Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Just Observing

Just Observing

Well! Just learned that novelist, Anne Rice (Interview With A Vampire, et al) has paid $8 million for a villa near downtown La Jolla here in San Diego. The 11,000 square foot, furnished, six bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, panoramic ocean views, house was built in 1993, so it should be in excellent condition. Let's hope it's not to close to the edge of a cliff or, considering what's happening to others with this damned continual rain, it could slide right off and land in pieces on the beach below. Or whatever is below.

Tornado drifted over Chula Vista this afternoon, but never touched down. Sheesh!

Back to Anne Rice: When her husband died in 2002, she stayed on in their home in New Orleans for awhile, then sold it. At that time, she said she was through writing vampire books...and her fans were getting more and more demanding. Showing up at her house and all such rude behaviors. So she bought some other place and lived there, but wasn't far enough away for privacy. So now she'll be here. Privacy will be no problem. The Bush twins could walk down 5th Ave through the Gaslamp and except for press, about the only reaction would be that people dining in the sidewalk cafes might glance at them and say something like, "wonder which club they're hitting" and that would be about it. Most of us really don't care about celebrities. They're just people after all--and mostly they're nice people, so leave them alone.

Writers are lucky. The great majority of folks have no idea what they look like, so they can go anywhere. Was sitting on the patio at the Marriott Yacht Club one evening when Pierce Brosnan walked past to his table. Had he not walked close to my table, I wouldn't have noticed him at all. I glanced up, had this quick thought that his eyes really are that sort of sparkly, icy blue, and never thought another thing about him. That's just the way it is.

Now that the rain is mostly gone for the moment, maybe the hillsides and the eyucalptus trees will quit sliding down and falling over. What a mess. Floods and sinkholes. Good that tornado never touched down but just continued on toward the mountains. With luck it will just fizzle out.

Drove out to La Mesa early this afternoon, had taxes done. Glad that's over with. Now trying to catch up with all the papers I didn't get read from Sunday on. Also have a manuscript to read. Author lives up in Hemet. Hope it's a good read and doesn't need much work. She brought it to the conference, and somehow, I've ended up with it.

New waitress at the breakfast hotel. Name is Rachel. Geraldo brought her out and intro'd her. Nice gal. Had breakfast by myself this morn. Read the paper, smoked, enjoyed toxic amounts of coffee. Couple of tables of men on the patio from whatever group is meeting there. Mostly they were on their cell phones. Was nice.
Wrap.

1 comment:

Nan said...

I thought about how glad you must be that your roof was fixed when we saw on the Weather Channel that your area was being soaked.

Also, I really enjoyed reading about the writer's conference. It is so different where you are from where I am, and it's fascinating to me to see a little glimpse of life outside these hills.