I figured out where the mouse is: it's inside the hood above the stove, up where the light is. Which means the cats can't get at him unless he's up in the cupboard, which he probably won't be since I threw away everything he could possibly get into as a food source up there.

I need to drop off some more post-dated cheques for rent, so I'll tell the superintendent about it tonight. But we've forgiven Vlad for not doing his job, since Vlad lacks the opposable thumbs and screwdriver necessary to get in there.

I suppose it must be warm up there, though. (I assume the extreme cold over the past few weeks has driven Mousie indoors. Coney thinks it's only reasonable, which is about all the discussion we're likely to have on the matter.)

Yes, I know--wrong sport, but it's the only athlete userpic I have left.

I generally don't watch the Super Bowl because there's just a little too much hoopla surrounding it for my taste. (I like the Grey Cup. I especially liked it the year it was held in Regina and the city didn't have enough hotel spaces for all the fans expected, and so locals were asked to billet incoming football fans in their homes. That was classic.) However, last night I was cleaning bridles (more about that in a minute) and after about the first quarter I made sure to stay on the game because I didn't want to miss Tom Petty at half time.

I don't know why it seems weird to me that Tom Petty was playing the Super Bowl, but never mind. Anyway, his set was good, although there was something odd about his already-odd voice. The people up near the stage seemed genuinely "OMGTomPetty!" and he seemed to be having fun, so that was cool.

And then the game was so close that I sort of had to keep watching (a big complaint my dad always had about the Super Bowl in years past was that it generally ended in a blowout, which is dull.) I got to rooting for the Giants just because I was so sure they weren't going to win, and when Manning threw that final touchdown I sort of let out a shriek that scared Vlad and Coney half to death.

Probably scared Mousie, too.

By that point I was rooting for Manning Minor because of the shots of Manning Elder in the box above the field, looking like a friendly fist and cheering on his little brother.

Anyway, much better fun that I expected the game to be.

Yes, I know--the way I persevere on things you'd think I have OCD. We all have these tendencies. I admit I have a bunch of them--I prefer to think of it as a long attention span.

(And in case you're wondering, I'm not through with the Grateful Dead yet, either!)

Anyway, I had some problems with the book. Obviously. But since I am not a historian, and not especially attached to the period, my problems were not the ones I have with, say, horsey books in which stupid stuff that would never happen in real life happens. I don't know a lot about this stuff and have gradually learned to stay calm over things that don't really concern me.

So I'm not all that concerned by the business of making Mary the youngest of the siblings, even though the one historical source I've read has her the eldest. I'm not super-concerned with the fact the novel lops about eight years off her age, and I'm therefore willing to go along with the resulting impression of blushing virginal innocence surrounding Mary in the early pages of the novel. (The one thing we seem to know for sure about Mary's early life is that she left the French court with a very naughty reputation--hardly the chaste innocent of the novel.)

I'm even pretty much okay with the way the novel expands the affair with Henry to extend over years and years, and to assume a much greater importance to Henry than seems plausible. I mean, I can sort of picture him having a continued soft spot for a discarded mistress who didn't cause him any trouble, but I jib at the notion she was important to him.

I'll even go along with the picture of the psychotically ambitious Anne, and the way the novel seems to accept every scurrilous rumour thrown around during her disgrace as true (incest with her brother, witchcraft, repeated adultery.)

So, having accepted all this for purposes of the story (it's an alternate-universe story), the stuff that bothered me about the novel was strictly novel-world stuff.

It was mostly Mary, sometimes a milquetoast and sometimes an anachronistic feminist warrior. And on second thoughts, I am unsure how much of my "oh for fuck's sake" reaction is exactly what the novelist wanted. I initially read the book as if the writer wanted us to take Mary as given, but maybe that's my failing as the reader. Maybe I'm not supposed to like Mary very much.

I'm not concerned with the business of Mary's affair with Henry, because it's not like she had a lot of choice (even absent the prodding of her ambitious family.) But she keeps whining that she can't betray Queen Catherine... and then she does so at every turn, not only tattling in matters where her family would have known she'd have something to tell, but also dutifully turning in her information even when there was no way for any of her handlers to have known she had any. When the queen stands up for herself, Mary is presented as rooting for her, but it rings more than hollow.

There is, however, a scene between Mary and Queen Catherine in which Mary protests that if it hadn't been for the family, she'd have been loyal, and the queen contemptuously retorts that "had you not been tempted, you would not have fallen, and if you'd stood to gain nothing you would have been loyal" or words to that effect. Which makes me think, well, yes, that's exactly what I was thinking about Mary myself: easy to say she sympathizes with the queen, but she never shows it. I'm thinking of the incident with the oranges, where Mary stumbles over a tiny piece of information that nobody would ever have known she had, and she trots it along to her hated family at once. That incident goes beyond her understandable ambivalence about the whole social climbing atmosphere--she's participating actively there.

