Wet dogs

It’s been raining off and on all day (mostly on), so during a break this afternoon, I let the dogs out to play.  They were amusing themselves, sniffing around, eating dirt, and I went back to my book.  A little later I realized I was hearing rain hit the windows pretty hard and I remembered the dogs were still outside.  I rushed over to the sliding glass doors and found two soggy dogs huddled up against the door, trying to get under the overhang.  Adorable.  They’re in now, mostly dry, and being a little clingy.

I’ve already shelved my new books (I had to move about a shelf’s worth of books all over the house, one shelf at a time), and now I’m relaxing.  I think John just gave up on his projects for the day, so we’re going to cuddle up and watch TV.  And skip dinner.  We had a big lunch with Jess and Chuck after the book sale.

A night off

I’m taking the evening off from the internet, you guys.  I spent all day staring at the computer at work (much more than usual), with NO breaks, doing tedious things (but listening to good music).  Anyway, my eyes have said NO MORE to the computer screen.  So I’m going to strain them a different way and read.

Links within links within links…

The end of the workday couldn’t get here fast enough for me.  Nothing against work, but I really wanted to be home.  And now I am, and now it’s Friday night, and now I have to face a 5-mile race in the morning.  If I can treat it like a regular workout, I should be fine.  I just don’t want to finish last.  Please don’t let me be last.

You know how when you look something up in wikipedia, you end up clicking this link, then that link, then this one over here, and back to this one, until you end up reading an article that has NOTHING to do with the first one you read?  (I know you do.)  That doesn’t happen to me as much out of wikipedia, for some reason.  I tend not to click through, or at least not through as many layers, on other websites.  I wonder why.  Well, I don’t, for whatever reason, but I did today, and I found this blog post about an old Newsweek article from 1995 about how the internet won’t last.

How did I get there?

I’m glad you asked.

I started at the latest post on John Scalzi’s blog, Whatever, and clicked on the link there to an article from Laptop Magazine where he was quoted about what technology he uses now that  makes him feel like he’s living in the future.  That article links to the Three Word Chant blog post that found the 1995 Newsweek article (and makes fun of it).  It’s this last link (or the first one, several paragraphs up) that I want you to read, but the Laptop Magazine article is interesting, and Whatever can be entertaining.  Have I mentioned that I love John Scalzi’s science fiction?  I’ve read Old Man’s War and The Android’s Dream, and I really liked them both.  Wish I had another of his books to read now that I’ve finished Ender in Exile

Take something already!

Oh my head.  Not a bad headache, just a mildly annoying one.  Have I taken anything to get rid of it (besides a glass of wine)?  No.  I’d have to put the laptop down and get off the couch for that.  Today felt really long.  It started with a visit to our financial guy (early at our request so we could get to work close to on time), then work.  Work started out okay, but then we got news that means our next two weeks are going to be more tedious than expected.  Faces fell, moods darkened.  And on my way out the door, I remembered that I had planned on stopping at Wegman’s on my way home to pick up salmon for dinner.  Last thing I wanted to do, but the only other food in the house was the ravioli we’re having tomorrow night (before the race (I’m SO not ready for a 5-mile race)).  So I stopped at Wegman’s and got out of there pretty quickly (and cheaply) since for once I only bought what I went in there for.  No browsing, no impulse buying.  I’m home, I’m comfortable (aside from the headache), and I think I’m going to read my book for the 15 minutes I have left before I need to start dinner.

Update: I love these pictures.  I want this house.

Not inspired

I hate when this happens, but I’m just not inspired to write much tonight.  John is in the basement with the band, auditioning a bass player (who, based on an introduction and about 15 seconds of eavesdropping while they got stuff out of his car, seems like a perfectly nice, normal person), so it’s hard to concentrate.  I’ve been trying to read through a few blogs I’ve bookmarked to see if I want to keep reading them, but it’s hard to tell when all I can hear is Lloyd singing “I used to love her, but I had to kill her”.  Kind of distracting.  And the dogs are demanding attention in ways that make it difficult to type.  Roxy keeps licking my hands and Riley was pawing at me.  I played with them a little, but that wasn’t enough, apparently.  They’re outside now.

