The end of July means summer vacation is half over. I have not completed half the work on the Tibet book that I want to accomplish, not to mention doing any of my own writing. And with a week’s vacation coming up in August, prospects for finishing everything do not look particularly good right now. *sigh*

Friday was Adrianne’s wedding, and it was a fun occasion. We sat at a math table, and behind us were two other math tables of friends of Adrianne’s mom who is also a math teacher. Ironically, as Jean and I were in the receiving line after the ceremony, Adrianne’s mom recognized me and greeted me as if she knew me, although I had never seen her before. It turned out she attended one of my talks at the Morris Area Math Alliance several years ago, and because Adrianne mentions me at home occasionally, her mom made a connection I was not able to make. If any PHS student is reading this, and you have Mrs. Whitney as a teacher in the fall, be sure to ask her about the “Badlands” dance! ☺

Yesterday Jean and I went with two of my brothers’ families to rural New York State to visit my cousin Will and his wife Dora. My brothers and I grew up in a two family house with Will’s family living downstairs, so Will and his sister Rita were more brother and sister than cousins, and we have stayed relatively close over the years. We spent some time yesterday looking at childhood pictures of the six of us, and mostly we were able to determine immediately who each picture was, except occasionally we confused my brothers Stephen and Michael. They are the most similar of the brothers in several ways. Poor guys! ☺

A busy week, which is not something that seems typical of summer vacation, but which in fact happens quite regularly. Monday I went to PHS for a few hours to open some of the boxes of supplies which arrived, and talk with my supervisor about our ongoing problems filling the math positions for next fall. We will have 5 new math teachers next year, but we were foiled last week when the woman we really wanted, who is currently teaching in Pennsylvania, has not applied for New Jersey certification yet so will not be available for three-to-four months, much longer than we can possibly wait.

Tuesday I went to the dentist to have an old filling replaced. Yesterday was not so busy, since all I had to do was go mail a box of Visions of Paradise at the post office, and stop to get my car washed while I was out. Today Jean and I have an appointment with our financial advisor. With the boys nearing the end of college, and retirement looming 3-5 years down the road, it is time to start restructuring my finances from growth towards income.

I am halfway through reading Susanna Clarke’s historical fantasy Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. It is very slow reading, but interesting, with numerous strands that are slowly developing, including the relationship between the two very-different magicians, and the historical mystery of the Raven King, the supposed developer of modern magic whom Norrell rejects as irrelevant but Strange feels otherwise. I am anxious to see where Clarke takes all of this stuff.

After Tuesday’ entry discussing my typical workdays the first three weeks during the summer, I have taken a brief break the past three days. Thursday morning I went to school where we interviewed four more candidates for three available math teaching positions at the two high schools. My department will be practically unrecognizable this school year with four new teachers and one maternity-leave replacement. Those of us who are left will be doing lots of mentoring (yeah, Mike and Adrianne, that means you! ☺)

As soon as I got home, Jean, Ceil and drove to Oriskany, New York. Ceil is Jean’s 84-year old aunt whose only son lives in Denver, so she comes to visit us two or three times a year for two week-long visits. Normally she flies from Syracuse to Newark, but this time we decided to drive her the five hours each way so Jean and I could do some chores around her house for her. Ceil is amazingly energetic for an octogenarian, but there are still some things she cannot do very well. We stopped for supper at a diner Ceil likes which was pretty good. I ate cream of pepperoni soup and a large tuna salad/potato salad/vegetable salad combo. We stay at Ceil’s house overnight–and since Ceil’s house does not have air-conditioning and the temperature was in the upper 80s, Jean and I missed being home–then we left mid-morning Friday for the return ride, stopping for lunch at Arby’s, which is probably the best fast food place because of their market sandwiches on whole-grain bread, which is much better than the little buns other fast food sandwiches are served on.

When we got home, Andy and Mark were at the pool with my brother’s family, so Jean and I went there for a few hours, staying for supper. Thus I did not get any work done at all the past two days, which will continue for another day since this is Hawaiian Tropic Day at Great Adventure, which means my family gets free admission, parking and supper at Great Adventure because my brother works for Hawaiian Tropic. Even though there is nothing I really like at Great Adventure, I would never stay home alone working instead of going on a family outing, plus it is good to get an occasional break from writing and editing so it does not get boring and become a chore instead of a pleasant activity.

Tomorrow I go back to work though!

I have a tendency to plan to accomplish more things during my vacations than I can possibly finish, and that is equally true during summer vacation as it is during shorter vacations. This summer my main task is finish editing the Tibet book, but I also hope to write a query letter with outline and chapter summaries as well as selecting which publishers to send the package to. One main chore, ten weeks, sounds easy, huh? Here is my typical schedule for the past two days:

Monday:
7:45: woke up, did my back-stretching exercises, ate breakfast
8:30: edited part of a chapter of the Tibet book
10:00: Jean and I went to the YMCA for our thrice-weekly workout. On the way back we did some shopping
12:30: ate lunch, showered, practiced guitar
2:00: edited the rest of the chapter
4:30: cooked and ate supper, practiced guitar again, drove to weekly lessons

Tuesday:
6:45: woke up, showered, did my back-stretching exercises, ate breakfast, drove to Parsippany to write curricula for 4 hours
12:30: ate lunch, practiced guitar, updated journal and blog, cleared up pile of mail on my desk
3:00: my parents arrived for visit, culminating at supper at local Chinese buffet

That was a total of 4 hours’ editing in two full days. So far I have finished 5 chapters in 3 weeks. With 7 weeks left of vacation, including one week which we plan to spend camping at Old Forge, New York, the prospect of finishing all 26 chapters plus the outline/summaries seems daunting. Trust me, it will get finished, but it won’t leave me a heck of a lot of time to accomplish any other chores. Thank heavens I cut back Visions of Paradise to semi-annual so I do not need to finish another issue of that magazine this summer as well.

