sylvaxel

Things of note that have happened recently:
Massage school, while time consuming, continues to be amazing.  I really enjoy the classes and (most of) the people, and the teachers are all great.  Also, I like what I'm learning.
Work continues to be bleh.  Fortunately, in order to compensate for the increased level of apathy at work...
I am now horribly addicted to the TdA forum.  I was catching flak last night (quite justifiably) for posting 60 times yesterday.  I had no idea that I was posting that much; ah well, there are worse fates.
I tried to pick my violin back up last night.  It didn't work very well.  I'm not sure whether this means that I should try more or stop trying- I think it depends largely on my time.
I haven't done nearly enough reading or gaming recently.  I really wish I had more free time (preferably when I wasn't completely borked from sleep deprivation).  I've managed to find the time to start writing again a little bit, but other than that I haven't taken too much time for the things I usually like to do.

I may post more thoroughly on one or all of these later; for now, that's all I can think of.

Posted from work.

I just realized it's been a while since I posted anything at all, and now that I've been working for almost two months and at class for almost three weeks, I can comment on both.

Work drives me slightly insane, mostly because it involves sitting on my ass in front of a computer all day (9-5, although in practice I usually arrive and/or leave slightly late/early) and writing code, and not interacting with anybody at all.  While sitting in the hallway.  My headphones are excellent for keeping me semi-sane during this process, and on some level it is good mental stimulation, but still.  Yeesh.  Fortunately, my computer (while slow as hell) has unrestricted internet access, which means I do things like check livejournal, facebook, webcomics, surf the web...if I was on a forum that would be a wonderful distraction, but meh.  The point is, I can adequately distract myself if it starts getting too ridiculous.  Case in point, I'm posting this from work.  I've concluded that I really really am not cut out for the 9-5 lifestyle; fortunately, this is only for a year (or potentially two).  It therefore has a definite end point, which means I'll put up with it and save money.

I love school.  It's completely different from any other school I've ever done.  First, because of the nature of what's being learned.  There's obviously more of a kinesthetic component to the learning- how do I do this stroke.  But more than that, it's the atmosphere.  All of the students there really want to be there and to learn what is being taught.  All of the instructors really want to be there and to teach it.  They also all have (highly pronounced) senses of humor, which helps a lot.  The other major difference is in the attitude of the instructors.  I'm used to a model where there is somebody who is imparting information to you, which you then absorb.  Here, they are there to provide the information to help you learn it.  It's a subtle distinction, but it's important.  They are an information source, obviously, but they aren't trying to force it into the students.  They're trying to help the students figure it out.

I also really like the material.  A lot of it is really interesting- there's a spiritual side woven through the curriculum that I really enjoy.  There are also elements of lifestyle choices/life skills that are recommended/taught, which is useful and fairly interesting.  Also, we practice on each other, so there's lots of free massage involved.  For somebody wound as tightly as I am, that's a very good thing.

Unfortunately, there isn't very much time for anything besides work and school right now, and 1-2 martial arts classes a week.  And my homework.  Between all that, I'm busy from: 9-10:45 (AM to PM) Monday and Tuesday, 9-5 Wednesday (my free day), 9-5 and then 8-10 on Thursday, 9-5 Friday.  One weekend in three, that's 9-10:45 on Friday and 8-5:30 on Saturday and Sunday.  Other weekends, I have the whole weekend except for Sunday 1-3 free.  That sounds like a fair amount of time, but I have to give two one hour practice massages a week, plus do other reading and homework.  It just feels like all of my time kind of vanished, and I don't get to spend nearly as much time with Laura as I would really like to.  Still, I'm getting in my work and my school and some time with Laura and even a little bit of gaming, so I can't complain that much.  I don't have much time to write, game or read, but I guess that's what happens when you try to have a full time job and take a full time University class load at the same time.  (I did the math, my average time in class per week is the same as taking 15 undergraduate hours).  I'll survive, and at the end of this year I'll have saved money, a skill set I can turn into a profession to make pretty good money on flexible hours doing something that I like, and (I really really hope) Laura.  And it's really hard to think of a (realistic) set of circumstances I would like better.

EDIT: and Laura, if you still want to spend some time finding me LJ icons/setting me up with those, I may just say go ahead...

Well, I've been partaking in the 9-5 lifestyle for over a month now, and I still don't enjoy it.  I'm a night person by nature, and waking up before 8:30 to get to work is unhappy.  This is even threatening to do something that undergrad was unable to and get me hooked on caffeine; it doesn't help that there's a free hot drink machine right down the hall, and the tea is actually pretty good.  The upside of this is that I got my first full paycheck, which was...pleasant.  Making over two thousand a month after taxes have been taken out is nice; I still don't want to do this or something like it for the rest of my life; there are things more important than the paycheck.  However, as a one year (possibly two year) thing, it'll be nice to have the chance to rebuild my savings account.  Also pay off my car loan.

I start classes at BTI next week, which I'm actually really looking forward to.  I'm not looking forward to the drive, but I really like the place and I want to learn what they have to teach.  It's also felt really strange not to be starting classes for the first time in oh so many years when almost all of my friends are still in school;  most of them either weren't seniors or are chemists so need another semester.  I'm going to be asking for volunteers to do homework on fairly soon, but I think only two of you actually read this, and one of you is in New Orleans, which makes it hard.  The other has already volunteered, quite enthusiastically.  My massage table should be getting here within a couple of weeks; I'm paying for it with the money I got from selling the old car (I still have no idea why he wanted it, but that's OK; it's no longer my problem.)

In other news, Laura being back in town is amazing.  We're not going to be seeing each other quite as much this semester/year, just because of scheduling differences.  Having said that, since we were not-quite-welded-at-the-hip last year, that may not be entirely a bad thing.  If nothing else, it means we'll actually have sources of conversation in our days, since we won't have spent all day together.  Well, she will, anyway; writing code all day is pretty boring.  Having her to talk to and touch after I get off of work makes the isolated code grind a lot more bearable, though.

