Sharibet's ramblings

I usually don't do memes, but this one feels like a nice ego-stroke :-)

If you're on my flist, and add your name to the Meme, let me know (along with the link to your thread), and I'll leave a comment about your fanfiction.

THE FANFICTION LOVE MEME

Well, it's December, and my TV interview is airing on our local cable access channel...

I gathered up my courage and watched it tonight.

Now, I absolutely loathe seeing photos or videos of myself, so that part was painful and the adage about the camera adding 10 pounds is absolutely true, but I don't sound nearly as incoherent as I'd feared.

I do have to wonder who that plump middle-aged person is, though... ::wry smile::

Streaming video of the episode can be found here, probably in a day or two (I just checked and they're still streaming the November episode):
http://www.trivalleytv.org/streaming/inaword-vod.html

My segment is the second one, following the book club discussion of The Book Thief.

I survived the experience...the show's two hosts were very nice and did their best to try to put me at ease, but I was *so* glad that I'd spent the weekend practicing my answers for "what is your book about?" and "what inspired this book?"
( They had six minutes set aside for me (on GOOD MORNING AMERICA, they only only give authors four minutes, I was cheerily informed). )

I'm going to be appearing on television.

The producers of a book-talk show on our local community access cable channel have invited me to come in to the studio on Tuesday, November 17th to tape a short author interview segment.

The show runs in frequent repeats for an entire month (likely, my segment will air in December or January).

I'm now officially nervous as hell.

Halloween weekend was fun. One of my best friends came to visit from LA, for what's become a tradition--a two-day DVD marathon of horror-themed films and TV shows.

The best film of the lot turned out to be They Wait, an atmospheric ghost story set in Vancouver's Chinatown. An expatriate Chinese-Canadian living and working in Shanghai returns home to Vancouver to attend the funeral of his uncle. With him come his Caucasian wife and their young son (portrayed by a terrific child actor).

Both the wife and the son are psychic (though they're unaware of this at first), and it's the Month of Hungry Ghosts, when in Chinese tradition, offerings are made to appease the souls of the dead. When a vengeful ghost possesses the young boy, his mother finds herself embarking on a harrowing spiritual and physical quest to save her son from the spirit who's slowly killing him, and to uncover the truth about certain events in her husband's family.

A deft mixture of horror, character studies, and the clash of cultures between the old generation of Chinese immigrants and their Canadian-born descendents, enlivened by an interesting and well-written script and some excellent performances, makes this a movie well worth renting.

Grade: A

The final day of my trip was spent in pleasant, low-key meandering through the cobbled lanes of picturesque Rothenburg, under cold, cloudy gray skies.
( Rothenburg is too cute for words, filled with charming 15th and 16th-century half-timbered houses, most with window-boxes filled with brightly-colored flowers )

A long and tiring day of travel today as we made our way down from far northern Gemany, where a cold gray ceiling of clouds had rolled in overnight, back down to Bavaria, where it was considerably sunnier and quite a bit warmer. The weather overall has been remarkably warm and sunny for September, and it looks like our luck may hold through the end of our trip, which is rapidly approaching.
( As night fell, and the lantern-style streetlights came up, we bought Italian gelato at one of the stores still open, and ate it as we made our way slowly back to the hotel, stopping to browse in store windows and to admire the silhouette of the tower-like city gates against the mauve backdrop of last twilight.  )

We awoke this morning to the sound of Sunday morning church bells, the deep tones from the giant bronze bells in the city's medieval spires echoing through our neighborhood, just across the canal from the old city.
( In which we spend a very pleasant day touring a medieval Hanseatic city by foot and by boat )

I got through the sorting, selecting, and editing a lot faster than I thought.

http://picasaweb.google.com/sharibet/GermanySeptember2009#

After a lovely home-cooked dinner of spaetzle, pfifferling mushrooms and herbs in cream sauce, and a tossed salad at my cousin's apartment, we finished packing and turned in early last night.

We left Berlin at dawn today, our train speeding north through a landscape of misty meadows, peacefully grazing cows and horses, and gently rolling fields.
( Luebeck is only a two-and-a-half hour train ride away from Berlin, but it feels like a different world. )

Another crisp autumn day, with scudding clouds and warm midday sun. Tiana and I split up today to pursue separate sightseeing itineraries—she wanted to visit the Kaethe Kollwitz museum, the Zoo, and a wool/knitting shop, and I wanted to tour Charlottenburg, the 17th-century summer palace of the Prussian kings.
( In which I spend the day immersed in the 18th and 19th centuries )

I finally finished slogging through the editing, selection, and captioning of the first set of my vacation photos. Holy crap, but I took a lot of photos--tons of medieval sculpture and Roman stuff, but that's geekery I won't inflict on the rest of the world. Here are the highlights:

http://picasaweb.google.com/sharibet/Provence#

On to the Germany photos next...and I have three weeks' worth to sort through...

