Instead of going out and partying down after work tonight like I usually do on a Friday night, I came home and collapsed in the recliner for a while. Halfway in and out of slumber, I watched the end of Breakfast at Tiffany’s on a local over-the-airwaves movie station- a film which I don’t recall ever having seen before anyways, but which happened to be on the tube as I was trying to escape my nose condition- and I have no idea what happened in the rest of the film, but the last 10 minutes were great.

The plan tonight was really to shut down and just stay home and try to study a little anyways. What began as a serial of sneezing yesterday transmogrified into a runny nose and a mildly sore throat today, and a tired body by 4 PM.

I ate two turkey sandwiches for dinner, and then tried to figure out how to research historical fiction.

I mentioned before that I had an idea for the story I wanted to do for Gish’s short story class- and that it actually built on a story I had written a number of months ago. The odd thing is when I wrote the first story back then, I had nominal concerns about getting the times and the place and the customs of that story right because it was purely fabrication. I sat to blog one evening, a story began, and soon it was full blown, unassisted by research except when I was looking for legitimate native names for my characters. For this story, for some reason, I am concerned about making the whole stronger, with accurate place information and cultural interest portrayals, which means asking myself a lot of questions and a lot of leapfrogging around to get facts and background.

The final draft of the story is due in three days, essentially, and I haven’t written a first draft.

And I am thumbing through books and surfing to different websites still trying to shore up backstory stuff.

Lame.

So I tried to learn a few things tonight.

I learned that “alluvial” is sediment left on the earth’s surface by water, as opposed to “basalt”, which is essentially “fine grained volcanic rock”, that which is so often seen in vertical columns of unique cuts and cracks.

I learned that a “scarp” is an escarpment, or a line of cliffs created from a fault shift.

I learned about banding in rock. “Gneiss” is banded rock containing different colors of varying thicknesses. “Schist” is banded rock containing parallel stripes.

I also learned that the Rio Grande Gorge runs about 78 miles long, from the Colorado border up north to Valerde by Taos. It has a depth of 800 feet at its deepest near the bridge.

I am not sure how these items fit into a story about a native girl and a mountain lion, but I guess I’ll try to work them in.

I probably should have paid more attention to the sociology stuff.

It’s 10. I’m going to bed.