I'm trying to find time to read and write, and I've been semi-successful with one of the two; I think I'll be able to get more reading done now than I did while I was still in college (which feels really weird to say), which will be nice.  I still haven't found time to write, partially because I have difficulty writing when anybody else is around, and finding time when I'm not at work and nobody else is around is difficult; my time at work is isolated, my time at the apartment tends to be with Laura and/or Greg.  I may start shutting myself up in my room to try to get some writing done on nights when Laura is at the dorm, though; I'd really like to start writing again.

So, I finally have a new car.  I've been looking for one for a while now, because Mountain Smith wants to buy the Corolla I've been driving (why I don't know, given that my pitch was 'you don't want to buy this car.')  Also, because to get to BTI I really needed something more reliable.  I've been looking far more aggressively for the past week or so, even more in the past two days.  In the past two days, I've been even more urgent, because on Monday night I did something stupid and drove said Corolla into a ditch; I missed the turn into the parking lot by about two feet because I wasn't paying enough attention.  Turns out, all it needs is about a $250 repair; score.

In those days, I've been amazingly stressed, and have actually driven or seriously considered the following:
A) ?? Nissan Altima from a dealer- rejected by a mechanic for needing $500 to pass inspection, dealer payed too much at auction
B) 95 Mercedes C220 from a person- rejected by a mechanic for needing a total electrical overhaul
C) 03 Mazda Protege from a person- was literally sold out from under me.
D) 97 Toyota Camry from a person- was sold six months ago and the ad never got taken down
E) 03 Mazda Protege from a person- was bought between the ad being posted and my response
F) ?? Nissan XTerra from a dealer- rejected by me because I really didn't want to drive an SUV
G) 95 Mercedes C220 from a dealer- rejected by me because I couldn't break 45 while flooring it; I consider this a major flaw.
H) 99? Toyota Solara from a dealer- rejected by a mechanic for electrical problems and oil leaks
I) 2002 Toyota Camry from a dealer- BOUGHT!

I saw the ad for the Camry today, and looked it up.  It was at the upper end of my price range, but for over a thousand below blue book.  Checked the carfax- spotless, one owner car.  Checked the dealer- A+ with the better business bureau.  After much buraucracy, I got the car (warrantied, which is why I didn't take it to a mechanic) with a $4500 (roughly) car loan to pay off.  Given that I'm actually making a fairly large amount this year, I should be able to pay that off within six months without straining.  I won't save all that much during those six months, but I'll survive.

The car thing had been stressing me out like crazy; now that it's over, I feel amazingly relieved.  Also, there are only three more days until Laura comes back!  Yay!  This will also be A) awesome and B) a major source of stress relieft.  Now the only things I need to do (other than wait three days) are buy a massage table (using the proceeds from selling the Corolla, most likely) and actually get some work done this week (since I was 'working from home' for the last two days and not really getting anything done.)  Both of these are manageable, and not actually that stressful.  Therefore, life is at least relatively good.  Hopefully Laura getting back will also stop and/or help with some of the bizarre moods and states of mind I've been in recently...

Last night, I had a religious experience.  Or I'm turning into a prophet.  Either way.

I had one of the most unsettling and apparently prophetic (in the biblical sense) dreams I've ever experienced, and I feel the need to share it.  Since most people aren't awake at the moment, I'm writing it here.

The dream took place in two distinct parts.  In the first, the entire time was spent getting ready for some sort of party.  What happened here was mostly irrelevant, except for my role.  I had a method, using dice (amusingly enough) for determining what sort of things were going to happen.  I could tell if something good was going to happen or if something exceptionally bad was going to happen.  It could also, less reliably, be applied to people- was this person mostly a good person or not.  Also, the symbol on the dice that started turning up for something bad was something that I was told was a foul symbol that nobody could look upon and live.  The pictures they had of it were taken of its reflection.  Other than that, there was a lot of running around, some if it in the snow, some of it barefoot, all of it largely forgettable.

Edit for clarification (since the dice were actually the second most memorable image): I wasn't rolling the dice.  There was a cluster of eerily shining deep orange dice-like things in a dark corner somewhere, which looked more like they were ten sided than anything else, but some were more than likely non-Euclidean.  Instead of numbers, they had a variety of symbols on them, and when I looked at the cluster at different times the symbols had changed; sometimes I could watch different bits of the cluster spinning.  I was somehow able to intuitively turn this into a message of sorts.  It was less reliable with people because I couldn't look at the dice themselves (as they were in a dark corner), but I still had some sort of connection with them in my head, so I could still form an intuition.

When people finally started arriving for the party, things got weird.  The person hosting split us up into various stations- people to greet, people to chit-chat, etc.  There were three of us left; two of them were supposed to do something highly unsavory if necessary, and I was supposed to give my informed opinion on the character of any given guest using my divination.  Then suddenly all of the guests were there, and things got really weird.

I had been talking to a group of three people, all of whom were fairly good people.  The room froze and grayed out, and I saw a square of space turn into an opening to...somewhere that really disturbed me.  Three pseudo-cherubim walked out of it, and they were some of the most terrifying things I've ever seen, in any dream.  Their eyes were windows into a dark and hungry oblivion of pure blackness, and their manner and faces were somehow tainted.  I turned back to the people I had been talking to, and they had also shrunk into cherubim, but without the apparent taint and the eyes of scariness.  Each group of cherubim had one male, one female, and one androgynous one.  They also each had an armful of apples.

Both sets of apples started out red.  However, the ones in the arms of the ones that scared me gradually moved towards black, and the others gradually moved towards gold.  The two groups had two options, from what I saw (I spent most of this part of the dream not moving): they could eat the apple, or they could throw it at the apples of the other trio.  If they ate it, they grew older and stronger in proportion to its current color.  If they threw it, each opposing apple that it hit was moved a shade back towards red, again proportional to the color of the apple, and the thrown apple was discarded.  It wasn't really a fair competition, though, because the three pseudo-cherubim were able to successfully bounce each thrown apple off of every single visible apple before it was discarded, and the ones that had been the people I was talking to weren't.  This continued for a while, this mixture of throwing and eating, until the androgynous pseudo-cherub had three apples that I just knew were about to turn purely black, and I didn't want to know what would happen then.  So I ran up to the other group, who were in the process of eating more of them, and snatched up a handful of the pulp off of the cheek of one of them, snarling "Give me that."  I ran over to the other one, and manually smeared the pulp on the three apples that were about to turn black, and they slowly started going back towards red.  It looked bloody murder at me, but didn't actually do anything.

