singedsun

Early at my new job, I managed to win a year-long membership to our local museum (which is VERY GOOD), the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Part of that is the invitation to some free talks from other museums or events at our museum that are member only (and sometimes costly - so I don't know how many if any of those I'll attend). I attended one of the Zoom presentations last Saturday morning: Asian Art & The Red Pagoda: A Conversation with Baroness Jacqueline von Hammerstein-Loxten. It's a chat being given from the Red Pagoda in Paris because of our museum's relationship with the man who built the Red Pagoda in the 1930s. The Baroness and the art historians at the Nelson have interacted during the last few years about some work in the Red Pagoda that was believe to be new to the structure that the historians have matched to pieces on display at the museum we know to be about 400 years-ish old. I find that fascinating. The Nelson is well known in art circles as having one of the best and most extensive Chinese art collections, whish is due in part to the Chinese and Indian art dealer both sold, loaned or donated as many as 150 pieces of art to the Nelson alone. If you're interested in that kind of thing, you can see one of the Jain shrines that the museum has in common with the Red Pagoda. You can also see what is arguably one of the most famous pieces that was acquired by the museum through this same man, The Guanyin of the Southern Sea. It is extremely imposing in person.

The talk included a video walk-through of the Red Pagoda which was breathtaking just over the video. I can't imagine how beautiful in must be in person. This Baroness acquired the building in 2011 after the descendants of the art dealer and designer of the Red Pagoda passed away couldn't keep up with the maintenance of the place. The building had been closed for years and she has spent the last 11 years loving restoring the place and researching all the art within it, and the man who built it. You can learn more about the Red Pagoda here.

I hope I get to attend more of these over the year while I have the membership since actually going to the museum in the time of COVID seems like a bad idea. This was a really nice light bit of my weekend when everything about my week was a little overwhelming.

Pretty much everyone on both sides of my family has had COVID in the last two weeks, people in no contact with one another, just badly coincidental timing and most of whom were both vaccinated, boosted and doing their part to stay away from others. Both my half-brother and my Dad (unrelated) are different kinds of high-risk and both are really, really ill. My dad barely answered my text messages when I checked on him every day because he was so sick. But thank goodness I got him that fitness watch for Christmas so he could watch his numbers. He'd the numbers to me when he didn't have the energy to type anything else, and that was actually really reassuring. As of last Sunday both my dad and brother seemed to be feeling a little better but still having hard times breathing, which is likely to just be something they'll be dealing with for awhile.

Last Thursday our friend Amy came over to watch a movie. The point was to hang out, not to watch anything specific, so I went out to Shudder on a whim and found something that sounded truly terrible. What we landed on was two hours of the most mundane haunted house movie I've ever seen. In fact, this review for the movie here at Confluence of Cult probably says it better than I could ever:

"Fatal Exam, a regional supernatural slasher filmed in St. Louis, might be the longest 1 hour and 52 minutes ever committed to 16 mm. Writer, director, editor, and producer Jack Snyder never met a mundane moment he didn’t want to film the hell out of. Although the movie purports to be about a group of university students spending the night at a haunted house in which they’re stalked by a scythe-wielding killer, Fatal Exam is actually mostly about a group of university students walking around a drab house for 92 minutes, at the behest of their Rod Serling-sounding college professor, and then feebly battling a scythe-wielding killer for 20."

This movie was a bad movie gem. It's the sort of things that I feel like is meant to be watched with friends for a laugh. Sure it's two hours of the most mundane shit, but it absolutely did not feel like that for the three of us. For us, it was two hours of hysterical laughter that got us giggling and crying and it was perfect. This has something my friends and I have definitely found the beauty in over the last two years. While we used to do this in person every few months before the current panorama, we now do this once or twice A WEEK. Sundays are regular face time sessions and now occasionally when everyone's in good health and safe, we can do them in person again too.

