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The House Must Go

About the house move situation (see August 18th)… the house wasn’t in very good shape, really, and a lot of things have needed to be done. We still need to get a door fitted to the back of the garage—we bought the door, now we need someone to put it on! Dad did all that stuff, and to be honest, my limit is painting walls. The old door was/is falling to bits, literally. Otherwise, I think the place is just about presentable, although I have some tidying to do on my tip of a bedroom.
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The Big Sleep (1939)

I’ve written a few book reviews recently. Here’s one of them:

The Big Sleep (1939)
by Raymond Chandler

This was Raymond Chandler’s first of seven novels, written at the not inconsiderable age of fifty. It introduces the famous PI Philip Marlowe, a character whose virtual twin, Carmady, had appeared previously in a number of Chandler’s short stories.

The Big Sleep (1939)

Chandler has somehow come to embody the genre of hard-boiled detective fiction, although he didn’t (as some people seem to believe) create it. His critical stock, as far as such things are meaningful, has climbed steeply over the years, whereas many of his peers remain in relative obscurity. The Big Sleep is arguably his finest hour, and does much to explain why his work is so highly regarded.
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The Earth Moved

Yesterday was the day we had an earthquake.

Mom and I sat watching an old John Wayne film on TV. Suddenly, just before 1:00am, the house shook fairly violently, and it sounded/felt like something very heavy (maybe a car) had fell on the roof. It lasted about 30 seconds, by the end of which we were both on our feet and both in extreme panic. Then it faded off. Since mom has angina, the strain on her heart was a bit of a worry, but she was okay after a while. It wasn’t strong enough here to shake any pictures from the wall or break any ornaments, but it was very hairy.
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What’s Up?

Life update since the death of my father…

Mom has decided to sell this house and move somewhere smaller, so that we have some money in the bank as savings. Dad left no savings at all and had no life insurance. We’ll be staying in this area, though. We might even get a two-bedroom flat, actually. Neither of us are gardeners, so a garden would be a needless burden.
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Loss

On July 7th 2002, in the early hours, our family dog Fred died, following a long illness. We’d been prepared for it for some time, but it was still a blow, as he was only eight years old.

By the early evening of the same day, astonishingly, my father was being rushed to hospital with a massive heart attack. In the early hours of July 8th, after several attempts to revive him, he too passed away. We’d had no warning of this, although the doctor said he had apparently been suffering from a serious, undiagnosed heart condition for a long time. He was 62.

Loss
Fred in 1998.
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Ziggy Plays Guitar

I recently bought the new David Bowie album, Heathen. It was okay—actually, it was a bit more than okay. I liked it a lot. The interest is part nostalgia these days, I guess. We all know his prime is long behind him (like probably 22 years behind him), but he’s still Bowie. He sounds the same, and he rather disgustingly looks the same too. Scary thought: he’s 55 now. There’s not much invention or newness in his current work, but… you know, Mick Jagger fans must really have to strain to not be embarrassed by him these days, so I tend to think Bowie’s held up rather well. He’s still a bit on the cool side even if he has nothing new to say. I didn’t expect Ziggy Stardust standard greatness, so I enjoyed it.
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HTML

Hm. Someone recently suggested Web design as a possible career for me. I’m not really convinced. I mess about with Web design occasionally out of boredom as much as anything else. I’m not sure I enjoy it much, and the results are usually disappointing, because my design skills are never really up to realising what’s in my head.
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What’s the Point?

I’ve just been fiddling around with how the site looks again. I keep getting to hate how it looks. It’s not a major change… I’ll probably do something else with it in a week or so. A poor excuse for a way to kill time, I expect.

What it really needs is good content! Hmph. Might be foxed on that one.
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Creativity Redux

More on creative stuff (see May 26th). It’s hard to express my feelings on it, since they’re so changeable. But I think the basic thrust is that when I try to pressure myself into writing with the purpose of making money in mind, the enjoyment factor does drain away, completely… so that it’s no longer so easy for me to see how I feel about it at all… the money thing confuses the issue, confuses my feelings, and compounds my cynicism about the whole thing, not to mention my sense of being a failure.

*sigh* I think it’s far too complicated to unravel properly, to be honest.

Whatever the case, I seem to be not even trying at the moment. Maybe something will come to me, maybe it won’t. But I reckon I should let it come naturally.
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