My Day
Posted on February 27, 2012 Posted by John Scalzi 46 Comments
Has been spent doing publicity for the Italian release of Old Man’s War, which has meant three e-mail interviews. Question present in each interview: “Hey, isn’t Scalzi an Italian last name? Are you Italian?” Why yes. Yes, I am. Well, Italian-American. Actually, more accurately Italian-English-Irish-French-Dutch-NERD-American. But still.
How’s your Monday?
My Monday is good … received an email from the Washington Post wanting a checking copy of Keith Robert’s PAVANE that I reprinted. Review runs on Thursday. Woot, as the kids say.
So far, so good. We’ll see how it turns out when I get home. heh
Genetically speaking, I’ve got it easy by comparison. Scottish on one side, Scottish and Irish on the other side, with just a smattering of North American Mongrel for flavor.
Meanwhile, our massive ugly soul-devouring work project got moved up from this coming Monday to Thursday – you know, three days from now – but has now been moved back to the original date. I am relieved, but still a bit off-balance.
1. Moving offices at work; we do it so often that we can almost do it in our sleep.
just sittin’ in the library office, orderin’ books – can’t get much better than that.
As for my pedigree, I’d put NERD first, then Italian-French-Scottish-Irish American. The Nerd trumps all.
One side all German, one side assorted British empire with a little Dutch and German thrown in for seasoning. As for Monday, let’s just say that I heartily recommend retirement.
I’m a merde. Half man, half nerd, and the “e” is for having visited France.
Still job hunting. Getting really tired of it.
This post, coupled with your tweet about “every Scalzi is fine,” somehow made my brain produce the sound of a baroque tenor singing “Every Scalzi Shall Be Exalted,” to the tune of “Every Valley…” from Handel’s Messiah.
It’s not unpleasant. Just…strange.
I’m reading a big book about Ai Weiwei for a report I’m doing for Art History (and drinking lots of coffee and eating cookies)
I have no idea what my pedigree is – human I guess.
Are you Nerd on your father’s side or mother’s side?
Which planet is NERD from?
What sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times.
@Michael Walsh – Now I feel old (again). I had a copy of Pavane in paperback, with that same cover art, over 25 years ago. I don’t remember how I lost it, but I know it was a great book.
Just had lunch with a good friend, now back home to resume reading The Troupe. JJS is SO right: retirement makes Mondays much better.
I think if you’ve read this post, looked through the comments, and make it to this one you should be required to have Nerd in your heritage. Because, I mean, well….. =)
Well it’s Tuesday where I’m at, but my Monday was filled with annoyances. Then I had dinner with my fiance and watched telly and suddenly it wasn’t so bad.
@Kilroy,
You do know what “merde” mean in French, right?
Btw, I always assumed that “Scalzi” was Eastern European.
I always thought I should be able to put geek as my ethnicity on paperwork, although I’ve never had the audacity to try it. But when I move into my first cyborg body I’m definitely switching to Robo-Earthican :)
I’m wondering what the Nerd coat of arms would look like and if it would, by it’s pedigree, require an iPhone to read it.
Anyhow, I still say you’re more geek than nerd, Scalzi.
Heh… I’m Irish/English/German/French/Dutch/Nerd/Geek. :P Oh wait…. I think there is some Scotch and maybe Native American in there somewhere… And more Scotch, of the whisky kind. hahahaha
A nerd coat of arms requires a Star Fleet emblem (Enterprise style), and at least a Rebel emblem or Imperial emblem. The rest is up to the particular nerd. Mine would have a photo of Manuel Garcia O’Kelly Davis, and/or a Cyberdyne Systems T-800.
We be related ..
Ibe a
NERD ALSO… yea US…
@Kathryne The hipster coat of arms is readable only on an iPhone. The nerd coat of arms is made in ASCII art.
My Monday was better when I learned that the shooting was not at my wife’s high school. She teaches in an MH (multiple handicap) room with students who are breaking and entering and getting high on bath salts. A shooting at her school wouldn’t be that unexpected.
Pretty good. One of the things that makes parenting worthwhile is when one’s 2-year-old is so excited to see you when you come home that she runs up for a hug and *clings* for about five minutes.
Also my grandmother’s cancer is in remission, so between the two it’s a damn good day.
