Exercise, Firefly, Tolkien, and books

[annathepiper]

+0: Everybody welcome cruisedirector to my Friends list! She tunes in after we yakked with one another over on russell_daily. ^_^

+1: I see that the squeeage for the Serenity trailer has commenced. And me without QuickTime installed on my work box. I shall have to view this shining bit of goodness when I get home, at which point I assure you that I will be joining in on the squeeage. Because dude, I have got to see this movie.

+2: I appear to have encouraged no less than four different people to take up the Eowyn Challenge: damara, solarbird, Scott who doesn't have an LJ account, and now llachglin, who is biking to work at Borg and who has piqued my interest in doing so too. Yay for the power of exercise and Tolkiengeekery!

+3: Okay, so I jumped off my planned book schedule and read A Dangerous Mourning, the second of Anne Perry's William Monk books. I think I'm getting to like how this series is as much about Hester as it is about Monk, and how the events of the first novel did have an effect on the events in this one. I really liked how this case was not solved a hundred percent happily--it gave the plot a bit more heft and realism than I'm accustomed to reading in many mystery novels, so yay for that. And I'm curious as to whether the changing circumstances of Monk's life as of this book will mean he's now escaped the conflict with Runcorn, or whether that's still going to affect him in the future. Looks like I'm in for the long haul on this series!

+3.5: But just to keep to my book schedule somewhat, I made a point of bringing Dragon and Phoenix with me to work today so I could read the rest of it on the bus to and from work. I'm finally in the last hundred pages, so I should be able to finish it up finally. I'm still not liking the book overall as much as I did the first one, just because it strikes me as having too much detail crammed in there and too many 'convenient' delays built into the plot to keep the characters from getting to where they need to go--but I must not be finding this a significant problem, since I am actually still reading the thing! I still really want to smack Raven around a few times, though.

+4: One of the good things about working on performance testing right now is that I can actually edit in between launching tests, and while I'm waiting for them to get done. I've made significant inroads on Chapter 17 in the last two days just because of this, even as I'm diligently recording the test results in my spreadsheet. Damned good thing I can multitask. Tonight, if I'm extra special virtuous, maybe I'll be able to finish this chapter up. spazzkat wants me to get done so we can have our marathon of Lost episodes to get Dara and me caught up; Dara wants me to get done so I can do the promised rigorous cleaning of the upstairs bathroom. ;) I'm tentatively hoping to get done by next weekend! Everybody wish me luck.

Monday miles: 1.0
Miles out of Hobbiton: 89.21
Miles to Rivendell: 368.79

Comments

[starsongky.livejournal.com]

Squee!!! I could've sworn I saw the guy playing Charlie on "Numb3rs" was in there somewhere. I'm searching my drives now, hoping I can save a copy of that trailer.

Man, I have *got* to have myself a "Firefly" marathon now...

[annathepiper]

I've seen mentioned elsewhere that a guy out of "Numb3rs" is indeed in the trailer. I'm not familiar with it, so that particular connection means nothing to me, but!

Me, I need to actually buy the DVDs--Dara and I don't own them yet!

[starsongky.livejournal.com]

http://imdb.com/name/nm0472710 - David Krumholtz, IMDB lists his "Serenity" character as "Mr. Universe", some kind of oracle or info broker, it looks like from the trailer. He also played Bernard the Elf in Tim Allen's "Santa Clause" movies.

[annathepiper]

Ah, gotcha. Though I never saw the Santa Clause flicks anyway, so that role would also go right over my head. :)

[spunbutterfly.livejournal.com]

Oh wow. Biking from Kenmore? Wow. Just wow. This is my shocked face. I think if I tried to bike from Greenwood to the Borg, I'd get run over on 520 at some point, if not I-5. Hee.

[annathepiper]

Well, llachglin is biking to Borg from Bothell, and Kenmore's only another 15-20 minutes if I took his route!

Though I also groove on taking the bus in and being able to read, so I'm not sure yet if I'll do it. I'll probably have to work up to being able to pull it off, anyway. I'm NOT that good a biker. I may need a few weekend biking trips down to the U-district to ramp up for it.

[jessicac.livejournal.com]

I was already bummed they postponed Serenity to a September release. This just makes it worse. Don't we have some secret agent we could send to get an advance copy that we could watch until we can go see it in the theater?

[annathepiper]

Apparently Seattle was one of the places selected for the special sneak preview of the almost-finished movie on May 5th, which I found out about yesterday--but according to kieri, the tickets sold out within ten minutes of being opened up for purchase. Sniffle!

I take small consolation in the knowledge that when September does actually roll around, the movie will still be shiny and new. It'll only be shiny and new once! ;)

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

I had actually been doing the Eowyn Challenge thing before when I was swimming a lot. The problem is that swimming accumulates miles slowly, and also that chlorine gives me cold-like congestion for a few days that eventually drove me to stop swimming. On top of that, "Swimming to Rivendell" is a bit absurd, and I never did figure out the mileage to Valinor or Numenor.

