Ordinary Day

I hadn’t really said as much on this journal, but I was on an unofficial book-buying hiatus through most of January, trying to take the opportunity to get caught up on reading the books I actually already own (wacky concept, I know). This got thrown off track though yesterday, since I was feeling down about getting a rejection letter–so I decided on emergency bookstore and walking therapy, by way of coping.

Therefore, picked up in print and making my first two purchases of 2011, I present:

• cmpriest‘s Bloodshot (which I am likely to also get electronically, but which I have only in print for now). This is I think her first official urban fantasy. There are vampires, but then again, this is Cherie Priest, and she’s on the list of people who’ll make me buy a book even if there are vampires in it.
• A used copy of Susanna Kearsley‘s Named of the Dragon–which I’d actually previously owned and hadn’t been impressed with the first time through. But I found myself wanting to re-read it and feeling sad that I’d gotten rid of my last copy!

What I was actually looking for were the first two books of Cassandra Chan’s mystery series, The Young Widow and Village Affairs. I cannot find them for love or money in any of the local bookstores on my usual routes–and I checked eight, including the downtown B&N, the downtown Borders, two of the three used bookstores at Pike Place Market (the third being currently inaccessible due to construction), the U-Bookstore, Half Price Books in the U-District, Twice Sold Tales in the U-District, and the Ravenna branch of Third Place Books. I shall therefore probably have to order them, and that’s fine, though I’d wanted to give the local stores a good fighting chance at selling me these titles first.

Also of note on this walk: my marketboys were doing crazytalk huge amounts of business when I swung by them for blackberries. The market in general was very, very crowded, possibly more so than usual just because the construction does weird things to the flow of people through the place. But still, wow! Way more people there on a Saturday afternoon than I’m used to seeing when I swing through there in the mornings and afternoons, to and from work.

There was a rally going on in Westlake Park downtown when I walked from Pike Place to Borders. I wasn’t terribly surprised to see it was a rally in support of the protestors in Egypt, and I was glad to see them raising their voices. Saw a couple of people on the corner of Fourth and Pike holding up an Egyptian flag, and scattered outlying knots of people on the fringes of the main rally as well as I swung over to B&N.

Yunnie Bubble Tea in the U-District still makes extremely tasty bubble tea. I miss them.

Half-Price Books in the U-District is still pretty awesome, even though they don’t have the amount of space at their disposal that Third Place does. Good place to go for book spelunking.

Gray, cool, and rainy but not too much so is a strangely appropriate type of weather to have if you’re moody and in the mood for exercise. I actually kind of liked the weather as I walked from the University District on up to the Ravenna branch of Third Place (which I’d never been in and which is much smaller than the main store), and from there up towards 80th. Also, north along 20th from Ravenna Third Place is a nice residental stretch of neighborhood, and gave me that odd little sense of satisfaction I sometimes get when I check out part of Seattle I’ve never seen before. ‘Cause, y’know, a Warder should walk her city and stuff.

By the time I made it home, close to five o’clock, I was feeling better mentally, albeit footsore. I estimate I did four miles and change while I was out, which is about what I do on a daily basis during the week–but during the week, it’s split up into morning and afternoon chunks.

And finishing off the day with a viewing of Megapython Vs. Gatoroid, this week’s Syfy channel crapfest, was pretty much exactly what I needed. Toss in some 4th season Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and some Voyage fanfic, and I was in a much better frame of mind by the time I went to bed.

I’m a little sad about missing Conflikt this weekend, but on the whole I think I made the right decision. My reserves of Cope were pretty low, and I needed some quiet Me time for a while. solarbird‘s been having a great time at the con this weekend though and I look forward to her bringing me a copy of seanan_mcguire‘s shiny new album!

Today I have been working on query letters for Lament, and a bit of actual writing. And I’ve been playing with the shiny new barcode scanning functionality in the iPhone Goodreads app, scanning in a bunch more of the books I own that I never got around to adding to my shelves on that site. I’ve topped 1,500 titles on my Goodreads account and will be amused to see if I top 2,000 by the time I’m done with the scanning.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Y’all may have noticed that I haven’t posted in days. This has been because I’ve been sick as a dog with a cold that just will not quit, and have been ever since the day I came back from Vancouver. Woke up this past Monday with a soreness to my throat, and my first though was “oh shit”. I made it to work okay, but by the end of the day I was quite hoarse. And by Monday evening it was official: I was sick.