Oh, I gave up on Bodily Harm.  Nothing was happening.  I need plot.  This is not to say I’m giving up on Margaret Atwood.  Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood, or maybe I’d like another one better.  I refuse to believe The Handmaid’s Tale was a fluke.  ‘Cause that’s just not fair.  When I really like a book by an author, I want to read everything they’ve written.  And I expect to like it.  So I’m a little disappointed.  But speaking of reading everything an author has written, my fallback  once I decided to give up the Atwood book was to read a new(ish) Orson Scott Card book.  So I’m very happy.  🙂

From what I can hear, the (possibly) new bass player sounds really good.  We’ll have to see what the guys think about how he fits in.  That’s my favorite part.  I love gossip.

What next?

I finished reading that Stuart Woods novel (Run Before the Wind – I liked it) a few minutes ago, and I find myself faced with a very familiar dilemma.  What should I read next?  I have too many options!  Another mystery?  Am I in the mood for science fiction or fantasy?  Which one?  Do I want to read something light and frivolous or something a little harder?  I really don’t know, and I might not know until I start something.  Please excuse me while I peruse my bookshelves.  That doesn’t sound right.  Probably because that’s not a word I normally use.

I didn’t get very far in my perusal.  Okay, browsing.  Feels more natural to me.  I stopped in the A’s and decided to try a Margaret Atwood novel.  I’ve only read The Handmaid’s Tale, but I like it so much I’ve read it several times.  So I’m going to try Bodily Harm.

A list

Things I Like (in no particular order):

  • Reading fiction, anywhere, anytime
  • my dogs
  • all dogs
  • PUPPIES!
  • And kittens
  • And cats that actually like people
  • chocolate
  • milk chocolate
  • white chocolate
  • Paul Reiser
  • Mad About You
  • Saturday mornings
  • sunny days (“sweeping the…”)
  • summer days
  • trees
  • books (and their smell)
  • big band music
  • lists
  • flowers
  • BIG bathtubs
  • showers with real water pressure
  • manicured lawns
  • manicured nails (my own, anyway – don’t much care for anyone else’s nails)
  • clean sheets
  • John’s clean, just-out-the-shower smell (much better than his just-came-back-from-a-long-run-sweaty smell)
  • John (duh)
  • everyone else I like (but won’t list here for fear I’ll leave someone I like off the list and that person (let’s call this person “H” for “hypothetical”)  will notice and be mad at me for leaving her (or him) off (even though it was an accident and I really do like H) and she will stop visiting my site, assuming  she was visiting and reading anyway, but if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t know I left her off and she wouldn’t get mad and stop reading, so I guess H was reading, which means, again, that I shouldn’t list anyone because I might leave someone off and she’ll get mad and stop reading)
  • decorating with books
  • my pretty new dining room table
  • Ellen DeGeneres
  • working from home
  • that relaxed feeling as you drift off to sleep

Speaking of that last one, it’s getting close to my bedtime.  More accurately, it’s getting close to that time when I should be in bed reading.

Should a post have just one subject?

My day didn’t quite live up to its promising start, but how could it have?  I had to go to work.  Not that work is a bad place.  But it’s work, so it can’t compete with anything that’s not work.  No, that’s too big of a generalization.  There are lots of things not-work that are worse than work.  LOTS of things.

It rained today!  That’s the first non-snow precipitation we’ve had since early December.  Well, maybe not, but it’s the first I’ve noticed, and it made a big difference in the amount of snow left on the ground.  I’m SO glad.

I finished The Pillars of the Earth a few days ago.  The last third was much better than the rest, starting just before the (very quick – really, I was surprised)  grand tour of France and Spain.  But I’m not in a hurry to pick up the sequel.  I started a Stuart Woods mystery/thriller instead.  Actually, I read the first Dresden Files novel first (it was okay).  Almost forgot about it.

