London Dreams

The day before yesterday I dreamed I was in the West End- I have this friend here who always wants to travel and for some reason I dreamed she and I had gone there- we were wandering around the West End (which looked less like itself and more like a futuristic shopping mall) and I ran into another friend of mine. We all decided to get dinner and then after that to walk to Oxford Circus to Beard Papa and get cream puffs.

Somewhere on the way I noticed things weren't right- there was supposed to be a bookstore somewhere and it wasn't there and that jarred me out of the dream before we'd made it anywhere near Oxford Circus.

I spent two and a half months living in Italy and I've never dreamed about it. I spent six weeks in England- mostly in London- and I almost can't believe how much I miss it. I miss the Tube. I miss my Oyster Card. A few weeks ago there was some site doing a bookstore review and the place was somewhere in Soho and I kept thinking I must have walked past the store at some point and never noticed it. I keep thinking the Chinese food I had in Brighton was the best I've ever had- even though I know it's a lie.

Ugh.

I picked up Andrew Grant's Even the other day- it's this pretty badass spy novel- that I first found out about on the Tube. They do these massive posters on the walls there about this week's book and David Trevalyon- the spy in the book- gets his life stolen and he's going to get... Even. Pretty Jason Bourne-ish. Turns out there's a sequel out now for it. Picked it up for my Kindle.

And back to the morose stuff. I saw this guy at work the other day- just one of the customers milling about- a doppleganger for Andy. It took my breath away. To some extent things like that make me angry. That there's only so many bone structures or hair and eye combinations amongst all of us. Other times I see something like that and, I mean, of course it's not him reincarnated- the time is all wrong for that, this guy was like, 20 or something- but it's spooky. It made me think of all the things we don't wind up doing or saying. I used to work at this pizza parlor and we'd get free pizzas all the time and I used to take them over to his apartment. I always thought how uncool it would be to tell him how much it meant that he let me in and I never said anything. I kept meaning to make him a pair of gloves and never settled on a pattern and every time I start to think about having cold hands in the winter and making myself just one more pair I remember I never made him any.

Sherlock 2 John Watson Scarf

I went and saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2 Thursday night and it was great- there was a preview for Sherlock 2 that looked like a lot of fun (technically I'm still more excited about Sherlock season 2 on BBC, but whatever). RDJ looked horrific in drag. Jude Law had an amazing scarf- blue and brown and cream colored.



Sherlock 2 John Watson Scarf

I'm using Vanna's Choice yarn from JoAnn's. It's worsted weight. I'm having to guess at the amount but I bought:

3 skeins Colonial Blue
3 skeins Chocolate
1 skein .....that oatmeal colored yarn with the brown threads in it. I lost the ball band already :(

CO 40 stitches. I did it long tail, but whatever you like.

Oh, right, size 9 needles.

CO 40 stitches in chocolate, then knit, purl, knit, purl all the way across. next row knit the knits, and purl the purls. The scarf will shrink in width but be thicker.

This brown section, make it 16 rows. Then start with the oatmeal color and do 2 rows. Then start up the colonial blue and do that 10 rows. Then the oatmeal again for 2, then go back to the chocolate. Make it as long as you need to and be sure to end with a brown section.

Now that you're done knitting it and ready to go solve some mysteries get out your trusty copy of... (i was going to say Half Blood Prince, but...) Sherlock Holmes Collected. (if you don't have that in some massive edition, go buy one. but until you've got it, use your massive Harry Potter books) Watson's scarf has really big tassels and I've only got one decent-ish picture of them so I have to guess a bit how they're done. Wrap the yarn around the book- all three colors- and cut it when you think you have enough. In the pic I've got that shows the tail of the scarf, it looks like you take two strands of a color together, use a crochet hook to pull them through, then slip the ends through the loop of yarn you pulled through. Pull it tight. That's one tassel. If I squint really hard it looks like the order of colors of tassel are oatmeal, chocolate, then colonial blue. Repeat it across.



It looks like it hits Jude Law at the knee so make it pretty big.

(also, Charles, I saw an ad for Disney's John Carter of Mars, and at the bookstore there was what looked like a movie tie in novel for Solomon Kane, and there's Conan at the end of the year. WHAT JUST HAPPENED?)