Second edit for clarification: as they ate the apples, their physicality changed.  The ones who had been people went back to being more or less normal people, although a little unearthly somehow.  The ones who had shown up (which is where I was focusing more attention) developed into things that looked mostly human, but kept their incredibly disturbing eyes, and had an aura of somewhat unnatural power about them, and not a friendly kind of power.

Then the rest of the room came back, although it was still grayed out, and the non-responsive people started moving around.  The two sets of others (cherubim and pseudo-cherubim) were suddenly positioned at opposite corners of the room, and were throwing small spheres, black and gold, into those assembled.  None of them touched me, but the number and potency of them had something to do with the previous apple eating/throwing contest.  Whenever a bouncing sphere touched somebody, they moved in the room.  Some people had these glowing helmets on, gold or black, and seemed to be immune to the spheres of their opposite number.  I realized as people moved around that we were sorting ourselves (me included) along the diagonal axis to be closer to one set of cherubim than the other, and I realized that the spheres were moving people closer to whatever they had been hit by.

Then my perspective changed, and I was looking down on the people in the room, including myself.  I realized that we were actually sorting ourselves in two dimensions.  It wasn't just proximity to one set of others or the other.  First, we were sorting ourselves based on whether we were motivated to aid others or ourselves.  Second was based on what sorts of things we were willing to do.  There was some correlation between the two, but by no means was it perfect.  The closest to the pseudo-cherubim were those who would do (almost?) anything for themselves.  I was in a fairly unpopulated place- I would do most things, and my motivations were for others.  The people were far denser on the pseudo-cherubim side than on it's opposite, although there weren't very many right next to them.  I was standing there, arms folded, looking into the eyes of the androgynous one with whom I had interfered, trying to stare it down, when I woke up.

I woke up deeply disturbed with an elevated heart rate, and the dream has stayed with me fairly clearly for the past hour.  The whole thing has stayed with me, but the most memorable image is the three dark eyed cherubim moving slowly towards me out of the portal to...wherever it was.

Well, I just finished my first week as a member of the working world, and I've concluded that I dislike the 9-5 lifestyle.  I consider mornings to be something to sleep through, not something to be awake and working during.  Also, I've just been so bloody tired and apathetic when I get home that I don't do much except sit around and be lazy.  This is a problem, and needs to change.  Having said that, I got my first paycheck yesterday, and remembered why I'm doing this: because it's only for a year, I can put up with it, take the money and save a lot of it.  I also get to actually spend money on a better quality of food and periodic books and nice things for myself and Laura.  I couldn't deal with it long term, but for a year I can handle this.  Having Laura back will make it easier; right now I've been having almost no human interaction, which is driving me a little bit batty.  If she's here, it means I have something to look forward to after I get off.  Right now it's get off and go back to an empty house with two cats and the dismembered mice they leave for me.

The past week has been slightly nuts.  I drove down to Georgia to get Laura from her parents on Tuesday, we drove back up on Wednesday, and we spent the days through Saturday just enjoying spending time with each other, which is amazing in ways the English doesn't really have the words to describe (although I may try sometime when I'm slightly less borked.)  Also, I watched Stardust, which my yelling at the movie aside (I do that to most of them) I rather liked.  Most notably Captain Shakespeare.  Also, I want protagonist-man's awesome pirate coat.

Today, we went to Myrtle Beach to return Laura to her family.  She did most of the driving down (thank you for that), and then on getting there with the rest of her family not expected to arrive for another two hours, we hit the ocean.  Playing in the ocean was awesome, and we've concluded that we need to take a beach trip at some point as soon as we can manage it.  Then we went and chilled out in the hot tub (there's something fundamentally wrong with that statement) until her family showed up, which turned out to be half an hour later than anticipated; they got lost somewhere in South Carolina, we're not sure how.

We all went out to dinner at Basil's, which is a fairly tasty Italian pizza/calzone/sub place.  Then I got to take Laura back to the hotel, say goodbye, and drive back to Chapel Hill.  Driving away from her was one of the harder things I can remember doing, and yes in some ways that includes belt tests.  I hate this long distance thing, even though it's only for another month.

The drive back was essentially two highways the entire way, the second one of them interstate.  In the dark.  With minimal traffic.  I won't say how much I was speeding, but it was a lot, and the drive was (mostly) boring as hell- except for the 50 mile stretch where it was raining so bloody hard that visibility was...20 feet?  Maybe?  That sucked balls, and was some of the hardest driving I've done.

I got back from that at almost exactly midnight, and now I'm preparing to go to bed, because tomorrow morning I have to wake up and be at my new job at 9AM, since it's a 9-5 job.  The thought of me with a 9-5 job is more than slightly bizarre, but I'm hoping this one works out well.  I'll keep you (all two of you) posted on how that goes.  Now, I think I should probably stop typing before I say something I shouldn't in my somewhat loopy state, and go sleep in order to make a better impression at said job.

Laura, I love you.

I'm a little nervous to actually review this, since A) I've read it before, and B) if I say bad things about it, Laura may disown me.  Fortunately, I don't have many bad things to say about it, so let's get started.

A combination of urban fantasy and epic fantasy, Support Your Local Wizard is an omnibus edition of the first three books in the Young Wizards series by Diana Duane.  It has elements of epic fantasy in that everything is very black and white; there is the Lone Power and its agents (black) and there are the Powers That Be and their agents, the wizards.  There are also certain thematic elements that I associate with epic fantasy- for example, in the first book, the goal is to retrieve the Book of Night With Moon from the Lone Power who had somehow stolen it and locked it away.  Yes, it was mostly coincidence (ish) that they were in the situation that made that the goal in the first place, but so it goes.  It's urban fantasy in that it's set in modern (well, OK, about a decade out of date) New York, and it does explore questions about the place for and perception of magic in the modern world.