My ancestry is about as American-mutt as yours; 25% Finnish via the UP, the remainder a mix of English, Scottish, German, and IIRC some French, a very healthy dollop of NERD, and gods only know what else.
Kevin: Best of luck to your grandmother, I hope your two-year-old has her great-grandmother around for a long time :-)
I had a nice start to my Monday because Sunday night I actually managed to get a full night’s sleep. The last two nights before that, I was awakened at oh-dark-thirty by some idiot who’d let the phone ring 1.5 times, then hang up. While it’s a fairly common complaint that most people don’t get enough sleep, for me it’s even more important–I have a seizure disorder, for which I take medication, and if I don’t get enough sleep I’m very dizzy and “out of it”, which makes me more prone to having seizures even with the meds on board. I spent pretty much the whole weekend reading Christopher Farnsworth’s “Blood Oath” (thank you, Scalzi) and trying not to do a whole lot else.
On that note, I had a nice end to my Sunday when I went to Farnsworth’s webpage, saw a link to leave a comment, left a comment praising the first novel and telling him I eagerly anticipated reading the next two–and got a personal response back within three hours! If the next two books in the series are as good as the first one, that act alone has made me a fan for life.
:-)
Oh, and insofar as ancestry goes…let’s see. Heavily English and Welsh with a smattering of German on my mother’s side, English and Irish on my father’s side. My married surname is a bastardization of the Scottish “MacEwen”. This amuses me greatly; my FIL was born in Wichita Falls, TX, and has a fairly thick southern redneck drawl. My MIL, on the other hand, was actually born in Ireland and raised in England, she didn’t come to the States until she was in her twenties. She tells me the only reason she doesn’t have a thicker Irish brogue is that when she attended English schools, they basically forced you to speak “properly” or risk punishment. Apparently they used to say things to her and her classmates like “Don’t you want to learn to speak English properly, instead of continuing to go through life sounding like the lowborn class you had the misfortune to be born into?”
It’s Monday?
Spent the day fretting about a job interview coming up on Friday.
Scorpius:
Actually, I get a fair number of people assuming I’m Eastern European. It would make more sense if you reversed the S and C: Csalzi.
Monday was good. Got new batteries (a 2032 and a 2025) installed in the old NordicTrack pulse monitor, and now it works, which will save us having to buy a new one. “No user serviceable parts” my foot. Tomorrow, tackling the water softener. Well, not tackling it, trying to figure out why it’s not working. I suspect that it needs some interior parts cleaned, as that was supposed to be done every six months and has yet to be done after eight years ….
Mom always said I should put “Damn Yankee” in that place in the forms.
Both of my parents were born here, all four grandparents, all eight greatgrandparents, all sixteen g^3p … g^7(?)pKonsvick sailed here with his parents from Stolkholm when he was two; because of that the USMC hastily insisted I was Swedish, but they were Norwegian. Further back are English, Welch, Scots, Germans, French, Jews, … a motley crew with either a half-dead or half-breed Injun as well (the old Bible is kinda smeared, 1/1024 or 1/2048, depending, not enough for any benefit.)
@ digitalatheist
Which Enterprise?
Well, no matter…I got one started for you because half an hour messing in GIMP was more fun than studying the Navier-Stokes equations I should be (why study today what you can put off till the morning before the class?). Do feel free to share your own embellishments ;)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/48257524@N07/6937284523/
@ Jennifer Davis Ewing
This attitude always amused me since English is quite possibly the most syncretic language on Earth and surely the most bastardized. IMHO, “Proper English” is a pretty ludicrous concept.
My day was good! It’s my dad’s birthday, so I took the opportunity to post some baby pictures (of myself) on Facebook and highlighted one of me with him. It was fun to enjoy the “Aw” moment.
I also got some TAFF stuff done and some other stuff prepped to mail as well. I am behind on the Month of Letters thing, but I still have two days! And Brian is going to see VNV Nation tomorrow night, so really, what will I have to do besides write postcards and letters? Good thing it’s a leap year.
