Adjustments

What's happened in three nearly five months? I went to Texas, translated a novel, and am moving to a new place with M in the next few months. It will be one that we'll own though, so that's a major step for us. Looks like I'll also be doing much more translation work.

The dog has grown. We're going to NYC in April, so we're definitely hoping to move before that happens, or at least before the summer.

I started going to the gym and I never thought I'd be happy to run a 10 minute mile, but I finally can. It's sad though, because I ran track in high school and could run a 2:20 half-mile. Hopefully I can keep improving.

My friend Stevie Edwards got into the Cornell and Michigan MFA for poetry. Congrats to her! I forgot about the MFA application season. I'm sure it got pretty crazy on the MFA blog, as usual.

Up the coast

We went to Arcata to visit my sister last weekend and met her boyfriend Andrew, and after the trip I realized that I really like Humboldt County. No, not because of the weed, but maybe because it has so much potential as a source of literary inspiration. Take, for example, this story that Andrew told us:

Both he and my sister worked at a bakery owned by a wealthy man who opened a French cafe in town. The impression I got while this story was being told was that the guy had no culinary experience and poor management ability. So, I guess he opened the cafe because he was rich and he felt like it. That's logical, right?

After he opened the cafe and bakery, he took his pastry chef to Tartine in SF (for those of you who don't know, Tartine is a famous bakery on 18th and Guerrero, known for amazing baked goods. Check it out.), and supposedly "stole" a bunch of their recipes and ideas and whatnot.

It seems like a true story to me. Some of the baked goods in the cafe look like exact copies of stuff in Tartine. I suppose it doesn't really matter, but because it's a small town with only a couple of good bakeries, it's a funny story. I feel a sense of small town drama in it. Apparently, Andrew's current employer (another bakery) is set to expand and compete with the other guy's bakery.

Arcata reminds me of something, but I can't place it. Maybe it's Berkeley, or what Berkeley sometimes stands for - independence and a refusal to become commercialized and hip. There are a lot of local businesses in both places, but it seems as though Berkeley can't staunch the flow of big business for long.

I bought my sister the Tartine bread book for her birthday, and now I wish I'd bought myself one as well.

Below: Ming and Mia at the visitor's center of a redwood forest, the avenue of the giants, and a coast view north of Fort Bragg on the PCH as you leave the redwoods.

You have to think about these things

It seems like a lot of people have stopped blogging, which is depressing. I used to have a ton of new posts on my dashboard when I would log in, and now there are none. It's too bad, really. Now, my links area is very depressingly low on people. But I've finally updated it!

Oh hey, Jonathan Franzen's new novel, "Freedom," is out, and this time, Franzen didn't object to it being an Oprah's Book Club pick. I find that a little strange. Am I the only one who would want to reject Oprah twice? Nevertheless, it's been a long wait, and I bought the book a couple of days ago, so I'll be starting it soon.

What I'm even more excited about is David Mitchell's "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet," which I also just bought. There's no rational reason for this excitement, since I thought "Cloud Atlas" was very slightly overrated, but this historical novel is about early 19th century Japan, and the protagonist is Danish, which implies insane amounts of research. From the first five pages it is evident that this should be good!

Also, Rick Moody's "The Four Fingers of Death" is out! Need I say more?

Anyone read any good short stories lately? I've kind of fallen behind on all that stuff.

What just happened?

Haha, there's been some interesting stuff floating around online lately. What was that thing about Anis Shivani? Oh yeah, along with that really ridiculous post about the most overrated writers in America, he's got the best HuffPost article titles, like, EVER.

Check 'em out.

In other news, Mia now weighs 7 lbs and has her own Twitter account ;) I know you care!

Still haven't taken the time to update the links. Still haven't really written anything about anything. Bought Alice Munro's short story collection, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. Read a few stories and still think that Runaway is a far superior collection.

Also have been reading Roberto Bolaño's short story collection The Return, which feels eerily like a practice run at The Savage Detectives and 2666. Probably one of the best and not Bolaño-related stories in the first half is Snow, about a Russian mobster and his henchman. Probably worth the price of the collection.

I'm a week late on this, but please check out Christine Lee Zilka's literary auction for Jennifer Derilo, who was recently diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Worth your time and money!

I'm in LA working on a Hellraiser reboot. Lots of screaming involved.

Dog

I got back to SF last week, and we got the dog the same day, so we've had her for a week now. She's pretty quiet and loves to cuddle, except when she doesn't see one of us and starts crying. So it's been a bit of a challenge to go anywhere. She got motion sickness on the first day when we were going home and threw up on me three times.

Her name is Mia and she just turned three months old. Next week we'll be able to take her out to play with other dogs, and I'll post more pictures :)

Shooting on stage is fun

That's a lie. It's not fun at all, but at least it's easier than being on location. Anyway, this is my weekly update since I'm working 14 hour days. Next week I'm going back to SF and M and I are getting a puppy! This is going to be awesome. I will post extensive pictures.

It's always sunny in LA

No really. Except for that one day, Wednesday, when it looked like SF from the air, a blanket of clouds covering the valley as far as I could see. And then when I got home it was sunny, so that was more in line with expectations.

I have a shoot starting in 9 hours. I should really get some sleep. I'll most likely be back in SF in about three weeks.

It feels like summer here! And it's kind of nice, if I don't think about the lack of public transportation and culture.

Does anyone have any good book recommendations?