I didn't do any writing this last week, if we're not counting the hour I worked on Madison on Sunday. This week was a busy one for Cody and me. We had an apartment inspection, so our cats got to visit Grandma and Grandpa. Mack Fu (the real Mr. Bond) did just fine. He's a laid back cat that loves people and doesn't seem to have a territorial bone in his body. Zenzo, his sister, transforms from mild-mannered lap cat to pop star diva/Diana the Huntress when she's in unfamiliar territory, and she spent the entire night and two days she was visiting Grandma and Grandpa and her cousins (my parents' two cats) hissing and growling at everything in sight (though she still wanted to be petted and to sit on laps while she did this). For those of you who have never seen a cat who can be simultaneously begging for a pet and hissing with annoyance, I present Exhibit A:
Isn't she precious?
We also celebrated my parents' birthdays this weekend. I've gained and extra 5 lbs in chocolate cake to prove it.
The only progress made on the writing front was that my research book, The Encyclopedia of Amazons, arrived. Despite its title, I was expecting a book of stories about women warriors. Instead, it is an alphabetized list of warrior women with a brief paragraph or two of biographical information. It is very brief. Very dry. Very factual. Very encyclopedic. Not at all what I was expecting, though it was exactly what was advertised. I'd built it up in my head to be a book filled with women's stories woven together in a creative narrative. My disappointment was short-lived, because simply reading the snippets of information made me start building the stories of the women in my head, which was the whole point of the book--to provide inspiration. As Cody put it, it's a perfect research book.
Oddly, this made me think of video games. I've been a fan of many of the Nintendo games from the very first console that came out when I was a kid. I've never gotten into the arcade games very much. Fighting from level to level in misspelled combat games never really did it for me. Nor did the racing ones, at least not for long. For me, it was always The Legend of Zelda and Metroid, and to a lesser extent, the Mario games. I finally realized why: They build on a story. You're not just running around trying to get items and kill enemies, you're following the path of a story arc. You're getting to play the hero/heroine, just as when you read, you get to see the world through the eyes of the hero/heroine on the adventure. I recently got a Wii for my birthday, and I've been playing through the latest Metroid game (Metroid Prime 3: Corruption) and the LEGO Indiana Jones and LEGO Star Wars games. I highly recommend all three, but especially the LEGO games if you're not a big gamer.
My most eye opening revelation of the week, though, was this: Pistachio frozen yogurt is really, really good! Who knew?
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