You may be aware that, in Venice, there is a bridge over the Grand Canal called the Ponte degli Scalzi. At one end of the bridge is a cafe, that is named “Ai Scalzi”. Its bags and signage and such are printed in capitals: “AI SCALZI”. I do not know why they left off the exclamation points. Whether it represents a battle cry, or a wail of inconsolable terror, is uncertain. Perhaps it is both.
Bruce — good luck for Friday.
I had a nice ending to my day –had to run an errand for work so ended up taking the bus home rather than going back to my office. That doesn’t sound so exciting, you say. But I live in Paris and the bus takes me along the Seine, right by the gold and gleaming Pont Alexandre IIII, the Place de la Concorde, along the Boulevard St Germain (where it dropped me off so I could browse in a bookstore and exit with a purchase), back on another bus which crosses a lovely small bridge with the back of Notre Dame standing out up (?) the river, through Place de la Bastille, and everywhere Parisians and visitors to watch. Then after Place de la Nation and the immense columns, the bus dropped me off just a hundred meters or so from my building.
There are worse commutes and worse ways to spend a late February afternoon.
Ethnicity German/Polish/Slovenian, but the Slovenian last name is also apparently common in Hindi, so for years I got email invitations to join Young Indian Professionals organizations (zero for three: middle-aged Slovenian potter) and I still get a mailer from Vonage about once a month trying to sell me cheap phone service to Delhi.
“Actually, I get a fair number of people assuming I’m Eastern European. It would make more sense if you reversed the S and C: Csalzi.”
Then you could grouse about how the politicians in Budapest are reverting to type; seeing as one grandfather hailed from that city I sorta keep track of that neck of the woods. The rest of my ancestry is Croatian and Slovak.
I actually took a closer look at the Italian cover art; is this your OMW/”Empire Strikes Back” mash-up?
50/50 Swede/German on my moms side (its also where my nerd comes from). Dads family got here very early so its a mixed bag of Irish, Scot, German, French and Native – probably some other things lost in the mists of time.
Grew up next to the Italian neighborhood so I knew Scalzi was an eye-tie name.
A nerd coat of arms would be a QR code wouldn’t it?
Xopher HalfTongue – Went through a few months of that myself a few years back, it can be soul crushing. Recognize it is NOT your fault that you can’t find a job right now and hang in there it will happen.
It’s Tuesday now, but since I’ve continued what I started on Monday, I still think it counts. What I did was struggling with my computer. From 10 am till 11 pm yesterday and from 9 am till noon today. It’s now running okay, but I will still get a new one because I still can’t upgrade this one at all and I’m in no mood to spend this kind of time on it once again next time it acts up. Then I’d rather buy a really good one which I can have for a good while. You can’t say that I haven’t given it a serious try. I study, which is why I could be at home these days and why I need a stable, working computer which won’t act up as I need to use it a lot. Now is the time when I say “Sod it” and go read the last 66 pages of Cherie Priest’s Dreadnought.
I had a great Monday.
Most of us have a lot more hyphens in our ancestry than our ancestors would ever admit. Go back far enough, and we’re ALL related. So be nice to your family!
That Italian cover looks to have Tie Fighters on it.
James: That Italian cover looks to have Tie Fighters on it
Wow. Down to the ball cockpit with segmented plate windows and weird pylons leading out to… solar panels….
That’s a little unsettling….
Also, why is the empirial fleet “green” and solar but the rebels drive coal fired xwing fighters? I assume that’s R2D2’s ultimate job, to shovel coal into the boiler.
@ Greg
Maybe the Alliance favored real energy reform with their low-profile bases and clear penchant for recycling old junk, whereas the Empire tacked a couple of bull’s-eyes…ahem, I mean solar panels on ships that obviously used orders of magnitude more energy than the panels could possibly provide and launched them en masse off kilometers-long metal wedges without a solar cell on them. Just a theory ;-)
@Frag: “Its bags and signage and such are printed in capitals: “AI SCALZI”. I do not know why they left off the exclamation points. Whether it represents a battle cry, or a wail of inconsolable terror, is uncertain. Perhaps it is both.”
It’s venetian dialect; “ai Scalzi” can be roughtly translated either as “near Scalzi (bridge)” or “near Scalzi (church)” since both are nearby …
and if J. Scalzi will ever visit Venice, I’ve got this inexplicable hunch of photos of him casually posing nearby. :-)