We arrived safely in Aiken last night after spending a day in Greenville, NC and touring the Biltmore estate (read “American castle”). Like with castles and cathedrals in Europe, you start to think that if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all. I have to say that the Biltmore impressed me nonetheless, just on the sheer size of the thing and the fact that it’s like a European palace, only newer.

We spend a couple days in Aiken then move to Savannah for a day, then back to Aiken, then home.

I’ve made a bad (and painful) discovery—I was hooked on ibuprofen. My stomach started getting upset from taking too much too often, but I thought the timing wasn’t so bad since I won’t be playing footie for another week or so. As I’ve come off my steady diet of Advil, aches and pains have slowly creeped back into my life, mostly in my ankles and my bum knee. It’s amazing how much niggling pain the ibuprofen has been masking, and I’m not quite sure what to do about it since Tylenol does next to nothing and the Advil’s still making my stomach upset. Not best pleased about this.

I read a couple critical articles on Blood Meridian on the flight down to South Carolina. My advisor recommended one by Dana Phillips entitled “History and the Ugly Facts of Blood Meridian” and boy, was it fantastic. A really good argument that makes me want to read the book again with his central ideas in mind.

The other was “Genre and Geographies of Violence” by Susan Kollin, which I had found a lot to disagree with regarding the novel. Kollin made some really interesting points about All the Pretty Horses though, and made me really excited to read The Crossing, which sounds fantastic.

I had a list of shortish sci-fi books I wanted to crank through during the break. I think my compulsion is going to mean that I jettison them all in favor of more McCarthy. So it goes.

No footie on the tube here, but I saw with some dismay that Spurs lost to the Ars* 2-1 away. Not that this is surprising, but by all accounts they should have at least drawn. Spurs have a mental block when it comes to their greatest rivals, and you can’t be missing penalties in games like these. You just can’t. Or you lose.

Current Mood: Satisfecho |