Camp Nanowrimo and crochet armor

Nanowrimo has started a new event that can take place any time of the year. It's called Camp Nanowrimo and it's got a kid's camp sort of theme to it. It's still got all the tracking features, but there's no forums or regions or anything for an ML to do (thank god, honestly- the last two years as ML have been hard).

There's a link to the side if you're interested in looking at it.

I have no idea why but even though my DVR is set to only record new episodes of Ancient Aliens it records ones that are old. But only sometimes. So sometimes I'll come home and there's a new episode, but it's really an old one. Oh well. Sometimes they get confused about actual history in it- I seem to recall some allusion to the crown of Egypt being designed to hide an alien's head- but there's things they bring up that there aren't answers to. Like how the Egyptians built anything when we can't find any of their tools. Or some of the South American monolithic sites that are just preposterously oversized...

I put down Sherlock to read Conan and then wandered off into the horrible sea of trash that is known as Anita Blake. It's so bad in such a... guilt pleasure way. (oh god i can't believe i made that joke) The early evening was so nice I went to sit on the porch and read The Case of the Dancing Men. I didn't quite finish it but the people are dead and Sherlock is hiding behind a door about to capture the main suspect. Sometimes when Sherlock is at his most didactic I just want Professor Snape to show up. Then they could have awesome smart people adventures.

I picked up some kind of spin off Conan novel this morning about a guy named... Anok? I can't wait for the movie to come out. And I keep waiting to get to the story about Sonja- I keep looking at knitting patterns for bikinis and thinking how to modify them with little crochet armor bits into her costume. It's like comics/crochet/fiction madness.

And I accidentally got mom addicted to True Blood. No, not the books. The tv show. "Can we watch it? Are the dvds here yet? What's going to happen to Sookie now?" I'm going straight to hell.

(Forced) Bachelorette

I'm not the kind of person that watches things like Bachelorette or Bachelor- it's just blah pukey fake relationship bs. I can't stand it.

But that doesn't stop Mom from loving it to death.

But this new season- the one episode that I've caught while making dinner- one of the guys on here is the most incredibly horrid person ever. His name is Bentley- he can fake cry on command, uses his daughter as an excuse to bail on the Bachelorette, and he keeps telling the cameramen he's only there to promote his buisness and get attention back home. Another girl told the Bachelorette what Bentley's MO was and she confronted him about it and he managed to spin the whole thing that it was his ex-wife's best friend telling lies...

I don't even understand guys. What was the point of all thhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifat? The Bachelorette bawled for like ten minutes of what was on air and who knew what that was in real life time. And they kept cutting it with him talking to the cameramen about how annoying she was and how much he was "so over" her tears and how ugly she is.

IN MUCH BETTER NEWS I've been reading the Conan stories like crazy. I found a complete collection for my Kindle. And it's like every story some waifish Princess is throwing herself and her billowing irridescent veils into his arms. It's great.

And I've been looking for a pattern to make a Harry Potter sweater. I think I'm gonna go with the Incredible Custom-fit Raglan Sweater pattern.

Outlander and Sleuth

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. Work and School have taken over all my spare time again. And I haven't cooked anything that fancy lately or knitted anything really spectacular (i mean, besides the shipwreck shawl from knitty that I'm in the middle of- I've just got to the beading part and it's making me crazy).

Just kind of blah and busy.

Anyway, now that it's the small little break between spring and summer semester I've been catching up on movies. MovieStop keeps having these four for three sales and I buy terrible movies- I bought some nightmare of a movie called Doomsday that's about a plague in the UK where the government decides to build a huge wall to block off Scotland and the plague. Oh god is it bad. It has a certain amount of punk rock Mad Max thing going on, but god is it horrid.

Outlander was a bit better- space man crashes in the viking times and the space monster he's got in his ship gets loose and then he's got to hunt it down. Honestly I felt bad for the Moorwin- the space monster, more than the vikings.

And now we're watching Sleuth, the remake with Michael Caine and Ewan McGregor. The dialog is so fast and sharp you can tell it was a stage play before it was ever a movie. So far nothing much has happened but I'm riveted.

I'm about half way through the complete Sherlock Holmes and I picked up a complete Conan because I've got one of the books and the new movie looks pretty. My Kindle is wrecking my life. New book, new book, new book.

MOAR SHERLOCK

So I had a dream this morning I was at the Trafalger Square Waterstones looking for Sherlock tie-in novels. I was like oh god... Amazon.uk says there aren't any so at least my bank account is sighing in relief.



