attendre-et-espérer

Entry, Ledger, Bureau of Frivolous Delights:

2012-05-22T06:00:00.003-06:00

#2904. Realizing that being an adult has its compensations. Like when you're having toast or pizza, no one can make you eat the crusts.

(Cross-ref: candy for dinner)

I Always Forget How Awesome This Song Is

2012-05-14T06:00:00.000-06:00

Overheard

2012-05-09T06:00:00.001-06:00

Location: The produce section of a grocery store, around eight-thirty on a Tuesday night.

Dramatis Personae:

Kid: A little boy of about six, sitting in the kid seat of a grocery cart.

Mom: A woman browsing for peppers a few feet away from her son.

—Act I—

Kid: Mom? [calling from cart] Mom? Can I get a hamster?

Mom: [distracted][approaches with bag full of produce] Hmm? What?

Kid: I just think a hamster would be perfect. Can I get one?

Mom: [browsing lettuce][still distracted] Huh? [comprehending] NO.

Kid: [slumps in cart, bummed out]

Exeunt players.

—End Act I—

Entry, Ledger, Bureau of Frivolous Delights:

2012-05-07T13:00:00.002-06:00

#906. You’re eating popcorn and you reach into the bowl and by sheer luck come up with a particularly salty and buttery handful. (Cross-ref: popcorn butter vein)

Back When 1977 Was 1996...

2012-04-30T06:00:00.003-06:00

Six Recent Google Searches

2012-04-25T06:00:00.002-06:00

1. Nissan Sunny
2. ocular prosthesis
3. open top of head
4. The Constant Nymph
5. French flaps
6. Joe Piscopo

There Were SOME Good Things About The ’90s...

2012-04-23T06:00:00.004-06:00

Someone Sent Me This Postcard

2012-04-20T06:00:00.001-06:00

That's one pessimistic yardbird.

They Tell Me It’ll Grow Back

2012-04-18T06:00:00.003-06:00

Recently, my original eponymous website went "THANKS, GOODNIGHT" and promptly died, and I found myself without a repository for the boilerplate on me and m’writing.

Then, in the rebuilding effort, I realized that the multi-page info monster isn’t me anyway. Isn’t me, and isn’t necessary. So instead of piecing the old thing back together, after a ridiculous amount of shrieking and hair-pulling due to that bunch of web-type stuff I frigged up because I don’t know my CNAME from my butt, I hereby direct your attention to the re-envisioned www.sarabeitia.com, now a single (convenient! sleek! pretty!) broadsheet containing everything -- books, reviews, bio, ephemera -- you might want to know. And probably more.

The Results Are In

2012-04-09T06:00:00.002-06:00

Top three terrible places in which to find yourself stuck:

3. LAX

2. Hell

1. Doctor’s office waiting room

Speaking of Opening Day ...

2012-04-05T11:00:00.000-06:00

BASEBALL AS SHE IS PLAYED

Something’s Opening This Week…?

2012-04-02T06:00:00.000-06:00

This is the kind of thing I sometimes do when I'm supposed to be writing.

2012-03-29T06:00:00.007-06:00

I can't remember where I first heard of it, but something I am sure of is that you can lose an entire day sifting through the pix at Retronaut.co.

Browse a 1973 Lego catalogue, anyone?

Or maybe you just want to see how the London Underground evolved over a century.

Myself, I'm partial to the Famous Letterheads entry. (Some, like Ali and Monroe: surprisingly understated. Then there's the intergallactic intensity of the Star Trek specimen. As for Charles Atlas, the guy had some brass ones, so to speak, to appear on his own stationery so nearly in the all-together...)

Enjoy today's time waster.

Oh Dear

2012-03-20T06:00:00.002-06:00

I had a dream the other night about an adorable stray kitty that upon closer inspection turned out to have big fluffy owl wings instead of front legs. It was kind of upsetting.

These pictures in the Meowjer League Baseball tumblr are perhaps more upsetting.

(via)

Just...Wow.

2012-03-12T06:00:00.000-06:00

Overheard

2012-03-06T06:00:00.002-07:00

"Yeah, but it's so unique ... it wouldn't make a good murder van."

"Are you in the market for a murder van?"

Oh Dear God She's Fussing Around in the Anthologies Again

2012-02-28T07:00:00.001-07:00

There are times when the, oh, say, hiccups of living become overly heavy. Times when the inevitably grim outcome of the ride—and the indignities that often accompany the decline—can't be ignored, and threaten to overwhelm.

(Some of us find ourselves extra-susceptible to the existential blues in late winter.)

