Not That Axe-Murdering And Characterization Are Necessarily Mutually Exclusive.

Followup to yesterday's post: I went to the D&D game feeling like I'd made my peace with the kind of game we were playing and ready to just enjoy pretending to hit things with an axe for a while. Two minutes after I arrived, everybody was deep in a conversation about how maybe we wanted to do something with more role-playing instead. I'm honestly not sure if it's me that has terrible timing, or everybody else.

Oh, well. I did do a lot of hitting things with an axe after that, anyway.

I Might Finally Have Enough Hit Points

Tonight's social activity: Dungeons & Dragons. I haven't really done much tabletop gaming in years, and D&D was never my favorite game to begin with, but a co-worker wheedled me into joining his game a few months ago, and, hey, at least it gets me out of the house, right? It's also not the sort of campaign I usually like: very hack 'n' slash dungeon-crawl-y, with characters that are essentially disposable. Very video game. I was always much more into unfolding stories and actual role-playing, but, alas, my crazy work schedule makes trying to participate in that sort of game an exercise in frustration. I've tried.

I feel like I'm finally getting into the spirit of the thing, though. After playing a series of doomed half-assed rogues -- half-assed in part because I found the Pathfinder character creation a little confusing and tended to err on the side of screwing myself over -- and a couple of fighters who could dish it out but not take it, I got some help from some handy character generating software and rolled myself up a half-orc barbarian who is easily the most munchkin thing I've ever played. We'll see how long this one lasts!

Almost But Not Quite As Good As Finding A Big Stack Of Money

Story of the day: Mysterious Stacks Of Books In NYC! Well, they're not all that mysterious. I mean the article includes the name of the guy leaving the stacks of books around and some quotes from him about why he did it. So... Kind of the opposite of mysterious, really.

Anyway. My bookish heart finds this utterly delightful and is thrilled to know that there are such things in the world. My practical brain, however, can't help kind of agreeing with the people in the comments suggesting that leaving books sitting around outside is probably not the best thing in the world for them.

April Currentlies

I got nothin' else today, so let's go with this.

Current clothes: Gray sweats, Rush concert t-shirt, black socks.

Current mood: Not bad. Halfway between being happy at how much I've gotten done lately and mildly stressed about how much I haven't gotten done. But I'm leaning slightly more towards the positive, moodwise, I think.

Current music: Norm Sherman by Norm Sherman. Which is... an interesting album. Let me put it this way, I listened to it for the first time immediately after an episode of Welcome to Night Vale, and I'm pretty sure it was the weirder of the two.

Current annoyance: No matter how much time I have, the amount of time necessary to do all the things I need or want to do is always greater.

Current thing: I'm taking a little time off this week, since my schedule easily allows it for once, to try to get caught up on various things I've fallen behind on... Housework, yardwork, etc., etc. And I am making progress, but... Yeah, see "current annoyance."

Current desktop picture: Still the same Doctor Who image. I suppose it may actually be time to change it up soon. Even if it is pretty awesome.

Current book: I just read The Adventures of Tintin: Explorers on the Moon, which a friend lent me, earlier today. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to read next. Something non-fictional.

Current song in head: The "Whalers on the Moon" ditty from the second episode of Futurama. I blame Tintin. Mostly.

Current refreshment: Orange spice tea.

Current DVD in player: Most recently, Spy. Which was cute. Not amazing or anything, but cute, and worth a watch. Also, man, is it nice to see someone who looks like Melissa McCarthy starring in a movie like this. Hollywood generally not only doesn't let us ladies of the rounder persuasion do any ass-kicking (even of the comedic kind), it generally prefers to pretend we don't exist at all.

Current happy thing: Not being at work.

Current thought: We're whalers on the moon! We carry a harpoon!

I Don't Think The Spinoff Is Going To Help.

Dear The Walking Dead,

Congratulations! You are now a serious contender for the title of "most frustrating season-ending cliffhanger ever."

I just cannot remotely decide whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Yes, The Eggplant Thing Is A Real Book I Actually Bought.

