books

Hard choices

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A question for the anal ages:

Do you line up your books along the back of the bookshelf, leaving room for other things (like little framed pictures or empty vases or the small ceramic turtle you bought in Mexico) in front?  Or do you shelve them so the spines all line up evenly along the front of the shelf?  And if you do it the second way, do you do anything with the empty space between the books and the back of the shelf?

I’ve always done it the first way.  John has asked me to try it the second way because it’s neater.  I’ll give him that.  I’m not convinced it’s better, though.  I have this irrational fear that wild animals or spiders or some other unpleasant things are going to move in and nest in that unused space.  Because I can’t see it.  And I’m usually so vigilant.

I wish I hadn’t put that thought into words.

Great day in the morning!

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Seriously, could today have been any better?  Only if it had unicorns and sparkles.  And it’s not over yet.  There’s hope.  Sure, we got up super early on a Saturday, but it was only so we could go to the giant used book sale that happens every six weeks in a warehouse in Annapolis.  Worth it.  AND I had a croissant and my favorite candy-coffee from Starbucks for breakfast on the way (tall, skim, no whip white mocha with two pumps of toffee nut – yes, I’m one of those now).  Extra worth the early wake-up.  AND we hung out with Jess while looking for books and then having bagels.  Better than extra worth it.  And THEN we went to IKEA and bought two more bookshelves, upper shelf extensions for those two plus the six at home that didn’t already have them, plus two wall shelves to go over the couch (and hold more books – maybe the graphic novels?).  We’ve spent the afternoon since then putting the shelves and the extension together while watching Law & Order: SVU, and now we’re going to pick up dinner from somewhere and settle in and watch a movie.

A day like today makes me so very happy.  Books, best friend, shelves, dinner, and a movie, a whole day hanging out with John, and sure, I didn’t do any calculus like originally planned, but John and I worked it out on the way home from IKEA.  Today we get the furniture part out of the way and relax a little.  Tomorrow, we’ll run, mow the lawn (it grew, like, two feet in 8 days), and do homework (my calculus, his thesis).  Sunday is the responsible day.

Happy Friday!

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This week was a short week (thank you for Labor Day – I love three-day weekends) that still managed to feel like a regular week, but Friday is finally here.  Tomorrow I get to see Jess at a great big book used book sale and then I’ll spend the rest of the weekend immersed in calculus.  Except for Sunday morning when I have to run.  And except for later Sunday morning when I’ll help John with the lawn, assuming it dries out.  I’ll have to pretend the internet doesn’t exist, I think.  Give it the cold shoulder.  Hope it doesn’t take offense and will let me back in later.  How forgiving is the internet?  I know it never forgets, which is somewhat (a lot) scary.

If I cared about symmetry, I’d skip the title

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I have been busy.  Good busy and bad busy.  The bad busy parts stress me out.  The good busy parts are things I could do all the time, every day.  And if I could get rid of the bad busy parts, I’d have time for things I like to do when I’m not doing the good busy parts, like playing on the internet.  Like READING.  John looked over at my book the other night, noticed I wasn’t even halfway through it, and told me it felt like I’d been reading that book forEVER.  I’m not sure in exactly what way how long I spend reading a particular book affects him, but if he noticed I haven’t been reading much, then I really haven’t been reading much.  Tragic.

I spent most of the last three days (all weekend and much of Monday) working on my statistics project.  (This is one of the good busy things.)  Nothing about it was hard, but there were a lot of pieces and the instructions were confusing.  I tried to get clarification from my professor, but since I never heard back, I made some decisions based on what the instructions would have said if I’d written them.  I hope they were the right decisions.  I turned it in late last night.  One big task done.  Yay!  Actually, that was the main good busy thing.  The one that took most of my time.  I talked to Corey finally (he’s going to disown me if I put him off any longer) – hooray for change!  Also, I, uh, bought more wine from my favorite local wineries and went to Borders.  Again.  These were very important errands.  Really.  Oh, and I saw Crazy, Stupid, Love Saturday night with a woman I know from the gym.  It was cute.  Ryan Gosling’s ears are too small to be believed.  Seriously tiny ears.

