Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Er, Finished TAFF Reports

[akirlu]

Well, it's been a glorious October here in Seattle, with dry weather, clear sunny skies, and a particularly spectacular fall display around campus. It's been so dry that I actually got to wear my red suede coat for much of the month without fear of ruination. And I've been keeping my little Lumix in my coat pocket and taking quite a few pictures as I walk to and from work and class. I also keep thinking about nattering about it here, but, well, Chinese class, therefore bizy. Also, after Randy Byers asked about it, I made the mistake of starting a little post about my trip to California to clear out my parents' Mariposa place, and that post turned into this massive, ever-growing travel journal about the entire drive down and all my little detailed observations along the way, and side trips into recent fan visitors and outings, plus fannish participants in my Big Estate Sale Adventure, and basically the thing snowballed into a fanzine article that is currently 8 pages long and not yet done, but overdue. Go, me.

I'll probably post it here eventually, too, once it's actually finished, because lately the things I send off to fanzines seem to fall into a dark gravity well of egobooless obscurity and despair from which no comment hooks can ever emerge and I do like to have at least *some* sense that other people read what I wrot.

Anyway, for the longest time I had that post saved only as a draft in LJ and so I kept feeling like I couldn't post other things until I got it finished with it. And when it comes to trip reports I seem unable to let go of recording every picayune detail for my own recollection and amusement, and this is why I have thirty thousand words of TAFF report down and no immediate hope of getting it edited down to a readable finished work.

But for now I have that post saved as a Word .doc, and a clean slate here. And so here, before it's too late, a post for October. It's been a grand month.

Comments

[athenais.livejournal.com]

You have had the classic glorious autumn I've been missing and found in Norway. California just cannot deliver on autumn over here on the coast.

I really want to read the fanzine article. So yes, publish it here, too, plz.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Jaw-droppingly beautiful photos!

Look forward to the trip report when you are ready to post.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

None of the parts of California I've ever lived in could deliver a real autumn. I know there are places on the East Coast that do even better, but I confess I have enough recollections of the inadequacies of Southern California autumns that I'm still pretty pleased by what we get in Seattle, at least in a good year. It helps that my office window looks out on the cherry trees on the quad, which always give good value for money at this time of year.

I will, indeed, pub the trip report here too. Like I say, I'm tired of not getting any egoboo at all.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I will, indeed, include the trip report here where I know my tiny-but-faithful audience is. :)

[cschells.livejournal.com]

Gorgeous photos! Thanks so much for sharing them! I count it a successful L.A. autumn when we don't have an actual heat wave in October/November... This year has been OK so far.

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

"Scenically attractive"!

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I love fog, and that was a pretty good fog machine last week. More please!

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I totally know what you mean about fall in LA. There was a an office Christmas party where the temperatures were still hitting the 90s, and I remember one year when fall was December 13. Just that one day. A Santa Ana blew in and all the leaves came off the liquidambar trees in the neighborhood, and that was that.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Thenkyewverymuch!

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm a rotten weather witch, because I can't call up mists on cue, but here's a picture of fog for you:

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Very nice! Especially with the lamps.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the halos on the lamps really made it lovely; in general, that morning was really magical walking in to the office. I took a bunch of pictures.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

The Japanese maple photo was an exceptionally nice thing, quickly putting to rest the notion that we can't have nice things with its position.

I was entranced by the fall colors in Minneapolis when I moved there back in 1979. And here all the news reports talked about going "up north" as the place to see the colors. There are times I feel the same way here, though driving the back roads of Vermont on a good day has much to recommend it.

What I've read of your prose would hold up to a 30K word TAFF Report. Is your draft truly unreadable, or just long? Have you thought of handing it off to a fannish editor for recommendations? It would be lovely to see it published.

And, yes, I look forward to reading about your California trip whenever and wherever that works.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Sadly, what I have of the TAFF report truly is unreadable in its present state. It needs heavy editing that I'm pretty sure only I can do to pull out redundant bits and re order others and frame several bits and fill in gaps within and between them (yes, there's more writing that needs to be done). I did actually hand the entire unwieldy mess to Randy to let him have a go at editing, and he eventually threw his hands up in defeat. It doesn't help that it's mostly in an outlining program that no one else has, and while that can be dumped to other file formats, it's still in outline-y order. I would like to see it published myself, but every time I get back to it, life intervenes. At least I'm out of living parents now.

[cschells.livejournal.com]

I just dug out a fleece pajama top this morning and remembered that the year I got it for my birthday (in October), I had to run the air conditioner in our apartment just to try it out... *g*

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, I remember packing for a trip to Sweden one fall while living in Irvine (it was grad student housing, about the only thing that would get me to move to Irvine then, or ever). It was late September and I knew intellectually that I needed to pack for cold autumn weather but Irvine was having one of those typical September heat waves where temperatures lie in the low 100s and I could barely even bring myself to *think* about my woolies; handling them in order to pack them was a major wrench, and trying anything on to make sure it fit was Right Out.