authoring destruction

I am so stuffed full of potatoes and ham and cake and applejuice that I am probably going to die.

No, seriously. Finally watched Brick in a sit-down, attentive manner, which that movie requires (thanks to jhonen_red for the initial recommendation, long ago). I'd watched parts of it on the DVR back in California and then become distracted, lost the plot, seen a bit of the end and thought I knew how it worked out (accidentally ruining it for myself). Turned out, I had no idea what I was talking about, and was still pleasantly surprised by the wrapup. The film is filmed beautifully. Then, more Black Books. Dylan Moran is slowly working his adorable Irish way onto my extensive marriage queue.

Also, the big collab project... I need to start engineering some of the more delicate of the plot components and I am, as I always am when faced by such things, extremely daunted by the prospect. How to make it devilish, but not contrived? Plausible, but not too easy? How to pace it so that the reader remains engaged, but the characters neither look oblivious or super-human in their powers of deduction? Ideally, I want the readers to be discovering things -along with- the characters, rather than being told everything outright and waiting for the kids to catch up, or only finding out after the characters turn around and explain it via unnecessary dialog. Damnit, I want people to think! That's too much to ask, isn't it?

I should rest. And to that end, I bid you all a fond adieu.

Watched the first half of Sense and Sensibility with the girls last night. Alan Rickman is like the spoonful of sugar that makes the Jane Austen go down.

Or, perhaps the spoonful of quinine. I don't think miss Jane needs so much more sugar.

Nah, I kid. It was a lovely film all in all (even the parts that didn't have Alan in it!) and I look forward to seeing the second half, but I was tired and I needed to get up to the hospital to pay another visit to the baby-mama. There's no baby yet... the holding pattern of yesterday was, they were keeping her until they could get a delivery room, and then they were going to start the process of inducing labor. Nobody called over night so I assume nothing has changed.

I'm also working hard on reminding myself to "not try so hard until such a time that other parties involved start putting in effort as well".

That's all, except for this:

Dear Colonel Brandon.
Marianne is not good enough for you. I am quite sure, however, that we can come to a more than suitable agreement. Keep your boots on.
Love,
M

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor!

Corntastic. Oh yea.