I haven't been around much lately because all my non-work energy, or these small occasional breaks for real life, I've been writing. I DEFINITELY got the writer's equivalent of eyes are too big for my stomach with this story I'm working on. I picked up a challenge pinch hit for a 10k minimum story. And I thought... oh I've got the perfect idea, I can get it to 10k no problem. Except I had three weeks (which I'm now at the very end of today) to write it and way more story than I expected to have. I THINK I can cap it at 15k today and be done. But if I'd had the whole length of the challenge (which I was not a part of before grabbing this pinch hit) I think I could've done at least 30k if not more. This is the easiest writing has been in a long while, it's great.

I hope you're all well. As soon as this story is behind me, I've got more to share. Shit has been kind of wild lately, so these distractions have been very very appreciated.

I don't really make New Years Resolutions, as I mentioned before. I do keep a bullet journal and will build the occasional tracker in it for a short-period of time tracking of a "thing" kind of use. I have loose ideas of things I want to accomplish in 2020 though. Although currently, I'd currently like a redo on the first seven days of the year, they've been really, really crappy.

So here's some loose plans I've got floating around right now for 2020:

WORK
It sucks right now. I love what I do and my new manager is great as is the rest of my team. But upper management does not understand our team, nor do they seem interested in learning about or supporting us. Year end reviews should come in February and I do not expect a raise or any sort of increase for me or anyone on my team (who all deserve them). I think my new manager (who's only been there five months now) has her hands tied on any leverage to get more for us. So if we don't start bleeding worthy, experienced employees in the first quarter, I expect by year end we will lose two or three people to other, better jobs.

I'm kind of waiting right now to see how year end shakes out for myself and my team before making any big decisions. However, I've already taken a call with a recruiter (who sought me out) and told him to call me in the second quarter to see how I was feeling about things. If I want to take a step-up at all (and I do), I know it's probably not going to happen where I am. So I want to have that at least in motion by mid-year.

WRITING
Overall I've pledged at getyourwordsout 150k words for this year, for a variety of projects.

I want to finish "Gravestones" which is my project title for my NaNo novel. I'm setting it into Scrivener and setting up edits for this first quarter with the idea to continue writing (maybe finish the first full draft) in April's Camp NaNo. By 4th Street in June, I want to have a chapter (or three) feeling good enough to take to the critique workshop there.

I also have an idea for two smaller romance novellas, so I want to pick one of those and flesh out the ideas and figure out which one (if not both) to finish this year.

Who knows which project I'll have going in the fall, but if it's not Gravestones, I'd like to have something else ready enough to start writing something new in November for another NaNoWriMo.

FANDOM
I'm planning to combine a bingo card with Femslash February.

I would like to finish a longstanding Dragon Age story I've been dragging out for too long.

I've started putting together some old Dragon Ave Aveline/Isabela fics and tentatively my idea is to take those six individual fics and string them together into a real plot - tentative word goal is 30k for that project. It's at about 11k now, so I think that's doable.

Definiely Yuletide again, and if Critmas runs, I'll do that again too. Based on where my other projects are, I'd love to pick up other new stuff as the muse strikes too. I was thinking about Chocolate Box this year, but I know I don't have it in me right now, so I'll have to watch and enjoy from afar.

I think that's about it.



I don't know if this makes a ton of sense at the moment. About halfway through this post I got the call from my dad letting me know that my grandfather passed away this evening about 10:30pm. He was struggling with lung and heart issues and after a recent bout against pneumonia didn't recover fully. I'm a little -- out of sorts and I came back to this post after dealing with a few phone calls and other messages.

I know that's a bummer to end on. But I think it's a reminder to me that I also need to make sure I'm setting goals this year that don't overwhelm me, that let me work at my own pace and let me stay happy and healthy both mentally and physically. It's one of the reasons I reset again and again throughout the year if something isn't working for me. Don't wait for the first of the year to make the change, just do it tomorrow.