This is, unquestionably, a young adult fantasy novel.  This is something that was intended for a middle school or so audience.  This is apparent in the black and white style, in the relatively simple prose, and in the overall simplicity of the plot.  There aren't many subplots, and the overall plots aren't very complicated.  Having said that, they're also relatively hard to predict (which, coming from me, is saying something.)  Duane also manages to braid in themes dealing with responsibility, death, belief and friendship (if not love, and she's getting there.)  She addresses these things on a surprisingly deep level for a young adult novel.  She manages to do all this without it coming across as heavy handed, which is both wonderful and unusual.  To sum up- plot is simple, but good.  Themes are well done, and as a young adult book I think it has a lot of good things to teach people in the target audience, and can do so in such a way that it isn't offensive or condescending.

The secondary characters in the book are great.  Tom and Carl, the Senior/Advisory wizards, are a lot of fun, as well as being one of the most realistically written gay couples I've seen in a while.  Nita's parents, while not a significant presence most of the time, work reasonably well and are realistically written.  Ponch (Kit's dog) is entertaining.  Fred and the Lotus from the first book are awesome, as is Ed from the second one.  Even the Lone Power is a well-written character, and is at times a truly menacing bad guy.  Peach- come on, what bad can you say about a cranky parrot who sings Gilbert and Sullivan and tells the future?  Dairine (I'll count her as a secondary character, although that's not so true in the third book) is a reasonably good annoying younger sibling.  My problem comes with the primary characters.

Now, let me be clear.  I like Kit and Nita, and while I won't ship them as hard as some people, I agree that it's probably coming.  They (Nita in particular) start out as reasonably fleshed out characters who it is easy to empathize with.  The issue is that I don't think Duane thought either of their characters through when she was writing them.  They do both get some character development, but it isn't quite as much as I would like.  More relevantly, it doesn't make sense for them.  Nita and Kit start the first book as, cannonically, 13 and 12, respectively.  (Laura, call me out if I got that wrong.)  They get developed as though they are at least 16 years old.  Minimum.  All of the stuff I was just talking about with themes?  Delivered through the vehicles of people who start the book before puberty.  They're making very adult decisions, life and death decisions, and they're doing it at a very mature level.  It...works, I guess, but I have no idea why she didn't start them at age 16 so that she wouldn't (apparently) still have the relationship between them not yet started eight books in (again, Laura, call me out if I got that wrong.)  It would also make the extremely high level of independence from their parents make more sense, explain their maturity level, and just generally make more sense.  It would also make most of the character development they get make more sense- it would make way more sense for Nita to...make a lot of the decisions she makes in book 2 if she was 17 than as a 13 or 14 year old.

Ultimately, I really like these books.  They're well written overall, the plots are engaging if not terribly complicated, the supporting cast is wonderful.  If you have middle school aged kids who are into fantasy (even if just Harry Potter), get them to read these.  If you're into fantasy and don't heavily object to reading something intended for a young adult audience, you could do a lot worse.  Just mentally age Kit and Nita up three to four years, and enjoy a relatively fast but well written and surprisingly deep read.

Edit: Laura reminded me of something that I completely forgot, which is the magic system.  I love the magic system in these books.  It is internally consistent (nice), makes logical sense (nice), and is actually consistent with observable physical law.  The fact that it requires more effort to reach escape velocity in order to go to the moon than to come back is awesome, as is the fact that you have to remember to take air with you.  Also, the fact that you have to actually exert effort to work magic, with a combination of ingredients, personal energy, future favors owed to the Universe, etc makes me happy.  I love the premise that words create the world and can alter it.  This actually dovetails fairly neatly into a number of things I believe.  Thinking about it, I'm not quite sure  whether these books (read long ago) influenced those beliefs, but I suspect that they did.  But yes.  Magic system-amazing.

So, I spent the last weekend in Kansas for my cousin's wedding reception.  This was hard for me because I really don't like Kansas, but they wanted me there and it gave me a chance to see my (over-)extended family.  I met people who are distantly related to me who I'd never even heard of before, as well as basically the entire Nowlin clan, all of whom are completely insane.  To give you an example, my uncle Stu (married to my dad's sister) is a seventy year old man who still races dirt bikes, is a semi-professional photographer, and is the only registered member of the socialist party in the state of Kansas.

The good news is that Shannon (my step-mother, AKA that evil cat-shaving lady) was not in attendance.  My dad was, which meant I got to talk to him a little bit without her there, which actually went really well.  I'm starting to wonder if it's her influence that I can't stand, rather than him inherently.  I also re-met some cousins who I haven't seen in a decade, and was requested by one of their parents to recommend fantasy novels, which I did gladly (Storm Front, Good Omens, Gypsy, The Dragonbone Chair and Neverwhere.)  I didn't get to see Granddad as much as I wanted to, but I saw more than enough of Grandmother.  Her mind is gone to the extent that it's hard to be with her at this point.  Overall, it was a good trip to take, but I'm glad it wasn't much longer.

In other news, I start work on the 20th (whee!)  This means that the tentative plan to kidnap Laura from Georgia on the 14th, bring her back to Chapel Hill, and spend a week or so with her before returning her to her parents in Myrtle Beach might actually work.  I hope they will?  We haven't seen each other in about two months now, which is definitely wearing on both of us.

I GOT A JOB!  I've been applying for various part-time retail things, and a friend of mine showed me an ad for somebody with an undergrad degree, preferably in math or computer science, with two years of programming experience preferred, including class projects.  The job was a research assistant at Duke for one year, paying 34,000, with health benefits.  Full time position.  I said what the heck and sent in a resume plus cover email.  Monday, I found out I had gotten an interview, which was yesterday.  He gave me stuff to read and told me to email him back (this was at the end of the interview, which I felt like went fairly well.)  Today I emailed him with a few actually intelligent questions on the 70 pages of stuff I'd read (all of it), and tonight I got a reply- I got the job!  This makes my night, if not my week.  The only way it would have been better would have been if I could have turned and kissed Laura in excited flipped out awesome mode.

