That's My Tail!
I Don't Get It
Sometimes the Dragon Wins
Go 'way, I'm sleepin!
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Image Stream - The Dragons
That's My Tail!
I Don't Get It
Sometimes the Dragon Wins
Go 'way, I'm sleepin!
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Ruminations of an Insomniac
Stray thoughts ahead. You were warned.
Why is the library or a bookstore so amazingly sexy? What is it about real paper, about the scent of the pages, the sound they make when turned or ruffled, that makes electronic media feel so flat?
I'm a book junkie, I admit it.
I have an intense predilection for hardbacks. They just feel so right, they read more comfortably: after all, you have no risk of bending the covers, they're easier to support during the process of devouring the book. Paperbacks are a weak and poor shadow of the reading pleasure, and yet my budget hardly allows me to buy hardcovers. The library makes a nearly acceptable substitute, and even though I won't own the books that way, there's always the joy of renewing what I've checked out previously.
Chronicles of the Lensmen: E.E."Doc" Smith. For hard sci-fi started in 1948, they still manage to hold my rapt attention, and I can see reflections of it in many more current works.
The bookcase purchased for my birthday is a black leviathan near my bed. A blank slate, shelves awaiting books, and the sides like a 2001 obelisk begging to be painted. Sorcha suggested silver knotwork, and I think it might just be the way I go unless there are other creative suggestions. The unrelieved BLACKNESS of it is so very formal, but it's crying out for More.
Of course, it's hardly a bookcase. That would be a misnomer of grand proportions. What it truly is, or rather has become, is a Dedicated Feline Napping Appliance. I've found cats happily sleeping on three of the deep shelves. I fear the bottom shelf lost forever to the four-legged interlopers.
Candle flames and lava lamps, the light of the laptop monitor, with old old X Files rumbling on the TV in the background as my only light. An oversized feline curled tightly against my leg as I type, purring like a motorboat and gently pawing at my leg for attention, then more insistently until I have to stop typing and adore him before the claws come out in a Demand For Attention NOW.
Rambling onwards. Uh-Oh Oreos. Uh-oh is right, the damned things are temptation enough for me, who isn't supposed to partake of the evils of refined sugar, but denying them is impossible. Damn you, DG. Now bring me more. Or better yet, cinnamon glazed almonds, which I have found a lovely online source for and will be begging to order quite soon, oh yes.
I want to kidnap my Trained Attack Wenches and run away for the weekend. Or a week. Just get away with the girls for a while. It doesn't matter if we do anything, if we just lie around, or if we pile into the car and aim for a random road trip. So what if it's more like "Thelma and Louise" meets "The Blues Brothers." We can do this. We must do this. I need the relief, I need my wenches, I need to get away and escape.
Am I escaping from something in particular, or just from myself? I don't think it matters. I'm pushing 40 with a stick now, I've lost all the horrible weight that dragged me down, and it's time I remembered how to live again.
Spent Saturday with my aunt and uncle. My aunt, sister to the Momster from Hell, and so totally different in every way possible. To know that she also has difficulties with the Momster was quite refreshing and comforting, to discover that I'm not the only one that thinks the woman is not only the poster child for Valium, but a dreadfully neurotic prude "in serious need of a good fuck," end quote. Endless wave pool, skinny dipping with my hippy relatives (who also pointed out the locations of all the N TX nudist colonies) in their indoor endless wave pool, or outdoors in the hot tub. This was the first time in many many years I've been able to spend time with them without the Momster around, and I think we were all a little nervous at first, wondering if we could just relax and be ourselves. It didn't take long to find many mutually compatible areas, and everyone relaxed and enjoyed themselves.
It wasn't a complete escape, but for a while it was another world.
A sound in the background, a guitar singing away, surprisingly melodic, to look up and see little tiny Thing 2 perched in a chair before the Wall of Guitars (including the ones signed by B.B. King and ... was it Eric Clapton, DG?), guitar in her arms. It was my 8 year old playing. DG got a few pics with his camera phone, but the Luddite has yet to figure out how to get them from the phone to anything else so they can be shared. My uncle also sent her home with two new sets of drumsticks. Yes, music runs deep in this family.
Some nights, I don't think there's enough Ambien in the world to still my mind and put me to sleep. I've been out of sleep aids for months, and for a chronic insomniac with 20 + years experience in the utter lack of sleep, I suppose it isn't so bad to go back to the dramatic cycles of sleeplessness, but damn what I wouldn't give for a night or two of perfectly normal sleep patterns. Such is my life, which at least I'm not sleeping through.
