Category: personal

Taxed

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 19 Comments

Just got back from Opera in the Park, which was fun. Along with the usual Mozart, Verdi, and et al samplings, the San Francisco Opera were pushing a contemporary opera they’ll be showing this year called Doctor Atomic, which is about Robert Oppenheimer. I, of course, am about three degrees of separation from the ev0l atomic bomb myself. Edward O. Teller is a character in the opera, and how weird is that? I studied under his son Paul. He was my dissertation advisor in grad school.

In sucky news, I got home to find a thick envelope from the I.R. Fucking S. They are auditing me for my 2003 tax return. They claim I owe them over $8,000. There is no way in hell I could owe them that. I don’t even make six times that a year as it is. Gross. I called my friend Gloria to talk to her CPA since I can’t make heads or tails of this. It’s insane.

Way to ruin my weekend, and after I was feeling slightly patriotic this afternoon and all that, too. pffft.

Myth-taken

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 30 Comments

I’ve decided I need to read more mythology and folktales. You know, the classic stuff from various cultures. I can’t help feeling that that’s where my next novel’s going to come from. It will be fantasy, but not historical fantasy. It will take place in the contemporary world, but will be about opening your eyes to the fantastic that’s all around us–or, at least that’s all around in the world of my fictional characters. The best fantasy, I think, builds on the classics, the way Mutant Enemy built on classic horror tales of our own culture and other cultures to create the rich landscape of Buffy and Angel. But oh, I haven’t read mythology since I was in Jr. High. I was one of those Greek-Roman-Norse myths freaks at the time, and I even forayed into Native American mythology before “real life” stepped in and I got more interested in gay and lesbian romance novels.

Now I hardly read anymore at all, which is like, doom, if you want to be a writer.

So I need to read stuff. Mythology, folktales, contemporary, ancient, fantasy. Anybody got any good recommendations to re-start my education?

Oops

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 17 Comments

Urk. I just committed an academic no-no. I’m innocently walking down the hall returning from the little girl’s room when I see one of the grad students standing in the hallway outside the large meeting room. He’s nicely dressed and rubbing his hands together nervously. Now, five minutes earlier, on my way *to* the restroom, I remember glancing inside the large meeting room and thinking it very odd that that student was apparently giving a talk to such a small (4 people) gathering.

Now I’m walking back and I’m almost about to cross his path when I realize what I was looking at. Either his advancement to candidacy talk or his dissertation defense. And just as I cross his path, his advisor steps out of the large meeting room and says the fateful words, “OK, you can come back in now.”

And I’m doing this inner *facepalm* thing. This is his big nerve-wracking moment, a moment that by all rights should be All About Him, and there I am stepping right between him and his advisor. Just trying to get back to my desk, you know, but… I couldn’t have waited five seconds?? Some moments are just sacred, you know.

At least I realized I was being utterly sacrilegious.

The wisdom of my Flist

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 19 Comments

Great quotes:

I’m pretty fucking serious about my writing. It’s not a hobby, it’s not a pastime, it’s not a whim. So, when I sit down to write, it’s not because I’m bored and I need to kill a few hours. It’s because this is what I’m passionate about, and the practice of writing is the practice of that passion. — yuki_onna

…a dialogue, the philosophical kind, isn’t something you win, it’s something that you try to resolve. When one party is determined to be right and not listen to any contrary views, it’s not really a dialogue. —jupitah

It is entirely likely that I am thinking too much today. I believe I will eat chocolate and read trash for a bit now. —__angela__

You can prove any thing with logic once you stop caring about how the world actually is. —jupitah

I’m starting to collect these.

Stop and smell the planets

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 3 Comments

You know, there was a time when I used to get excited about every space shuttle launching, every space probe whizzing past planets, every eclipse. I remember one summer in grad school I was working for the State of CA and there was a partial eclipse that day and I made a point of going out on the office patio and squinting up at the sun just to see if I could see the little bite the moon had taken out of it.

I remember walking out to the patio, passing all the worker bees in their Dilbert cubes thinking, “This is a major event! Look at you people, so intent in your work like that’s somehow of any importance at all compared to this!” Uninspired drones.

And then somewhere along the way, I stopped paying attention to any of that stuff, too. Maybe it just became so commonplace. Maybe the opposite–maybe there wasn’t enough exciting astronomical events out there and I gave up hoping for it. Or maybe it’s just, in the past few years, I’ve been less into the sci-fi and wanting to see it become real, and more into the fantasy/horror genres. Who knows?

Lately, though, there has been a flurry of new!fun!space news. Privately funded space ships. Probes whizzing past Saturn’s rings. I may yet become again the girl who stayed up all night watching the latest fuzzy images of the planet Neptune.

Oh and that meme thing…. which says I’m apparently a wimp lurking in the shadows.

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