Bah, Day 2

Spent most of yesterday alternating between lying around in a zonked-out heap on the couch while shivering under two blankets... and sitting up because my muscles were sore enough that I couldn't stand lying down anymore. I was definitely running a fever; solarbird told me at one point that the muscle aches were from that and told me to take Tylenol. spazzkat provided Sucrets throat lozenges, lotion-laced tissues, and issue #1 of the new Buffy Season 8 comic to read. risu provided tea. I have a good household.

The Buffy Season 8 comic was well worth reading and Joss Whedon's presence was palpable all over the writing. The artwork doesn't suck and the familiar characters look sufficiently familiar. Don't know if I'll actually go buy the individual issues of this thing, but I will definitely buy graphic novel compilations.

I am in the middle of trying to read through the Tanya Huff double novel Of Darkness, Light, and Fire--which is actually two older novels of hers, Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light and The Fire's Stone, published in a single volume. I've finished up the first of these but have barely started the second. I'm not sure if this counts as reading one novel or two, since the original works were published separately.

But I have pre-empted that reading with a re-read of the Vicki Nelson books, since I got all interested in reading those again now that the TV series has started up. It turns out that the first episode of the series is mirroring Book 1, Blood Price, pretty well. And the assistant character in the series, Coreen, actually does appear in Book 1. I had totally forgotten that. They've apparently changed her last name transitioning her from the books to the series, though. I note a couple of places where the dialogue was updated to reflect more current online trends (e.g., Mike mentioning Googling Vicki's condition, the college geeks mentioning playing Everquest), and that's cool. I am however disappointed to note that one exchange between Vicki and Coreen got deleted--where Coreen tells Vicki that she'll have no problem paying her because her father pays her a ton of "guilt money" due to his having run off with his executive assistant to the Bahamas. His male executive assistant.

Re-reading Book 1, I can also better buy why they changed Henry from a novelist to a graphic novelist. Huff can portray his writing easily--she just has to write chunks of his "prose" to intersperse into scenes to reflect him being at work. On TV, though, if Henry's drawing, that's more visual and gives a viewer something concrete to hook onto.

Also, I watched a good bit of The Abominable Dr. Phibes, which spazzkat owns on DVD and which I had never seen. Definitely the campiest and most stylized Vincent Price flick I've ever seen. We also watched three episodes of Jeeves and Wooster, which had come over the Netflix queue, and which proved to be quite clever and funny. I've never seen House, but I've seen plenty of pictures of Hugh Laurie from that series, so it was a bit of a visual disconnect to see him quite younger and much less disheveled.

My fever broke overnight, I think. I'm feeling somewhat better, but not normal yet. The fever may be gone but I'm still coughing and sneezing. I'd like to say I'll get some writing done today as well as the rest of the photo cleanups I'd promised raise_a_jar, but I'm not sure I'm going to be together enough for that. I think finishing reading Blood Price is probably more my speed.

And, just to get caught up on the walking numbers...

Miles since the 21th: 24.1
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1880.4
Miles out of Isengard: 87.4
Miles to Minas Tirith: 698.6