It's even awesomer because it's more or less a 9-5 job (ugh), which means I can go to school in massage therapy starting in August, since this class is nights and weekends.  This is good, because I was accepted, and have already given them a $200 tuition deposit.

In other news, I'm still looking for a new car.  I've turned nocturnal, which may have to stop or at least become less the case, given the whole full time job thing.  Since getting back from the trip, I've mostly been sleeping, eating, reading, not writing nearly enough, gaming, and job hunting.  On the gaming front, to my chagrin, I've started playing Warhammer 40k.  I really thought I'd managed to avoid that one, but then Doc found out about it, and he actually plays at a reasonable speed, so...yeah.  Oh well.

This weekend I'm flying out to Kansas to see my entire extended family at my cousin's wedding reception.  The wedding itself was small, a month ago, and in New York, so this is basically an excuse for a family get together, which should be fairly fun (especially now that I have something to tell people when they ask what I'm doing next year.)  That's about all of the significant stuff happening right now, other than plotting to kidnap Laura.  Wheeeee!

OK, I'm going to change up the format this time; it makes no sense to have a setting section for a series that I've already commented on the setting of, for example.

First thoughts:  This book disappointed me.  Don't get me wrong, it was still a fairly good read, but I felt like it had some things seriously wrong with it.

Pros: OK, first and foremost, the minor characters.  I absolutely loved what she did with Ben towards the end of the book; it took him from the abrasive sexist asshole to an actual character, and did it wonderfully.  Kyle and Warren (especially Kyle) continued to be awesome, and I loved the development of the Fae in general, Uncle Mike (and to a lesser extent Zee) in particular.  It was nice to actually find out more about them.  Also, Samuel's musician-ship was a nice touch to have thrown in at the beginning.  The plot was reasonably well done, and the pacing overall was excellent.  It kept me engaged and interested more or less constantly.  Of course, by the end I kind of wanted to throw it at the wall, which brings me to...

Cons: I had two major issues with this book.  The first one is that the very first time I met him, I said 'that's going to be the bad guy, isn't it?'  The second time I met him, I said 'yes, I was right.'  It was, to me, too damned obvious.  Also, his motivation wasn't really as fleshed out as it could have been.  He never really became a three dimensional character to me- he was 'the bad guy who Patricia Briggs is trying to write as a nice guy and potential friend so that we will be shocked when he turns out to be the one behind it' the entire time.  To give her some credit, that's a really hard twist to pull off well, and she came pretty close.  She just didn't quite nail it.  My second major problem was with the rape and the recover from it.  I thought that Ben's explanation was wonderful, and I thought that her response was entirely realistic.  I did not think the last page of the book was well done at all.  'I don't want him to win, I'll go start a new relationship with a dominant werewolf that I want to last for a long time while I'm still having trama-induced panic attack and am not over being forced to love my rapist now and do it with sex.'  What?  That makes no sense to me.  Now, I will put a caveat on this one: if in the next book she's having nightmares/panic attacks/issues with Adam/something similar because she hasn't gotten over the trauma yet, then I'll be OK with it.  I'll assume that she ended with Mercy's shirt coming off because she didn't want to be answering angry fan letters until the next one came out, but she was planning to deal with it realistically, and that I would be fine with.

Kvetches: Not in the same league as my two big issues, I was still irritated by how quickly and seamlessly the love triangle resolved.  If you've been building something up as a source of tension for two books and part of the third, DO NOT just make it vanish in a cloud of rose petals.  Tension breaking should involve some backlash.

FInal thoughts: I understand that Patricia Briggs was trying to deal with some serious psychological issues, and trying to use a fairly difficult villain-creation technique to make the whole thing more ambiguous at the end.  She got both of them almost right, but not quite.  I give her credit for trying, and I give her credit for getting close, but I'm still going to be disappointed- this was a good book, but it could have been completely fucking amazing.  As is, it was still a good book, and I'll still be reading the fourth one, but overall I think I liked Blood Bound better.

It's only been a couple of days since I last posted, but MAN has a lot happened.  I'll hit the highlights-elaboration upon request.  I'm having trouble thinking right now, my head is still spinning.

We drove out of Lafayette and to Mount Shasta, where we camped for the night.  On a walk around before dinner we found an entire meadow full of pitcher plants, which was kind of awesome.  Two important things happened that night: first, there was a nasty thunderstorm.  Second, I found out my tent was no longer waterproof.  Therefore, I got a total of five hours of sleep (ish?).  The first half was in my tent, the second half was in half hour blocks sitting in the front seat of the car.

Mom and William had camped at the low point, so woke up in the middle of a lake, with their tent flooded.  We drove into town, ate breakfast at the Black Bear Diner (which was awesome) and then drove to a motel where we dried out our gear.  We drove from the motel to Crater Lake, which was amazing.


The next day was a long day of driving to Mount Saint Helens, where we camped again.  I slept in the trunk of the car, which was OK.  We were, unfortunately, unable to see the mountain, because the cloud cover never lifted.  The next day, we went to Ape Cave, where Katie (the sister) and I walked through the longest lava tube in the western hemisphere.  It was fairly awesome, and very different.  I've been in limestone caves before, and having one that was so linear was weird.  It was a lot of fun, but kind of hard to describe.  Then we drove to Seattle.

Last night we got in, checked into our (ridiculously nice) hotel, and had one of the best dinners I've ever eaten at a really good and reasonably priced French Tapas restaurant, the only one I've ever seen.  Then there was sleep, and then there was this morning.  We went to Pike Street Market.  I've been to markets in Istanbul, Marrakech, and various other places in the middle east, and while it doesn't really compare, it seemed like an actual market.  In America.  I was shocked.  I now have a pair of fingerless alpaca-wool gloves.  Then I left the family and went to the SciFi museum, which while slightly campy and a little hokey was kind of fun, especially since they were hosting a Jim Henson exhibit at the time.  There was one kid there who didn't recognize the Bert and Ernie puppets they had there, which a passing woman commented was criminal.  I kind of agree.  Then I wandered back to the hotel to rest my feet and use the interweb; tomorrow, we head out to Vancouver.  Whee!

