jebbypal

Well, I have been ... quiet as of late. Much of it from my normal holiday hibernation thing (well, normal unless I actually go midwest then I post as much as dialup will let me to relieve stress).

So far, this year looks much like the last one, or at least the last bit. Other than a few favorite authors and a show or two, it's been kind of hard to get my fandom on in any way shape or form...which leaves me funky feeling too. Finally went to reading books but had problems connecting with any until I turned to the tried and true Burning City which usually engages me and it did. Bought a couple of books last weekend and thanks god I got two, because if I'd walked out with just Hood by Stephen Lawhead, I would have been one depressed puppy. Now, I've read at least two seires by Mr. Lawhead and enjoyed them - college age or grad school, not sure which. But this thing is atrocious. I'm 3/4 of the way through it, but at this point I doubt I'll finish. Every character is a whiny ass brat, the women are generally written such that every other sentence is "Merian loathes the F[rench], but in her heart of hearts, she can't help but being attractive to the nice, old, married baron that keeps flirting with her". *rolls eyes* Just, ugh. I don't think I've ever read a book before where I didn't like at least one character.

Fortunately, I also bought de Lint's Widdershins and that washed the nasty taste right out of my brain. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Hmm, that's pretty much all for me. Hope everyone had a happy new year!

Okay, I love Trader Joes, but dude, they need to fix the design of their bags of sugar. I was rather po'ed when they discontinued selling the organic cane sugar that came in the hard plastic container, but I loathe the new "ziplock" bag containers. Mostly because even when you cut it open for the first time, sugar crystals are already lodged in the zipper pieces ensuring that you'll never be able to reseal it again. I thought I had resealed the brown sugar that I bought last week, but I just looked at it and realized it was open. Thankfully, it was because I could see the sugar and not because I saw anything exiting the container. I'm thankful no roaches followed the scent to it, but geez. Is it that hard to design containers that work?

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Worked today, but not as much as I should thanks to my continued reading binge (I bought two books last week). I finished up Last Call by Tim Powers and was very impressed. Much better than the spy novel I read, that's for sure. He's also really grown alot since I read The Anubis Gate a few years ago. It's very Gaiman-stylish, but populated w/ more normal characters that are tyring to make sense of a very screwed up alignment of the stars. Definitely check it out if you've ever enjoyed any of Gaiman's work or Neal Stephenson's.

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Horrid radio station is still overplaying The Fray -- this is like 3 weeks running. I've concluded it has to be clear channel. It reminds me of why I stopped listening to radio completely a few years ago. Thankfully the major rock/metal station appears to have either exited clear channel or gained some independence because it's always a fairly good mix w/out any ability to set one's watch by what song is on. Then again, I'm still partial to Pandora.com since I finally managed to program some good radio stations (I just can't bare to fill up my harddrive with enough music to get lastfm to work for me).

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( to do list for this week because geez, time is getting away from me. )