This past week in review

[annathepiper]

So! Been a few days since I last checked in, thanks to avoiding LJ while at work and trying to write (or otherwise being too brain-dead to write, which also means I'm too brain-dead to post to LJ) once I get home. But there hasn't been anything too terribly fascinating to post about this past week anyway, so y'all haven't missed much in the land of Anna.

Capsule summary: Fairly quiet week at work. Forgot to take my Synthroid again on Thursday, which was very annoying, as I'd been trying to get everything stabilized again Synthroid-wise and that didn't help matters much. But things are clicking back into place in my brain now that I'm taking the 150's regularly again. Also, work improved once I finally buckled in and started bringing cans of diet Mountain Dew from home. The market near the Times building stopped stocking diet Dew for some reason, and the absence of my morning and post-lunch Dew at work was making me cranky! But bringing in my own cans solved that problem nicely, and is significantly cheaper besides.

Polly is in much better shape now that she's had quite a bit of the pink antibiotic goop, enough that she's started getting finicky again about eating her food with the medication in it. I'll have to figure out better ways to get her to eat.

I've finished The Art of Deception, by Ridley Pearson, a book I'd picked up way back when I did the Underground Tour with ravyngyngvar during his visit. They'd been selling this novel in the Underground's gift shop, so I thought what the hell, I'll check it out. It was... meh. Good Seattle-like atmosphere, but it turns out that this was the eighth novel in a series--so here and there I found myself with the usual slight sense of thinking I'd better know what was going on had I read the earlier books. This also caused one very minor but nevertheless present nitpick for me--I don't need much description of a character, but y'know what? I'd like to know before I'm 238 pages into a novel whether a significant character has a distinctive feature like a mustache. A rather bigger nitpick I had with it, too, was the scene where one of the POV characters goes and speaks with an expert on the Underground, and she suddenly starts spewing reams of information at him that read way more like a quote from a lecture or an encyclopedia rather than actual dialogue. I expected it to end with "this description of the Underground brought to you by the Seattle Chamber of Commerce. We now return you to your regularly scheduled story, already in progress!" Long story short, if you want to check this out, you might actually want to start with book one in the series.

One little bit of amusement I got out of that novel, though, ties in with another thing I had going on this week. I've been working on a personal quest of trying to listen to everything on my iPod. I've got a huge swath of stuff in my collection that I haven't even listened to even once since ripping it onto the device, so I made a Not Played Yet playlist and have been slowly working my way through it. This week I went through all of my Enya and Loreena McKennitt, my album of various classical works by Grieg, and (and this is where the novel is pertinent) the album Surfacing by Sarah McLachlan. I'd bought that on impulse some time ago, on one of those occasional whims I get to try to expand my musical horizons. And I'd played it before, just not any time recently, so I'd totally forgotten what the album is like. But it was actually mentioned in the novel, which made me go "HEY!" So I had to go ahead and play it.

Next up on the reading queue: Banner of Souls by mevennen, a.k.a. Liz Williams. The next few novels I'll be reading will follow the theme of "Authors Whose LJs I Read". This means karentraviss and matociquala and jimbutcher are all forthcoming. So is The Surgeon's Mate, however. risu has been hungrily devouring my Patrick O'Brian novels lately, having grown ardently fond of Jack and Stephen, and she'll be catching up with me shortly. So I'd better be reading the next one on my To Read shelves soon!

Lost was watched on Thursday, Battlestar Galactica on Friday. More commentary will be forthcoming on the latter.

And last but definitely not least, huge, huge congratulations must go out to kathrynt and llachglin, the proud parents of Lilian Elanor Tewson Heino!

Last Friday miles through Sunday miles: 26.85
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1454.9
Miles out of Rauros Falls: 145.9
Miles to Isengard: 338.1

Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Polly is in much better shape now that she's had quite a bit of the pink antibiotic goop, enough that she's started getting finicky again about eating her food with the medication in it. I'll have to figure out better ways to get her to eat.