I did one other kinda major good busy thing this weekend.  Big accomplishment for me.  (Big.)  I ran 10 miles Sunday morning.  Ten whole miles.  I wasn’t very fast, and I walked a little bit, but I did it.  I am no longer afraid that I won’t be able to finish the race in October.  I did it.  The last mile was really hard (it wasn’t early morning anymore and the sun was high and the shade had disappeared and I’d been running for nearly two hours and it was my tenth mile), but I realized as I started it that I’d never run this far before (8 miles – two weeks ago – was my longest run until Sunday morning).  And with every step I took, I was running farther.  Each step was one more than I’d ever run before.  There aren’t very many times I’ll be able to say that.

So that was my weekend.  The good busy stuff is all cool and great (now that I’ve turned in my statistics project), but it doesn’t end there.  I have two more quizzes and a final to complete by next Thursday for statistics, and my next calculus class (differential equations this semester) started yesterday.  I’m so glad my classes only overlap by a week and a half.  Any more than that and I’d be seriously considering quitting my job.  I don’t know how people manage working full-time and going to school at the same time.  With just one class at a time and no extra-curricular work activities (don’t get me started), when I can leave work at work, I can manage.  Anything more and my head starts to spin, Exorcist-style.  (It’s not pretty.)  But yesterday, even though it was a Monday and I had work to do and a project to finish, was a really good day.  The weather was perfect, I had the windows open to catch the very breezy breeze, I got a lot done, my legs didn’t hurt from the run the day before, and my strength class that night was calming.  (I really like my gym.)

———Break for earthquake———

This post was going to have an ending, but then there was an earthquake.  Nothing else got done today.  The earthquake ate my ending.

I melted, and then I got my nails done

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It’s been a busy weekend.  Kind of.  Busy in a good way since I was able to do a bunch of things I wanted to do while still getting most of the things I had to do done also.  Except for the store.  Didn’t make it to the store.  But I did lots of other things, and I got up early (too early – I’m a little tired) both days.

Yesterday, I went into DC to meet a family from France (you’re welcome, Mom) at Eastern Market.  We met at nine, chatted for a while (I’m afraid I babbled at them), wandered the market a little, and then I sent them off to the Capitol, the Archives, a couple of museums, and Kramerbooks.  Nice people.  It was only a little awkward. I wandered the market by myself for a few minutes after they left (bought some cute jewelry, peaches, and sausages) and then I poured myself into the car to go home.  It was only maybe 10:30 or close to 11, but it was crazy hot.  I was melting.

I went back out shortly after I got home, though not into the sun.  It was time, once again, to make the trek (less than a mile – great trek) to my new favorite nail salon (the one I went to in May that’s all crisply white and peaceful and wonderful).  I got the spa pedicure, just because.  They slathered my legs in a purple mud mask that had a chilling effect from the knees down and then wrapped both legs in hot towels.  What a totally weird feeling.  Chilling cold on the inside, but wrapped in steamy hot towels.  Kinda neat.  My legs feel super smooth.  While my nails were drying, I got distracted by the display of nail polishes on the wall.

I’m itching to organize them by color.  Is that weird?  When I ‘m deciding what color to use, I always grab a handful in the same color family and then choose the exact shade I want.  It’d be much easier if they were already on the shelves that way.

After nearly two hours in the salon (feet and hands – it was wonderful), I came home only to turn right around again and head to Target and Borders with John.  Oh!  So Borders is closing.  I’m sure you’ve heard.  That’s depressing.  It was packed yesterday afternoon, too.  All those depressed people taking advantage of the liquidation sale.  I picked up the new George R.R. Martin book, even though I’m super annoyed with him.  It’s been six years since the last book in the series came out, and at the time, he was saying that he’d basically already written this one.  SIX YEARS.  I’ve already had one author die on me before finishing a series.  I see no reason to encourage him to take six years between books, with no end to the series in sight, no matter how good I think the series is.  You may not believe me, but I really wasn’t going to buy this one until it turned into a bargain book or until the next next one came out.  But it was 40% off, and I have the others in hardcover (I cared more WAY back then, and he hadn’t jerked his fans around as much yet), so I caved.  I feel slightly ashamed of myself.

