myliblog: Uncle Bobby's Wedding:
Library collections don't imply endorsement; they imply access to the many different ideas of our culture, which is precisely our purpose in public life.
Thought about going to the memorial concert tonight, but wasn't up for it. Spent the whole day reading various bizarre social networking posts about where people were in 2001. There was a hashtag for it, for goodness sakes. Bizarre, and yet I suppose completely human.
I doubt I'll ever forget, but the memory seems to change with each telling. And more than the day itself, the days and weeks immediately after stay in my mind. It was a hard time, but one that has faded with the passing of years so that its immediacy is lessened but certain indelible images and feelings remain, worn into the psyche beside all the rest of a life's traumas.
Hm, I seem to have gone a bit introspective despite my effort to avoid same this year.
I've finished two actual novels this week, though, which was great. And they were both awesome in totally different ways. Lavinia by Ursula K LeGuin, and The Shadow Queen by Anne Bishop.
Now I'm really tired and looking forward to a fun weekend, so I'd best get to bed and try to actually sleep.
- my best friend really really really wants me to read Twilight. sigh. I probably should read it just so I'll have a point of conversation with my younger cousins, who aren't readers but have apparently all finished the series.
- she also spent some time discussing the ways that she thought my characterization of Draco Malfoy in Far Away as Moonshine echoed that of Michael Corleone in The Godfather series.
- and we spent our lunch talking racebending and white-washing in film, something she's been aware of and talking about for longer than I.
- good times, despite the sparkly vampire complication.
- Friday evening I actually went out. Yes, really. Had dinner and then drinks with friends. I visited a new bar I'd never been to, and had some lovely Scotch.
- The lightning on Friday was apocalyptic. Made me wish I had a camera with instant shutter speed, to capture it.
- Saturday morning at the gas station, a lady saw my "I'm blogging this" t-shirt and said, "Hey, can I ask you about blogging?" So we ended up having a conversation about social media while my tank filled. Bizarre.
- Spent Saturday evening at my aunt's house. We had dinner and conversation and played two rounds of Scrabble. Fun times.
- Today Mom and I made a HUGE dent in my cleaning. We moved the sewing cabinet, and put away almost all the books, although actually really they're all thrown willy-nilly onto shelves, not actually organized. It'll take me weeks to get them organized.
- I hung two more pictures on the walls, too.
- Baking soda really is a miracle cleaner.
- I have two more bigbang arts to do, and then a fest to illustrate before Snupin Santa hits.
- I'm working on a concept for a series of fairy tale illustrations in Prismacolor and ink, for my Advanced Visual Arts studio class this semester.
After lunch my parents and I met up at the Progressive Coalition's house party fundraiser for three City Council candidates running on progressive platforms. It was a pretty interesting gathering, and I was able to stay to hear all three candidates speak before heading out for my ConCom meeting.
ConCom meeting went pretty well. We're getting closer to the big day, so things are very intense. Scheduling is getting tight and a much larger portion of my free time than I expected has been dedicated to Con stuff. (Not a problem, but as this is my first year I'm still getting into the feel of it, gauging the job.)
After the meeting, several of us went to dinner at Sewadee Thai, and I had some yummy Squid Delight, which also served as a great breakfast today.
Then I went home to put up my leftovers and stash my paperwork. I got picked up later for a lovely and fun game night in the neighborhood, so yay. I had a really grand time and they introduced me to Fluxx, a card game I had never heard of but really enjoyed. I'll have to get myself some edition of Ticket to Ride to bring for play another time.
I slept in this morning, and now I'm trying to get some more drawing done. My deadlines loom.
Also, despite several library books waiting in the wings that I have started but not finished, I'm rereading Lirael and Abhorsen by Garth Nix. So much for new stuff.
(Also, good grief how much do I adore the soundtrack to Merlin? When will they release the music from the later episodes? It's really amazing.)
- Music:Merlin DVDs
Does anybody else remember The Young Astronauts series?
It was all about an international group of high school/college age geniuses who were recruited by NASA in the very near future for a mission to colonize Mars. The books started with team assignments in Houston, training at JSC, and eventually launched the teams into space where their ships for the Mars mission were being constructed in Earth orbit. Then they actually land on the Red Planet, establish base camps, and have the beginnings of governance for the new colonies.
