Heat=Water

The temperature has dropped and I have gone from 174 pounds to 172 in two days. I am clearly the human equivalent of the Hoover Dam.

Ran into a friend today (whose judgment I trust). She was praising the virtues of the South Beach diet. Being an obedient (and desperately optimistic ) sort, I rushed off to my local book dealer and purchased a copy. Will I lose 8-13 pounds in two weeks? Only time will tell. Went to the grocery store to buy the first day's recommended items. Two weeks without wine may make me cry ... or whine... but I'll give it a whirl.

Miami Vice / More Lessing

A couple of days ago, I went to see Miami Vice and a more bloated, convoluted and annoyingly filmed movie I haven't seen in a long time. There were respectable performances -- particularly by Jamie Foxx and Eddie Marsan -- but Mann's interminable cuts and excessive usage of grainy video stock made for a visually irritating film. The two main female characters (played by the wonderful actresses Gong Li and Naomie Harris) were supposedly high-powered and independent, until the last 45 minutes when they became powerless girl pawns saved by the boys, Crockett and Tubbs. Gong Li recently impressed me in Memoirs of a Geisha and Harris's was one of the best performances in the recent instalment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. I hope she appears in the third film, holding her own against Johnny Depp's wonderful Jack Sparrow.
Needless to say, Miami Vice was a tremendous disappointment. At nearly three hours, it was too long and contained far too many characters to retain the audience's attention. The dialogue was filled with tech specs and mumbled accents. I have a good ear for accents and yet even I was straining to make out the dialogue. The whole thing felt like an over-budget episode of COPS.

Reading: Doris Lessing's The Four-Gated City (1967)

Always finish what you start. And The Four-Gated City is a perfect example of that motto. I have struggled through the first four books of Lessing's Children of Violence series, disliking the main character, Martha Quest, and finding Lessing's novels dry and uninteresting. The final book in the series, however, is gripping my attention, and I'm only a hundred pages in (out of over 650). Her evocation of post-war London is detailed and sympathetic, and even peculiar characters, like the sex-driven Jack, are understandable as the sad, broken detritus of the war. This is a much richer, fuller book, and perhaps from the hand of a more mature writer. The whole series is constructed as a bildungsroman, but this book (which moves into the genre of science fiction) seems to have a clearer centre, moving it away from a mere itemisation of Martha's peculiarities.

Less Lessing is More

Finished Landlocked this morning and am now starting The Four-Gated City. I am afflicted by a sad need to read all of a series, even if I don't like the first one. I have found the series' main character, Martha Quest, infernally annoying. She completely lost me when she walked out on a husband who, frankly, wasn't that awful, and left behind a little girl about two years old. I seldom let my feelings so completely prejudice me against a character, but I found it impossible to see her as anything but selfish and solipsistic after that. I've read half a dozen Doris Lessing novels now, and have come to the conclusion that she just does not crank my gears. Everyone else I know loves her, so I guess I'll have to live with being a freak of nature.

Sleepy Time

Thank heavens -- rain today and liveable temperatures. I tried going for a run yesterday in the heat and had to quit after a whopping 2 minutes because I was nauseous. I'll go for a long walk instead today. I feel so defeatist when I have a bad run. I'm such a baby runner anyway -- barely able to make it through 20 minutes of run 4 mins. walk 1 min. But I keep plugging away.
Slept well last night for the first time in days. No a/c has meant uncomfortable nights. Last weekend I was so exhausted I was schlepping around like a zombie. Not good. Wonder when the psychosis hits? My grandmother claims she hasn't slept a wink since 1932. That explains so much.

Hollow Man

Just watched Hollow Man, and I can say I really only watched to the end so I could crap all over it later. Sebastian Caine -- big ass genius, able to invent a way to become invisible. So he becomes invisible and the only thing he can think to do with it is become a pervy creepazoid who gets his jollies from molesting women? Sadly, since I consider Kevin Bacon (who's not a bad actor) one of the least attractive men on the planet, I couldn't even derive the pleasure of the vicarious imagined grope from his antics. Instead, every part of me genuinely went "ewwwww". Formulaic, badly written, and often badly acted by the supporting cast (especially the girl playing the extraordinarily dim but busty vet). Tony Curran's invisible man Rodney Skinner in LXG beats Bacon's Caine hands down. Now him I could stand to see groping someone. Damn -- why did they cut the bit where Skinner lives the high life as an erotic Holy Ghost in the girls' school in the graphic novel? I go to bed instead having been visually icked by the thermal imaging of Kevin Bacon's privates.

The First Blog Ever (for me)

It was a big debate with myself, but I have decided to take the plunge. To blog or not to blog. As a sad little writer wannabe I assume it can only be good to write more. That's making the assumption that writing a fairly silly blog doesn't impede working on the book instead. So the plan is: 1. use this to keep writing
2. comment on life as I see it
3. track my weight, eating and exercise.

What is going on in my life now?

I am 44 years old, a married mother of a seven year old girl, an English prof at a Canadian college, and a reading junkie.

I won't list my weight today, since we're in the midst of a vile heatwave and the scale is not making any sense at all. Heatwave or no, I will brave recording it on the weekend.

Reading: Doris Lessing's Landlocked (1967)
and Wally Lamb's I Know This Much is True as a book club choice with a friend.