First, book reviews!
Xenocide by Orson Scott Card, 592 pages
This is the immediate sequel to Speaker for the Dead, it picks up with Valentine travelling to see Ender on Lusitania. Years have passed since “Speaker” and Ender has established himself as a respected member of the community. Lusitania is dealing with the coming of the fleet sent to destroy their world, as well as internal struggles between themselves and the peguininos, and the newly discovered colony of “Buggers.” In another part of the universe, a father and daughter on the chinese planet colony called “Path” are charged with helping decide the fate of Lusitania. I enjoyed this book. Like always, Card made all the characters enjoyable enough so that when the story shifts to another portion you are not disappointed.
Swan Song, by Robert McCammon, 956 pages
Swan Song takes place just before and after a nuclear attack. The survivors struggle to make it through the years of nuclear winter that befall them. Some people cling to objects of hope, others with family, some with cope by inflicting violence. Some parts of this book get rather “surreal.” There are issues with objects being “magic” and there is a “demon” that preys upon people who have hope, and a young girl who can make plants grow from the dead and damaged earth. All these characters eventually come together after years of roaming the United States, and it all comes to a head where the fate of the world hangs in the balance. It was a sad book, a bit descriptive in some parts, but not overly disgusting or sexual, and so I can deal with this sort of book from time to time. I guess taking a look back at the book as a whole, I did enjoy reading it, gave me a lot to think about and be greatful for.
Moving on… I am feeling much better today. I think I discovered what spurned my depressed mood yesterday too. A woman came into #13thHour the other day whom I hadn’t seen in years. I missed seeing her come in, I was in the living room reading (Rubicant tipped me off to her presence in a private message I read later), but Myk got to talk with her briefly and when he mentioned getting my attention she said “no.. that’s ok” … a polite refusal to talk to me. I think we need some background here.
Once upon a time I dated a guy online with the nick Exeplis. He was my first “boyfriend” and I met him on the scifi server. He was a nice guy, had a steady job, and despite being 10 year older than me, he gave me attention that I hadn’t ever had before. As time when on I realized that we had little in common except that we were both lonely and shy. I met him in real life, and although I wanted things to work out, I just couldnt see past his age (he was 27, had a house and was ready to settle down, I was 17) and the fact that he had little to no interested in computers besides getting on to chat. After his second plane trip to visit me I broke up with him. Now since this woman was a close friend of his, she saw this breakup as a horrible horrible thing for me to do. Apparently Exeplis didn’t see it coming, and she took his side in absolutely despising me, but what could I do? Then I started dating someone else within a couple weeks. It was a rebound thing, I was depressed and he was there *shrugs* it happens! And she took this to mean that Exeplis never meant anything to me… it broke off some of the more transient members of #13thHour because I was such a horrible person for doing this to him. Gah, I was 17, what did they expect? The years went by, and Exeplis got married and settled down with a nice girl, they had a son, and we started talking again. I guess Exeplis and I do have a friendship now, I even helped him get back into touch with this woman!
So where does that leave me? I assumed she’d just steer clear of me and #13thHour. But no, she came into there, chatted pleasantly with Myk, had fun while I wasn’t around, and left. I guess this depressed me. I’ve tried to make ammends with her over the years, even doing small
favors to see if she would forget the past and move on. It hasn’t worked. Even when Exeplis is now my friend, she will not budge from her hatred (I’m sorry, strong dislike, hatred would be so un-christian) of me. I guess I shouldn’t worry about it, I mean it was really none of her business in the first place. I think it just annoys and upsets me that she still dislikes me… and that she has the nerve to come into my (ok, Time is the founder, but I would definately be labelled co-founder) channel dispite that.
Next! The concert yesterday was so cool! The drive out there wasn’t bad either, and we didn’t get lost! It only took about 2 hours to get there. Harrisburg is a very nice little city. And The Whitaker Center was a very nice place. The concert lasted from 2 pm til about 8 pm, with a 20 minute break… it was quiet a lot to sit through %) We had front row seats, which meant that they set up 3 rows of extra chairs, and we got to sit in the ones closest to the stage, I could touch the stage, in fact… I had trouble *not* touching it because we were so close to it! We could see the artists so close up, it was amazing! Jeff Pearce was cool, he really knew how to amuse and work the audience between the songs, and I did enjoy his set. Robert Rich was absolutely amazing! I was very close to pushing away the budget for the day and talking Myk into buying another one of his cds (we have several), he played through his whole hour long set without stopping, which caused a bit of discomfort… the seats weren’t exactly the most comfortable in the world, and at least with appluase breaks you got a suitable time to rearanged yourself into a more comfortable position without feeling guity that you are annoying the people around you %) After that set we got to have a 20 minute break to walk around. Then we came back to listen to Steve Roach. Myk is a huge Steve Roach fan, but last year he was disappointed when we went to a concert of his in Philly. He’s started using a guitar in his ambient work, and Myk doesnt like it… neither do I. And to be honest, most of Roach’s music bores me anyway… he played for nearly 1 1/2 hours with no breaks. By the end I was snuggled up with Myk half falling asleep because I was bored and uncomfortable. The last artist was Jonn Serrie. I didn’t really know much about him, since my ambient/space music knowledge is vastly limited, but he’s fairly famous… has done music for a number of planetariums and has done work with the likes of Lucasfilm Ltd. and NASA… cool stuff! I was quite captivated with his music, and he stopped between each song, which was nice. So I guess Robert Rich was my favorite of the night, but I was itching to pick up a John Serrie cd as well when the concert was over. Luckily I didn’t %) We left Harrisburg right after the concert, figured we could just get something here in North Wales for dinner… we got home around 10, much to our dismay we found out that nearly everything was closed since it was a sunday night, d’oh! We ended up eating in.
Today Myk took off of work (he planned to take it off because he knew he’d be tired after the trip to Harrisburg yesterday). It’s nice having him home on a weekday %) He’s cleaning and waxing the Rav4 right now… News with the laptop? Well the gentoo install didn’t go very smoothly. Myk ended up taking it last night and beating it into submission ;) Unfortunately I wasn’t around to see it, so my hand in the install is… well… I basically didn’t have a hand in it. My knowledge of the gentoo install is still practically null. I’m glad that Myk got the base install done for me (compiling x right now, not sure how it will work), yet disappointed that I couldn’t learn much from it. It’s just so hard learning to install gentoo on a laptop that is so old, the base compile takes so long that a screw up costs you days, and it would have been difficult for me to sit through all Myk’s work on it, just because he was working on several other things at the same time *shrugs*
Um… I guess
that’s it for now. I just stared Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil … I remember that I have seen the movie once, but I remember nothing of the movie. It’s good, and it’s been a long time since I’ve read a non-fiction book that read like a fiction. *wanders off to read*