I think I read, perhaps, five books? Then I lost all track of them. I always got a kick out of the fact that one pivotal early scene in the first volume took place in the Galleria. And they all got to ride on the Vomit Comet, and figured out one character's medical issue based on playing an arcade game. Fun times, man. I was sure that I still owned them all, too. I am certain that they were still in my house when I left for college, but they may have gotten purged at some point in the last 14 years.
Another series that I remember vividly that vanished into the mists of the out-of-print section was the Secret of the Unicorn Queen or some such, about a modern teen girl who predictably falls through a vortex into a fantasia in which unicorns are endangered by some evil empire, and gets adopted into the pro-unicorn freedom fighters. And wears her jeans until they fall apart.
And then there was the ballet series, Satin Slippers perhaps? I don't remember what the series was called, but it was a FAME-type set-up of teenage soap opera at a famous ballet boarding school in San Francisco. I just remember this one storyline about the FMC's dance partner who injures himself but hides it to continue in his starring role, to the point of completely improvising a pas de deux at the last minute to avoid landing any jumps on his bad ankle.
The other thing I really enjoyed way way way back in the day was a series that was essentially Choose Your Own Adventure but with time travel, so you were always being thrown back into some real intense historical period and offered different ways of reacting to it. Looking back, they were probably awful in terms of historical accuracy, but they were entertaining. And I know there are still some of these in the house. (A quick Google search tells me they were called Time Machine.)
ganked from E:
This week’s Booking Through Thursday asks:
“This can be a quick one. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.”
1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
2. Sati by Christopher Pike
3. The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley
4. The Princess of Flames by Ru Emerson
5. Dune by Frank Herbert
6. Essential Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks
7. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
8.The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
9. The Seeress of Kell by David Eddings
10. Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey
11. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
12. The Girl with the Silver Eyes by Willo Davis Roberts
13. The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
14. Contact by Carl Sagan
15. The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon (I read it first as an omnibus edition)
Well, that was actually kind of hard, and I admit I couldn't always remember the correct author name. It's weird to try sifting through my mental book catalog to the sources of some of my most cherished scenes and characters. You know it's been a long time since you've read them when you can recall the scene and the cover, but not the title.
Except for A Tale of Two Cities and maybe Dragonsinger, I believe that I actually still own every one of these.
No nonfiction, either. Interesting.
ETA: You know what should have made this list that I totally missed? Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. Because it is a big part of the family literary canon, those books whose references and quotes have become part and parcel of conversation and lifestyle in my immediate family. Actually, it would be interesting to do a whole meme on the books that make up the family canon. Do many other families read series together? We all have our own tastes, and then significant portions of overlap, and random books that have made the rounds of everybody.
Things have been happening, thoughts have been thunk, writing has not really happened but a lot of art has gotten done...
I've been calling on my parents a lot for help with the apartment, arranging and unpacking and such. I have some stuff from IKEA that hasn't yet come out of the box - perhaps I should have that Flat Pack Party after all.
I think that this evening I shall go buy a television at last, and maybe put some books away.
Lately I've had lots of meetings and Meet-ups and a seemingly overwhelming amount of volunteer commitments, mostly online. How did I end up working on two back-to-back cons? Urgh.
I haven't got a costume for any of them, either. Although I may go shopping for something to wear to the dances, at least.
I'm test-running some less-demanding-than-Adobe art software on my Mini, so that I won't have to lug Ginevra and all of her expensive software to San Francisco for the art demo I'm supposed to do. Does anybody out there use openCanvas regularly? Got any good tips? Tutorials?
Other randomness:
Read The Graveyard Book, and it was excellent. Haven't yet managed to finish any of the other books I took from the library. Rereading the Enchanted Forest Chronicles omnibus instead.
Ran through the entirety of Avatar: The Last Airbender again. The finale chokes me up, man. Beautiful stuff. I may need to get DVDs.
Still re-watching Merlin, too. I'm easy.
Really, really wish I had Ghostbusters on DVD.
I've made a lot of grilled cheese lately. Also used almost every pan I own. Now I just need to make cookies (or pizza) and I think I will have used all possible kitchen tools at least once.
Have made minor progress on the current quilt, but won't really get far until the sewing table stops being the "put everything down here when you come inside" table. Working on it.
