I'm awake hours earlier than usual, after dragging (with Malaya's wakeup assistance) myself out of bed hours earlier than usual. Unfortunately I did not go to bed any earlier than usual, so my eyes have that (holes burned into my face) feeling so many of you are no-doubt familiar with from your real lives and real jobs. "Sucks, dunnit?" you're probably saying right about now, with nearly as much sympathy as I feel for this lady
who ran herself over. And you'd be right to do it.
I got up "early" (for me) because I have to get up by 8 Saturday, and then not much later than that on Sunday and again Monday. The ordeal! Since I usually write at night, and seldom get into bed before 6am... ugh.
Anyway, Saturday morning is this month's Kali workshop. We're doing it outdoors in a park down south, rather than at Tuhan's house, since this time it's staff, and you need a lot of room for 10 or 15 people to be swinging two meter lenghts of wood around. We've done some stuff with staff now and then in Kali in the past, but we're always limited in space, and people don't ordinarily bring such long weapons with them to class. My new stick is seven feet long, but it actually fits into my car pretty easily, once I fold down the backseat and stick it from the trunk alongside the passenger seat.
Malaya and I got our sticks on Monday, since we wanted to get in some practice before the workshop. We have no idea what we'll be doing then, but Tuhan almost always starts off with some footwork, then does a few form-learning exercises, and eventually we get to watch him fight with the weapon of choice for that workshop, and then see other students spar in various ways. Workshops are about 2/3 learn with a new thing, and 1/3 watch other people show off their Kali skills. Quite often, the most fun is in watching advanced students and teachers spar, and those always provide a needed reality check for the younger students who have been starting to think they actually know something about the art.
Saturday afternoon is the bridal shower for the upcoming wedding of our friends, and since it's a "Jack and Jill" affair, I've
got to get to go. It should actually be pretty fun, since it's at the bride-to-be's parent's house, which is big and roomy, and there's going to be tons of good food (always at any Filipino gathering) and company. The event begins in the afternoon, and will likely go all evening as such gatherings usually do. There will be a huge buffet-style table of homemade cooking, lots of gaming outside (mah jong, texas hold 'em, etc) and so on.
I can't stay that late though, because my dad's in town for a quick visit, and is going to be driving down from Davis Saturday evening. I'll see him for dinner that night, and then Sunday we're driving up to Sonoma for more
wine tasting and photo shooting. He's staying overnight then, and come Monday we'll do something in the morning before he flies back to San Diego in the early afternoon. Malaya's so busy with the wedding planning stuff and getting stuff done for work on Monday that she's hardly going to see dad at all; just dinner on Sunday when we get back from Sonoma, in theory.
As always when outside events impact on my usual idle-filled schedule, my thoughts are about how I'll get any writing done. Of course when I have pretty much all day to do that most of the time, I seldom manage to get started before 2am, once Malaya's asleep and I've got no remaining distractions; well, none other than the oh-so-succulent Internet and all of its unearthly delights. So I'm going to try and do some writing in the daytime, or perhaps start it earlier in the evening than usual, etc. I've been doing at least 2-3000 words a day for the past couple of weeks, and while I'd like to spend 12 hours a day and do 8000 words and finish the novel(s) in a month, I try to be happy that I'm at least making steady, if unspectacular, progress.
As the above probably hints at, blog posting may be sporadic to nonexistant this weekend. Adjust your lifestyle accordingly. Luckily, just like the past few weeks, there aren't any movies we're interested in seeing this weekend. I'd been hoping that
Brothers Grimm might be watchable, but most of the reviews say it's visionary imagery
in search of a plot. That and the CGI trees look like rubbery shit in the trailer and TV commercials.
The Cave boasts the laziest and least-interesting title of the year, and appears to be of
about the quality you'd expect of a horror movie being dumped in the late-August dregs. And thanks to the new titles listing on Rotten Tomatoes and its eye-catching 00% approval rating, I now know about
Undiscovered, which seems largely designed to make the rest of us hate the aspiring celebrities of LA even more than we do already. You'll probably have more fun reading the reviews than watching any of those; my most memorable movie experience of the past week was following Aahz's recommendation and reading
Ebert's zero-star review of
Deuce Bigalow 2, which starts off snarky, turns cruel, and ends with some ruthless and entirely justified character assassination of Rob Schneider. Two quotes:
"Deuce Bigalow" is aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience. The best thing about it is that it runs for only 75 minutes.
...Schneider was nominated for a 2000 Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor, but lost to Jar-Jar Binks.
You get the idea.