Anyway, today I got up early to run (attempting (and failing) to beat the heat, although today was nothing like yesterday), helped John with the lawn, saw the last Harry Potter movie (more on that later, I think – it was both really cool and not what I’d hoped for), and now I would like a nap.

I know the Cheesecake Factory is a chain, but they’re often good, and sometimes really really good

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The most recent book in The Dresden Files (not the one that’s about to be released – before that) has a Princess Bride reference.  Of course it does.  It was just a matter of time.  I should watch that again.  Not that I need to.

I had the best salad ever the other night.  It’s the French Country Salad, and it’s the best thing ever, and if you have a Cheesecake Factory near you, you should go order it.  It’s an appetizer salad, so it’s not as humongous as their entree salads (although they may make it entree-size – I don’t know), but it’s too big to actually be an appetizer salad.  I wanted to eat something else for dinner, so I only ate half of it and I boxed up the other half.  It was so good I wanted to take it home.  Of course, by the next day, the lettuce was wilted and it wasn’t good anymore.  So if you get it, eat it then. It’s totally worth it.  Lettuce (maybe arugula?  I don’t know.), some kind of vinaigrette, goat cheese, beets, candied pecans, and grilled asparagus.  So good.  SO good.  Deliciously good.  I don’t even remember what I ordered for dinner, actually.  Oh, it was New Orleans shrimp.  Eh.  The salad was memorable.  Not so much the shrimp.

Full disclosure – I do not work for The Cheesecake Factory.  No one I know works for them.  They are not paying me for this.  It was just a really good salad.  🙂

Riley loves me, this I know

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Who can resist those beautiful brown eyes?

He’s reminding me that I should be paying attention to him who adores me and not so much to the computer.  I’ll be right there, Doggy-dog.

I love Tom and Lorenzo.  They make fun of people in the most delightful way.

That appears to be all I have to say today.  Oh, wait.

This week, from an I-was-better-about-doing-the-things-I-need-to-be-doing perspective, has been much better than last week.  Last week was all about keeping weird and stupid hours, not getting enough sleep, eating like a piggy little pig, and NOT EXERCISING AT ALL.  All week.  I didn’t feel so hot when I got to last weekend.  I felt downright disgusting.  And very very tired.  So I’ve been better this week.  Not perfect, no, but better.  About that stuff.  I haven’t pigged out (as much), I’ve done some sort of exercise every day since Sunday, and I’ve been getting closer to eight hours of sleep every night.  This week was MUCH worse for work, though.  But I’m not going to talk about that.  (I vented to Jess on my way home today, so I feel a little better.  Thanks, Jess!)

The other thing I feel better about?  Calculus.  I got my midterm grade back over the weekend.  I got a B.  That’ll do.  I thought I did better than that, but considering…everything, I can be happy with it.  I take my final next week.  I turned in my last quiz twenty minutes ago, so the final is all that’s left.  That feels good, but so does knowing I can still handle calculus.  After all this time.

Now what do I get to do?  Clean.  Clean like crazy, like the wind, like I’ve never cleaned before.  Because the house is a WRECK.  It looks like a tornado came through.  See for yourself:

This is what happens when we don't pick up the clutter for a couple of weeks. We just keep shoving it to the side.

Note the calculus paraphernalia and the books stacked all over the dining room table (because the giant annual used book sale I LOVE was last weekend and we just HAD to leave work early on Friday to go before they closed at 7pm that night because we were out of town the rest of the weekend) and the toilet paper, giant bottle of ibuprofen, and tons of mail scattered on the island.  And that’s just this room.