I haven’t mentioned yet how nicely John planned my birthday.  We got up early to go to Ikea for the shelves, but not before waiting half an hour or so for this woman who answered the craiglist ad to show up to take the old dining room table.  She didn’t show, so we left.  In the car, John said, “I got you this for the ride to Ikea,” and handed me a card and the new Michael Buble CD.  At least half of the songs are standards, with a couple of new originals, and another couple of covers.  I really like it.  We went to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast (yay bagels and boo coffee), and then we shopped at Ikea, which is always fun.  When we got home, John put all the shelves together, and sometime in the middle of that, the other woman who answered the craigslist ad showed up for the dining room table.  So it’s gone.  We went out to dinner at the  Woo Lae Oak in Tysons Corner (it was really good), and as we were leaving, John said, “I didn’t bake you a cake, but we can’t let your birthday go by without dessert, so what do you want?”  I decided we should go to Wegman’s and visit the bakery ’cause they were likely to have chocolate-covered strawberries.  They actually didn’t, but when I asked them if they knew where else I might find some, they said they’d make some for me.  🙂  They did, and they were yummy.  So we got home (with the chocolate-covered strawberries and some peanut butter fudge for John) and I found another card and another present on the coffee table.  John planned our evening, too, and bought me a copy of the movie Clue, which neither of us had seen in I don’t know how long.  So we sat on the couch with our chocolate-covered strawberries and fudge, opened a bottle of the dessert wine we bought in Charlottesville when we were there for Jess and Chuck’s wedding, and watched Clue.  Pretty much until we fell asleep.  I couldn’t have been happier.  And that’s why my birthday was so wonderful.  John planned it.

My GOODness

The last…lots of hours have been both a whirlwind and the longest…lots of hours I can remember.  John dropped me off at the airport at 2:30 yesterday afternoon, and I met my coworker, Millicent (not her real name), in front of the United counter.  She’s got some kind of special frequent flyer status, so we got to get in the short line.  Usually, she (and anyone checking in with her (that would be me)) gets a free upgrade at least to Economy Plus, but we were on a full flight and no upgrades were available.  Sad for us.  Especially as we boarded the plane and realized that we were in the two middle seats on either side of the LAST aisle on the plane.  Yeah, those seats don’t recline.  We were in the first boarding group and got on the plane about 3:30.  Supposed to take off at 4 and land just after 7 PST.  My first seatmate, window seat guy, arrived.  He’s a big guy, a little too big for the seat, gray hair, very nice.  He was reading David Eddings, so we chatted about that for a few minutes.  Then Mr. Talkative arrived.  Tall and skinny, also with gray hair, he started talking the minute he sat down.  He travels ALL the time apparently, all over the world, and knows everything.  He tells funny stories, but because he knows EVerything, it got old fast.  (And he scared the 10 year old in the row in front of us with horror stories of flying in bad weather.)  But I was being nice, so I didn’t bury my nose in my book or reach for my headphones.  Anyway, while everyone was still boarding, a maintenance guy came by.  We heard the flight attendants talking about how the potable water system wasn’t working.  Then they made the announcement.  “We’re fixing the problem and will get in the air as soon as possible.”  At about 5pm, an hour late and after another announcement that didn’t give us any clue when we might actually go, I called John and told him I’d just text him when I landed, since who knows how late it would be.  At about 5:15, they made us all get off the plane.  They were either going to fix our plane or find us a new one.  But all other flights to San Francisco (and to anywhere that might get us to San Francisco) were full.  They weren’t saying where another plane might come from.  Everyone ran for the customer service desk.  By the time we got there, United was telling us to wait and see.  A decision would be made by 6:30 one way or the other.  So either the plane would be fixed or the flight would be canceled and we’d be getting on a 6am flight Monday morning, if such a thing existed.  It was just after 5:30, so we figured we had an hour and we’d go find somewhere to sit down and eat.  Wendy’s was the only place nearby with seating, so Mildred grabbed us a table and I ordered.  We got a frosty to share.  (We felt we deserved it.)  JUST as I got our food and was heading for our table, I heard the announcement for immediate boarding of our flight.  It was about 5:45.  Maybe another 15 minutes later, we were on the plane again, this time with food.  And now people were jealous.  But we had a frosty to share, so we were trying to figure out how to sit next to each other, just for a little while.  I convinced Mr. Talkative to switch with me, so I had an aisle, and then we noticed that her aisle seatmate hadn’t arrived yet, so I figured I could sit there, next to Miranda in her middle seat, and let Marcella’s aisle seatmate have the aisle seat that belongs to Mr. Talkative.  Just for the length of time it would take for us to eat our dinner and our frosty.  Everyone went for it, we all switched around, and the plane took off.  And then we gave away our fries ’cause we had WAY too much food.  So people liked us again.  Until the flight attendant (who wouldn’t take any fries even though she was starving ’cause she said it wasn’t professional) yelled at me for getting out of my seat too early.  I could have sworn the captain made the announcement.  He did make an announcement, but it was about something else.  That I totally missed.  Anyway, we all switched back when we were allowed to move about the cabin.  And then my rather large seatmate, window seat guy, started getting claustrophobic.  For real.  At first, he was just feeling a little overheated, and he’d ask me and Mr. Talkative to let him out so he could stand in the aisle.  That happened two or three times.  He got some ice, he had my air thingy and his pointed at his head, but it wasn’t helping.  Then he panicked a little and said, “Okay, I gotta get out of here.”  So we got up in a hurry and let him out.  I had already considered offering him my seat, but I didn’t really think putting this big guy into a middle seat was going to help at all.  I was working on how to bully Mr. Talkative into switching with him and letting him have the aisle, but when window seat guy panicked, the mom in the row ahead of us offered to have her daughter (in the aisle of that row) switch to his window seat (next to me).  Nice lady.  Window seat guy calmed down and was fine in his aisle seat for the rest of the flight.  It worked out for me, too, ’cause the daughter didn’t take up nearly as much room.  No more crowding.  That’s more drama than I need on a flight.  Mr. Talkative finally shut up, I was able to finish This Rough Magic (I liked it), and I got more than 2/3 of the way through my Dean Koontz novel.  But I was SO bored!  I didn’t have any puzzle magazines (stupid oversight on my part – won’t happen on the way home), I was uncomfortable, I didn’t watch the movie (it was The Informant!, which I really want to see (so does John), but the airplane was loud, and I couldn’t hear the movie very well, and I figured I’d just miss lines, so I’d better wait), and I wasn’t sleepy.  I don’t usually get bored with reading, and now that I think about it, I don’t really think I was bored at all, but I was uncomfortable and restless.  The rest of the flight was uneventful (yay), and we landed around 9:30 or so.  We were at the hotel by 10:15 or 10:30 (felt like 1:30), and then I collapsed.  I’ll get into today tomorrow sometime.