With the undead kitty, catnip worked to get her to eat.

[annathepiper]

Ooh, that's a thought. Thank you. I may resort to that if necessary--right now, swapping over to Polly's still-favored dry food for a little bit seems to have convinced her to eat more.

[howlinhobbit.livejournal.com]

Re: Ridley and the Chamber of Commerce ad in the book... I believe it was in an earlier book in the series ("Undercurrents"?) where the author kept referring to the "U Section" instead of the "U District". Every time that appeared (and it was several iterations) it brought me to a screeching mental halt.

In fairness, I might be disremembering which book I saw this in. Ridley might be innocent. But for heaven's sake, that's a research thing that should be done very carefully. If you're planning a book set in a given real city and you expect to maybe sell some to the residents of same... don't screw up something like local slang.

[annathepiper]

Oh geez, the U-Section?! That'd drive me up a tree too.

I looked up Undercurrents on Amazon--it's the first in the series, it turns out. I didn't see any references to that kind of a screwup in the reader reviews, but that may not mean much. :)

[ravyngyngvar.livejournal.com]

Re: Distinguishing features only showing up late. I had the same feeling when I originally read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. In the third book it suddenly said that Arthur Dent was still wearing his bathrobe from when the Earth was demolished. I'm sorry, but none of the previous books mentioned a bathrobe at all. I've since learned that the bathrobe originated in the TV series.

So, have fun watching Lost and BSG. I've just read that Norwegian TV won't start up season 3 of Lost until the new year. I might catch it earlier on Swedish TV, though. BSG is still in Season 1. How can I discuss TV series with my American friends under these conditions?

[annathepiper]

How can I discuss TV series with my American friends under these conditions?

LOL! Dara says, "The same way we discuss Doctor Who with our British friends." ;)

I will be delighted to go back and talk about old BSG or Lost with you, just say the word. Oh gosh, an excuse to have to watch all our season 1 BSG DVDs! However shall I manage? ;)

[ravyngyngvar.livejournal.com]

Well, it doesn't matter that much with Doctor Who, since it mostly has self-contained episodes. BSG and Lost have long storylines full of mysteries that will (hopefully) be revealed later, but you already know the outcome of some of them.

When I visited you, we watched an episode of Lost together which I could, since at the time Norwegian TV was only about two weeks behind. I could share my speculation that there were in fact two different islands (Michael, Sawyer and Jin had just been to sea, drifted back, and met a completely different group of people), and learned that spazzkat had the same idea. Then we were both proven wrong by the end of the episode, but we started out pretty much on equal terms.

I can say that BSG does have my interest, although not enough to get me to rush for the DVD. I do get annoyed by that Baltar guy continuously talking to a hallucination of his Cylon lover, nobody else noticing, but everybody agreeing about how much they need to trust him. Whatever comes out of that (can't be good) I guess you must know already.

I was away last week, so I've still got an unwatched episode, with another being aired tomorrow.

I also recorded the first episode of Carnivale, since it looked interesting, but I haven't had time to watch that either. I've gotten up to date (well, as far as they've gotten in Norway) on West Wing, and am way behind on the Danish crime drama Ørnen ("The Eagle"). I've discovered the curse of trying to follow too many TV series at once.

[annathepiper]

Yes indeed, there is much to be speculated about as to what exactly Hallucination!Six is. She's not just a hallucination. What she is... well, it's not been said for sure yet. ;)

But oh my yes, I sympathize with trying to follow too many TV shows at once! I've got to squeeze in the Dresden Files when they start up in January as well!

[ravyngyngvar.livejournal.com]

You're into the third season, and you still don't know? Jeez. Seems like Lost territory.

And what do you think happened? My hard disc recorder stopped working. With all of those unwatched episodes still on it, and no way to get to them. It's back to the store, and I asked if they could please try to preserve the contents, but I know those repair shops. I think there's a good chance that I'll buy the DVD sets of Ørnen now.