I know where I’m starting, though.  All those new books need to be shelved, and before they can be shelved, they have to be catalogued.  Hey, it’s gotta be done.  I might as well be the one to do it.

I don’t think I’d be good at that

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I’ve been thinking about stories a lot, at least partly because I’m in the midst of wanting to read my Dresden Files books nonstop, at the expense of EVERYTHING else.  Like to the point where I’m more than happy to get stuck in a left turn lane with a red arrow because I’ll have an extra long time to read before the light changes again.  (Yes, I read at stop lights.  I swear I don’t read while the car is moving.)  Yesterday, I sat in the car in the parking lot for a few extra minutes when I got to work  to read a couple more pages.  I did the same thing in my driveway when I got home.  (Which makes no sense.  Why not go inside and read?  I was HOME.)  Are they that good?  Well, I enjoy them very much.  They’re sometimes dark, but lightweight at the same time, and they move. Lots of action.  I care about the characters.  (After nine books (more, but that’s how many I’ve read so far), I’d better.)

I’d like to tell you a story like that.  Of course, you may not want me to.  I’m not good at stories.  I can’t even tell a joke.  (Seriously, I’ll forget how it goes midway through, and once I remember, I’ll start laughing so hard I ruin it for everyone else.  And then I’ll screw up the punchline.  Every joke, every time.)  But I’d tell you a story anyway.  I’d even make one up for you, but I can guarantee it’ll be not good.  It’ll ramble (dear god, it will ramble), it’ll try too hard to be funny (and it will fail at that), and it will be full of plot holes.  Plot holes so wide you could march a platoon of elephants through them.  Like the elephants in The Jungle Book.  (Love the elephants in that movie.)  So I’m okay reading other people’s stories.  WAY more than okay.  I get less of an itch to write my own stories than I occasionally have to do musical theater, play in an orchestra, or be the drummer (or singer, or both) in a band.  What’s the phrase that means you had a dream you never followed?  Or maybe you followed it and failed.  Or maybe you tried, but were brutally shut out.  There’s a phrase for this.

Seriously, what is it?

It’s not unfettered ambition, it’s not untapped potential, it’s not a dream unrealized…maybe that’s it.  But it doesn’t feel quite right.  Something like that.  Regardless, that’s not what this is.  I’m happy to leave the novel-writing to others.  As long as they let me read.

(A dream deferred?  That’s a poem, so probably not.)

What? A blog? I have one? Oh, you mean THIS blog…

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Hi.

Vacation is a wonderful thing.

Let's assume this is before I fell off the wakeboard a dozen times.

Florida panhandle, Gulf Coast with a bay on the other side of our isthmus.  We had everything we needed for the perfect beach vacation.  Sun?  Check.  We had beautiful weather, even if I did spend the majority of every day hiding from the sun.  Sand?  Lots of it.  Very convenient hose and shower under the house (sounds like we had to go underground – the house was on stilts) to rinse off the sand, but even with those, the house and pool were full of sand the whole week.   Pool?  Sure.  Someone was in it nearly all day, every day.  Boat?  Naturally.  Corey brought theirs and borrowed a couple of wakeboards.  We tubed and wakeboarded (is that a word?), or attempted to.  I drove some so Corey could play (that was terrifying – just ask Mark and Mel), and while SOMEone may have run the boat onto a sandbar, it wasn’t me.  We saw dolphins!  And a sea turtle.  I turned a little pink both days on the boat, but it wasn’t terribly painful, and it faded quickly.  Mostly because I was wearing 50 SPF and hiding inside, on the deck, and under the beach umbrella.  The sun is fierce down there.  On top of all that (and the cases upon cases of beer and wine we drank, and the hours and hours of singing and Rock Band, and hand after hand of Go Fish with Gaby), we got to ride in my uncle’s four-seater plane (Thanks, Ed!  That was cool!).  And I did a little calculus.  Which reminds me…I got my quiz back today.  (I spent all of Monday working on it.)  Six out of seven questions right.  Go me.

