Book #41 -- Gregory Maguire, Wicked, 406 pages.

This was a very good novel (albeit very different from the musical, and much darker). I loved Elphaba, and hated knowing what was going to happen to her. Although there were a lot of loose ends and questions never answered but I heard he wrote a sequel, so I guess I'll just have to read that. And I'm looking forward to reading his revisionist fairy tales.

Progress toward goals: 138/366 = 37.7%

Books: 41/150 = 27.3%

Pages: 11922/50000 = 23.8%

2008 Book List

cross-posted to 15000pages, 50bookchallenge, and gwynraven

So my partner and I need a place by June 1st. We *have* to move by then, and have not the slightest inkling what we are going to do. We're willing to pony up a month's rent worth to a broker, because the no-fee listings on Craigslist are totally useless. Does anyone know brokers who charge around that who work in Queens and the closer-to-Manhattan Brooklyn area?

We can afford about 1200 max a month, but are aiming for less if it can be done. We want one bedroom or more and have two cats.

• 08:17 Tis a gift to be simple #
• 13:05 I love my library. My finds: Little Miss Sunshine, a book on John Glenn for son's project, Alton Brown's Feasting on Asphalt. #
• 19:31 Family movie night with the kids. We all have different tastes, but at least found one movie to agree on.....a dog movie! #
• 20:49 @mickmel Wondering if you have checked out snackr yet. If it works we can act like we're working AND check our RSS feeds! #

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• 10:54 Favorite quote of the day so far: "women be flappin their bingo wings!" a la someone on ontd! #
• 10:57 @LuckyKiona I just found one from a couple of years ago - they keep their full value! YAY! #

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I'm 26 and have been very shy all my life. I can rarely speak to people I don't know. Using the phone is difficult to me and I will often avoid appointments too. I rarely go out. On the opposite scale, when I'm with people I know very well (eg at work, family) I tend to be loud and obnoxious and a downright asshole even though I know I'm doing it. I hate myself.

Anyway I just wanted to introduce myself and ask if anyone here is the same way when it comes to interacting with people?

I recently sold and old watch on ebay. For scale on the listing picture I included a UK one penny piece as it was the only thing immediately to hand at the time. My Mother pointed out, quite correctly, that international buyers might not know how big a one penny piece was and not be bothered to find out. However, her suggestion of alternative scale was especially dumb:

"You should use something that everyone will recognise... like a strawberry."

Yes. Because strawberries are all exactly the same size... *facepalm*

hey, i just graduated. more on this later. 

Add words to this list for me....

Trust
Love
Brilliance
Success


Help a girl out.  :-)

I just started reading rice-boy.com and wetherobots.com, The odd thing is that thois would mean that my habitual webcomics could start with A, S, D, Q, W, and R. All clustered within 2 square inches on the left side of my keyboard,

Somehow this seems to have a reason and a meaning.

Tweets from today.

• 17:42 Twenty quids worth of steak for tonight. Shared among four of us but still. It's gonna be gooooooood! #

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Its name is Carl. It doesn't put the lotion in the basket.

You know that whole making-friends-at-a-certain-age thing? I'm going out tonight, or in, rather, with two brand new friends. Women, which I truly need more of in my life, and interesting ones, to boot. We will be drinking wine on a porch and there are three of us total. That's all I know. Well, no, I know who the three of us are. It will be me...and two other women. *snort* So, wine, women, porch, and a taxi ride home, I guess. Bah.

I used to make more money. Cabs were the norm for me when I lived downtown, even when I had a car here. But, yeah, it gets pricey. I'm taking the bus there, so at least it's just a one-way taxi ride.

You know that Tori Amos song, "Taxi Ride"? It's in my head now.


Despite myself, I've had a decent day and I'm looking forward to a nice night. Rock on, good people.



.

I miss my sistwhore.

You may recall the wallet that the CTA employee found recently and gave to me in order to locate its owner. I guess I neglected to update my journal, but James and I took the wallet to the campus police at Northeastern and they got in touch with Chad, the wallet-less student from Montana. Meanwhile, I never saw the CTA guy when I used the Brown line, so I hadn't updated him on the situation.

Today, I had lunch with a friend at Noon O Kabab, which is right across the street from the Kedzie station, so I stopped in to see if my favourite employee was there. And he was! I updated him about the wallet and he graciously remembered my name, (I remembered his, too, but I'm good with that sort of thing), and then he tells me that he has found a book. Someone lost a book, a very expensive text book, and maybe I could help find its owner! *giggle* You have to laugh, you just do. I mean, I don't mind trying to assist people. He is clearly a good person who wants to help people and doesn't know how best to go about such ventures, maybe because his English is sketchy, maybe because he's older and not computer literate or he can't get around as easily. Whatever the reasons, I certainly will help as much as I can. But what I'd really like to see is the CTA implement a standardized system for lost objects. I mean, how long have there been trains in Chicago? Why is there no solid protocol in place? Are all cities like this? I'm going to research New York City's policies and Toronto's. My impression of the train system in Canada is very positive and they may be the standard to follow on several counts. I've never seen the like of cleanliness in public transportation as I did in Toronto and Vancouver. Surely these nice Canadians have a lost and found in good working order.

