David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Word count: 64356 | Since last entry: 280

Everyone I talked to about being retired said that they couldn’t imagine how they managed to get everything done and still work a full-time job. It’s true. You’d think that with 40 extra hours in a week I could relax. But no — I’m not even keeping up with my email.

You know how, going into the weekend, you think you’ll be able to get a lot done on your day off? And yet somehow the tasks expand to fill the time available, and you find yourself at the end of the weekend with only three of the twenty things on your to-do list crossed off (plus eight more things done which hadn’t been on the list in the first place)? Every day so far has been like that. Like the day I bought the iMac… it took basically the whole day, because I had to go to two different Apple Stores (one of them twice) before I found the computer and printer I wanted in stock. And getting the thing set up and all the files and applications switched over has taken a lot of time, though not nearly as much as I’d feared.

It’s easy to forget what day of the week it is. Every day feels like Saturday. But every day feels like Sunday too, because yesterday felt like a Saturday. There’s a bit of that Sunday afternoon angst, that uncomfortable can’t-possibly-get-everything-done and yet at the same time what-am-I-doing-with-my-life vibe.

Mind you, I have been able to take the time to do some things I would not otherwise have done. In the last couple of weeks we’ve attended four plays, three movies, and a reading by Charlie Stross. (Weekday theatre matinees are… different. The house is half full and they’re all female and over 60. Where are the retired men? Are they all dead, or do they just not like the theatre?) We finally got caught up on the TV shows we taped while we were in Japan. I’ve been doing the dishes and the laundry the way I always meant to. When Kate’s folks came for a visit, I was able to hang around with them instead of running off to the day job.

I’ve been writing every day, but not much… 100-300 words most days. I need to do a little more than that if I’m going to make my next crit group deadline. It’s hard, because I’m still trying to take this novel over the hump in the middle — the main plot driver for the second half of the book is just peeping its nose over the horizon now. It should start building momentum again in the next chapter or two, I hope.

I fear that I am transitioning from a successful short story writer to an unsuccessful novelist. Novel #1 has so far failed to find a publisher, and because I’ve been focusing on novel #2 I have, ironically enough, sold fewer short stories in the year since winning the Hugo than any year since I started selling at all. Also, next year’s Writers’ Weekend, at which I was to be a featured speaker, has been cancelled.

However, there is some good news on the writing front. “Charlie the Purple Giraffe Was Acting Strangely” (Realms of Fantasy, June 2004) has been picked up for The Mammoth Book Of Extreme Fantasy, edited by Mike Ashley. And I will be joining such luminaries as Mary Rosenblum, Irene Radford, Jay Lake, and Ken Scholes at Powell’s Cedar Hills for a multi-local-SF-author event on November 14. Watch this space for more details.

Tomorrow we’re heading to Ashland, where we’ll be visiting square dance friends Mark and Tim and seeing three more plays. We get back just in time for Kate’s 25th college reunion weekend. The days really are just packed.

Word count: 64076 | Since last entry: 2925

Two weeks gone by already? Wow. Plenty of stuff happening.

One big thing done in that time: I replaced the PC with a new top-of-the-line 24″ iMac. Screen: big, shiny, very crisp. Speakers: better than anything else in the house. Also took the opportunity to clear off the old desk and cubby. We found some very amusing old stuff dating back to before there was a web.

Before and after photos of the cleanup:

Before

After

Word count: 61151 | Since last entry: 450

Retirement, day 1. Collect the whole set.

Kate took off this morning to take a friend to the doctor; I went to the gym, then walked down to Stumptown and bought some coffee beans then traded them to a funny little man for a magic cow. In the afternoon I sorted a pile of papers that I’d shoved in a box before a party a few weeks ago. Fortunately there were no overdue bills or other nasty surprises, and most of them could simply be thrown away. Two or three more such boxes to go.

Then we fixed dinner for friend Brenda Cooper, visiting from Seattle, after which we worked on a jigsaw puzzle Kate brought back from Japan. It was wicked hard, with a thousand tiny tiny pieces, most of them pretty much the same color. Right around the time Brenda left, Kate’s parents showed up for more jigsaw puzzle and conversation (mostly about Japan). They were supposed to have visited this weekend, but life intervened and delayed their trip by three days.

Tomorrow morning we’ll have breakfast with Kate’s parents. It must be Sunday, right? Feels like Sunday…

You may note that I have renamed this blog. I was going to call it “A Month of Saturdays” but I think “The Days Are Just Packed” seems more descriptive. And besides, it’s a Calvin and Hobbes quote.