I would like to go back on vacation.  Right now.  For a long time.  Please?  It was just so nice to not have to do anything.  ANYthing.  The hardest decision I had to make every day was whether or not to have a mimosa with breakfast.  We had no plans, no schedule.  No expectations, no responsibilities.  It was SO nice.  I would like that at home, please.

Thanks for the great vacation, family of mine.  Love you guys.

Spring fever

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I’d call it senioritis, but I don’t qualify as a senior under any definition of the word.  Spring fever is accurate enough.  I want to be outside.  I want to be active.  I want to be doing almost ANYthing that isn’t work.  It’s just as well my sad little cubicle doesn’t have a direct view of a window.

I finally finished The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest the other day.  I downloaded it from Audible.com and listened to it while in the gym or walking the dogs using the Audible app on my phone.  It took me forEVER to finish it, but I really enjoyed it.  I decided to give up on Heyday.  I was 130 pages in and I didn’t care.  Nothing had happened (except something that totally grossed me out) and I didn’t care about the characters and why should I spend my precious free time reading a book I’m not over the moon about?  I’ll have way less free time coming up soon, so I might as well enjoy what I’ve got.

Hopefully, this was the last punch in the mouth

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Sorry about all the short posts lately.  I have the attention span of a gnat.  Also, my face hurts.  Although not as much as I was afraid it would.  This whole procedure sounds more painful than it has turned out to be.  Thank the whatever from high atop the thing.  Seems like it would have been fairly simple, right?

  1. Yank the molar that’s causing trouble.
  2. Put in a fake tooth that will forever and ever behave perfectly and not throw parties that require calling the cops and then rehab.

Not so simple.  Fake teeth don’t have roots.  They have screws.  Screws that have to be longer than the roots because, I don’t know, they just do.  And in order for the new fake tooth to be sturdy, the screw has to be completely surrounded by bone.  Can’t have the end of it sticking out in space.  It wouldn’t be as sturdy.  (What space?  Right, the space in the sinus cavity above my teeth and behind my cheek.)  The solution is to fill in some of the space with bone.  I didn’t ask where they got the bone.  Maybe I should have.  Anyway, that’s what they did.  My sinus cavity is not as big as it once was, and I have a screw sticking out of the hole where my molar used to be.  Once it heals completely (about four months), I’ll get a nice new fake tooth.

In the meantime, I get several days on the couch.  I’ve watched movies (Whale Rider – good, Saint Ralph – good), lots of TV (catching up on Scrubs and The Good Wife), started watching Harry Connick, Jr’s latest concert DVD (In Concert on Broadway – my good buddy Geoff Burke is in it!  Very exciting.  (I realize that seeing him play from 3 feet away for an hour and than talking to him for a grand total of maybe 15 minutes at the bar does not a best-friendship make (wait – I haven’t told you about that yet), but don’t think I won’t use every connection I can think up to get backstage the next time Harry is in town.  Besides, he was cool.  And really good.)), and played on the internet.  A lot.  And I finished my book (The Forever War).  It was very good (as expected).  I’d been looking for it in used bookstores everywhere I went, but couldn’t find it, so I finally bought it new.  I’m glad I did.  The latest edition has a foreword by John Scalzi, who has quickly become my favorite contemporary science fiction author.  And blogger.

I’m rambling, so I’m going to quit here and soak up some of this sun before it dissolves into more torrential rain (yesterday was CRAZY with the rain) and read my book on the deck.