No, no, I don't want this one because it's got a pretty cover. Nope.

Worst. Nanowrimo. Ever.

This year's Nanowrimo has been a disaster from start to finish. I couldn't think of anything to write til day one- too much school work- no time to plan events- the story I picked up ended halfway through. I started another story as soon as the first finished but by god there's only so many weekly papers and final papers and Livy a person can cope with before defeat happens.

Besides the not winning part- which I've done before, just not in years- the worst part is feeling like I can't write anymore. Nothing is as good as it used to be, I don't think of the story unless I'm sitting at the computer (no time to think up conversations while I'm at work or driving, apparently), everything just feels blah. I looked at last year's Nano which was a romance novel and I swear to god it's brilliant in comparison to anything I wrote recently but it's no For the Glory of Rome.

Sometimes I'm scared I cranked out my Penultimate Life's Work.

I hate feeling like this.

In other, happier, news:

I've talked to my sister about five or six times on the phone. She's really nice. She has two kids. She wants me to visit.

My seamonkeys are doing great.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson is even more awesome than the movie. I cannot put it down. Even though I know what's happening.

In comparison Michael Crichton's Pirate Latitudes is no Jurassic Park. I think he must have still been working on it when he died, like it's draft 1.5 or something. It's just not as long as usual.

My friend Lisa has a bunny that she let me petsit. I've never really seen a bunny up close besides in pet stores. They're not very friendly but they are soft. I guess you just hold it?

Books, books, books.

I picked up Anne Macaffrey's Crystal Singer last week at Book Exchange. Normally I give books the 50 page test that I learned from Charles- the first fifty pages were just kind of... Sleepy isn't the right word, but I wasn't excited about anything Killashandra was up to either. But I couldn't stop reading it either. I think I'm about 3/4 the way through it and I don't want to read it anymore, but I do. I guess Killashandra isn't very interesting, but Anne's writing is very good.

Then I picked up Dracula, My Love by Syrie James which is a retelling of Dracula from Mina's POV. I'm only about a hundred pages in, but it's a good read. Not YOU HAVE TO READ THIS yet, but it's amusing.

And last night I noticed that Clive Barker's Absolute Midnight which is the third book in the Abarat series was supposed to be out last month. I think it was also supposed to be out last month last year. Come on Clive, put the book out- there's not even any fanfic I know of to bridge the gaps.

All the books in the world.... except one

Scan of some comic.

Found this randomly, it's really great.

Books, Books, Books

Sat down and read all of the recently released Lord Sunday in one sitting. Last book in the series and it manages to put a new spin on what's been happening in the previous six books to the point I think I have to reread them. The Keys to the Kingdom series is pretty young adult and the books are pretty thin- it's one of those series I'd love to see rewritten as doorstops for a more adult audience.

And before that I read The Steel Remains which was on a blog post about all of the remake movies they're doing this year and next and what they could be making from books instead. Apparently there is going to be a new Highlander movie and that's my childhood so when the blogger said "make steel remains instead" I had to see what was so special about the book that it beats out my beloved Highlander. And as much as I love Highlander I'd rather see Ringil hacking things up on screen right now.

The Cobb County Library Book Sale yielded up an almost complete set of hardcover Vampire Chronicles (only need two more) and I've been rereading Interview with the Vampire. It's the book that besides the Narnia books owned my childhood. And its funny- there's moments I remember almost word for word in it, then there's parts I can never recall- like Babette. I always forget who she is. Louis is still very emo. I wish Vampire Lestat had been one of the other hardcovers I'd picked up- I'm almost done with Interview already and ready for Lestat to start behaving badly.

Clive Barker's Abarat series was supposed to have the third book out last summer (also the original release date for Lord Sunday before it was moved back) but I'm beginning to suspect it's never going to come out.

And I picked up but did not start rereading the first book in the Bloody Jack series. I read the first five in three days when I checked them out of the library a few years ago- Jack is actually Jackie whose family dies of plague (i think?) and she joins the Royal Navy while passing for a boy, fights pirates, becomes a horseman, gets sent to a boarding/charm school for young ladies, joins a whaling ship, falls in love with another sailor, ect, ect. Crazy nautical awesomesauce.



Look at the second to last job title in the subtitle of the novel. I'm pretty sure when I read to book five I'd only gotten to the soldier/sailor part. Now she's a mermaid. Or she was book before this.

