Tonight's word count and other errata

[annathepiper]

0. 661 words tonight, which brings Chapter 15 up to 1,261 words and the grand total of wordage to 51,762. Snuck in a few extra words in between running test scripts at work today; this is one of the satisfying side benefits of doing most of my testing via automated scripts. I can watch them run and type out a few words here and there as I do so.

1. flashfire, I have totally neglected to mention, was visiting all this past week for his annual trek up here for Turkey Day. And he brought me a copy of The Matrix, just because. Awww. Thanks James!

2. I have started reading Digital Knight by Ryk E. Spoor. That really is sort of an unfortunate name for a novelist, but well hey. ;) I had glanced at the book in the U bookstore, and thought it might possibly be fun but had waffled on whether or not I wanted to buy it. Folks recommended it with caveats on McAnallys, and at this point I'm definitely finding it fluff reading. While Mr. Spoor appears to be shooting for the same kind of audience that Mr. Butcher shoots for with the Dresden Files, Mr. Spoor isn't as good a writer, I think. Something about his usage of semicolons kind of twigs me--though that's more of a punctuation nazi thing with me rather than his writing style! That said, his style doesn't quite work for me either. I like some of his ideas that he's putting into this book, but there is a kind of triteness to his dialogue that keeps some of them from really being implemented well. One of his villains in particular comes to mind as an example of this; he's supposed to be scary, and yet my reaction to him was 'oh for fuck's sake, ditch the cliches and kill something already'.

The other weird thing about this book is that it isn't actually a full-length novel. Rather, it is a collection of shorter vignettes about his hero and related characters. This is sort of distracting, and I am in agreement with the one poster on McAnallys who had talked about how this makes the writer come across with a tone of 'look at all these cool ideas I had, but I can't really get a full blown novel out of any of them, so here! Have some short stories'.

3. Master and Commander on second viewing: still two thumbs up! I noticed several things going through the second time that I hadn't caught the first time, got to listen for the good parts of the soundtrack I'm starting to recognize, got a better idea of the identities of the secondary characters, and oh yes, most importantly, more ogling of Russell. ;D

Lars, my coworker whose last day is actually tomorrow because his contract is expiring, apparently finally saw M&C himself this past weekend. He came up to the poster he'd put up for me by my station and stroked Mr. Crowe's picture and said "Good Russell!" Hee hee. I'm going to miss Lars.

4. The Great Big Sea message board on their official site has had another overhaul. I definitely approve. The new board is a lot less intimidating to navigate than the old one.

5. Got caught up on watching Angel with mamishka, finally, and that was definitely worth the watch. I really did like the whole "Wesley's dad" plot.

6. Finally got around to emailing my brother and telling him that we wouldn't be going to Kentucky for Christmas after all, due to insufficient buckage. Sigh. Had to email him, too, because when I tried to call him on Thanksgiving his phone was apparently DISCONNECTED. Mip.

7. I think my shoes are starting to get worn out. I noticed my feet hurting a lot today, even while I was sitting down. Stupid feet.

8. solarbird has a potentially very interesting house lined up in Lake Forest Park. She's already gone to look at it and has scads and scads of pictures; I'm going to go check it out on Sunday to see what I think of it in person. The things the place has going for it are really nice big lot that it sits on, complete with a little forest in back; lots of big windows, so the inside is all about the airy and light and spacious, at least during the day; nice porches and decks; good proximity to Burke-Gilman; and privacy, peace and quiet! The cons are, the place would need considerable amount of work to get it into shape for moving in and even after we got moved in; the commute to places I'm likely to get employed would become suckier; and we'd no longer have proximity to so much cool stuff like we do here in the U-district. But on the other hand I'm resigned to that last being the case regardless of where we move, just because we're moving out of the U-district.

Comments

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

So what's prompting moving-thoughts, if I may be so nosy?

[annathepiper]

The short form of the answer to that question is "we're sick and tired of the student fuckwits in the University District not only vandalizing property and being loud, noisy nuisances every time they have a party, but even getting to the point of having a RIOT this fall till the police started cracking down and hard on the new noise ordinance."

The somewhat longer form of the answer has to do with our house having gotten broken into last January, with Dara being sick and tired of having to literally stand guard over our property on weekends when the students are in full-blown party mode, with Dara also being sick and tired of the city constantly fucking over the University District in terms of willingness to actually make the University make their students behave--it's apparently taken the aforementioned RIOT to make the University go, "Um, well, gosh, maybe we better do something about this."

This whole situation was a big contributing factor to spazzkat moving out, too.

[gerimaple.livejournal.com]

will you sell the current place, or add it to the roster of rental properties?

and is this the house Dara posted about on the 21st?

[annathepiper]

Actually, Dara and I own two rental properties. The current plan is to sell the other and hang onto the one that we actually live in, and arrange to rent it to post-graduates or faculty from the University; the major advantage of this would be that Dara would be able to retain access to the studio that she set up on the upper floor of the carriage house.

And yeah, this house I'm going to look at is the same one that Dara posted about before. As of that posting she hadn't looked at it yet; she's seen it since then and it's proven interesting enough that I want to go take a look at it.

[annathepiper]

Yeah, the Wolf King's the one. I'll admit the way that he took out Jason's hacker contact was suitably creepy, but for the most part he just wandered around through that story going "GRR!" and spouting stupid cliches.

I'll also give Mr. Spoor points for the creatively icky way of taking out Elias in the first episode.

But that said--I've just hit the episode where Verne's "son" shows up and Jason starts getting clues about Verne's history. And as soon as Verne said "I'm not a vampire" I was all "WTF?! Are we re-defining 'vampire' now?"

The thing I think that is distracting me about the episodic style is that it doesn't seem to allow for much character development. The scenes along the theme of "Sylvie's not my girlfriend, but gosh! Verne's right! I shouldn't be sending her mixed signals!" were unsatisfying, though. Because I was going, "WHAT SIGNALS? THERE HAVEN'T BEEN ANY SIGNALS!"

Siiiiigh. :)

[annathepiper]

I've only gotten a bit into the explanation--only as far as Verne telling Jason it's dangerous for him to know about this. So I'll see if I agree with you!

*giggle* This does have a rather first-season sort of feel about it, doesn't it? Though if this were a TV show, the love interest would be a better developed character. ;P :)

[annathepiper]

Hah! You've got a point there. ;) Well, we'll see how the rest of this book treats me!