Regular readers of this blog might know that Friday night is our usual supper & shopping night out, and my shopping typically consists of browsing at one of the local book superstores. Last night when I entered Barnes & Noble there was an incredibly huge line of people winding halfway around the store, as well as dozens of other people wandering around talking, laughing, using cell phones and ipods, and distracting my browsing while apparently having no interest in buying any books themselves. What they were doing was getting wristbands to guarantee that they could buy the new Harry Potter book when it was officially released at midnight last night.

Books are one of the central aspects of my life (yeah, yeah, eating is pretty close too ☺), but I confess that I cannot understand so much fuss over a single book. 10,000+ books are released every single year, and if somebody is a genuine reader there must surely be something worth reading instead of fixating on a single book, no matter how good it might be. During my browsing last night I saw at least a dozen books I wanted to buy, but I restrained myself and did not buy any of them because I ordered two books through the mail already this week. What this tells me is that those people on the lines were not real readers, only Harry Potter fanatics, more interested in immersing themselves in familiar characters and a familiar world than enjoying a reading experience. I would be willing to bet they are nearly as fanatical about the movies as they are about the books.

I actually did read HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE several years ago and, while it was pleasant reading, it gave me no incentive to read further in the series, especially considering how many richer, fuller fantasies are published every year. I am currently reading Susanna Clarke’s historical fantasy JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL, which is a fine example of what fantasy can be at its best. So before all you Harry Potter fans attack me for my blasphemous opinion of Harry, I suggest you read at least some other great fantasy before dismissing them all as beneath the level of the great Harry. At least my opinion is based on a broad reading experience rather than blinders that do not let me see beyond the world of Harry Potter.

I confess to not being a particularly social person. My idea of socializing is to read other people’s fanzines and letters they send to VoP. However, even in that social milieu I do not do respond nearly as often to other fanzines as my readers respond to mine. Every summer I have a bout of guilt over this, and I determine to be a better loccer, but that usually lasts until school begins in September, at which point I have no time for anything other than school work and the barest minimal fannish activity. Which means I better send a loc to all my trading partners while I have time the next two months!

I have a list of chores I should do this summer which are sitting on a notepad next to my computer. One of them is buy a new stereo system. I am listening to cds on a stereo which is 30 years old and has the unfortunate tendency to fade out periodically. That’s not the ideal way to listen to good music. However, I know nothing about stereos, nor do I feel like spending time researching quality and prices. Does anybody reading this have any expertise in this area? I am looking for a basic stereo/radio into which I can feed my cd player and turntable. I have purchased 100s of cds in the past decade, but I have no intention of replacing 100s of old records as well. I probably will buy new speakers too.

If you could describe yourself by using a song, a book, and a movie, would you be able to do it? That was one of the things I thought about this past week during the two-day trip Jean and I took to Oriskany, New York, to pick up Jean’s aunt for a two-week visit.

The song is easy. Simon & Garfunkel’s “I Am a Rock” describes me precisely as a youth, and still very closely as an adult. You’ll have to find the lyrics to learn my secrets though. ☺

I had to think about a movie for awhile before deciding that Mr. Holland’s Opus could easily be about me if you replace music with fiction. He became a teacher as a necessity to earn money while he was writing music, and turned out to be a considerably better and more involved teacher than he ever was as a songwriter.

The book turned out to be easy too, but it’s a cheat. I wrote a future science fiction novella entitled “Chez Nous” in 1971, not realizing until it was finished how autobiographical it was. I do not believe I have ever revealed myself quite so deeply in writing since then, so perhaps it turned out for the better that the original anthology which intended to publish the novella folded prior to publication.

Anybody else want to try describing themselves?

The obsessive side of me judges summer partly by how much I accomplish. In this first week I have finished editing both the Passing Scene and Wondrous Stories portions of the June Visions of Paradise. PS is the personal portion, mostly containing excerpts from my journal and blog for the past six months. WS is the serious portion, filled with book reviews and articles, mostly on science fiction and historical fiction.

Yesterday I finished editing a far-future novelette, which fills in portions of my future timeline which I began creating 30 years ago. Ironically, last night while I was reading a novel by China Miéville called The Iron Council, I realized the plot of the story bridging this novelette and one I wrote a few years ago which takes place about 20 years previously. I hope to start that story around editing the Tibet book this summer.

My computer has been driving me crazy for a long time for various reasons. Now it has gotten infected, so Alan and I have decided the time has come to reformat it. Thus I have been spending time the past few days saving files, mostly by burning them. At times it is good that I am obsessive about backing-up files, since I have multiple copies of everything I do, on the hard drive, on floppy disks, and on cds. I also have an external drive, but I do not want to save anything on it right now in case it gets infected. I am not so worried about floppies or cds since my anti-virus will scan them when I use them, but if my external drive gets infected then it too will need to be wiped, and I have all our pictures on it.

Jean and I watched Martin Scorcese’s movie The Aviator, the biography of tortured genius Howard Hughes. It was a good movie. Jean and I recall parts of it, such as his famous plane The Spruce Goose, but much of it was new to us. I should remember Hughes whenever my mild hypochondria threatens to get out of control. ☺

We’re having a barbecue today for Fourth of July, an excuse to bring some family and friends here to eat our hearts out. Isn’t summer grand?