Who needs paragraphs?

Life is hard

I’m so conflicted!  I’m home, with probably at least an hour before John gets home, and I can’t decide how I want to spend my time.  I want to curl up in the papasan chair in my new cozy library and read my book (it’s really good, but sometimes a little dry), but I also want to mess around on the internet and visit all my sites and blogs.  Wait!  I might be able to do both.  Read now, surf later.  After dinner, John will probably want to play his guitar or work on the book database he’s building for us, so while he’s doing that, I can climb into bed with my laptop.  Problem solved!  I’m off to read.

One side note, totally unrelated: we’re out of broccoli and I want to have a salad with ravioli tomorrow night, so I went to Bloom after I got home.  They’re closing!  Everything is on sale, and they’re not restocking the shelves.  And apparently this has been going on for a while, because the store is half-empty.  Meaning no produce.  So I couldn’t get broccoli or lettuce or anything like that.  But I found this Green Giant potatoes and green beans steamer thing, so we’ll try that with salmon tonight.  I’ll have to get my salad stuff from Wegman’s tomorrow evening.  I know, fascinating.  I’m done with you people.  All critical and stuff.  Good day!

I have to write it down.

Sometime during the day today I thought of something I wanted to write about.  I didn’t write it down.  So I can’t write about it.  Seriously, I thought this memory loss thing was at least a decade away.

Oh, well.

Mom asked me what our plans are for the weekend, and aside from a brunch date (that I think is still happening), I don’t think we have any.  Which is FANtastic.  We might have the opportunity to get real stuff done AND have time off.  Among other things, I want several hours of dedicated reading time.  Since I started Anathem, I’ve only really had time to read while eating breakfast and before going to sleep, and I’ve been too tired at night to read very long before turning the light off.  It’s good, and I want to find out what happens, and if I don’t settle in to read this weekend, it might be a month before I get anywhere.  Plus, I’d like to be done with it before I fly to San Francisco, ’cause in case I haven’t mentioned it, this book is HUGE, weighs a TON, and I don’t really want to carry it on an airplane.  But I don’t want to start another book just because it’s smaller if I’m not done with the one I’m reading.  That’s sort of a problem for me.  Solution: finish it before January is over.  In normal circumstances, this would not be a problem.

I would also like to have guilt-free fun internet time (which I no longer have at work since I have a real job that actually requires me to do and learn stuff.  Also, no privacy in a cubicle farm, so I’d get caught.).  I have a TON of blogs bookmarked that I’d like to check out.  I read about 8 a day, and while some of the post every day, some of them don’t, and I need more so I always have stuff to read.  Stuff I want to read.  Written by interesting people, or at least people with interesting writing styles.  Ideally, by the end of this weekend, I will have read enough content on all of those blogs to determine if I want to continue reading them.  Then, I can add them (or not) to my blogroll, and possibly provide brief reviews of them so you, my faithful (though mostly silent (which I’ve totally come to terms with, ’cause I know you’re out there (that sounds kinda creepy and desperate, but you know what I mean))) readers can decide for yourselves if they’re worth your time, too.