Found a vanilla scented candle that isn't disgusting. I didn't think they existed, and fake vanilla smells make me gag, all plasticy and unnatural. This is rather mellow with a whisper of cigar store vanilla pipe tobacco smoothness, instead of sharp and biting, and is missing the cloying sweetness of other vanilla attempts. I suppose I'm as pleased as I can be, but of course they were on dramatic clearance and will probably be impossible to find after this.
Damn Illuminations anyway. First they go and candle the Sacred Spaces candles that I utterly adored, then they discontinued my Tomato Vine candles, and now they've bloody well gone too far by pulling Every Single Illuminations Store out of the state of TX. You people are FIRED! The young Empress to Be is as displeased as her Mama. Bastards.
Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi is my friend, but the evil Pepsi company that does not provide said cold tasty beverage in a convenient 6 pack of BOTTLES instead of cans needs to be soundly thrashed. I don't do cans. I can TASTE the metal, and it's foul. And then there's the nose thing, which provides friends and family alike with a great deal of entertainment as Pooka comes away with a bruised schnoze because the Irish nose just isn't designed to be slugging any beverage out of a can.
You can all stop laughing now, thank you. I have stale pistachios, and I'm not afraid to use them.
Yep, I've got the 3 am blues.
Why is the library or a bookstore so amazingly sexy? What is it about real paper, about the scent of the pages, the sound they make when turned or ruffled, that makes electronic media feel so flat?
I'm a book junkie, I admit it.
I have an intense predilection for hardbacks. They just feel so right, they read more comfortably: after all, you have no risk of bending the covers, they're easier to support during the process of devouring the book. Paperbacks are a weak and poor shadow of the reading pleasure, and yet my budget hardly allows me to buy hardcovers. The library makes a nearly acceptable substitute, and even though I won't own the books that way, there's always the joy of renewing what I've checked out previously.
Chronicles of the Lensmen: E.E."Doc" Smith. For hard sci-fi started in 1948, they still manage to hold my rapt attention, and I can see reflections of it in many more current works.
The bookcase purchased for my birthday is a black leviathan near my bed. A blank slate, shelves awaiting books, and the sides like a 2001 obelisk begging to be painted. Sorcha suggested silver knotwork, and I think it might just be the way I go unless there are other creative suggestions. The unrelieved BLACKNESS of it is so very formal, but it's crying out for More.
Of course, it's hardly a bookcase. That would be a misnomer of grand proportions. What it truly is, or rather has become, is a Dedicated Feline Napping Appliance. I've found cats happily sleeping on three of the deep shelves. I fear the bottom shelf lost forever to the four-legged interlopers.
Candle flames and lava lamps, the light of the laptop monitor, with old old X Files rumbling on the TV in the background as my only light. An oversized feline curled tightly against my leg as I type, purring like a motorboat and gently pawing at my leg for attention, then more insistently until I have to stop typing and adore him before the claws come out in a Demand For Attention NOW.
Rambling onwards. Uh-Oh Oreos. Uh-oh is right, the damned things are temptation enough for me, who isn't supposed to partake of the evils of refined sugar, but denying them is impossible. Damn you, DG. Now bring me more. Or better yet, cinnamon glazed almonds, which I have found a lovely online source for and will be begging to order quite soon, oh yes.
I want to kidnap my Trained Attack Wenches and run away for the weekend. Or a week. Just get away with the girls for a while. It doesn't matter if we do anything, if we just lie around, or if we pile into the car and aim for a random road trip. So what if it's more like "Thelma and Louise" meets "The Blues Brothers." We can do this. We must do this. I need the relief, I need my wenches, I need to get away and escape.
Am I escaping from something in particular, or just from myself? I don't think it matters. I'm pushing 40 with a stick now, I've lost all the horrible weight that dragged me down, and it's time I remembered how to live again.
Spent Saturday with my aunt and uncle. My aunt, sister to the Momster from Hell, and so totally different in every way possible. To know that she also has difficulties with the Momster was quite refreshing and comforting, to discover that I'm not the only one that thinks the woman is not only the poster child for Valium, but a dreadfully neurotic prude "in serious need of a good fuck," end quote. Endless wave pool, skinny dipping with my hippy relatives (who also pointed out the locations of all the N TX nudist colonies) in their indoor endless wave pool, or outdoors in the hot tub. This was the first time in many many years I've been able to spend time with them without the Momster around, and I think we were all a little nervous at first, wondering if we could just relax and be ourselves. It didn't take long to find many mutually compatible areas, and everyone relaxed and enjoyed themselves.
It wasn't a complete escape, but for a while it was another world.
A sound in the background, a guitar singing away, surprisingly melodic, to look up and see little tiny Thing 2 perched in a chair before the Wall of Guitars (including the ones signed by B.B. King and ... was it Eric Clapton, DG?), guitar in her arms. It was my 8 year old playing. DG got a few pics with his camera phone, but the Luddite has yet to figure out how to get them from the phone to anything else so they can be shared. My uncle also sent her home with two new sets of drumsticks. Yes, music runs deep in this family.