Multi-tasking

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I’m doing something I usually make fun of John for doing: I’m reading three books at once.  Not at once, but at the same time.  Nope, that’s not right either.  I don’t have that many hands, eyes, or brains.  I’m in the middle of three books, and I plan to go from one to the next as the spirit moves me, without finishing one first.  And – hold on to your hats – one of them is non-fiction!  Crazy, right?  For me, a little unusual.  Also, I say I make fun of John for reading several books at once, but it’s not really something to make fun of (and I’m not really successful at it.  That making fun part.).  He’s often doing it because he can’t decide what he’s in the mood for, and when one of his books is non-fiction and the other is fiction, I can sometimes see his point.  Why am I doing it?  I couldn’t decide what to read next.  I finished my last book, picked up a book Mom just sent me (a memoir called My Love Affair with England), left it upstairs and, a little absently, picked up No Second Chance to see if I could remember why it was recommended to me, got totally sucked into it (it’s really good!), and then remembered that Hulu is offering a free download from Audible.com and I’d like to listen to a book while I work out at the gym, so I logged in and downloaded The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (which I had already started reading in PDF).  And now you have the long version (and longer sentence) of why I’m reading three books at once.  Although if No Second Chance keeps going the way it is, I’ll be back down to two books by morning.

Note for those who care: Audible.com uses DRM, so I’m really glad this book was free.  I’m not a fan of DRM.

True Blood, kinda

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I just finished the first Sookie Stackhouse novel (Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris), and I can’t decide if I want to keep reading them.  This is the series that the HBO show True Blood is based on, and I have kind of a love-hate relationship with the show.  John and I have talked about reading the books a few times, so he picked the first one up for my birthday.  He asked how it was going.  You know how Sookie babbles (I mean on the show, of course)?  Way more information in one sentence than anyone needs?  Well, Anna Paquin does a good Sookie Stackhouse.  And she’s the narrator.  And if you think her relationship with Bill is messed up on TV?  Reading the book will not change your mind.  On the other hand, it’s quick, it’s entertaining, but for once (twice, really – I feel this way about Jodi Picoult novels), I think I don’t need to own these books before I read them.  The library will do just fine.

Insert your own obscure song lyric

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Some days, I’m just not capable of thinking up things to write about.  Even boring things, like the weather (we had ice this morning and I went in to work late – it didn’t make work more exciting).  I promised pictures of the new bookshelves, but I was hoping for sunlight.  And I’ll probably wait until there’s stuff on the ones in the dining room.  It’ll make for a better picture.  The house is shaping up pretty nicely, though.  The first floor only.  The second floor needs some work.  We’re almost in the market for a futon to replace the twin trundle beds in the guest room.  (I say almost because we spent WAY lots of money this weekend.  More furniture will have to wait.)  Before the dining is done, however, I need wine racks.  Wine racks that will fit on bookshelves.  I’ve seen a couple, but nothing I love.  And I don’t want to turn the whole bookcase into a wine rack.  Which means I’ll need other places to store wine.  I haven’t yet given up on this (it would look quite nice next to a chair by the fireplace or near a chair (that I would need to buy – what was I just saying about money?) in the library), and I’m looking for similar items…

In the meantime, I found this picture on Bookshelf Porn, and I’m torn between wanting to swim through the books (like Scrooge McDuck in his money pit) and itching to organize them.  They’re crying out to be sorted by genre and alphabetized!

Can't you hear them? "Sort us, please! We're so confused!"

Though the roads are perpendicular

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Why so many title pages?  This book has THREE.

First

Second

Third

They’re all in a row, one after the other, and that’s not even counting the page before the FIRST title page that basically works like the back of the dust jacket, with the title and author AGAIN (and a short bio).  I don’t understand.  Why so many?  Does Random House think I’m going to forget what book I just picked up? Every one and a half seconds?

I don’t get it.  But I do think Random House is a cool name for a company.  Maybe I’ll call my bookstore Random Books.  Or Random Reads.  Random Readers.  Random Shop.  Maybe just Random.  Maybe not.

Wanna see the worst haircut I’ve ever gotten?  I hated it.  It was the summer after my freshman year in college.  I was going for a pixie cut, something really short, something I’d never done before (and have never tried since), but that Mom and Mindy do really well.  If they can do it, I can, right?  Maybe I wasn’t clear enough with the stylist.  She gave me something that looked kinda like Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell in Hook.  With a mullet.

