Adventures-A-Minute

[Faux Pas goes to Colorado for Christmas and BUILDS a house. He COMES BACK and pays TOO MUCH for a taxi ride.]

Long Version:

The week before Christmas, the wife, sister-in-law, and I went out to San Luis, Colorado, to not only celebrate Christmas, but also to help build my mother- and father-in-law's house.

We flew out of New York's La Guardia Airport to Denver International where we had a two-hour layover while waiting for our eighteen minute flight to Colorado Springs. When we got to Colorado Springs, the lady at the baggage claim said that some of the luggage for the flight came down earlier on a bus. Silly people.

Down in the suburbs of San Luis -- how a town that's eight blocks long and three blocks wide can have suburbs, I'll never know -- we worked on getting the house done by the time my parents would arrive. I feel rather proud of the work we got accomplished. They have a four-room adobe building that they've built an addition on. The addition (the Small House) was more or less complete. The in-laws wanted to finish off the roofing on the connecting bit which we did on Christmas Eve. In the adobe, they had four rooms of things just piled up. I, and others, managed to clear out all four rooms making them livable. Instead of four rooms with various boxes scattered around, now there's one room with boxes against one wall.

I finally met my three-month old nephew. Unfortunately, so did my mom. The pressure is on to reproduce.

Fun things that didn't involve building a house included attending the Posada in San Luis. It's a Catholic thing usually done in Hispanic communities that re-enacts the journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethelem. It's entirely in Spanish. I was able to tap into my years-old high school Spanish class and translate most of the songs. We met in front of the parish hall (Joseph was fifteen minutes late) and followed Joseph and Mary on their burro around the neighborhood, stopping at a few houses to sing. We wound up at the church where Joseph and Mary were invited in and began Midnight Mass at ten o'clock. (I know, I know...)

Let's see. We also went up to the shrine at the top of the mesa and had a great view over the whole valley. A side trip to Taos uncovered several shops that didn't have outrageous prices (I know, I'm shocked too!). One shop on the plaza sold really neat glass wind chimes and I picked up a neat set for my step-father. I like doing nice things for people.

Christmas morning was fun. My wife's family has this thing where everyone takes turns opening gifts rather than everyone diving into a pile and ripping wrapping paper. It's actually a neat tradition, but with ten people, we're done opening presents around New Year's.

The day after, we went skiing down in Red River Ski Area. Very nice slopes and very nice instructors. However, if you're afraid of heights, don't go on the Red Chair. By the time we got to the base of the red chair, I was exhausted. (I'm very much a beginner-level skier.) The wife and her sister went up and skied down the mountain from the halfway point. When they got back, we were going to walk a few blocks back to the lodge, but one of them thought it would be easier to ski down from the quarter-way point. I thought that'd be easier, so I got onto the lift.

The quarter-way point is a loading only. The lift after the quarter-way point gets really high. The halfway point is really the three-quarters-way point. I'm afraid of heights. I was so freaked out, I almost jumped off the chair. It's amazing what fear will do to you.

Anyway, we finally arrived at the unloading point and had to ski partially down a blue (intermediate) slope until we could get to the green (beginner) slope that would take us down to the lodge. I managed to wipe out about eight times, almost seriously destroying my left knee. (Again, it was a combination of the fatigue and the fear from the lift ride.)

Aside from that part of the ski trek, I really enjoyed the day.

The next day, we drove to Colorado Springs to catch our flight (the day before, my father-in-law drove one of his kids down to Albuquerque in the snow to catch a flight -- five hours there, five back). Back in New York, there were no cabs at La Guardia. We wound up catching a shuttle to the Port Authority and catching a taxi home where, after my wife and sister-in-law were inside, the taxi driver tried to charge me $70 for a $45-50 cab ride. Jerk.

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A bit about books and popular authors:

One thing I decided to do was pick up a few Terry Pratchett books, based on some of the raves I've read here. I'm not certain what happened, but his writing just doesn't seem to be as good as I thought I would have been. I've read _The Color of Magic_, _The Light Fantastic_, _Equal Rites_, and _Small Gods_. Color took a while to build up, but as a first novel (or at least the first novel of the Discworld series), I was able to forgive Pratchett. He really hit his stride near the end of the first book, and seemed to keep up the, um, zaniness that I was expecting in the second book. (Although I didn't like how physical descriptions of the characters didn't appear until the second book. To me, Rincewind was slightly overweight and short and Twoflower was the tall, lanky one. Telling me a little bit into the second book that Rincewind was gangly and Twoflower was rotund is too late.)

However, his third book, _Equal Rites_, while an interesting story, didn't seem to be anywhere near the humor level of the earlier books or _Good Omens_ (the book he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman). _Small Gods_ read as if it was even more serious, with spots of humor.

Tell me, are all of his books like this? Perhaps I just read some of the Discworld books where the comedy aspects were at their weakest?

Anyway, I think that Pratchett is an entertaining author, but (so far) I haven't read anything in Discworld that was as zany/madcap/funny as _Good Omens_.

Much better than Terry Brooks (he typed, adding fuel to the fire). While at O'Hare and stuck with the prospect of a two-hour flight without reading material, I hopped into one of the news shops to pick up some reading material. Amidst all the various Michael Crichton, Tom Clancy, and Ken Follett novels, there was one Terry Brooks novel called _Running with the Demon_. To let you know where I was coming from (Colorado! Ha! I slay myself sometimes!), I hated the Shanarra series, likening them to _The Lord of the Rings_ with a few names changed here and there. I also hated his writing style in his first original novel (_Magic Kingdom for Sale - Sold!_) so much, I dropped the book about three chapters into the book. Here I was, thinking that Mr. Brooks had written over a dozen books and, hopefully by now, his writing abilities would be stronger than what I read before. Sadly, I was wrong.

Oh how I wish I had a red pen with me on that flight. On page two of the story proper, the protagonist stops to examine herself in a mirror in order to get a physical description of her in there. (A particular literary pet peeve of mine.)

My creative writing professor would have ripped up the first scene between the grandmother and the grandfather and thrown the scraps into the trash. Terry Brooks shows that there's an emotional distance between these two characters and then adds this clunker of a sentence to close out the paragraph:

"The length of the silence between them implied accurately the vastness of the gulf that separated their lives."

No kidding. You just spent about a page and a half explaining that. Mind putting that sledgehammer down, sir? My forehead hurts.

Did you ever see the long version of Lynch's _Dune_? Do you remember the scenes where, when a new character entered the movie, the movie would just sort of stop and wait for the narrator to finish a three-minute introduction? The same thing happens in _Running with the Demon_.

Brooks is simply a mediocre writer who somehow managed to luck into fame and fortune. That's all I'm going to say about that. (Unless people want to discuss it.)

-Faux "doesn't claim to be an author" Pas