Yesterday was the local library's big (well, big-ish; it's a small library) Friends of the Library book sale. As always, I told myself I was going to be restrained, and mostly just look for stuff that was already on my wishlist, and, as usual, I left with a big pile of books I had no intention of buying, anyway. There's just nothing like a $2-a-bag price tag to make you suddenly convinced that if you don't go home with a copy of something called Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant, you will somehow regret it for the rest of your life.

Well, at least I can say that my books acquired total for the year is still smaller than my books read total. So far. I did intend to help that along by spending the rest of the day reading, but I was so tired from getting up at noon to buy books after working all night that I had trouble keeping my eyes open. Ah, well. I have the rest of the year to spend working on it, right?

Sometimes I Think We'd Be Better Off If We Just Dropped The Mic On April Fool's.

So, did everyone survive April Fool's Day? I have to say, it is not my favorite day of the year. I quite like jokes that are funny, clever, and creative, and most importantly obviously jokes, and which have no consequences of any kind. Think Geek's fake products, for example, are always good for a chuckle. (And when those have consequences, they're actually the good kind. I mean, enough people loved the idea of the tauntaun sleeping bag that they ended up making it for real, and how cool is that?) Pranks and deceptions, on the other hand, I do not like. Even the most harmless ones are mildly uncomfortable, and the less harmless ones can be incredibly bad ideas.

On that note... Any of you guys get caught by the Gmail Mic Drop? In case you didn't and don't feel like clicking the link, they introduced this new "feature" supposedly for use when you were fed up with a conversation. It'd e-mail a gif of a Minion dropping a microphone and stalking off to all other recipients, then ignore the rest of the conversation forever. They yanked it pretty quickly, after a bunch of people accidentally hit the button on important work-related e-mail. Which isn't too surprising, as it was right next to the usual "send" button, and apparently actually replaced a "send and archive" button a lot of people habitually use. (I don't see that on my mail, myself, though. Maybe you have to deliberately set it up?)

I damned near got caught by this thing, myself, actually. I saw the button show up (on, it's probably worth pointing out, the evening of the 31st in my time zone), immediately figured it was an April Fool's thing -- Google's actually done some really great ones in the past, of the harmless and obvious kind -- and went to their blog to see what it supposedly did. Mildly cute, I thought, if not exactly up to their usual standards. And I went back to click on the thing, because I was curious to see whatever funny "Ha, ha, April Fool's, obviously we wouldn't actually do that!" box would pop up. I damned near did it on a conversation I was in the middle of with a friend, but common sense prevailed, and I tried it out instead as a reply to some link I e-mailed myself ages ago and did not care about. Boy, was I taken aback when I realized that it actually did what it said it did. "Huh," I thought to myself. "That seems... dangerous." And very, very carefully avoided it after that.

Making it all worse, even though they removed it quickly, once it was there for you it didn't go away unless you reloaded Gmail. I certainly saw it on mine all night, until I finally thought to try that.

Just say "no" to stupid April Fool's pranks, boys and girls. Especially if they involve screwing with services used by people all over the world for doing lots of serious and important things. I wouldn't think this would need saying, but there you go.

April Showers You With Blog Posts

So, the last couple of years, in honor (kinda-sorta) of this blog's anniversary month, I've run the experiment of posting at least something, no matter how short, for every day in April. It's a good antidote, I suppose, for my tendency to just wander away for weeks at a time and forget about this place. So, I'll be trying that again this month. Get ready for lots of posts about... things. Of some kind.

Right. That's one day down! That was easy.

Not A "10"

So, my verdict on Windows 10, for the record, is that it'll be pretty nice if they ever get it to actually work. In the meantime, my desktop is now back to Windows 8.1, and Microsoft owes me back the day of my life I spent dealing with that crap. Gaah.

Welcome... to NM.

Guess who's got tickets for the Welcome to Night Vale live show they've finally -- finally -- decided to bring to New Mexico, and which will be playing in Albuquerque ON MY BIRTHDAY?

Yep! Me! Whoo-hoo! Gonna be the best birthday ever! (OK, admittedly, it's not until July. I could get hit by a bus before then, or swallowed up into the depths of the existential void or eaten by eldritch horrors or something. But I will confidently predict it to be the Best Birthday Ever, anyway, because we must always live in optimism.)

