A Quick Personal Note

Sorry I've been dragging lately. The last few weeks have been a bit difficult, just not horribly. I fought off a sinus infection, had a quick exam by my cardiologist (no biggie, just lose some weight and get some exercise), started taking tango lessons (yes, for realz), and then took my car to the garage to diagnose a rattle and was told it needs about $900 in repairs. Ugh. So right now my car's sitting immobile in the parking lot while I build up the scratch to get it fixed. It's annoying but there's public transport galore here, and I once went six months without a car with only a few problems here and there, so a few more won't be too much of an issue. I'll definitely have it back on the road by the New Year.

In the meantime, I've been reading and listening to music and doing other things. Last night I walked into the movie MYSTERIES OF LISBON, not realizing it was nearly 5 hours long, and while it's not exactly an action-packed mystery, it is a visually impressive and lavish film that truly captures the feel and spirit of a 19th-century novel. I highly recommend it.

A small example of MYSTERIES' visual oomph.

And just throwing something out there...in the past month, the top 10 countries looking at this blog were the US, UK, Indonesia, India, Canada, Germany, Russia, Italy, France, and Poland. "Strawberry Hill," "Xeethra," and "Anthony Eglin" are the top 3 search terms that lead people here. And the top post is my review of The Castle of Otranto, which is the most popular of all time. I guess a lot of students are doing papers on it.

I also read this in the meantime. It's OK, not great. The narrator spends far too much time navel-gazing and getting caught up in her too-perfect-for-us-to-care love affair. I will give it credit for having a nifty murder method (poisoned blankets and sheets) so it wasn't a total loss. But the language was fairly clunky and I just couldn't like the narrative. These "literary thrillers" are starting to get too big for their britches.

Anyway, that's all for now. I'll try to keep it moving this month; October is big for our little community...