A Grief Observed

I just bought C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed at my local Book Market [you gotta check these guys out, you cannot beat their prices. It's incredible]. I decided to read it for 2 reasons.

1. I had a minor epiphany while wearing my WriterHat[tm] that I gravitate to writing melancholic, deeply introspective, moderately lonely people. Because that is, underneath everything, the "what I know" in the "write what you know" Famous Command Made To Writers. I think it's a good command, for fiction writers. And, frankly, there are far worse things in the world than to be instinctively drawn to writing lonely people who look at the world through strange filters. I can live with it.

2. I've always wanted to get to know C.S. Lewis better. I loved and still love the famous Narnia books, which of course he is best known for. But Lewis was known for a lot more, and I want to meet him in the pages of his work.

[The unspoken zeroeth reason, is that when it comes to books, I am a mountain climber. It was there.]

Music and other Conversational Topics at Cocktail Parties

People always think my family is wierd. Or cool. [My family is, btw.] But, they think it's wierd or cool that my mom plays the autoharp. And my dad is learning the banjo. And my father[*] is an organist -- that's what he does for a living [hey, *I* think that is cool]. Grandma sang in a "hillbilly band", back before country was country. Uncle Charlie plays the guitar. We all play or played musical instruments, or sing, or both. I usually just sing -- got my instrument with me all the time!

It doesn't mean we're all that great. It just means we like music. We're not magically different, we just like music. There is NOTHING, so help me god, NOTHING stopping you from studying a musical instrument. It's good for you. It's soothing. It's fun.

So....do you like music too? Go spend $8.00 on an harmonica and have yourself some fun.



[*] My Three Dads. Long story, live with it.

The Sound of Sidra Not Posting

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Not that bad, really. I revised some remarks in my little monologue about fanfic and copyright infringement and why I have no plans to write "bookfic" anytime soon. But no new posts for a couple reasons - one, I've got a temporary part time job. I'm still looking for "real" work, so if you by chance are looking for a kickbutt programmer with good writing and people skills, try me. Consulting, part time, full time. I'm game. I like to work. This gig is strictly temporary, like, another couple weeks, max. But it has been enjoyable.

Two, while not parttimejobbing, I was putting together a decent implementation of the open source ecommerce software I worked on and with at Zelerate from 2000-2001. Now that it's up, I have a "demo" site to point prospective clients to, and that's a valuable thing, doncha think? Being as enough of the clients whose projects I worked on while at Zelerate are not necessarily...vibrant commercial entities, shall we say, at this time. *ahem*