Hilary Booth... of course!

On the spur of the moment, I joined a 48 Hour Read-a-thon. The idea was to pick some books you wanted to read and to see how far you could get over the week. I attacked my pile of crime books. By some miracle, I managed to finished Richard Castle's Heat Wave and Dashiell Hammett's Maltese Falcon, the latter I've been meaning to finish for literally ages. I blogged about it over here. I will probably post a fuller review of Falcon once I get my thoughts together. I suspect a rewatch of the Huston movie may be in order with a comparison against the pre-code version. Since I don't drink, I'm not sure whether watching "Satan Met a Lady" sober is a good idea. Maltese Falcon is most definitely not a romantic comedy of any stripe.

One thing it did remind me I've put off was my eyes. I dug out my reading glasses, which helped a lot, but my eyes adjusted so well I'm now worried about my eyes. I haven't had an eye appointment since the last time I went to Pearle and went into hock. My old doctor moved so he's in the same building as my allergist, but he's no longer with Pearle. I still haven't decided whether I'll go back to him or find someone closer. I've heard horror stories about nearly every chain. I've also seen suggestions to take your prescription to one of the online places -- but then how do you know which frames to pick? It's almost worse than buying shoes online. And I have about as much chance of anything fitting right.

Only have a few minutes to write. My new assignment has my terminal in my boss' office, so very little play time for me. It's good for keeping me focused on the project.

I'm mostly done with my submission for this week. I need to go through it with a fine tooth comb tonight to see if I left any strays behind from the rewrite. I have to get it done Wednesday night if I hope to get it copied on Thursday before the meeting. Hopefully this will give me enough impetus to write chapter 2.

The "Maltese Falcon" class has started on Barnes & Noble's online reading group. It's only for three weeks and the book goes pretty quickly. It's hard to divorce myself from the Bogart version, which TCM is thoughtfully showing along with "Big Sleep" and "Dark Passage" on Thursday night.

Baseball is back. The Nationals opened against my mother's Phillies with a loss, living up to the fine old Senators' tradition. I'm still reminded of that Hexagon song. "We want a team that lost a 100 games every year?!" If they're ours, damn straight. It'll be amusing though if President Bush throws out the first pitch. He used to own the Texas Rangers after all, which used to be the Washington Senators, before they left down.

Dance the Fat Away: Study on youth obesity involving DDR.

I went to the Library of Congress for the "Maltese Falcon at 75" program. They've definitely changed the streets behind the Madison building, blocking off different side streets in the name of added security. Finding the Montpelier Room took some doing, especially with so much of the building closed down for the night. I didn't remember it being that big of a room, but we nearly filled it.

( Maltese Falcon at 75 commentary and nattering )