Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

The problem with finding a good book is that, when it’s over, I go through a sort of grieving process. For the characters and the story. I miss them and wonder how they’re doing. And I want to have another experience like that again, where I get so incredibly involved in someone else’s world for a while, but the prospect of kissing frogs while searching for a prince is just so daunting that I have grown ever more hesitant to pick up another book. So the more books I’ve read that I love, contrarily, the less likely I am to take a chance on another book. An overall trend, perhaps, of wanting to stay comfortable in my own little zone?

What’s got me all angsty, you might wonder? I just finished The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield and even though I knew I was hastening it towards its end, I couldn’t put it down. Instead of getting out of bed this morning and brushing my teeth, I picked up my book and carried on from where I left off last night when I fell asleep reading. For a girl who grew up reading and re-reading Jane Eyre, it was absolutely wonderful.

But.

To get there, my previous two books were The Road by Cormac McCarthy (supposed to be incredibly powerful and moving; I found it pointless) and Within the Shadows by Brandon Massey (puerile).

I feel like my time is too valuable to waste on crappy books, but who am I punishing by going on strike? I need a royal book tester, is what I need. I had high hopes for Goodreads.com, but their search engines are really… sub par. Every “Best Of” list has at least one Twilight book on it. Honestly, guys? And I dunno, my tastes run maybe not 90 degrees, but some discernible difference from the pack. The Historian only has 3.5 stars on Amazon, but I think it’s the best thing I’ve read in years.

Sigh. I dunno. I’m gonna try some Agatha Christie next, I think.

This is why I buy the Applecare extended warranty.

On my MacBook Pro, Applecare is due to run out on April 27. I took it in because there were some dark spots on the display, some blemishes on the case, and a loud fan. They did a complete freaking overhaul. They replaced:

• The top case ($285)
• The display ($850)
• The optical drive ($150)
• The logic board ($650)
• Both fans ($90)

(Prices from Powerbook Medic.)

Yes, you are out there shouting that all that stuff is overpriced, which I’m sure it is. But I paid $349 for the warranty, and I’m pretty sure you can’t get all these things for any equivalent notebook for under that price. And to have all that stuff replaced on a three year old computer? Win.

Just spent a great 5 days at SXSW Interactive, and I’m WORN OUT! I got to catch up with some old friends, meet some folks I’d been looking forward to meeting, conspire with my panel to disrupt the conference, laugh at all the people desperately and repeatedly pimping themselves, watch Brian Clark and Mike Monello ask the tough questions, see Alan Tudyk get in an elevator, do guerilla filming in a parking lot, stroll through the streets of downtown Austin covered in fake blood, and have lots of long lunches with chitchat (I think I missed all the keynotes). It was lots of fun, and I am really looking forward to Portland this summer.

You can see my SXSW-tagged pics (few though they might be) on my photostream.

This is something like week four of my being sick.  Did you know that “sick” and “suck” are separated by one small letter?  True.  

Anyway, I went to the doctor last week because my cough never went away, but my regular doctor was on vacation and this other lady told me I was having bronchial spasms (something I’ve never had in my life), gave me some Advair and this awful cough medicine that doesn’t stop coughing but makes me sleep, so I cough in my sleep, which is annoying, and she sent me on my way. Coincidentally, that was the last day of my sinus infection antibiotics.

Two days later, I had a 101 fever and was coughing so much that I couldn’t even talk to anyone because it would set off this chain reaction cough that would last for what seemed like half an hour, during which I could see my husband’s eyes dart to the clock, the car keys, and mentally calculate how far away the ER was.

My regular doctor was back today and he X-rayed my chest and sinuses. Verdict: still have a sinus infection. I get to take these high-octane meds now: Levaquin (ruptured tendons!) and Prednisone (steroids!). At least he prescribed the good, worky cough medicine that allows me to have some sort of rudimentary function.

So anyway, I guess that’s good news – at least I know what’s wrong with me now. I can assure you that husbandly sympathy pretty much trickles away after about week 2. Also, he stepped on a nail this weekend, so I had to sympathy back at him, swimmy head and all, when all I wanted to do was wooze.

On another note, the radishes are going great guns, and the carrots and peas made an appearance this morning. They’re forecasting temps down to 40 this weekend, which could mean 25 and could mean 50, knowing this area. I still have to wait to plant the other stuff.

The voice of Whataburger’s commercials (“Just like you like it!”) is the same guy who played Elder Lyons in Fallout 3.

I went to go read to Caroline’s class today, which is always fun. The kids are so enthusiastic about stories. And they all listen in their own little ways. One girl likes to play with my toes as I read. Other kids just have the permanent wiggles. Other kids just do their own thing, which is fine. Generally, they’re really well-behaved, and even if they’re not paying attention, they’re doing it quietly. And they always ask for more stories, because it means they don’t have to do any work.

So after story time, they had a little independent reading time before lunch, and another kid brought over Frog and Toad Together and gave it to Caroline and me. I had this book when I was a kid, and I remember that there was something deeply, deeply disturbing about it, to the point that I didn’t like reading it even while I had some unhealthy fascination with it. So I seized the chance to read it today, wondering just what it was that upset me so when I was little. And we leafed through it, and it was perfectly innocuous.

As we were reading, lunchtime came, so Caroline ran to put the book back, but darn it all, I was not going to let it go. The kids lined up, but I ran over to the bookshelf and skimmed through to the back. Aha! Dragons and giants. Scary? Not so much.

Hmm. The Dream. Last story in the book.  Images from Google Books.

Wait, what?  Toad’s doing well up on stage and his friend is in the audience getting smaller and smaller and smaller and he just disappears?  Ay ay?

To a child, it’s just freaky.  To an adult, I have to wonder what the moral is – don’t excel?

Am I really that much of a freak for liking my Y-axis inverted?

This is not a double entendre, I promise.

It’s just that I’ve been playing a lot (a LOT) of Fallout 3 lately, and the most natural thing in the world for me is to play it with the Y-axis inverted, so that pressing down on the joystick brings the camera up, and vice versa. When I hand the controller over to Hub for him to do something, he calls me a mutant freak of nature and scoffs repeatedly at me. Scoff, scoff scoff.

I dunno, man, it just feels right.

I was gloating a couple of weeks ago because I went in for a full allergy test panel and showed some reactions on my arm several days later. The allergist said that he only sees that in people with very good immune systems. And I hadn’t gotten sick with any of the crud going around this year.

And then hubby got sick and I gloated even harder, because he never gets sick, it’s always me who gets sick. so even though I was being nice to him I was secretly thinking, “Ha, it’s not me!”

Can you guess what happened next?

I’ve been sick since last Sunday. Started out with a nasty sore throat; now I’m pretty sure I have infected sinuses because I feel like someone hit me in the face with a cinderblock. Can’t even chew. Oh, and being up all night with the nosebleed last night, that was fun.

Things I’ve accomplished in the last week:
1. Sleeping about 16 hours a day
2. Playing Fallout 3 for the other 8 in order to take my mind off how miserable I am.

Things I haven’t accomplished in the last week:
1. Anything that’s not on the list above.