Sunday, January 2, 2005

‘Twas a quiet day. I had very little energy or enthusiasm this morning, so I relaxed in my bedroom, reading volume 3 of the Bleach manga and generally relaxing. I eventually got the gumption to head off to work, where I intended to finish off some work and sign my timecard. I arrived to discover that the entire network was down. Arg. I’m going to have to create a correction timecard and explain the situation to my boss tomorrow. That’s an unpleasant thought.

[Gundam Seed artwork]

I stopped by the grocery store on the way home and picked up a few things, especially a filet of tilapia (a type of fish) for dinner. By the time I got home and cleaned the sink full of dishes (I’m anxious to get my dishwasher working), I didn’t want to do much of anything, so I watched Jackie Chan’s Spiritual Kung Fu—a terrible film but also fundamentally enjoyable in the way of any Saturday afternoon, badly dubbed, incomprehensible kung fu film—and episodes 19 and 20 of Gundam SEED. Those episodes were a nice break from the first few episodes; a lot more light-hearted than the fifteen episodes that came before them.

Gundam SEED suffers from a problem that I see in the other Gundam series I’ve seen (Mobile Suit, Wing, and Turn-A): unevenness. Each show will plod along for an episode or two, then will break into half an episode of genius—character development, action, drama—then return to very little of any of that for another few episodes. Strange.

Somewhere in the middle of that, I baked the tilapia. Ironically, despite the fact that I have a talent for baking, whenever I’ve made a fish meal I’ve always fried it (unless I had a recipe). This was my first experiment with just baking fish. I put the tilapia filet on a piece of aluminum foil, brushed it with olive oil and lemon juice, wrapped the foil around the filet, placed it on a baking sheet, and baked it at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. The result was flaky and flavorful, dead easy to make, and healthy.

That gave me a bit more energy, so I hauled two weeks’ worth of trash out to the street, as well as some broken lumber and a broken pane of glass the previous tenants were kind enough to leave in the back yard, then proofed more of the novel I’m being paid to proof. It’s definitely real work. Even though I enjoy the novel, I can’t dive in and enjoy it the way I do a novel that I read for pleasure. I have to pay attention to every word, making sure none are misspelled, and judge the grammatical weight of every sentence. Some sentences are grammatically correct but feel wrong, and I have to note that too. But I’m up to page 220 out of 320 now, so I can see the finish line.

I also wrote another 250 words of my December short story (which I want to finish up so I can start on my January short story). I’m almost done with it; it should only need another 500 words or so. That’ll make it 1,500 words; short, but acceptable for a short story. At my current rate, I should be done within the next few days.

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