Some nights, I don't think there's enough Ambien in the world to still my mind and put me to sleep. I've been out of sleep aids for months, and for a chronic insomniac with 20 + years experience in the utter lack of sleep, I suppose it isn't so bad to go back to the dramatic cycles of sleeplessness, but damn what I wouldn't give for a night or two of perfectly normal sleep patterns. Such is my life, which at least I'm not sleeping through.
Found a vanilla scented candle that isn't disgusting. I didn't think they existed, and fake vanilla smells make me gag, all plasticy and unnatural. This is rather mellow with a whisper of cigar store vanilla pipe tobacco smoothness, instead of sharp and biting, and is missing the cloying sweetness of other vanilla attempts. I suppose I'm as pleased as I can be, but of course they were on dramatic clearance and will probably be impossible to find after this.
Damn Illuminations anyway. First they go and candle the Sacred Spaces candles that I utterly adored, then they discontinued my Tomato Vine candles, and now they've bloody well gone too far by pulling Every Single Illuminations Store out of the state of TX. You people are FIRED! The young Empress to Be is as displeased as her Mama. Bastards.
Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi is my friend, but the evil Pepsi company that does not provide said cold tasty beverage in a convenient 6 pack of BOTTLES instead of cans needs to be soundly thrashed. I don't do cans. I can TASTE the metal, and it's foul. And then there's the nose thing, which provides friends and family alike with a great deal of entertainment as Pooka comes away with a bruised schnoze because the Irish nose just isn't designed to be slugging any beverage out of a can.
You can all stop laughing now, thank you. I have stale pistachios, and I'm not afraid to use them.
Yep, I've got the 3 am blues.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Senile much?
You know you're getting old when ...
... you look at the date and go HUH, what? That can't be!
Only to discover, yes, the date is correct. Why is this relevant?
My birthday is tomorrow, and I totally had no frellin clue whatsoever.
Oy.
*headthunk*
Or maybe its just the fact that I haven't been to bed yet, even though my body passed out about 5 hours ago without the rest of me and my brain just refuses to shut down and accept that sleep is a relatively normal and necessary function of life unless you're a mutant freak with chronic insomnia like me, thus rendering the entire point moot.
Ooo, shiny!
... you look at the date and go HUH, what? That can't be!
Only to discover, yes, the date is correct. Why is this relevant?
My birthday is tomorrow, and I totally had no frellin clue whatsoever.
Oy.
*headthunk*
Or maybe its just the fact that I haven't been to bed yet, even though my body passed out about 5 hours ago without the rest of me and my brain just refuses to shut down and accept that sleep is a relatively normal and necessary function of life unless you're a mutant freak with chronic insomnia like me, thus rendering the entire point moot.
Ooo, shiny!
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Guilty Pleasures
I have a confession to make: I really adore David and Leigh Eddings. I know a lot can be a bit trite and formulaic, but their writing is charming and easy to read entertainment while still making the old brain cells work. But still, the Belgariad and Mallorean were fun reads, and then I discovered the Elenium and the Tamuli, and life was good (though the Belgariad and Mallorean were definitely more 'solid' reads, and there was a bit too much of the Deus Ex Machina in Elenium and Tamuli for my tastes. Mary Sues, anyone?)
I've just been charmed all over again.
Picked up The Redemption of Althalus at the library. I'm probably enjoying it far too much.
Well, come on, I needed something new to occupy my brain cells for a little while, especially a bit of fluff, after reading Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I was absolutely thrilled with it, and King hasn't held my attention that well since The Stand.
(Note: Anyone wanting to make a Pooka really really happy, her birthday is coming up fast and her "now pushing 40 with a stick" self would -really- like to own a copy of the entire Dark Tower series.)
Also in the Excellent Reads category: John Shirley's Eclipse "A Song Called Youth" series. Dark gritty cyberpunk with some post (and mid) apocalyptic flares.
I've just been charmed all over again.
Picked up The Redemption of Althalus at the library. I'm probably enjoying it far too much.
Well, come on, I needed something new to occupy my brain cells for a little while, especially a bit of fluff, after reading Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I was absolutely thrilled with it, and King hasn't held my attention that well since The Stand.
(Note: Anyone wanting to make a Pooka really really happy, her birthday is coming up fast and her "now pushing 40 with a stick" self would -really- like to own a copy of the entire Dark Tower series.)
Also in the Excellent Reads category: John Shirley's Eclipse "A Song Called Youth" series. Dark gritty cyberpunk with some post (and mid) apocalyptic flares.
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