On the Trenchcoat Farewell Project front, I've laid out one story and have begun work on the second. One (and a half) down and forty-four to go.
Layout work is entirely different from writing. I can feel a different part of my brain firing as I write this, compared to when I'm moving bolts of text and pictures around on a page. I love doing both, but there's a bit of an adjustment moving between the two.
We had a fun weekend. On Saturday, we headed down to Burlington's Ikea and bought a set of hanging paper lamps for the computer room. We paused in a nearby Indigo Books to have coffee and write, and then it was home. There, watched Memento, a video we'd rented earlier that day.
We seem to be in a tense movie phase. After Signs, Memento matched up nicely as an edge-of-your-seat flick. Not that it was frightening, or anything. We were at the edge of our seats, leaning close to the screen, trying to figure out the film.
The premise of Memento is that the main character, looking for the murderer of his wife, sustained brain damage during the attack and can't process new memories. The last thing he remembers is his wife dying, and yet he's forced to interact with people, keep notes on his investigation, and somehow he copes. To put the viewer in the same boat as the protagonist, the movie is told backwards, becoming not a Whodunnit so much as a Whydunnit. Watching the plot unfold (or, should that be, fold?) and character motivations behind their actions coming clear after their actions makes for a riveting ninety minutes. The direction is tight and the acting is strong. There is a bit of blood, and a lot of swearing, but other movies have done worse and not been nearly this intelligent. The revelation was shocking enough that we inflicted it upon my parents the next day, mostly so that we could see it again and see how everything fit together.
It's heating up again, and we're retreating to our air conditioned computer room. That's fine with me doing layout work.