MERMAID.

And I thought the book where she's a horseman was going to be badass.

Curse of the ADD knitter

Having seen Jean's post about knitting I feel the need to blog about it too.

I have come to realize over the last few weeks of knitting that I am hardcore ADD about it. I have at least ten projects going at the moment, and I sort of move between them depending on what I'm interested in working on at the moment. Give me something I'm inspired with and I'll work on it day and night and get it done in three days.

Give me something I am not so inspired with and it will sit in my knitting crate for a year.

And lately (much to Mom's horror) I have been frogging those uninspiring things. Frogging is where you pull the needles out of the project, then rewind all the yarn out of it, then do something else with the yarn. I used to be afraid of doing that because of all the hardwork I'd put in. Now I'm just like, urg, I can use that yarn on something else. Or I want the needles back.

Which is nice. It saves yarn. And Mom makes this face like :O only so much better. You can tell she wants to take whatever I'm frogging away from me.

Anyway, long story short, I have two shawls going at the moment, a pair of gloves in sock weight yarn (oh god all of those tiny little stitches), a pair of gloves with cables, at least two scarves... And I have a pair of gloves to finish for one of my WriMos.

And then today, knowing all of that, I found a pattern for fingerless gloves where you embroider words on the knuckles and it made me think of one of the sailors in Master and Commander who has "HOLD FAST" tattooed on his knuckles. I go to look at the yarn, see there's some I have in my stash already, but they're in some gloves from two years ago that I have never worn or finished. When I get home those things are getting frogged. Now if I only knew how to embroider so I can do little ships and Here There Be Monsters things all over the rest of the gloves...

Still Ghostwriting for Shakespeare

I had this crazy dream this morning that a lost Shakespeare play had been found. It was called "To Wit" and was about... This young man who was getting married and took all of his friends out to his country estate for revelry before the wedding. They were going to hunt for a week, and drink, and boast about things, and then the bride would show up with her family and friends, and the play would end with a wedding. Only the friends of the bride were going to marry the friends of the groom, and the play was much funnier than it sounds.

Part of the reason it was a 'lost' play was that Shakespeare had written it in secret and had half the men played by women, and half the women played by men. Most of the boasting and jokes had to do with gender roles and sexism.

I remember in the first part, once they'd all just arrived at the country estate two of the men, Gracen and... this guy who's name I can't recall, they get drunk and start boasting about how they're both such good hunters they don't have to stalk their prey, they just hide so well it comes to them. And Kiera Knightly was playing Gracen and I think Karl Urban was playing the guy who's name I can't remember. And they wind up in the yard of the estate, pointing to trees and barrels saying they could hide behind them so well no one would ever find them. At one point Gracen is hiding behind a lone wagon wheel he's propped up in the middle of a field and it's after dusk and they're drunk and the other guy can't find him in the dark so he wins the boast off...

It was the most hilarious thing I had ever seen.

And then Nikki started crying and hopping up and down on the bed wanting breakfast and you have no idea how furious I am I did not get to see the rest of the play.

War of the Worlds

Finished "Days of Grass" this morning- it'd been a long time since I'd been to a used book store and found a Tanith Lee novel I hadn't already read or owned. Found this one over at Book Nook about a week ago and only just picked it up last night. It's pretty much War of the Worlds, if she'd written it first- aliens come down and take over the planet and humanity goes to hide underground and the heroine sneaks up now and then to see what surface life is like. And then she gets captured by the aliens and taken to a city they've made. It's good, but it's not Tales of the Flat Earth.

Ennui

Sorry blog, haven't been able to think of anything to write about so it's been a slow month.

I did this big knitting project the other way and misread the directions (which weren't that clear) and two days worth of work is all wrong. Mom made a scene while I unwound the knitting so I could redo it- it was like I was painting over the Mona Lisa.

Haven't done any Christmas shopping, though two knitting projects are done. Two more to do, I think. Or three. I should probably make a list tomorrow.

Made up a character to play in my friend's Blue Rose game. Blue Rose is called Romantic Fantasy- I'm not fond of that name, but whatever- it's the difference between most Dungeons and Dragons games and most fantasy novels written in the last twenty years. More abandoned moonlit temples and court intrigue than undead vikings coming over the mountain to kidnap the mayor's daughter. Drew my character on the back of my sheet- it's amazing how well I can draw for someone who can't actually draw.