It's much better adding 12-13 miles on at a time, particularly with an activity that actually feels like a journey.

[annathepiper]

Ah, okay, I stand corrected. :) *giggle* And yeah, swimming to Rivendell's a bit tough!

I need to get in some biking trips down to the U-district now that the weather's getting warmer. I figure if I seriously want to consider biking to work, I should get into better shape for it! I'm NOT good at hills at all, and I still haven't really gotten down the mysteries of when to change gears and when not to.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

I'm NOT good at hills at all, and I still haven't really gotten down the mysteries of when to change gears and when not to.

Me neither. I shift as little as possible. I generally use the high gears for flat portions, occasionally shifting to middle gears for short rising sections or as an intermediate step before big hills. For big hills, I try to shift into the lowest possible gear, except that my bike chain has a hard time dropping into the lowest set of gears. Maybe I'm supposed to attempt it from the low end of the middle gears? In any case, I usually fail to shift several times before finally succeeding at finding a low gear. I have no idea if I'm doing this right.

I can proceed this way for short hills, such as the stretch from the street my house is on to to the top of the hill in my neighborhood. Unfortunately, this isn't enough to get me up the hill alongside 520. All three times I've gone up that, I've had to walk some of it.

That said, even after a few tries, I'm getting noticeably better both at shifting and at going up hills. I think a good tuning for my bike would also help.

As for swimming to Rivendell, a look at the map suggests a water route. From an upper fork of the Brandywine in Hobbiton, you can swim downriver to the sea, then southeast a bit, and then up the Greyflood. That becomes the Hoarwell, and then the Loudwater, which takes you as far as the Ford of Bruinen. Dodging the elf-woman and hobbit on the white horse and the nine Nazgul on black horses, you can drag your Speedo-wrapped body the final few miles through the hills with a minimal set of abrasions. Surely Elrond's healers can repair the damage from such a short "swim" over land.

[annathepiper]

I do expect that with many other things, changing gears while biking would improve with practice. :) My trick's going to be getting in that practice! Now that summer's coming on and my manuscript is GONE GONE GONE, here's hoping I'll be able to get some weekend trips to the U-district in.

*basks in the merry geektitude of the details of the water route to Rivendell* Hee! Of course, I can't swim for crap either. ;P I can barely dog paddle.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

I love the Monk books. I'm also very fond of her Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series, which she began long before she wrote the Monk books. They're probably not as strong overall, but hardly read for the mysteries anyway; I read for the ongoing family stories and the friends who come in and out of each book. :)

[annathepiper]

Cool, thanks for the recommendation! It'll be a while before I'm in a position to check those out too--I've hardly read anything so far this year and I've got a lot of things to clear off of my To Read shelf. :)

Heck, I've got a while to go in the Monk books, too!

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

And me without QuickTime installed on my work box

I had exactly the same issue. Except that alerted by my wife, I managed to hop into the chat room while Joss Whedon and Nathan Fillion were there. :-)

[annathepiper]

Cool! Did you or your wife get to hear any cool things from them?

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, no. Assuming they were the real thing, and not spoofers, they didn't say much -- it was kind of too crazy in there for real conversation.

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

ARGH! I HAVE TICKETS! SQUEEEE!

http://www.cantstopthesignal.com/

If that doesn't work, try

http://browncoats.serenitymovie.com/

[annathepiper]

*giggle!* Yeah, the word's been coming to me too. Going to have to see if I can jump in on this. :D

[annathepiper]

BLOODY HELL. They're already sold out! Sniff!

[annathepiper]

Ah, foo. Yeah, that's one of the big dangers of chats like that.

[kieri.livejournal.com]

Aiaiieieiieieie.

(wiggity wiggity wiggity)

Cool.

[cruisedirector]

*waves*

So am I the only person in the world who never watched Firefly in the first place? I must admit a little wariness to Whedon. I am not the Buffy/Angel fan that I am told I should be -- I watched, I enjoyed, but I missed Firefly on first iteration and keep having other DVD priorities get in the way! Is Serenity going to make no sense to me if I have not seen the series?

[annathepiper]

I'll tell you what I told aerialscribe on a later post from yesterday--I'd be surprised if Joss didn't have something in the movie to clue in audiences who don't know what's going on. But I'd highly recommend checking out the DVDs if you get a chance!

I myself was a devoted Buffy fan, not so much Angel (though I enjoyed it), but Firefly appealed to me a lot more than either of them. I've seen people's opinions vary wildly--the elements that work for me sometimes don't click for others. But the things I like about the series DO click very well for me: the blending of a Western feel and SF, a very strong ensemble cast from the word go, a ruggedly handsome captain who's a rogue with a heart of gold ;), the touches of Chinese in people's lines to indicate the fusion of Chinese culture and American culture in this future, Joss' trademark snappy dialogue, and an overall sense that the world of this storyline is a lot more tightly constructed than Buffy's. It's been said that Firefly really was the project closest to Joss' heart, and in my opinion, it shows.