I'm extra amused that the show is called "Ghost Stories" and they've managed to book the purportedly haunted theater. See, guys? You come to New Mexico, we receive you in all appropriate style!

March Currentlies

This is at least a couple of days earlier in the month than I usually do this, but I'm working ridiculous hours for the next few days, plus I hardly blogged at all in February. So what the heck. Here we go.

Current clothes: Gray sweatpants. Blue t-shirt from Carlsbad Caverns National Park. White socks. Black leather boots.

Current mood: Okay, I guess. But tired and a little out of it. I've been tired and a little out of it all week. It's not that I haven't been getting enough sleep, more that the shiftwork is increasingly kicking my ass. Last week I did seven days in a row of night shifts, and I'm still not quite recovered from it, somehow.

Current music: Nothing much, really. Well, except for this happy, upbeat version of the Walking Dead theme music. I just listened to that a few minutes ago, and it was weirdly creepy in how not-creepy it was.

Current annoyance: The usual having-a-human-body stuff. Most notably it's unambiguously spring here now, and my allergies are starting to notice. Mercifully, there's not too much of the sneezing-and-snotting right now -- I like to think that's because I got proactive and started the Flonase early, but probably it's because pollen season hasn't really started in earnest yet -- but my sinuses are already giving me problems. Although, come to think of it, they did that sometimes during the winter, too. Basically, sinuses are evil.

Current thing: This is shaping up to be an amazing year of reading so far, both in terms of quality and quantity. Between that encouraging fact, and the tiredness and evil sinuses sapping my energy, all I want to do is cocoon myself on the sofa and read forever.

Current desktop picture: Still the same Doctor Who image it's been for months.

Current book: Visions of Sugar Plums by Janet Evanovich. Because who doesn't want to read a Christmas story in March? I don't know that I'm enjoying it as much as the Stephanie Plum series proper, though.

Current song in head: The last couple of days, it's just been random stuff that's dissipated quickly. Which is an immense relief, since before that I had Jonathan Coulton's "Nemeses" stuff in my head for, like, a week and a half. That's a fun song, but not when it's playing on continuous loop night and day.

Current refreshment: Raspberry ginger ale. Which is an interesting combination of flavors. I'm not 100% sure how I feel about it. I mean, it's good, but I think maybe I like regular ginger ale better.

Current DVD in player: Nothing right now, but yesterday it was the classic Doctor Who episode "The Brain of Morbius." It's a lot of fun to go back and revisit some of the old Fourth Doctor eps occasionally. And Tom Baker was my first Doctor, as he was for a lot of Americans, so he holds a special place in my heart.

Current happy thing: Allergies aside, the weather really is lovely. Also, I finally got the permanent crown put on my tooth, and after a year of sensitivity and root canals and all kinds of indignities, it's quite a relief to be able to chew on both sides of my mouth now without pain or worry.

Current thought: Seriously, all I want to do is sleep and read and read and sleep. But, noooo. I have housework to do, and I've got to go get a haircut, and then I've got some 12-hour shifts to work, and... Bah!

Felicitous Calendrical Adjustment!

Happy Leap Day! I hope everybody has enjoyed their extra bonus bit of February. Me, I spent mine working, then sleeping (more than I really should have), then finishing a good book, then watching last night's episode of The Walking Dead. So, a very full life, really.

February Currentlies

Yes, it's time for this again! And I have taken my own and others' advice and finally replaced the "current worry" with "current happy thing." Because it's much better for my brain to think about happy things than all the stupid stuff it likes to worry about. Anyway:

Current clothes: Gray sweats. This Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy t-shirt, which I bought recently because there was a "buy a t-shirt, get a free pair of socks" sale, and how could I resist? Gray and green wool socks (not the ones I got free with the shirt).

Current mood: Meh. Kind of tired and out of it, since I got less than three hours of sleep today. Basically, I got off my night shift, took a nap, and then got up again. Which at least will make switching over to days happen easily. Well, OK, not easily, but it will make it happen. I'm also trying not to be stressed, which is harder to do the less sleep you have.

Current music: Nothing much. Oh, wait, I guess this cut from the Mad Max: Fury Road soundtrack that a friend linked me to because we were discussing the movie. (I just started playing it again. Man, that is waking me up!)