Word count: 60701 | Since last entry: 720 | Days until retirement: 0

The guys at work retired my keyboard.

They cut off the cord and epoxied it to a plaque with my name on a brass plate at the top. I signed it. It will hang in a place of honor in the Design Studio conference room.

I am truly touched.

I also got a going-away lunch on Friday and a get-together at the Hall Street Grill today after work. People were sincerely sorry to see me go. I didn’t get emotional (well, I got a little misty as I was going off to work for the last time this morning). I realized today that I never got a going-away lunch from Intel, or from any of the last several jobs at Intel (most of which stopped when the division was shut down, so any going-away was a group activity). I feel good about the work that I did at McAfee; I’m sorry to go, but there’s now a whole department to do what I used to have to do myself, so I’m not leaving them completely in the lurch.

Tomorrow… a new start!

Word count: 59981 | Since last entry: 277 | Days until retirement: 4

Yesterday was my last 8am meeting, and probably my last time going to the gym near work. Today might have been the last time I’ll have to make my lunch in the morning. Going-away lunch with my department tomorrow. Monday’s my actual last day.

This is a strange transitional time. Almost everything I need to do is done. I still have meetings to attend and some housekeeping chores, but I’m not really responsible for anything any more. I’m not quite done here, and not quite started there.

I have so much on my to-do list for when I’m done here it isn’t funny. Writing, of course, of which I have hardly done any in the last 8 weeks. I don’t entertain any fantasies about eight-hour writing days and octupling my former productivity — I’ve heard enough from other writers who have gone full-time that life expands to fill much of the time that the day job used to, and I don’t even intend to try to write full-time. But I do hope to improve my productivity somewhat, maybe even enough to do some short stories as well as finishing my second novel by early next year. I also have a lot of major non-writing projects in mind, like upgrading our six-year-old computer and twelve-year-old entertainment center. And we’ll be traveling a lot: Ashland, Seattle, and Saratoga (NY) in October alone. And Kate wants to re-do the bathroom.

::rubs hands:: This is going to be fun.

Word count: 59704 | Since last entry: 110 | Days until retirement: 13

First day back at work. Most of the gang was off at some kind of training class so I spent the day catching up with email. Many people said, as I’d expected, “hey, aren’t you retired?” My boss is still trying to convince me to stay on just a little longer. I remind myself of all the times in my working life I’ve poured my heart into a project only to have it canceled. Shoe’s on the other foot now…

After dinner, I went to the coffee shop for Tuesday night writing group. I spent much of the time there re-reading the synopsis and last chapter in hopes of being able to pick up where I’d left off. I didn’t find the existing material terribly convincing, but I did manage to write a hundred new words (I promised myself at least a hundred new words) before acknowleding I couldn’t keep my eyes open. At this rate I’m highly unlikely to finish a chapter before the next crit group meeting. So it goes.

This is the first fiction writing I’ve done in almost two months. This book may have a visible seam in the middle, like the Washington Monument.

Nine working days to go.

Ah, home. The blessedly familiar… While we were gone our neighbors began repainting their house. It’s now half yellow, half green with white spots. When I turned on the dining room light, one of the bulbs immediately died and gave out a wisp of gray smoke(!). When I went to replace it, the glass envelope of the bulb came off in my hand, leaving the exposed filament behind. The envelope was filled with smoke, which sloshed gently, like a liquid. Our neighborhood grocery store has been entirely rearranged. We never did find the cereal. Glad we were only gone for three weeks! :-)

The business-class lounge at Narita airport has free wi-fi. Also free booze, beer, and snacks. A girl could get used to this.

It’s been a trip. We came for the strangeness, and got it in spades. I’m tired of strange now, and ready to come home. We have been able to communicate pretty well with people here, between our limited Japanese and their limited English. But it’s terribly frustrating to be unable to read. I’m also looking forward to Portland’s more reasonable humidity.

Last night there was a religious festival in the neighborhood of our hotel. All over the neighborhood, groups of people dressed in identical yukata gathered together to carry their local shrine (a decorated box about 3′ cube) around on their shoulders, bobbing and chanting and stopping at each local business. Trick or treating? Wassailing? Not sure, but there was one guy in each group going into each business they stopped at with a shopping bag and coming out before they left, and that shopping bag was definitely getting fuller. We saw three such groups without hardly trying, and we’re told the big night is tonight. Unfortunately, tonight we will be on our way to Seattle. (Whatever “tonight” means in a day which is, I think, 40 hours long… we leave Tokyo at 5pm and arrive in Seattle at 9:30am the same day.)