EDIT: I can't believe I forgot to mention this: on the way through Portland,I insisted we stop and go to Powell's bookstore.  It's an independent new and used bookstore the size of a city block; it was freaking awesome.  I have a few pictures, but they don't really adequately convey the scope...

First thoughts: Sweet, the series didn't start with its best book.  I hate it when that happens.  The focus on the vampires is interesting; the love triangle is threatening to spiral out of control, although my money is on her ending up with Adam.  Possibly (hopefully) with some experimental D/s thrown in; that would be hot.

Characters: Most of the minor characters didn't get very much extra build-up here.  However, there were some nice developments with the fae, particularly Uncle Mike.  The angle with Stefan being interested romantically in Mercy makes some sense, but is...odd.  The focus was primarily on the vampires, their politics, and Mercy herself.  I liked what happened with Mercy in this book, and I thought the introspection before she went and killed Andre in cold blood was a fairly look into how her mind works.  I also liked the role she seems to be taking on with the local police department; it could prove interesting, although the number of semi-commitments she has to honor and maintain is going to kick her in the ass someday.

Setting: See Moon Called, it's the same world.  The fact that it continues to be internally consistent is nice.

Plot: I love the plot on this one.  It did not feel forced, everything made perfect sense with the internal politics of the seethe, and the ending was hard to call, but you had enough information that it didn't feel like an Ass Pull.  I did call about half of the twists before they happened, but A) I have a lot of practice, B) I have good intuition, and C) not very far in advance in most cases.  The idea of a demon-possessed vampire is amazingly frightening while being internally consistent and awesome.  There isn't much more to say: the plot is put together well, hangs together well, explains everything in retrospect, and nicely emphasises how inhuman vampires are.

Kvetches: OK, two books of love triangle is OK, but adding Stephen as a potential interest makes her a little too close to being a Mary Sue ('Everybody loves me, and I don't know why!  I'm not that attractive, am I?')  Hopefully this situation will resolve before it gets to that level.  I feel like if Marsilia is really as obsessed with getting back to Milan as she seems to be, and had withdrawn from the world as much as we were told she had before the first book, SOMEBODY would have overthrown her already.  Obsession and not paying attention among a bunch of machiavellian power-hungry vampires seems like a good way to get taken down.

Final thoughts: I liked this one.  It fixed my big issue with the last book, which was an ending that came out of nowhere.  If she actually keeps developing her minor characters, this is going to become one of my favorite series.

OK, I might have been exaggerating slightly with the post title, but not by much.  Yesterday sucked.

First, I got to wake up around six in the morning (ugh) to go to the airport.  At the airport, I wanted to get breakfast, but because the person in front of me had used the last of the scrambled eggs the only things available were disgustingly sweet cinnamon rolls or merely nauseatingly sweet cinnamon twists.  I went with the twists.  This was followed by a six hour flight (which went reasonably well; I read or slept through most of it.)  We landed in Vegas to change flights, and the first thing I saw coming off the ramp was a sign saying Jose Cuervo.  I was amused.  After an hour or so of waiting, we got on the (also fairly smooth) flight to Oakland.  All of our luggage made it, which was nice.  We hopped in a taxi and went to the rental car place, where it turned out they weren't expecting us for another two hours, didn't have the car we were supposed to get, and had pulled a bait and switch with the deal they were offering online (we had to pay another hundred for unlimited mileage, which given the nature of the trip is very necessary.)   While waiting for the car, I went to Subway, which was the closest thing resembling food, since I had had only a few strips of bacon, five cinnamon twists, and a peanut butter sandwich in the past eleven hours.  We got the car, came to my Aunt and Uncle's house, dropped off our luggage, and went to the hospital.

Grandpa was hospitalized two days ago, as I think I mentioned.  They still have no idea what's wrong with him, but they're doing some tests later today that will hopefully clear things up.  Seeing him, especially laying in a hospital bed like that, is incredibly hard.  I remember him from when he was still walking around, driving around, taking me to see where he worked on jewelry.  Seeing him like that made something abundantly clear to me that nobody else in the family will say out loud:  he's dying.  He is dying by inches, and has been for years now.  He has Parkinson's, several joint replacements, can't really walk anymore, and now this.  He is only getting less vital, less vigorous, less able, and less rational.  There is no up-slope from this.  And it's depressing.

The rest of the family (the four of us, my aunt, uncle, cousin, and grandmother) went out for reasonably good Vietnamese food for dinner, and came back to their house.  We watched a home video/slide show of my cousin's baseball team this past season (his senior year of high school), then I begged off and went to the room where I was sleeping to call Laura and read.

To explain why this sucked so much, I have to explain for the first time in writing one of the stranger things about me.  I can tell what people are feeling.  When I'm in a room or a building full of people, I pick up the prevailing mood and emotions and begin to project them/experience them, although to a certain extent I can block it out.  When I'm talking to an individual person, I can get significantly more detail from them.  I know it sounds slightly crazy, but meh.

As a result of this, airports and hospitals are two of my least favorite places to be.  To quote Douglas Adams, "...airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk..."  So quite apart from the inherent drain of air travel, I'm also picking up on that and reflecting it.  Hospitals...hospitals suck.  Hospitals may be my least favorite place to be.  They are full of people who are dying, despairing, in terrible pain, in the process of giving up hope, depressed, drugged, and generally unhappy.  As soon as I walk into a hospital, I almost completely shut down.  I think it's an unconscious self-defense mechanism.  It doesn't keep me from feeling amazingly drained and somewhat frayed around the edges by the time I get out, but I'm not sure I want to know what would happen if I kept myself open.

