The replacement monitor arrived yesterday. Holy cow, is this thing big! I can actually see what I’m typing without wearing my glasses, which is something like amazing. Doing layout on this thing would be a dream.
Too bad I’m not doing layout, anymore.
One thing I am doing is going through file cabinets, looking for stuff to throw out. Lest you think I’m picking on the file cabinets, the bookshelves are also under assault, and my closet; and pretty soon I’ll set my sights on the CDs.
While two boxes of books went to the library and a buncha bags of clothes found their ways to Goodwill, the file cabinets, I regret to say, seem full of stuff that (1) we need, or (2) that I’d forgotten we had, but might still need.
Case in point re: (2).
Yesterday, I pulled out of the back of a file drawer, five file folders, labeled thusly:
VC&M Pieces
Steve’s Klamath
Liaden Notes (blank folder interfiled with the labeled folder appears to contain notes from the construction of Local Custom or Scout’s Progress — or both)
Shan & Priscilla #2
You will perhaps understand why I found this folders to be Of Interest. Indeed, I’ll be posting something tasty from this find oh, later on today over at Splinter Universe — I’ll tell you when. Briefly, it’s a study in four parts detailing the first meeting of Val Con and Nelirikk. Hopefully, you’ll be amused. At least I was amused.
We were not really good at dating things, so all I’ve got to go on to guess when these were four pieces were written are the following Clues:
At least two of these exercises were written on a typewriter — you can feel the letters on the back side of the sheet.
The longest piece was printed out on a dot matrix printer, and the whoa-cheap 20# burst paper is starting to yellow at the edges. This particular iteration has the following running head: book four/prolog. Prolog has been lined out and over it is written, in my hand, Chapter 1.
Based on these Clues, I’m gonna say we’re looking at a creation date of sometime in 1986.
Of the other Folders of Interest, Steve’s Klamath is possibly a hundred pages of a novel about, hey, Klamath. I haven’t examined it in depth, but I do see that it would very much make “Misfits” an Alternate History novella.
Shan & Priscilla #2 is 80-odd pages of the book immediately following Conflict of Honors, dealing with Shan and Priscilla’s year of Learning to Work Together. This one may be unique in being dated: 9/26/86
The various bits of paper in the Liaden Notes file are, some of them, quite fragile, and typed on a variety of papers — the backs of ice cream store flyers; the white side of green-bar computer paper; the weird paper that Steve bought at a flea market — maybe 22# (no, not 24# and definitely heavier than 20# — it’s a puzzle, this paper), originally cream colored, but already starting to yellow when we were using it for draft paper, back in the 80s — and lots of yellow-lined pages, filled with handwritten notes, from which I can clearly see how my cursive has degraded over the years.
There are also bits of scrap paper with quotes and words and various doodles. I like this one, written on the back of one of those pink While You Were Out sheets. At the top, with a black double-doodle-border around it, written in red pen (yes, on pink paper) is “ref desk 5600” (so if anybody wants to call the reference desk at the UMBC Library — it probably doesn’t work any more. If it does, ask if Sierra’s still there.)
Below that, in peacock blue block print is Ho bios brachus, he de techine makre (gr) life is short, art is long. — Hippocrates
The front of the page is blank, in case anybody wants to take a message.
So, that’s been fun.
Yesterday, as I mentioned above, was all about finding things to remove from the house, thus giving my brain time to think out the various thinks that are on its plate. We ended the day by watching (streaming! from Netflix!) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which has held up remarkably well.
And, now? I guess I’d better get some work done.