John Varley's "Mammoth" Pt. 2

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I finished my first John Varley book today (Amazon), and I have to say that I quite enjoyed it. Tom Clancy had good things to say about him as an author (as evidenced by the quote on the front cover), and while I wouldn’t go so far as he did, it was a fun read.

The novel as a whole seemed a bit… thin… but that didn’t detract much from the fun involved. After all, this is a novel about time travel and mammoths. It was exciting enough toward the end, and I was caught at Tully’s trying to finish it before I left. Luckily, although our main character is a bit of a “supergenius” when it comes to physics/math, you don’t get bogged down with detailed explanation of the nature of quarks or anything similar. It was a bit of an obvious attempt to dumb it down for the readers by essentially only having our main guy explain such things to his animal-trainer friend, but it’s easily overlooked.

This definitely isn’t one of those books I know I’ll read again, but it’s one I’d suggest to friends for some light, fun reading. I have a hard time ridding myself of my books (not helpfully influenced by Josh), so I doubt I’ll be putting it up on BookMooch anytime soon.

Hey, the return key worked this time! Firefox just barfed on me twice for trying to hit it, heh.

If anyone wants to borrow this book, shoot me an e-mail. If you don’t have my e-mail, ask me in the blog, or give me yours.

Stargate!

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We’re on Season 8 already… oof!  It looks like we’ll be spending all day today and tomorrow finishing out what episodes we have here at the studio.

Speaking of things to watch, has anyone had a chance to see The 300 either yesterday or today?  Sure it’s early, but some people are bound to be fanatical, and if I know one of them I’d like to see what they thought.  I’m off to see it tomorrow night with Josh I think… his friend Brian called and invited us, and it looks like we’re going unless I tell Josh I don’t want to go.  I think it’ll be us, Brian, and someone else and his girlfriend, no idea who they are.  Josh has met the one guy once.

I’ll have to write about what I think of the movie when we get back.

I love my shuffle.  Shuff shuff shuff!

Shuffling Along

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Josh came home today with a surprise for me… an iPod Shuffle! -grin-

It’s a blue one, and was on refresh. And of course, Josh gets his employee discount on top of that, which is why he bought it. Apparently, back when V-day was around, he was planning on getting one for me then, but since none showed up on refresh at the time he didn’t bother. Might as well wait for a discount eh?

Anyway, I’m totally excited about it… and it’s really cute. I’ve already loaded it with “Top 200 Hits of the 90’s”. Should be lots of fun. Woo!

Birthdays

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No, it’s not mine, but it is my good friend Lisa’s. Or at least it was a week or so ago (hey, this is the first time she’s been back in WA). I’m excited today because I get to give her the felted bag I made for her, and see what she thinks of it. -grin- I was going to try and wrap it up in some string/yarn to keep it simple, but as soon as I removed the books from the bag that were helping shape it, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to fold the bag up the way I was thinking. Sure, these bags are quite durable, but I just “pulled it out of the mold”, so to speak, and I really don’t like the idea of potentially messing with the shaping that (right now) is so nice.

It’s a good shape for a book bag I think… and so far thee strap on my bag has been nothing but strong, so I’m hoping that it’ll be able to hold what she needs. And yes, I am aware that she’ll only be in school until this summer and then she’s done, but it could serve as an overnight bag too, couldn’t it?

It should be really cool either way. I put it on my shoulder and almost didn’t want to let it go, haha.

In other knitting news, that linen stitch scarf is still slow-going. For some reason I can’t keep up a good rhythm on it. I keep stopping for a few minutes after 4 rows or so. It’s a bit odd. I love it, but I think it’ll take me awhile to finish. Maybe if the next scarf is twice as wide I’ll have better luck staying on track.

Mornings

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For me, I think I’m affected by the weather in a big way. They say that people feel more depressed during the winter, and happier during the summer. I think that’s true for me, although I never realize it until summer comes along.

Point is, I have a major headache that I’ve had since early this morning. Josh got up to leave for work, and I had enough of a headache that I figured drinking tea and staying up might be the solution, because often I get headaches because I sleep too much. Well, it didn’t quite work out, and at this point it’s not quite bothersome enough that I want to take advil, especially since we’re down to 4 pills and haven’t gone to the store to grab some more.