In the last three weeks we’ve hardly eaten the same kind of food twice. I think it was two weeks before we repeated anything other than train-station bento, which is consistently a good quick lunch. I didn’t have katsu-don (breaded pork cutlet and egg over rice) until yesterday. Barbecued eel. Tempura. Oyakodomburi. Things on sticks. Sushi-go-round (a tiny cheap place, not the greatest sushi ever but pretty darn good). It’s all been wonderful.

Spent most of yesterday at the Edo-Tokyo Museum, which covers the entire history of Tokyo from its establishment as capitol by Tokygawa (before that it was just just a reedy swamp… hmm, just like Washington DC). Very well-done museum, notable for 25′ square miniatures equipped with binoculars so you can see the details. Every turn provided new and fascinating stuff I hadn’t realized I would be interested in, like the history of Tokyo’s coinage (Tokyo was on the gold standard, while Kyoto was on the silver standard, which did interesting things to the economy).

Boarding soon. Back later today…

We’ve been to DisneySea! (And the reason for the rather awkward name is that it’s the opposite of DisneyLAND. Surprised it took us until today to figure that one out.) This deserves a much bigger post than I have energy for at the moment — been up since 6am, just got back a half-hour ago at 10pm, on the move the whole time — but I do want to note a few differences from Disney in California:

1. Everything at Tokyo Disney is in Japanese (except for the signage and some recorded announcements, which are bilingual). This shouldn’t have been a surprise but I kept getting tripped up by it, especially in familiar surroundings such as the “New York” and “Cape Cod” sections of the park. All non-recorded announcements and most non-safety-related announcements, including the soundtracks of all rides, are in Japanese only (though one stage show had hand-held subtitle devices available in Japanese, English, Chinese, and Korean). Cast members have about as much English as the average Japanese person, which is to say that some have none, many have some, and some have a lot. On the other hand, my little head exploded when the Japanese cast member at the Indiana Jones ride waved us aboard with a cheery “Adios, Amigos!”

2. Themed fire extinguisher cubbies in every ride and area.

3. I was wondering what they would do with Rod Serling at the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Answer: no Rod Serling at all. The DisneySea Tower of Terror has a completely different backstory.

4. They have squashed-penny machines, but no pennies. They use copper blanks the same size as a US penny, right there in the machine. It’s not as much fun to just stick in a 100 yen coin and get the squashed penny out. Squashed pennies should cost 26 cents (or 101 cents, or whatever the price is these days).

5. The 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth rides are unique and very cool. The Aquatopia ride is also unique but just plain strange.

6. The railway between “America” and “Tomorrow” is a tiny little two-car trolley that squeals and rumbles like a full-sized Chicago El. Not quite sure how they managed that.

7. They have a full-sized ocean liner, which contains two very good restaurants and a deck you can promenade on. I wonder how many people they lose every year trying to lean out over the prow (with a real sixty-foot drop to real water and nothing preventing you from doing so) and shout “Top of the world!” in Japanese.

8. Flavored popcorn. We spotted strawberry, cappuccino, chocolate, and black pepper.

9. Daikon and jellyfish salad. We didn’t order that.

10. Potato and burdock danish. We didn’t order that either.

Took the shinkansen (bullet train – basically a long, very-low-flying airplane with wheels) from Takayama to Tokyo today. Spent much of the trip studying kanji, and determined that shinkansen means “new trunk line,” nothing to do with bullets at all. Didn’t figure out the kanji for “passenger car,” though, which was more important because it would have helped us ask which car of the train we were supposed to be in.

Arrived in the Tokyo neighborhood of Shibuya, found our hotel, checked in, found dinner. Shibuya is exactly the 2019 Los Angeles of Blade Runner, complete with light drizzle. All it needed was umbrellas with neon shafts to complete the picture. Imagine taking about four blocks of downtown Portland, clearing away all the buildings, and dropping them down at random on the surrounding blocks. Pave the area where they used to be, then cover every vertical surface with neon and video screens (each with its own blaring J-Pop soundtrack). Now take the entire population of Portland and dump them all in those same blocks. Have about half of them stand at the edge of the paved area, and every five minutes have them all scramble to a randomly-selected point on the opposite side of it. That’s Shibuya.

(By the way, does anyone know why the Shibuya branch of Mandarake might be closed at 6pm on a Tuesday night?)

Having obtained dinner (tuna sushimi to die for, plus two salt-grilled things-with-eyes in garlic and olive oil, yum) we returned to our hotel to do laundry and plan the next day. Tokyo is overwhelming, but we have made a decision. Because Shibuya is not stimulating enough for jaded travelers like us, tomorrow it’s… Ginza!