Writing today from the belly of a hurricane

At my current job, in a tiny plywood office with an ENORMOUS fan blowing all the paperwork around me. I guess that would be a tornado instead of a hurricane, but it reminds me of the way the trees bend in the wind when a storm is brewing up.

So, I am in love, love, love with Patty Griffin. Like the best music, I feel like I found her myself, like she's speaking only to me when she sings. This woman's voice is so incredibly powerful and tender, full of yearning and grit. It's a little bit all Patty all the time in my house right now. Especially her song Trapeze, which instantly went into the soundtrack for TCB. Rowing Song is also really good and she has amazing covers of Tracks of My Tears and Moon River. This woman is phenomenal. I had goosebumps listening to her last night and I actually sat still and closed my eyes to listen, which I almost never do when I'm at home. I'm always multitasking. I sat there and thought, "The universe does always know what I need and look, it gave me Patty Griffin."

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A few days ago, I watched August Rush, and I have to say I liked it a lot. I'd heard some bad things about it and it was sentimental and rather implausible, but I'm a sap for movies like that. I love Keri Russell too. And Jonathan Rhys Meyers. And Terrence Howard. And Alex O'Laughlin, who was in Moonlight (so sad! damn CBS!) and plays Jonathan Rhys Meyers' brother here. Lotta goodness, right there. But it occurred to me later that, like Sleepless in Seattle and other great examples, the two romantic leads probably share less than a total 45 minutes of screen time. So many romantic stories are so concentrated on how two people get together after being so distant. And that's probably appropriate. But I like stories like The Cutting Edge where the romantic leads spend LOTS of time together, fighting and being their horrible selves before they finally get together. LOL. I have no problem imagining those characters spending their lives together. I wonder what that says about me. Anyway, the music's great in August Rush, as you'd expect it to be in a movie about music.

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A lighthouse in Cape Cod became a mystery when it went missing in 1925 (believed to have been destroyed). It was recently discovered that it was moved to Point Montara, California. The juicy story broke in Lighthouse Digest. Lighthouse Digest! How amazing is that? They still don't know the details of how they moved it to California.

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Reminded me a bit of A Rose for Emily, but two locals lived with a decaying corpse - no one knows how long just yet. A former teacher of mine is mentioned in the article, so there was a random moment of pride in there, mixed together with the horror and disgust.

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I'm amused watching everyone speculate about the "Mystery Memoir" on GalleyCat. Here's the latest, getting increasingly rabid.

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Here's something interesting from Gawker about bloggers writing about their kids, oversharing and all of the things I worry about as a newbie blogger.

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And Gawker again, talking about stealing news stories. Haven't read it yet, but it's bound to be amusing.

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For the first time in a long time, a full scene came to me while I was brushing my teeth (or whatever I was doing) and I jumped for a notebook to scribble it down by hand. Pretty invigorating. I miss how handwriting feels, the freedom I feel writing that way as opposed to the computer. TCB is coming along slowly, but I am so very happy with the 70 or so pages I have. Even the ones I know that need a lot of cleaning up. I'm finally on the right track with this damn thing. :)