In other news, they’re doing a fire alarm test in our apartment building today, which can be anywhere from 2-5pm, so Josh has suggested that I meet him at work at 2. Apparently he has something he says “isn’t that exciting” for us to do while we’re waiting… which is totally fun for me but at the same time a bit odd, since I have no clue what this “unexciting” thing could be. Either way, I’ll have to start getting ready soon.

I’m going to go take some advil.

Stashin' It

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I didn’t get any new knitting done today, other than the odd row on the linen stitch scarf that’s been in the works for at least a few days now.

But I did do something productive when it comes to knitting though. I revisited a long lusted-after yarn website, called HandPaintedYarn.com, and it is wonderful! Their yarn is much more inexpensive than your local LYS is likely to be. And the colors are great. I did a bit of online research on them, and most people seem to be really happy with the service. The forum thread was from back in early ’05, right after the site was featured in a magazine review, so at the time shipping was slow do to the influx of orders. Something like 6 months’ worth in 10 days.

Check it out if you’re interested in yarn… as soon as I have the resources I’m going to go and buy a boatload! *slaps wrist* No! No more yarn until you use up some more of your stash!

Ah, well. That’s it for now.

(I started typing this entry up yesterday, but didn’t get around to posting it, so if this and the next entry show up back-to-back, it wasn’t my intention)

Private?

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I used to have a LiveJournal, and I used to write a lot of private entries. Not for the first couple of years mind you, but I definitely did later on. Now that I have this WordPress account, I’ve been trying to find ways to import my LJ posts, which has led me to read a few of the old ones. Oof! I want to be able to use whatever my current journal is to write “in the moment” angry-at-the-world posts every once and awhile… but that will be hard unless I can find an easy way to make entries private. I know there are some plugins for making individual entries private, but I need to make my whole Archive category private (the one that will contain my old LJ entries).

Who knows what I’ll end up doing. I’ll have to talk to Josh about it tonight, and in the meantime get on with the knitting!

John Varley's "Mammoth"

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I heard about John Varley fairly randomly, browsing the internet learning about various new SciFi authors. He’s supposed to be quite good, and has a decent amount of books out, so lately I’ve been mooching his books through BookMooch and getting the odd one at Half Price Books when Josh and I make our weekly trip. -grin-

This if my first venture into his writing, but so far I really like it. We’re reading about a billionaire of a man who will pay any amount of money to get what he wants, and his team has recently discovered a full, frozen, Mammoth body in the tundra (I think we’re in Canada at this point). Buried with the Mammoth? A man. Wearing a wristwatch.

Ooo, suspense! Haha. Either way, it’s managed to grab my attention so far, and if it weren’t for my marathon knitting sessions as of late, I’m sure I’d have more of it read. I’ll let you know what I think of it when I finish.

Hem

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This is a group I’ve recently really gotten into, and have been telling everyone about. I’m in love with their style, especially on their album Rabbit Songs. Here’s an excerpt from their Wikipedia entry:

Hem is an indie folk-rock band, fusing together a mix of traditional American music with newer style. They consider themselves to be a “countrypolitan” band. Band members include Sally Ellyson (vocals), Dan Messé (piano, accordion, glockenspiel), Gary Maurer (guitar, mandolin), Steve Curtis (guitar, mandolin, banjo, back-up vocals), George Rush (bass guitar), Mark Brotter (drums), Bob Hoffnar (pedal steel guitar), and Heather Zimmerman (violin).

As most of you already know, I first found out about this band through a Liberty Mutual commercial, and at that point just had to get more of their stuff. For those of you interested in seeing said commercial, it just happens to be here on YouTube. Coincidentally, it will also provide a snippet of my favorite song for you to listen to, Half Acre.

I’m not exactly sure that I’m going to provide track-by-track reviews or anything for the artists I ultimately post in the Music category, because that would take up too much of my time. But I think I would like to have a record of bands that I’m into at different points in time, as well as have a way to let any readers know what I’m listening to these days, giving them an opportunity to check them out as well.