The other issue yesterday was seeing my relatives.  I was able to get reasonable reads off of all four coupled individuals, and what I got greatly depresses me.  Grandpa is tired, afraid, feeling helpless, regretful, and wants to lash out because of the fear and the helplessness.  Grandma is in denial over the fact that Grandpa is going to die, yet still worried on some level about what's going to happen when he's gone.  She's also worried for him, worried about him, fairly tired herself, frustrated with him, and through it all feels a habitual something that falls somewhere between affection and love for him.  My Aunt and Uncle have achieved the American dream, and it terrifies me.  They're living in a town that's a suburb of Oakland in a house that they own with one kid, three cars, and two dogs.  And they almost never interact.  They have totally different interests, and almost nothing in common but their son who is about to go away to college.  It is, at this point, essentially a loveless marriage, and that is a prospect that I find utterly alien and terrifying.

Combine this day with one of my worse 'wah I miss Laura' nights and yesterday was fairly sucky.  Today we head out and drive to Mount Shasta where we'll be camping tonight, so hopefully the day will overall be better.

In just over eight hours, my family is flying to the west coast for a two week family vacation.  Given that I've been going to bed between three and four in the morning and waking up after noon, this is going to be interesting.  We get to go see my aunt and uncle with the cousin who just graduated from high school.  If we're really lucky, we also get to see my grandparents- Grandpa just went back into the hospital last night with fairly severe hemhorraging.

That's the beginning and end of the trip.  In the middle, we're driving up and down the west coast, up to Vancouver and back down.  On the way we're going to see such things as Powells, Crater Lake, the Olympic rain forest, and I have no idea what else.  I wasn't in charge of trip planning, but I've been reassured that the car we're renting is sufficiently large for me to fit my lanky self into.

Whenever we have internet access, I'll be writing about the interesting things that happen on the trip, and possibly book reviews.  I'll also be taking lots of pictures; I'll try to figure out some way to share them if anybody (all two of you who read this) are interested.

On the night before we leave, on which there's no way I can get enough sleep, while everybody else scrambles around packing, I'm sitting around watching the Princess Bride and typing this (hence the post title.)  I'm sure that something interesting can be read into that, but it's too much effort.

Periodically throughout the summer, since I actually have time to read, I'll be posting my thoughts on what I read in the form of book reviews here.  Any book review post will have the tag for it, and the same title as the book.  Other stuff that's happening with me will go in another entry.  Usually, I'll just jump right into it.  However, since this is the first one, fair warning: in any book review I write, there will be spoilers.  I'm not going to bother to hide them unless somebody requests it in advance or I know Laura hasn't read it because she would knife me.  I'll try to keep them relatively minor, but they will happen.  One last note:  I will periodically use terms from the TVTropes wiki.  Usually, they're self-explanatory.  If not, I'll take a sentence or three to explain the gist, although the wiki would probably do it better.  With that disclaimer, on to Moon Called.

First thoughts: It's not the best thing I've ever read, or even the best fantasy I've read, or even the best non-epic fantasy I've read.  What it is is one of the better first books in a series I've read.  It's clear that Patricia Briggs has put a fairly large amount of thought into her world, and that everything is reasonably well set up from the word go.  She knows who her characters are, she knows how the rest of the world sees the supernatural community (important, and often somewhat neglected,) and she knows where her characters fit into said community.

Characters:  I think that Mercy was better thought out than anybody else in the book, which makes perfect sense; she is the main character, after all.  I think that Mercy herself is a very interesting and well put together character.  It's nice to have a realistic character who actually has weaknesses, although I think that it would have been nice to show her getting her ass kicked by a werewolf.  We're told it would happen a few times, but the only time she fights them, they lose.  I thought that the rest of the characters, particularly Adam and Sam, could have used a little more fleshing out.  We get flashes of character off of both of them, but nothing hugely significant from either one.  I suspect that's because Patricia Briggs hadn't quite decided which one to make the primary love interest when she was writing, and therefore wasn't sure how to characterize either of them.  It shows.  The other minor characters, most notably Warren, aren't really fleshed out but have sparkles of personality and/or mystery (Zee, I'm looking at you) here and there- again, just fine for a first book.  You can't fully explore every character's personality in one book, nor can you give them equal time- with each other or with the main character.  Also, the fact that she took somebody who looked to be a potentially major character and then killed him is, to me, awesome.  It sets a tone of actual danger for the rest of the book, even though we know the main character is still unlikely to die.  I know some people hate unexpected character death, but I personally prefer to know that Anyone Can Die.

Setting: I like the world.  I like the thought that clearly went into it.  Well done modern/urban fantasy is some of my favorite, and I think that a lot of thought went into the setting.  It's internally consistent, it makes sense, and it leaves room to add other things later.  She's already got vampires, werewolves, fae, witches and walkers in there, and can add more with minimal effort.  I also liked the way Mercy is something slightly off-kilter.  Vampires have gotten slightly cliched recently, and a werewolf would have worked, but the added mystique is kind of nice.  Also, the fact that she's exploring Native American traditions is very very nice.

Plot:  Good news: I couldn't call the plot.  I've read enough fantasy that I can frequently call the entire plot from fifty (+/- 45) pages into any given book.  This one I couldn't predict, certainly not in its entirety.  It hangs together in a reasonably believable fashion, too: everything that happens follows more or less reasonably from what has already happened.  Key word: more or less.  In a few places the plot seems to hang a little strongly on coincidence that isn't really justified as anything but something happening because the author says it will.  The first and most obvious of these was Mac showing up at Mercy's shop in the first place.  I mean, OK, coincidence to get the ball rolling, but in hindsight it seems slightly odd.  I can't think of any more off the top of my head, so I can't justify that any further; I should write these within two days of reading the book in the future.

Kvetches:  My personal gripes with the book (and believe me, I can always find SOMETHING to gripe about.)  In this case, it's the plot.  It gets a little too complicated, and while I wasn't able to call the entire thing, I could frequently call what would happen in a given segment.  For example, I knew most of what would happen in the vampire visit significantly before it happened.  Moreover, the final reveal bugged me.  While it made perfect sense in retrospect, it didn't make sense in retrospect because you had the information to figure it out.  It would have been extremely difficult to call what was going on and why without knowledge that you didn't really get during the book.  Maybe it's just me, but I prefer the final reveal to make me go "Oh!  Shit!  Why didn't I see that coming?  That makes perfect sense!"  This one felt, to me, like "OK, I guess that also makes sense, but no way in hell would I have expected it."