But when the feeling is transformed into a little gem of beauty it's a small consolation, some kind of bulwark against encroaching dark. As in those oft-quoted last lines of Tennyson’s somber yet comforting "Ulysses":

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

"Venture Afield" (Ha!) That Was Totally Unintentional

2012-02-21T07:00:00.005-07:00

It’s probably a shock to no one that I read a lot of YA. Probably equally as unschocking, sometimes I like to venture afield in my reading.

So I spent the past weekend reading a library copy of Chad Harbach's much-hyped novel debut The Art of Fielding (as in, devoured it in two big Saturday then Sunday bites). I don’t want to talk about it – everyone in the world, it seems, has already talked about it! – but I can’t help myself.

Obviously I had a hard time putting it down, having consumed it so quickly. I was particuarly drawn to Schwartz (of course!) in all his well-meant, self-doubting, paternalistic even angry glory ... he could have been cast as Salieri to Henry's Mozart, but he wasn't, and I loved him for that. I read the last few chapters with a lump in my throat, and was wrecked for the rest of the day after the final page was done because I couldn’t stop thinking about that last scene. That bit there – that not being able to put the book out of my mind once it’s over – says a lot about whether a book is a good read for me. I was afraid I’d be disappointed after so much hype (I wasn’t, not at all), especially as I’ve learned to distrust so-called literary novels’ endings because they often feel to me incomplete and/or drearily tragic (another relieved exhalation here, at least for me … your own mileage may vary).

The thing I can’t stop thinking about, that compels me to keep talking when so much has already been said by smarter, more interesting people, is the baseball. I really can’t determine whether it’s the baseball itself, those loving, unhurried descriptions of the plays and the microcosm of a ball team, that’s the true reason I found The Art of Fielding so absorbing and moving. (I am aware that others have found the opposite to be true: Not giving a crap about the game as a subject and pleasantly surprised by thoroughly enjoying this book anyway.)

(Tangentially, I could analytically parse the evolution of my attachment to the game in a "Why I Love Baseball" essay, but that would be for another time, and likely never at all, since it would only be absorbing and moving to myself.)

If this story were hung on a different metaphor, would it have meant so much to this reader? But that’s maybe a ridiculous question, since the alchemical mix of plot and theme in every book either succeeds with a reader, or it doesn’t, and can often be at least partially predicated on the reader’s own prior emotional attachments to the particulars. Which is to say, I might not have been as absorbed by an ice hockey story, even one as well-written as this baseball story, because my emotional attachment to baseball exists prior and apart from this book. I believe this says more about how and why I experienced this particular book as I did than it does about whether I could enjoy a story about collegiate hockey players.

And really, none of this matters … it was just something I found myself thinking about. For whatever reason (it's the baseball!), The Art of Fielding = recommended. Add it to the innumerable tally.

Sweet Sour Times

2012-02-20T07:00:00.001-07:00

Happy Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T06:00:00.003-07:00

aka Candy & Flowers Day
aka Too-Cute-By-Half Punny Cards Day

I May Or May Not Have Difficulty Avoiding That Time Life "Classics of Country" Infomercial...

2012-02-13T07:00:00.001-07:00

b r a i n s m e l t e d s e n d h e l p

2012-02-09T07:00:00.001-07:00

As I rattataptap closer to the middle of the ol’ WIP, I realize that I’ve reached a point where the scraps and scribbled notes vastly outnumber my brain cells. Right now my writing "process" is a lot like when Beautiful Mind goes all scary paranoia crazy and starts pasting papers and clippings together in an "order" that makes sense only in his scrabbled brain. There are SO. MANY. SCRAPS. and I can only decipher about three-quarters of them. Wait, does—does it say here that the CIA is after me?! *eats all the paper*

Six Enjoyable Weekend Bits

2012-02-07T07:00:00.000-07:00

1. The better half and I watched a Dirty Harry movie marathon.

2. Since we installed the new one last week (and took the old one to the scrap yard to exult in its death), we now have a water heater that you know, heats water, and also doesn’t vomit all over the floor in temperamental fits.

3. We tuned in to the Super Bowl and Downton Abbey both in the SAME DAY. (Ooh!)

4. Speaking of the Super Bowl … there were tasty SNACKS. Lots of ’em.

5. And speaking of tasty snacks … yesterday we ate an ice cream that looked like a baked potato.

6. Also, the weekend lasted through Monday.

“Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.”~ Robert Benchley

2012-01-25T08:00:00.002-07:00

This Is How You Upgrade Your Day

2012-01-16T07:00:00.003-07:00