With a mullet. And not so many layers, I think. I don't remember. I've blocked it out.

It was awful.  I got home, cried, and went somewhere else the next day to try to get it fixed.  Which wasn’t really possible.  So I hated my hair that whole summer.  I recently came across a picture of me from later that summer, and while I still don’t think it’s a good haircut, I don’t think it was quite as bad as it seemed at the time.

It’s not something I’d do again, though.

And to bribe you into saying nice things about this old picture of me (or at least non-commital not-mean things), here’s Mr. Toad.

I’m pretty sure there aren’t any vampires in this book – not entirely certain yet

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I don’t think I should be awake more than about 16 hours in a row. Yesterday, we were up for 20 hours, and I’m completely worn out and was pretty much useless today. We got up way too early for a Saturday to meet Jess at a book sale in Annapolis (which was awesome – we came home with over a hundred books for a little over a hundred bucks), came home home in the early afternoon and sorted those books for a couple of hours, and then went into DC to meet John’s mom and sister for dinner. I think it was around 1am when we got home.

I spent about half of today in front of the fire with my book and the dogs. I’m getting better at keeping the fire going; I don’t always have to call for John when it dies down a little. I’m still not that great at it, though. It’s all trial and error – poke this log, turn that one over, move the other one over there. Reminds me of learning to sail. I never could figure out when I was supposed to tighten or loosen lines. I just tried it one way, and if that didn’t work, I tried the other way. I didn’t actually learn anything. I’m surprised I ever managed to bring the boat back to the dock.

I’m done with winter, I think.  Much as I enjoy days in front of the fire, I’m really not okay with nights where the low is 7 degrees.  7!  I just revised my exercise plan for tomorrow.  Inside, inside, inside.

For those of you keeping an eye on what I’ve been watching, we finally finished Firefly (we’d put it on hold because we didn’t want it to be over) and then watched Serenity (which I think wouldn’t have made sense to anyone who hadn’t seen Firefly, but we liked it), the BBC version of Life of Mars is really good (I’ll watch anything if it’s got DCI Hunt in it – we haven’t seen the US version yet), and TRON: Legacy has no plot.

Taking up space

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Honestly and truly, I have the next part of the Wales story written. I just have to add the pictures and then I’ll post. So…tomorrow? Today I worked a little, finished a book (The Alien Years by Robert Silverberg – good, but not one of my favorites. It reminded me too much of those young adult Tripod books I read a very long time ago.), and ran my first mile (of only two today, but still) WAY faster than I have in a long time. Good day. I like having Mondays off.

Damn. Edited to remove the double spaces after each period.

Books shouldn’t end in cliffhangers!

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I spent every spare minute I had yesterday and this morning reading my book, and as I got closer to the end, I started to wonder how on earth this could get wrapped up in so few pages.  The answer?  It’s Part 1 of 2.  Not a book and its sequel, at least not where you have one book with a beginning, middle, and end, and then another.  Oh, no.  This one has a cliffhanger ending.  Not fair!  Thank goodness the sequel is out already.  In hardcover only, of course.

You’re a fake and I’m a phony

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i bought myself a present.  I finally own a copy of Holiday Inn, which I am watching right now.  Other than that, I’ve got nothing for today.

Well, something.  If you like Russell Brand, you will probably like Tim Minchin.

With that, I’m off to finish my book.  It’s somewhat entertaining (Connie Willis’s book is MUCH better), but I’m ready for it to be over.  I need to finish it so I can read something else.  Before Christmas.  Ooh, there’s a thought.  What books are coming with me on our trip?  That’ll be fun to plan out.

Thought of something else.  John Scalzi posted his third list of ten things he’s done that you probably haven’t.  I can only think of one off the top of my head: I have crossed every single line of longitude on the globe, all by ship (except for the width of the US – I did that twice in a car, a few more times by plane).

And now for some geek humor (thanks to The Daily What (and FoxTrot, of course) for the comic).