If I have to choose, though, the book gets a higher priority than the blogs.  But they’re on my list.  I wrote it down!

Catching up with myself

Some things I meant to talk about and kept forgetting about:

  1. I finished Pope Joan a couple of days ago.  Really liked it.  It was one of those books Mom sent me.  She usually sends good ones (there have only been a couple bad ones), but for some reason, I resisted this one.  I’ve had it for several years, but never wanted to read it.  Never had a reason not to read it.  I wasn’t being rational.  It’s good historical fiction.
  2. I started reading Anathem, by Neal Stephenson.  This is another one I was putting off.  Partly because it’s huge and in hardcover.  Huge is never a turn-off for me, but huge and hardcover makes it hard to carry around (and I do tend to carry my books wherever I go).  Now that I have a short commute and absolutely no possibility of reading at work (not that I ever did that…), I won’t be as tempted to carry it around and I can just read it at home.  I’ve really liked everything else Neal Stephenson has written, and I’m enjoying this one, too.  Except for one small thing.  It really is a small thing, ’cause it’s not keeping me from enjoying the book.  It’s just a minor annoyance.  Science fiction and fantasy authors, fantasy in particular, have a tendency to make up words.  They think it’ll help the reader immerse herself in this alien/fantasy world.  Sometimes they’re right.  When it’s done well.  Often, they’re wrong.  Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg, in their introduction to the novel Nightfall (a book I LOVE), addressed this directly.  They pointed out that this story takes place on an alien world, and while they could make up terms in an alien language to use when referring to hands, shoes, dogs, etc, they’d rather just write hands, shoes, dogs, etc and save the reader the confusion.  That’s the way I prefer it be done.  Make up a word (or merge a couple of words to make a new one) when you need to refer to something that doesn’t have an equivalent in the real world, but otherwise, stick to English.  Makes sense.  And it makes for some really good writing.  (I wish I could have met Isaac Asimov.)  Neal Stephenson, in Anathem, seems to be going too far the other way.  He seems to have made up words where it’s not really necessary to make them up.  It makes me work harder to figure out what’s going on.  I shouldn’t be confused.  I’m sure (really, I am) that once I get past the learning curve here, I won’t notice it, and I’m equally sure that the payoff for all this work will be worth it ’cause I’ve read his other books and they’re always good.  But generally, don’t make me work so hard to decipher what should be English!  Last I checked, English is my first (and only, but I’m working on that) language, and I’m pretty good at it.  Carol Berg, in the two books I just read by her (Flesh and Spirit and Breath and Bone) is in the middle.  She made up a few words where necessary, and they worked in the story, but then she’d make something up completely when referring to units of measurement.  Why?  I don’t know.  But I’d be reading along, everything’s fine, and I’d stumble across “quellae” when she mean inch or mile or something.  (Yes, I’m aware there’s a big difference between an inch and a mile, and in context, there was no confusion.)  Why would she do that?  She said horse when she meant horse, wagon when she meant wagon, monk when she meant monk.  Why not mile when she meant mile?  Or league?  Why those words and not other basic words?  But again, I really liked those books.  The stories and characterization were well worth the occasional stumble.  But it could have been better!
  3. Apparently, I was just itching to talk about that.
  4. We watched Grace is Gone Saturday night.  What a depressing movie.  John Cusack is in it, which is why I DVR’ed it in the first place, without really looking to see what it was about.  John (my John) warned me that it was sad, but Saturday was kind of a sad day for me anyway (no particular reason – I was just blue), so I figured it was better to watch a sad movie when I’m already sad rather than make myself sad on a happy day.  Oh, I cried.  And then I cried some more.  And then I was like, “Why are you doing that, John Cusack?”  And then I cried some more.  And then I made John (my John) promise he wouldn’t die.  Did I just give something away?  Nah.  That’s in the description of the movie.  Stupid movie.

Salmon tonight, with horseradish cream sauce (courtesy of Wegman’s, naturally), broccoli, and mashed potatoes.  Apple noodle kugel for dessert.  Unless I have a banana nut muffin instead.  Tough choices.