09 February 2007

New office (hey, I got to clean this one first)

So my work office moved down the hall, around the corner, down that hall, and around the other corner. Essentially, a U-shape. Reason? The operational improvement director hired yet another human and required another office to house said human. So I'm on my third office in three-and-a-half years. Yipe. But there's only one of me in here, since Loreen hasn't hired any one to replace Dianna yet, which is good because there isn't much room for a second human (the new office is about 2 feet narrower than the old one so the file cabinet sits farther into the room now).

HOWEVER - it is clean. I 409'd this sucker before I moved anything into it.

I finished a couple Hemingway stories while waiting for Glenn-the-computer-guy (who really is a lifesaver, we love him) to come and relocate my machine to my new office. "Big Two-Hearted River: Parts I and II" are really just two linked stories about a guy going on a fishing trip in Michigan on the Black River. What really makes them interested is the attention to detail regarding every, single, thing: walking in the meadow, walking in the pine trees, finding a clearing near the river, setting up the tent, making dinner, getting ready for bed, making breakfast, catching grasshoppers (for bait), baiting the hook, etc. All told with very short, sharp sentences - modernist to a "T." I was thinking that Hemingway probably wouldn't be published today with his over-descriptive, clipped style. New prose seems very drawn out to me.

The really interesting thing is the little "Chapters" between each story. Chapter XIV on page 161 is about a dying bullfighter, gored by the bull. It's so riveting for a paragraph. This is the end:

The doctor came running from the corral where he had been sewing up picador horses. He had to stop and wash his hands. There was a great shouting going on in the grandstand overhead. Maera felt everything getting larger and larger and then smaller and smaller. Then it got larger and larger and larger and then smaller and smaller. Then everything commenced to run faster and faster as when they speed up a cinematograph film. Then he was dead.

Current book-in-progress: "A Clean, Well-lighted Place" by Ernest Hemingway
Current knitted item: Shawl. I have two more repeats of diamond pattern #2, an eyelet border and 12 rows of garter stitch. About 36 rows total - I will, WILL get finished.

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