Been keeping a better food diary for the past few days, along with a general journal. I've stopped trying to separate everything and am just keeping everything in one book now. This combined with regular check-in with the Wellness Counselor at Rice should help me get a better handle on things. I hope.
And that's enough for now. Lunch break is well over, and I have things to do.
I got so engrossed in it, I ended up staying up until 1am to finish it.
Brilliant, amazing book. Totally different from Discworld, but with a few touches that throw back to that series. Incredibly moving, especially in the first few chapters when all you have are two young protagonists with no shared language, dealing with tremendous trauma and grief.
AMAZING.
Go read it.
I could run over to the Central Market and Bed, Bath and Beyond to get some of the things I still need. (A spatula would really come in handy.)
I'm out of rice cakes! This is a tragedy.
I made tea today in my kitchen for the first time, using the kettle Mom bought me and the teabags she sent from home. I should probably acquire my own tea at some point. And a teapot.
Tummy troubles continue, with possible hypoglycemic symptoms, but they are usually mild and quite possibly psychosomatic. My anxiety can level me faster than anything else, it seems. Need to work on that meditation thing.
I've been reading actual books and paper media, though. Mostly nonfiction - some "making a magical home" stuff, some "environmentally sustainable cleaning" ones, and ODE magazine. Also the interviews in Weird Tales.
Now I'm hip deep in the con Access database, running some reports for the Chair, and pondering the reality that ConCom members don't really *attend* their con as such.
Also, I'm on programming for a Con next weekend. The panel is about Social Media. I will have very likely just finished a report and formal action plan on the topic for work. My life is funny that way.
I want to get to a point today where I can get the sewing machine table set up and finish the sandwich construction phase on the current quilt. If I do that much, there's every chance that I could manage the quilting before I go to New York. But I still don't have a printer set up and it's blotchy when it runs. Can't print photos with it until I figure out what's up with that.
Also, for those keeping track, I'm up to Episode 1.09 of Avatar: The Last Airbender and I <3 Sokka SO MUCH! :D
Chatter below the cut about The Explosionist by Jenny Davidson.
( my Gchat tag was )
Alas, right? I'm going to try to finish it anyway but good lord it's grinding.
I love James Morrow, and have been reading many interviews about his new book coming across my feed lately. I figure I'd link to one, so other folks can hear more about his latest book.
Granted, I have Godzilla on the brain a bit, but still, it's fascinating to see the real social commentary that emerges from a study of 1950s atomic horror SF and the contrasting wacko stuff that came out of the nuclear-apocalypse 80s. (Red Dawn, anyone?)
Also, I have never seen the 1954 Gojira. Is it hard to find? I shall have to check my libraries.
I fail at weekend productivity, mostly. Although with the assistance of Fabric-Stash Enabler Mom, I did acquire some smokin' awesome additions to my stash (and the things I actually needed for my current project) during a trek through Houston's southeastern neighborhood fabric stores. We should learn that in most cases, we will find fun novelty fabrics at the chains, but for quality color/value cottons, going directly to The Painted Pony would save some time and money. ;)
The only thing we didn't find was the Hoffman Challenge fabric. It's on some of the online retailers, but not yet in stores around here. We'll wait a bit and check back.
We also went to the uber-awesome catfish joint and scored a party platter overflowing with hushpuppies. WIN.
I did not actually get the fabric washed, although that's probably good as now it has bonus cat hair to wash off, too. Apparently my quilting table is Zephyr's new favorite nap spot.
Suffered through the Sunday blahs and Sunday night insomnia, which really made for a grand morning today. Ugh. Did manage to get my iTunes playlists transferred to Sofia at last, and got rid of most of the repetitive entries in the Library. Also acquired hotel accomodations for both ApolloCon and WorldCon. w00t!
Did some art, including laying in colors for the commission portrait for llnm. Finally. It'll take several more color layers to get it done, and I'm not sure that I'm happy with the chosen palette, but the nice thing about digital is that I have a great amount of control over individual colors. Did not do any writing. Did a lot of reading, both of the fanfic and regular variety. I finished Skulduggery Pleasant (hey! It has a sequel!) and have gotten firmly addicted to The Stepsister Scheme.