I stayed home the rest of the week, coughing up a storm, fumbling for the tissues, and ingesting any number of OTC remedies. On Thursday, I saw one of the other doctors at my usual clinic (since my usual doctor wasn’t in that day), and she said that yep, I had a nasty cold. Never had a temperature of note so we were pretty sure this hasn’t been any form of flu. It’s just been a Martian Death Cold.

I got back enough brain by Friday to work from home, and as of today I’m functional enough to be bored silly, but I’m still snorky, coughy, and prone to needing to curl up under the blankets for random bouts of zzzz’s. I have been absolutely useless for getting any writing done or much of anything else. I’ve been consoling my ailing self by rewatching first season Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and solarbird and I have also taken the opportunity to get caught up on Caprica, which to our pleasure is continuing to fail to suck. And since I’ve also been useless for continuing my previously planned Laurie King readathon, I’ve punted instead to re-reading the J.D. Robbs–since I’ve started exchanging my paperbacks of those for electronic copies.

I’ll be staggering back to work tomorrow, and if Cliff Mass is correct in his last post, it’ll be just in time for the weather to take a turn for the sucky. Joy. I’m sick all week while it’s warm and sunny, and it gets wet and cold just in time for me to go back to work. I’ll be lucky to shake this damn cough before April.

The cats have been quite happy to curl up beside me while I’m making with the zzzz’s, though. I even got a picture of them. Dara says this is particularly good and that I should post it!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

What with solarbird being out of town this weekend, I’ve taken it upon myself to have some quiet me time, which I really rather needed. Just getting caught up on my sleep is a win. But so is doing various and sundry small chores and errands that needed doing, such as getting the checkbook caught up, buying reflective red tape to go over the broken lens on our right rear taillight*, picking up some more long and therefore work-appropriate shorts to wear to work as well as some badly needed sports bras, and washing clothes and sheets and towels.

Friday night we had all the Bothell crowd as well as jennygriffee come over for more tabletop gaming, and while that was quite hectic, it was also fun. I continue to be full of Win for little Moira and Lillian, and this time around I also got little William’s attention; the boy thought it was great fun to try to help me play my guitar. He’s shyer than the girls and doesn’t talk nearly as much, so it was pretty neat to see him perk up.

Lily and Moira love going up our stairs and peeking in my bedroom because I have a big bed they can bounce on, and also, we have a cache of stuffed animals in there. But they also love making me (as well as any other convenient grownups) chase them in circles around the main floor of the house. Lily in particular commanded me to “be a dinosaur!”, so I apparently need to get right to work on my T-rex impersonation. Meanwhile, Moira wanted to further investigate our DVD collection, and when she spotted the pink boxes that contain our Cardcaptor Sakura anime episodes, I went ahead and let her watch that figuring that it wouldn’t be too scary for her or Lily. kathrynt tells me that Lily in fact is experimenting with being scared, and likes to identify things as “scary”.

This led to one of the cutest things I’ve heard coming out of a two-year-old mouth lately: “scary toilet paper lady” to describe the antagonist character in the movie I showed them. Hee.

And, Moira insisted that I “protect” her while she was watching the movie, and sat in my lap. Aw. <3

It should also be noted that Lily furthermore kept asking me for "Donkey Riding", and when she spotted the background pic of Great Big Sea on my computer, pointed at it and said "that's a picture of Donkey Riding!" She's still a little shaky on which name goes with the band and which name goes with the song, but she clearly now knows the faces of Great Big Sea when she sees them. Mostly. She also thought Eddie Izzard on my T-shirt was Sean, I think. I put her straight!

Yesterday morning Q then IMed me to tell me that Lily told her "we put on shoes and go over to my Anna's house!" I am apparently now Lillian's Anna! Who knew?

Unrelatedly, last night while working on checkbook balancing, I re-watched TOS's "Doomsday Machine" episode (some awesome mileage of The Kirk), Master and Commander (which I think is now well and solidly my favorite Russell Crowe movie Ever), and another 4th season episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (which is still bringing the wacky).

* Why the hell can’t I buy just a replacement lens for that taillight, anyway? The light itself is intact, it’s just the outer lower bit of the lens that’s broken. But according to the guys at Schuck’s the assembly is all they have, and they wanted $130 for it. I bought a $5 roll of reflective red headlight repair tape instead and used that. Which should do me for now and hopefully satisfy the next cop that tries to pull me over for having a broken taillight.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.