Killing time

I'm a morning person. I'm up and at 'em while H is still asleep. She's awake now but not ready to face the day. Hence I have time on my hands. Hence here.

Funny thing about So Cal, it still feels like home. I think it's the landscape. I come down here seldom but when I do, I feel more like "coming home" than I feel when returning to Oregon. So many formative years in Pasadena maybe. Those wonderful brown San Gabriel mountains. I also thought my favorite color was blue. Maybe it's brown.

I have no bad memories of So Cal, the way I have ghosts in Oregon. Maybe that's part of it, too. I could live down here -- though it's become too expensive to be very practical. But I easily become a desert rat in my old age, living in some Calif desert town. Hell, then it wouldn't matter if my teeth fell out or not ha ha.

The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Still not in my seat yet, so I can't really believe it till I am. I never, never thought I'd have the opportunity to see this live in my lifetime.

Man, when I return, only a month of school left! This has been a term in a sprint, great for winter, which usually is the slow term. Then spring, then summer. Amazing.

In the summer, I want to finish the Cold War project. I don't know if I can but I'll give it my best. Then I can enter the fall and the new school year with Sally back on the front burner, finishing it before summer. My big plans. Along the way, fiddling with my music drama.

I also want to begin my huge reading project this summer: Chapman's translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey, followed by the Sequel written by Kazantzakis. A huge project! But it's like Mahagonny, something I've been wanting to do for a very long time. If I realistically expect to do this, and finish it, I have to begin sooner rather than later.

The big adaptation libretto project appears to be delayed again, as my own music drama now interests me more. Maybe I can dabble in both at once. I still have a lot of research to do for it, however.

My spring textbooks are the same as fall and winter. This is the first time I've used exactly the same books in successive terms -- twice, this year. However, in fall 2007 I am thinking of dropping one of them, Aristotle's Poetics for Screenwriting, and just lecturing on the essential points I use instead. Save the students a little cash. Also, I may be adding LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, having seen the published script and accepting it as close enough to spec script style to use (most shooting scripts are not). At the same time, I love using CASABLANCA and SIDEWAYS together because they actually share so much in dramatic strategy. They are very different films, of course, and yet from the writer's point of view, do many things in very similar ways. Thus good to use in the classroom.

Two minutes left in the computer time I bought. I'll take OJ to the room and see if I can stir the wife into movement.

We have a very, very leisurely morning! We pick L up at 1030, don't have to be at the opera house for two hours. Find a leisurely brunch somewhere. I do want to wander around outside the opera house with my camera.

Despite teeth hassles and H's amazing accident, our trip is a good one so far. Glad to be down here. Glad to be WARM in L.A. Glad to be alive with most of my faculties intact. Over and out.