Lalala. I think that was it. I got the feeling there was some kind of nation-wide sports event going on, but it never really got onto my radar. I will probably catch up on the cool movie trailers over the course of the next few days.
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libba_bray posted about this and I WANT ONE!Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
The awesomeness knows no bounds - especially note the info about the illustrations. w00t!
The sky is really blue today.
The rooftops are really terra cotta.
It would make a great painting.
Also, I have started the 2009 Reading Year with some fun stuff. Currently I'm reading:
Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy
The Reluctant Widow by Georgette Heyer
and
Caprice and Rondo by Dorothy Dunnett (I have told myself that I am not allowed to reread Lymond again until I finish Niccolo. Which I haven't done, so no spoilers, people! He's still in Poland!)
And about fourteen Terry Pratchett Discworld novels and five George MacDonald Fraser Flashman novels scattered around the house for random continuation. (I've been reading Flashman at the Charge at the rate of about four pages a month for months now. Except it's getting interesting enough for me to want to carry it around and stuff.)
And in other news, at Watercolor class we did an exercise on washes. I ended up with a big mess, and a slightly less awful mess. But they look really interesting, so I may apply some fine ink lines over them or something. Someday I will remember to upload the photos.
Dudes, watercolor is hard. But I am learning to loosen up. (After all that colored pencil detail work, and the precision of the tablet, letting my paint move around on the paper is really quite difficult. And watercolor has never been a comfortable medium for me anyway, except with flat washes of a single color, like for portrait class last year. My instructor has such incredible mastery of the medium, I love the way she uses the paint. If I can just get that confident with them, even without producing masterworks, I will be happy.)
The title of Little Brother pays tribute to George Orwell, but the content is shaped by our own "9/11 changed everything" society. It's as timely as the day's headlines: literally since I started reading the book just as the Supreme Court was ruling that Habeas Corpus applied at Gitmo. The book was written for young adult readers but, as the cliche goes, it's fun for children of all ages.
rclementmoore first thing, then various volunteering and things then panels and fun stuff. Got to see GoH Allen Steele on a panel, finally, plus some other fine guests. And everybody admired my hat. The panels were great! I had an awesome time.Tear-down took a wee bit, then Dead Dog, then homeward bound in the rain. And now I'm home.
And totally exhausted. Whew.
The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia (weird and wonderful)
Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler (also weird, in a meta-fiction sort of way. lots of fun stuff here.)
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld (hey, he went to Vassar, btw. I didn't know that until recently. I love this series.)
Pretties by Scott Westerfeld (see above)
I'm in the middle of Specials right now, the third book in the establishing trilogy. What a fascinating world. It gets creepier and more involved with every volume.
Trading in Danger by Elizabeth Moon (I just love Moon's space opera. She rocks this one for me, and I hope the others in this series are as good.)
Er. I think that's it. I'm also in the middle of Death Masks by Jim Butcher, and I am fighting a constant battle to prevent my family from spoiling future books for me because they are all about three volumes ahead.
Highly recommended. Plus the two Afterword sections about security and the internet are great, too. Check the web link above for free downloads of this book and others, plus other nifty extras.
I have liked reading Cory's blog and I have several of his other books on the TBR, but this is the first one that I have actually opened.
I feel like I've hit the mother lode of fabulous books, or perhaps I have just emerged from my non-reading period now that it's summer. I have been reading and finishing novels at a decent pace ever since Old Man's War. Yay!
Damn.
This marks the first time this year that I could not put a book down until I finished it. Seriously, I picked it up during dinner and got to a certain point... and didn't close it again until I finished it.
I'm on a roll! Things are looking up! And I've drawn something every day! Yay!
I finished Moon Called by Patricia Briggs, and holy cow - I am totally salivating after the next ones. This is a really good turning point in my reading habits, as it's only the second book I've finished in months. For some reason everything is still sitting on my shelf with bookmarks in them. Only Terry Pratchett has had the mystical power to keep my interest, but I realize in the middle of the books that I have actually read all of the Discworld books, I just don't remember which is which sometimes.
(The other book I finished was Maureen Johnson's 13 Little Blue Envelopes and it was also excellent. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys humor and real-life adventure. It was especially fun considering that I had just made my first trip to England so I was right there with Ginny as she figures out what the heck is going on when she gets there.)
[Edited for SCIFI Channel scheduling.]
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