I just don't know if what I'm getting out of that scene was put there on purpose.

I mean, I know this character is ambivalent. It's just there are moments when I think we are led to expect one thing of the character, and she does something else that seems out of character for the person we're shown.

The whole business of being at court and wanting to flee is another thing. Obviously, that makes sense. And the story goes on and on and on about Mary's delight in living simply in the country and spending all this time with her children, right? (Those scenes are the most Mary Sueish, frankly. At least to me.) (Although the big romance with the second husband... that was tiresome as well.) I can see this character dragging herself back to court when Anne calls her--the sisterly rivalry that seems so over the top doesn't quite negate that instinct to go to a sibling who needs you. What I object to is the part when she's safely in the country, and her discarded husband arrives to claim her and the kids, and take them off to his quiet estate far from court. Okay, Mary is nervous of him (although she later sets to work to charm him, so why didn't she think of that right away?) but I didn't buy that her immediate reaction was to send Anne a panicky letter asking to be called back to the court she so fervently wished to get away from. She wanted to live peacefully in the country with her children. Her husband showed up and wanted to take her to live peacefully in the country with her children. I don't get why Mary didn't see the obvious potential benefits right away.

It's a truism that people are inconsistent. However, they are generally inconsistent in fairly consistent ways, if you see what I mean. To some extent, that's Mary in this novel. But in other ways, her behaviour is more suited to the convenience of the plot than consistent for the character I'm reading. So I'm left thinking that the romance-novel-Mary is the one the writer planned for and intended us to experience, and the scenes that bothered me were ones that just didn't read as intended.

I could be wrong, of course, but what I'll be taking from this experience is yet another warning about tweaking a character to serve the plot: the tweaking is best done well in advance, or readers may be left saying, "I don't understand why she did that."

Which is not exactly revolutionary, but I learn slowly.

...I missed the shoe gene, and apparently have a thing about bridles.

This one was listed on sale in the tack store's flyer for much less than this price, and after some mental struggling (not nearly enough mental struggling) I went ahead and bought it in the cob size. The cheapo English bridle I got last fall, when I thought Lease Girl was going to be riding Mitzi soon, is not bad but since it's full-sized it turns out the noseband is going to be a problem. I got this one in the smaller "Cob" size and it fits fine. Right now I'm working on conditioning the leather, but I've already tried it on Mitzi and she looks adorable.

Well, of course she does!

And pictures will eventually follow!

I mentioned over the weekend that I was looking for a new copy of American Beauty because the one I have skips in my car stereo. (My car stereo also does not play CDs I've burned myself, at least not ones I burned on my last workstation, so making myself another copy isn't a solution.) Oh, and incidentally, guess which song skips so badly it's unplayable? That's correct: "Friend of the Devil." So obviously I had to do something.

Anyway, the only copy of American Beauty I could find was an expensive special edition, but I did find Skeletons From the Attic, a greatest hits compilation that includes "Friend," "Truckin'," and "Casey Jones," as well as a live R&B song I assume is being sung by Pigpen. Score!

And American Beauty plays just fine in the house CD player, which I cannot explain but will go with. I guess the laser is heavier in that machine.

I know! I'm getting to like the band's music partly because their early years are so much fun to read about!

But here's a tidbit I'm glad I know: there was a brief period in the mid-sixties when the whole band moved to LA and lived together.

In a pink house.

No, really. What is it with rock bands living in pink houses?

Which means that, if I ever decide Kowalski should conduct an experiment in communal living, Jordy will have only one question: "What colour is the house?"

Which will lead to a single followup question: "Will they let us paint it pink?"

[When my family moved from Quebec to New Brunswick in the late sixties, the second house we lived in was pink. Just thought I'd throw that in.]

Too bad I cannot steal this story, but I'm sure I can think of one with a similar vibe.

Okay. While residing in the pink house, the Dead's neighbours included a house of ill repute on one side (brothel, gambling hell, whatever) and an old lady on the other.

It is not clear which neighbour hated their nocturnal practices more, but there were complaints.

Eventually, the old lady decided to give the band a taste of its own medicine. She gathered up every noise-making device in her home (radio, record player, television) and placed them in windows facing the pink house, undoubtedly at some ungodly hour of the morning. Then she turned them up as high as they would go and switched them on.

The resulting cacophany was enough to wake... well, the Dead, as a matter of fact.

However, since all the machines were making different noises, the racket struck the band as more entertaining than annoying. As Bob Weir remarked later, perhaps if they'd been serenaded by the stock market report they'd have been bummed out, but as it was they apparently came outside to investigate, laughed a lot...

And then went next door and made friends with the old dear.

Honestly, fictitious characters could not be more cooperative, in terms of likable goofiness. At least, not my fictitious characters, alas.