Germans love their dogs. On this trip, I've noticed well-behaved canines accompanying their owners almost everywhere--to restaurants, in museums, even riding on the subway. They sit or stand patiently, waiting for their owners to finish whatever errands they're running, and I have yet to see a dog in a restaurant actually begging for food. Instead, they sit or lie quietly beside chairs or under the table.
( In which we spend the day surrounded by the glories of the ancient world, and are mugged by a gang of insolent and fearless sparrows at lunchtime )

Today was our highlights day, taking a bus tour of Berlin's major inner-city sights (Checkpoint Charlie, the remains of the Wall, the Brandenburg Gate, etc.).

We started the morning with coffee and a freshly-baked roll at the hotel's café downstairs, then headed off to the U-bahn (Underground) stop a block away.
( In which we are introduced to the whirl and bustle of Germany's capital )

Just a short journal entry today, since it was a travel day, and also we were just too tired to do much sightseeing once we arrived in Berlin.
( In which we survive a train filled with a high school boys' soccer club )

All that glitters may not be gold in some parts of world, but in the Royal Treasury Museums of Dresden's Residenzschloss, aka Die Gruene Gewoelbe (the Green Vaults) that which glitters *is* probably gold, inlaid with diamonds, rubies, pearls, or (oddly enough) coconut shells, engraved and filigreed to a dizzying degree of details, and then probably finished off with enamel or perhaps a carved Greek figure in polished ivory.

( In which we spend the day gawking at a dazzling, overwhelming, and priceless collections of bejeweled, gilded, carved, and ornamented stuff )

My sister and I managed to pull off a surprise for my Mom's 70th birthday, with some help from Dad.

On Friday, we all flew to Seattle and met there, then took a taxi down to the cruise ship terminals, and boarded a ship for a weekend cruise to Victoria and Nanaimo, BC.

Until we arrived and checked in, my mom truly did not have a clue where we were going or what we were going to do. We'd told her only what kind of clothes she needed to pack for a weekend away, and Dad helped out by smuggling us her passport, plus driving us to the airport and birdie-sitting for me.

We made Mom cry (with joy). She sat in the lounge of the cruise ship just after we checked in, clutching the Welcome Aboard glass of champagne and dabbing at her eyes. Awesome!

It was a lot of fun--the ship was nice, food was great, scenery and weather were both spectacular. And it was nice to hang out with my sister and my Mom in a low-stress atmosphere...we had a great time together.

We spent Saturday in Victoria, touring the gorgeous Buchart Gardens, and having lunch on the waterfront, followed by a browse through the stores in downtown Victoria.

Sunday was cold, with brilliantly cloudless blue skies, calm seas, and beautiful scenery in the lovely little seaside town of Nanaimo, just up the coast a bit from Victoria. People were incredibly friendly (including the two Mounties in full dress uniform, who were mobbed when they appeared, and patiently and cheerfully posed for dozens of photographs).

I got home around lunchtime yesterday after taking a mid-morning flight back from Seattle. And now I have a sinus infection of some kind. *sigh*

Not traveling anywhere else for a while. I need some time at home.

I'll resume posting the remainder of my Germany travel journals when I get home from work tonight.

My head is stuffed full of Great Art from a day spent at the Zwinger Old Masters Painting Gallery, my stomach is filled with good beer and good food, and we're sitting outside at a restaurant located in a historic apothecary's shop in the cobbled Neumarkt plaza, watching a lovely orange twilight descend over the domes and gilded spires of Dresden, listening to the Vespers church bells echoing off the tall, gaily-painted 18th century houses lining the square.

( In which we saturate our minds with Great Art, particularly lots of florid counter-Reformation Spanish and Italian religious paintings, turgid with gore and melodrama )

Since today was mostly a travel day, with a six-and-a-half hour rail journey to Dresden, which lies northeast of Regensburg, in the old kingdom of Saxony, I'll start with our dinner at an outdoor restaurant on the cobbled Frauenkircheplatz, with the great bulk of the cathedral towering over us, and pretty eighteenth-century buildings in fresh yellow, ochre, and white paint surrounding the square. I'm comfortably seated under wide umbrellas, drinking a delicious local white wine and watching the world go by.
( We've only been in Dresden for a few hours, but I can already tell that it has a totally different atmosphere from Regensburg's crowded medieval historic district. )

Both Tiana and I woke up *very* early this morning, even without an alarm…she was up and out of the hotel room around 5 am, wandering downstairs to the free Internet access in the lobby to check her email, and I slept until 6:15 am or so (and if you know me, you probably know that I am *not* a morning person) before getting dressed and stumbling downstairs to partake of the restaurant's excellent breakfast buffet. True to Southern German form, they had pretzels and cold-cuts and cheese alongside the eggs, fruit, cereals, toast, and jams.
( I'm not really a fan of the baroque style to begin with—I find it gaudy and excessive in its insistence on carving and gilding anything that could possibly be carved and gilded, along with a few things that probably shouldn't have been )