Final thoughts: a solid, entertaining read with a well-developed world and decent characters.   More than good enough to get me to keep reading the series.

The good: I've had a large amount of time to spend doing not much recently, which means I've been doing the obscenely complicated character generation for Ars Magica (Jason, what are you thinking?)  I've also read more in the past week (for fun) than I have in the previous...two months?  I finished both Chalice and Moon Called.  I'll tell you what I think of the latter in a book review/LJ post later.  I wouldn't want to spoil Chalice for Laura.  Also, I've been officially accepted into BTI, which means I officially get to go to school to become a certified massage therapist.  Also also, Greg's parents will let me leave my stuff here rent-free for June and July while I house-sit, which is very very nice.

The bad:  I have so much time because I'm still unemployed.  While it's not like I'm flat broke, I'm headed that way relatively quickly, and I can't really get a job until mid-June because of an already scheduled family vacation;  the timing is kind of inconvenient.

The ugly: To get that two months of free rent, the apartment has to be spotless by the end of May.  Therefore, I'm off to do battle with the kitchen counter and our epic build-up of recycling.  Wish me luck!

Yesterday I lost almost an entire day to playing a new MMORPG called ACE online.  While this is fairly standard for me, it's also depressing how easily I get addicted to things like this.  I also managed to get a few things done; my snazzy new computer is on the way, which is nice, and I put in a complaint with the people who make Titan about the board being FUBAR.

Today I woke up early (for me) and went with William to go take a look at the car I found on Cars.com.  Now, it was a little over a half hour drive to the dealership, which isn't too terrible.  However, when we got there I asked about the car (a 2000 Nissan Altima with under 70,000 miles on it for under four grand; it's a good enough deal to pursue.)  Apparently the car, which was off the lot for maintenance when I called on Friday but would be back by Monday, was out for a test drive of indefinite duration.  When I asked the guy at the desk where it was and if I could see it, he told us that the car was out on a test drive and he had no idea when it would be back.  Now, this doesn't make sense to me, since test drives are normally 20 minutes or less, right?  The really weird thing is that he didn't try to sell me anything else.  No questions, no offers, no nothing.  Just 'sorry, the car isn't here.  Here's my card, call me before you come back out.'  So I would say that the car doesn't exist and the add is just a way to get people to come to the lot, but there's no reason to bring me to the lot if you aren't going to sell me anything.  Therefore, the car may or may not exist.

I also looked into employment at two Barnes and Nobles and a Borders.  One of the Barnes and Nobles is actually hiring, so I have an application to fill out for them.  Here's hoping it works out!  I also have a few other places to inquire tomorrow, including an adult superstore about ten minutes from my apartment.

I also also managed to hit up the library today, so I now have fresh reading material, including both Moon Called and Support Your Local Wizard (if I'm going to finish that series, I'm going to restart at the beginning.)  I'll let you know what I think as I read them.

I think I'm enjoying the ability to sleep as late as I want and play games as much as I want a little too much.  The past few days have been almost nothing but gaming.  I also broke down and bought a copy of Titan today, which is as awesome as I remembered, but more than I really wanted to pay.  I really need to find a job ASAP...

Yesterday the only productive thing I managed to do was go look at a new apartment that I might potentially be in next year.  It's a studio apartment in the basement of a woman who's a friend of the family, and has two children (10 and 14 or so) and a dalmation.  The rent is slightly less than where I am now, and it's more conveniently located (IE it's actually on a bus line.)  It also has one of those massive trampolines in the back yard, which would be kind of a plus.  On the other hand, last night at midnight or so when coming back from Jason and Rachel's house (yes, I've been there for the past two days, which is odd) Greg and I decided randomly to stop at Kroger, spend about ten dollars each, come back and make breakfast for late night food and then have incredibly geeky conversation until four in the morning, and I think I would miss that if I was living "by myself."

So begins my attempt to keep a public record of what's going on in my life for my friends, especially the out of town ones, and anybody else who wants to read.  I'm fairly new at this, to a point where I have no idea what to name the journal as a whole.  Suggestions would be awesome.  But today was chaotic enough to merit posting about.

I woke up far earlier than I really like to, especially over the summer.  By that I mean before 9AM.  I drove out to the massage therapy school I've been considering going to in the Spring (Body Therapy Institute), which is a 40 minute drive from my apartment, for my final interview with the admissions person.  She actually really likes me, so it was a quick interview; just long enough to ask a few questions about the hands-on one day trial I did (awesome) and to go over the health form.  I know it's part of the process, and it's a fairly pleasant drive, but almost an hour and a half for a half hour interview was kind of bleh.

I spent a few more hours fighting with my computer (it's been giving me problems whenever I try to do anything other than web browsing or internet surfing; I think I finally wore out the graphics card.)  Then I went home to see my Mom and William and Katie!  Katie (my sister) is actually in the USA for the first time in I have no idea how long, although she's flying up to New York tomorrow.  I actually spent most of the time at home looking at a new computer (see above) that I can persuade Mom to get me as a graduation present and a new car.

The new car would be excellent because I'm currently driving a 16 year old Corolla that I don't really fit into properly that keeps managing to mysteriously lose oil.  It doesn't show up in emissions, and they've checked the engine for leaks, but it still goes SOMEWHERE.  The result of this is that I have to put a new quart of oil into the car once or twice a month, which is irritating.  Something similar also happens with the power steering fluid, so now I just drive without power steering.  I've been tolerating it, but if I'm going to be looking at a 40 minute commute three days a week in the spring, I really want a new car before then.  One that's comfortable, preferably with cruise control.

I actually managed to find a car on cars.com that I think I might be getting, and a laptop on newegg.com that I also might be getting, so this has probably been my most productive day of being a graduate so far.  Which is a little depressing.