Always glad for books
A little thing I am thankful for: My Subterranean Press hardcover omnibus of The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox arrived this week. I can exchange two softcovers in my library now for a single hardcover, and perhaps not lose it this time (I’ve already lost one paperback of Bridge of Birds and one of Eight Skilled Gentlemen). It’s quite a shame that Hughart won’t be writing any more of them, but as he says on the flyleaf, he could feel “formula” creeping up on the tales, and that would be a worse shame.
If only certain other authors had stopped while they were still ahead of their own creation. On the other hand, a check with enough zeros on the right can be a powerful incentive to any writer…
The Obligatory Holiday Post
I can think of several things for which I’m thankful today:
Everything is out of the apartment now except for some random cleaning supplies, and a couple of lamps and a vacuum cleaner that wouldn’t fit in the car last night. This will be taken care of this weekend when I drop off the keys. For this I am very thankful to Starr and, well, me. We’ve both put no small effort into all these boxes.
I am thankful to Starr for many things, in fact; but they’re all mushy and I’ll save that for some other time.
I am thankful to Starr’s parents for allowing us to use their house for the next year or two. We’ll be very comfortable here, and we’ll be able to save up some money which we’ll need to get our own place. (Midori is thankful to them for the gas fireplace, which is one of the best things the furless monkeys have invented since domesticated catnip and the chewy kitty treat.)
I’m thankful to NASA for giving me the opportunity to show me what I could do for them, and to rattrap for encouraging my developing Macintosh skills in the first place. I’m also thankful to the designers of the Apple Newton, whose long-cancelled product inadvertently provided me with some “hardcore Mac expert” cred in the most recent planning meeting.
I am thankful to the grocery store owners and workers who allowed their stores to be open this morning, so I could acquire the remaining bits of a quiet Thanksgiving surprise dinner to serve Starr, who once again works a holiday.
I’m thankful to the creators and operators of LiveJournal, without whom I’d never be able to keep track of what’s going on with all my friends. My peeps are a complicated, intelligent, opinionated, goofy bunch – which is exactly how I like it, and my life would be horribly diminished without them.
I’m thankful to all the people that I like and love that my emo side is awfully disappointed this holiday. I’m supposed to be, and fully expected to be, horribly dissatisfied with my life at this age. Problem with that is, there’s so much good in my life right now… how can I let the few speed bumps slow me down?
Effort and Reward
First, let us get the day’s whining out of the way. I am in very great pain: as in, I’m hoping to avoid standing up until it is time to leave for the day. My legs and back are screaming at me, wanting to know what kind of idiot I am.
The good news is that almost everything is out of the apartment – one more evening’s work, tonight, should do it. We’ve made a deal with a friend to give the place a professional cleaning tomorrow, and this should leave me clear to turn over the keys on Friday or Saturday. I’ll be relieved!
Last night, my gaming group threw me a late surprise birthday party. Two separate awesome cakes, and some excellent clothes from Jesse. (Starr’s reaction to the clothes: “Squeee!”) Everyone did insist on wearing black to this little event, but heck, that’s hardly unusual for my friends anyway! Thank you very much, guys!
Brief updates
- 09:36 Just had to explain who Cthulhu is to a workmate. Must increase geekiness of workplace. (At NASA, yet.) #
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Racing around
Okay. I have owed my sister a phone call for several days, and perhaps if I post it here, I will be looking at it tonight and go, “oh yeah, I really need to do that”.
We actually managed to get out of the house for a bit on Friday night – we’ve not been good at that for the last couple of weeks. It’s so easy, when one of us doesn’t get home until 7:30 or 8, to say “screw it” and vegetate for the rest of the evening, but we made ourselves go out with friends, and had a sorely-needed good time.
After a Saturday full of more moving and cleaning, Starr and I got our WoW characters each halfway to level 67, at which point they will have passed my poor gnome mage I’ve been leveling since long before The Burning Crusade. There was debate over whether we’d stick around Outland once we hit 68, and quest a bit in Shadowmoon or Netherstorm; but the urge to take off to the Great White North is strong. We’ll see.
Along those lines, I need to contact my gaming group – our session three weeks ago was cancelled due to host illness, and I never even heard whether or not we scheduled a session last week. I was prepping to start a Shadowrun for the group, and I assume there is still interest. I’ve also got a box full of giveaway gaming material from the Stuff Reduction Plan, and I’m hoping that they’ll want some of it.
Tensions are still cooling slowly on the cat front. Early this morning, Midori and Precious repeatedly chased each other up and down the house stairs, which I think may actually have been play instead of attempted murder. The welcome absence of hissing and yowling is the peg I’m hanging those hopes on.
The 45th anniversary of the Doctor Who TV show passed this weekend. I had to check out a YouTube video of the days when the Doctor was a cranky old man with a hyperintelligent granddaughter, and certain walls of the TARDIS control room were simple photographic blowups. Dig the 1962-era special effects:
Classic stuff.
Brief updates
- 07:51 Woke up this morning on Riff & Magenta’s home planet: Land of Night (and high electric bills!) #
- 13:02 Ozzy Osbourne for WoW: tinyurl.com/6drrfj Guess his race / class. Go on, guess. #
- 19:57 Still unpacking. A bit stunned at the amount of STUFF one can extract from a three-bedroom apartment. #
Sent subspace radio by LoudTwitter
Acceptable abuse
I’m a little stunned this morning.
As practically anyone with sense predicted, the homosexual community reacted extremely badly to the passage of Prop. 8. It’s one thing to have had rights denied to you for centuries, it’s another to have recently-attained rights taken away by people for no other reason than they don’t like you.
So, why am I stunned? Well, certain religious organizations were active in the process to remove those rights, and plenty of others stood complacently by. So, gay people are lashing out at these religious groups. And the stunning thing is that religious folks are acting surprised and hurt!
I swear, I’m reading this in many places online, such as LiveJournal, news sites, opinion blogs: “We’re just treating you like abominations and taking away a chance at happiness you briefly had. We don’t understand why you’re so upset. Why would you have a problem with this?” Of course, it’s not those specific words, but it’s absolutely the attitude. “We don’t understand why you’re so angry, and honestly, we’re a bit offended.”
Frankly, I’ve always attributed discrimination against gay people, in most cases, to malice. “We don’t like you, and it’s socially okay to mistreat you, so we’re gonna.” I never before realized that someone could be unaware that treating another human that way was wrong. “Why does this bother you?”
Wow.
AllerGEE, AllerGAA
(This would have been posted this morning were it not for the LJ downtime)
If I should pass away from exhaustion and allergy-caused asphyxiation, I just want you all to know that I died the way I lived: semi conscious and sniffling. Seriously, this morning I was so wobbly, I thought I might wreck my car on the way into work… and tonight I’ll be putting my back into it again and hauling more boxes.
QQ, I know, but I’m honestly having some trouble coping at the moment. I’ll manage, of course, but oy. I’m in a closed office for the next hour, doing a software upgrade and tapping away on the Newton, and it’s awfully tempting to take a nap. Bad Idea.
On the good side of things, I played some PS2 Fatal Frame on a five-foot plasma flat panel TV last night. That was kinda fun.