I wonder when I'll be able to make the time to do this thing. This petitioning the CTA's protocol thing. Meanwhile, anyone in Chicago lost an expensive text book recently? *snort*

Being at a...well, not a crossroads, but rather a four-way intersection with a broken stop light, a five-car pileup ahead of me, and a SUV being driven by a alcoholic housewife right behind me one inch away from my bumper, has led me to some interesting idle thoughts and embarrassing acts of desperation. Most recently, I walked into a bookstore/cafe that didn't advertise but nonetheless obviously had a conservative Protestant Christian bent. Still, it had a good lunch menu and, since at least they didn't sell "liberty fries", I ordered a meal. As I waited and browsed and without any real hesitation, I started cruising the cook. I'm not sure if cruising staff at a conservative bookstore is a pathetic act of desperation or a subtle act of cultural terrorism, but either way I couldn't help myself. I was consumed by two types of animal appetite that afternoon.

He earned checks in almost all the boxes in my internal list of desireable physical characteristics: taller than me, long-hair (stuffed poorly but provocatively under a cap), and stubble. What really fascinated me, though, was how rude - well, outright disdainful - he was toward his co-workers. When one told him she couldn't find where the extra mayo was, he simply without saying a word - without even looking at her - went into the storage area for it and, again without a single word or a nod, later found it and handed it to her. He carried around the sort of tight-lipped, expressionless face that wards off casual pleasantries like an asshole's crucifix. If I was a straight woman, I'd have a chorus of "Nice Guys" behind me, whining about how I only flirted with jerks. So when he finally returned my admiration with a look that could either be interpreted as an examining glance or as a shot of contempt, I knew I had made my day.

As I ate (not surprised but disappointed that he didn't tuck away a slip of paper with his phone number under the fries), I imagined that he was enraged by the necessity of having to work at such a place. In the storyline that unfolded in my mind, he enlisted me in his war on the uptight Establishment management by gesturing me toward a back room, where he preceeded to "get it" with me against a bookshelf, all without ever saying a word. My head knocks off the shelf books with such classic homophobic titles as "Marxism and The Gay Conspiracy" and "The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS." It's sex where even lust isn't the primary purpose; instead it's political, sex as an act of terrorism, and I'm nothing to him but a vehicle for backroom defiance. (Was I really objectifying the cook if, in my objectification scenario, he is actively objectifying me? Now that's postmodernism I can get interested in.)

Of course, none of this happened, and the impossible to understand but thrilling glare I was awarded with was the limit of our interaction. In spite of the apparent views of the management, I'll probably eat there again - a good, cheap lunch trumps politics in my book - so maybe he and I will "meet" again (or perhaps even meet for real, although I'm sure after the fantasy I had any real encounter will inevitably be a painful disappointment).

But slooooooowly.
They were still crating up the display when we sat there this morning, but we got out of Atlanta by noon.

Ever since the turkey happened, I just couldn't seem to get interested in cleaning the truck. I'd vacuum and pick up, but the windows and dashboard just sat and collected dust. It was more a lack of interest....I sort of go anxious when thinking about cleaning in the front.
Today I steeled myself and washed the windows, cleaned the dashboard and shined the chrome pieces in the dash.
I noticed that the turkey and broken windshield really gouged up the dash on Stan's side.
Anyway.
The truck looks waaaaaaaay better.

I've been in many interesting houses, but none this interesting.

http://home.aol.com/decorating/photo-gallery/pch/_a/its-a-bird-its-a-plane-its-ahouse/20080514163009990001?icid=1615984945x1202538588x1200304713

I'm only an occasional crime reader. I don't gobble crime books up, but rather wait until something shows up on my radar. Partially due to my Grub Street class, which has many students interested in crime fiction this time around, and partially due to the brain-killing amount of bad fantasy I've been reading via Clarkesworld slush, I've picked up a bit more crime as of late.

Today, I bought two books — as a datum for the question, "Does blogging help a writer sell books?" I bought What Burns Within for no other reason than I find author Sandra Ruttan's crime fiction-themed blog entertaining. Then I saw the Hard Case Crime Bloch books were out, and even better they were collected in one volume as a double. I have a special weakness for doubles — I like doubles the way my autistic cousin Taki likes license plate numbers that add up to a prime (Whee! *handflaphandflap*) but I have a complaint. The covers are friggin' awful.

The Ruttan looks virtually self-published, with the stock image of a lick of flame that carries over artlessly to the spine over a dead black background, the Baby's First Font choices, and 1974-called-and-it-wants-its-texture-back embossments.



The Bloch books are just ruined. The usual retro look is in play, except that as this book has two front covers, the barcode was just plopped onto one of them. Not only does that annoy because it signals somewhat arbitrarily that Spiderweb is the B-title, it was useless. When I put the book down on the counter — Shooting Star side up, of course, because I could not bear to look at the other — the cashier opened the front cover and scanned the barcode on the interior flap anyway.



Don't let these horrible scars dissaude you from checking out the books though! Take pity on poor Ruttan and poor dead Bloch!

• 20:16 @misstreah You'll get a similar sentiment from most men: "If I had breasts I'd never leave the house. I'd just play with them all day." #
• 10:17 @jttaylor That totally sounds like a good idea! Take a little mini vacation from the Big D every now and then. It'll keep you sane. #
• 10:24 @jttaylor @therotund I'm pretty sure they do. I've been trying to tell her this... #
• 10:27 @jttaylor One trick to freelancing without burning out that applies here is to stick to a M-F, 9-5 sched. You need not write 24-7. #
• 10:30 @jttaylor I still don't thinkTom would mind. He probably owns some stained pants of his own... #
• 10:33 @jttaylor That is true. The man is pretty inscrutable. #

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