Current annoyance: Having a house and a human body, both of which are aging and need all kinds of maintenance and repairs.

Current thing: Being a responsible adult and getting important stuff done, even though what I really want to do is to go back into book-hibernation. Yay, me.

Current desktop picture: Still this (spoilery) Doctor Who picture. Because I am not tired of it yet.

Current book: I just finished 21st Century Dead: A Zombie Anthology, edited by Christopher Golden. Which was okay, but nowhere near as good as his first zombie anthology. I'm now about to start Hard Eight by Janet Evanovich, because Janet Evanovich is perfect reading for when you've had three hours of sleep and need some fun, mindless distraction.

Current song in head: There's been a lot of stuff lately, but right now it seems to be "Every You Every Me" by Placebo.

Current refreshment: Nothing. But I should drink some water or something, 'cause I'm kind of thirsty.

Current DVD in player: Most recently, disk 2 of season 2 of The Wire. Which is still very good, although I sometimes feel like I'm only pretending I'm actually following all of it. And I forgot half the characters' names again between seasons.

Current happy thing: In an amazing and inexplicable triumph of willpower, I have bought no books yet this year. Zero! None! I'm starting to see tiny little gaps open up on the TBR shelves where books have come off and not been replaced, and it's terribly gratifying. I won't swear it'll last very long, though. Especially as I have a doctor's appointment in Albuquerque tomorrow, and I may very well talk myself into a stop at Page One while I'm there.

Current thought: I really should get some things done around the house now, and have some food, and take a walk... But I cannot decide what order I should do these things, in, and the indecision is making me want to just give up and flop on the couch instead.

Song Of The Day

Because you want to keep a sense of humor about these things.

The Word Of The Day Is "Root."

Well, my sewer has now been de-clogged and my tooth de-pulped. And I am weirdly amused by how fundamentally similar those two procedures actually are.

Anyway, the root canal was long, tedious, uncomfortable and tiring, but not painful (except for the needles at the beginning), and definitely nowhere near the top of the Worst Things I've Experienced in My Life list. And, holy crap, the pain is gone! I'd gotten so used to it that now every time I pull air past that tooth or take a drink of cold water, I feel genuinely shocked that it doesn't hurt. Mind you, my poor jaw definitely feels like it's been held open with clamps for three hours. But I'm sure that will pass.

The sewer problem, by the way, turned out to be due to roots. It seems that at some point I really ought to have the old iron pipes replaced with PVC, otherwise they're likely to cause more problems down the road, but for now I can flush my toilet with impunity again, and all is well. Whew!

Two Not At All Great Tastes

You know what's even more fun than contemplating having a root canal tomorrow? Hoping that the plumbers I just called will be able to get my sewer line unclogged before my root canal appointment tomorrow. Yay! There is nothing more fun than having your tub back up when you flush the toilet! (Fortunately, I think it's only a partial clog, as this sort of thing is not happening every time. But it did happen last night, and today when I tried to take a shower my toilet started gurgling, so, yeah. Something clearly needs to be dealt with here.)

Seriously, life, do you just think it's funny to pile the most cliched imaginable awfulnesses up on me all at once, or what? SIGH.

Good News, Bad News

So, today I found out I have to have a root canal. But, on the plus side, I also found a way to keep my shoes from coming untied all the time.

I Aten't Dead

Oh, dear, I've been neglecting this blog long enough that people have started to e-mail me and ask if I'm all right. I'm fine! I'm sorry for disappearing! I think two things have been happening this month that explain what I've been doing instead of blogging. First, I kind of went into this state where all I really wanted to do all day was lie on the sofa and shove words into my face. Sort of the book-lover's equivalent of hibernation, I think. So I mostly did that for a while, and then I had to scramble around doing all the responsible-adult things that piled up on me because I neglected them while I was book-hibernating. Which I'm still in the middle of. (Next up: dentist's appointment! Whee!)

I feel like I should have something else to say here, though, so I will offer up a random thought.

Random thought: I have heard that in some places there is a tradition/superstition that if you don't take down your Christmas decorations by January 6, the Devil will come and get you. I am strongly in favor of adopting this here in the US. Hell, I may almost be ready to start believing in the Devil myself if it will get people to take down their Christmas lights. Come on, guys! It's nearly February!

