? Because after December 2015, I qualify for my company's AWESOME 15-year longevity award: a dream week trip, with extra time off and up to $10,000 in bonus $$. PLUS, 2016 is when the sister girl turns 50.

We're planning a two-week extravaganza, visiting whisky distilleries in Scotland, Hay-on-Wye, and who knows what else. We've got 4 years of planning ahead of us!

Truth be told, part of the fun of these trips is the planning. The librarian sis is AWESOME at the details. I'm more about the big picture. Between us, we make a heck of a team.

We plan to let a cottage somewhere sort of central (probably a National Trust property) or through vrbo.com. Probably let a car/van. BIL really wants the freedom of driving around. I want to take trains.

No matter what we eventually decide for our itinerary, I know it's going to be fabulous!

Tell me about a great trip you've been on/are planning! Where's somewhere you've always wanted to go?

Evidently, there are 2 new shows on the air and I missed both of them. ::facepalm::

Alcatraz debuted last night to various reactions from my friends, mostly of the "I'll watch this again" variety.

Lost Girl, a show that's been airing in Canada made its way south with its own debut on the stupidly named SyFy network. The protagonist is a succubus. Huh. Didn't see that coming as a premise for a show.

What say you, hive mind? Is it worth catching up on them? Should I watch?

Keep in mind I LOVE fun shows AND grim, dark shows. From Big Bang Theory to Oz to pretty much anything in between. As long as it's good storytelling and well defined characters.