New Year's Currentlies

Current clothes: Green sweatpants. Gray sweatshirt with an Edward Gorey picture of a cat lounging on a pile of books and the words "books. cats. life is sweet." (Because, really, what more do you need? Not even capital letters!) White socks.

Current mood: Very good, happy and relaxed. I spent the entire morning in my pajamas, doing nothing but reading a good book until I finished it. Man, I need to do that more often. It's very good for my psychological health. (The shirt does not lie!)

Current music: Nothing much. Once again, most of my listening-to-things time is going to trying to keep up with a bunch of podcasts. Or at least not fall further behind. My podcast backlog hasn't remotely reached the out-of-control state that my book and DVD backlogs have, but it is constantly threatening to expand in that direction.

Current annoyance: I was totally prepared to say winter, and that I'm entirely ready for it to go away now. Except, uh... it kind of did? The temperature suddenly shot upwards today, with the result that there was a veritable waterfall of melting snow pouring off every roof in town.

Current thing: It's a new year! So I'm going to be more creative and more productive and healthier and just generally all-around better at living! Right?

Current desktop picture: Still this spoilery promo picture released before the Doctor Who season finale. I might leave it up for a while, I dunno. It is a pretty awesome picture.

Current book: I've just started in on a bit of local history with Elfego Baca in Life and Legend by Larry D. Ball.

Current song in head: Nothing at the moment. Although Brain Radio has been unusually suggestible lately, and I fully expect something new to set it off and get it playing something annoying at any moment.

Current refreshment: Mellow Moments tea, which is a really nice delicate blend of peppermint, spearmint, chamomile and, I dunno, some kind of spices and stuff.

Current DVD in player: Disc 5 of season 10 of Supernatural. About which I appear to have no opinions whatsoever. Well, OK, I definitely have opinions about it, both positive and negative, while I'm watching it. But the moment I turn the TV off, I entirely cease to care.

Current thought: Maybe next time I do this, I'll add in "current happy thing" or something to take the place of the "current worry" entry that I eliminated last time. (Which, I must say, was a very good idea.) Seems like it'd be a little redundant this time, though, as it'd just be feeling good and having the day off of work and getting some quality reading-in-the-PJs time in.

2015: The Year In Books And Other Stuff

Happy New Year to all! I hope 2016 is bright and happy for all of you, and brings you many good things.

2015 was, I suppose, a messy, turbulent year for the world at large (although I'm not sure if there are actually any years that aren't), but, looking back, it seems fairly sedate for me, personally. The big event of the year for me was having family visiting and doing the Balloon Fiesta and various trips around New Mexico, in October. Well, that and rain flooding in through my floor again during the summer. Looking back over the blog, I'm not sure I even talked about that here... It was extremely annoying, although fortunately not too difficult to fix: I just had to caulk up a crack in the concrete slab floor. Also on the subject of water being where it's not supposed to be, I think my roof might finally be fixed for good this time, so that's definitely a plus for the year. I also got a new oven, a new dryer, and a new couch and loveseat, so my house is overall a nicer place to be now than it was at the beginning of the year, even if it is continuing to age. Oh, and, yes, I am going to brag about winning that Doctor Who trivia contest forever.

I also read a lot of books, as always. My total for the year was 137 books. Interestingly, 2014's total was 138, and I have no idea how the heck I manage to be that consistent about it. I'm not consciously trying to be! You can see my whole year's worth of reading here.

As is traditional, I include here a list of my favorite books of the year, or at least the ones I gave the highest star ratings to on LibraryThing. It's a pretty good list this year, I think:

Fiction

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Promise by Gene Luen Yang
Sweetland by Michael Crummey
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie
Tenth of December by George Saunders
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Putting on the Ritz by Joe Keenan

Non-fiction

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe
Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight by M. E. Thomas
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better by Clive Thomspon
The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession by David Grann
Size Matters Not: The Extraordinary Life and Career of Warwick Davis by Warwick Davis

A little of both

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012 edited by Dave Eggers


We're not going to talk about how many books I acquired in 2015, though. Not at all.