Saw Ninja Assassin and The Princess and the Frog. I don't know if my childhood memories of Disney are just rosy colored from that age- I don't watch Disney anymore- but when I heard that Princess and the Frog was the best since Lion King I was a little excited about seeing it. Went and saw it with Amie and Joel and I don't know what reviewer made that comparison or what they were on at the time, but they're not even in the same league. I can think of songs from Lion King (The Circle of Life, Can you feel the love tonight, Hakuna Matata) or Aladdin (A Whole New World) or The Little Mermaid (Part of Your World)- I can't recall any songs from Princess and the Frog besides "Almost There" and I've got nothing other than the title. I guess it was ok. I don't know. It was pretty. It wasn't Miyazaki.

(On that note, Ponyo rocked my face off. And now I really want to go watch Spirited Away again.)

However, Ninja Assassin was everything it promised- fifteen gallons of blood in the human body and it's all under high pressure and the ninjas have lots of sharp pointy things. It had a neat story too- though I think I thought it'd be a bit more since I saw JMS in the credits. There was a lot of back flipping, too. And the ninja hero guy spends a lot of time working out in his apartment in sleep pants.

I had a weird thought at the used book store the other day. I was over at Book Nook since some friends live near there, and I wanted to see if they had something I couldn't find at Book Exchange and I realized there's some things you just can't find. Oddly enough, there's about eighty something Outlanders books by James Axler and at least that many Deathlands books- you're lucky if there's more than five in a used book store. Where do they go? I have no idea. I never see them anywhere. However, there's usually at least one Zecheria Sitchin book and so far I've managed to collect nearly the whole series from Book Exchange alone. And I realized no matter what used book store I go to I pretty much always find something really interesting sounding that is book three in a five book series- and you are never ever going to see the other four books. It's like they don't exist. There's something called the Silver Thorn or Silver Throne series written by someone with a last name that starts with "Mc" and I see it every used book store I go to, and it's never the first one.

Tanith Lee's Night's Master

Seriously, doesn't this look cool? It's the new edition of the first of Tanith Lee's Flat Earth series. I've got it in hardback, in a collected edition but this is so nice looking it makes me want to run out and buy it.

Cobb County Library Book Sale

This is probably going to be the last big booksale of the season... Kevin and I got up really early and went to wait in the cold for the doors to open, then rushed around looking for things from 9am til 1pm. Found a few grocery bags worth of stuff, some records. The records selection was practically all Vivaldi this year, just crates and crates of it, no big band.

Well, having Kevin along was great because he's big enough to fight his way in amongst all the grannies at the craft table (I'm too scared to start pushing) and he came out with a few knitting books for me. The first was like, 80's colorwork for children (SCARY) and the second was... Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting, which is one of my favorite knitting books of all time. I never thought I'd get a copy since it's price is usually somewhere between 200-300 dollars but this was ONE FREAKING DOLLAR!!

Other than that I got a Cole Porter bio, a few really old Horatio Hornblower books, a comlete set of Kate Elliot's Crown of Stars, a couple of good history textbooks, some King Arthur fiction. One of the records is "Monster Concert" which has like, 20 pianos and sixteen players- it has to be cool.

And, not adding in the real value of the Alice Starmore book, I bought $445 worth of books for $26. Best of the season so far.

ALSO DO NOT TAKE KIDS TO WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE. IT'S MADE OF AWESOME AND NIGHTMARE FUEL.

Third Book Sale of the Season

There was a booksale this morning at Perimeter Mall- to benefit the American Association of University Women. I've never been to a booksale in a mall before- If the Cobb County sale can use Exhibit Halls in a park, I'm astounded one taking place in Atlanta can't find something similar. Meh. Food was right there, since we were next to the food court, so that was cool.



Now, as for the finds...

There was a writing book I used to check out of the library all the time on characters. I need to figure out what the other one was- same topic but it had all these lists of hobbies and names by region in it.

Several history books: AD 1000, The Waning of the Middle Ages, Life in a Medieval Castle, Courtesans, The Great Mortality, and The Last Madam.

Two Arthur books: The Quest for Arthur's Britain and The Mists of Avalon.

Simple Knits with a Twist which has knitting with wires and plastic bags and the like. Milk, Eggs, Vodka which is a collection of lost and found grocery lists. I did find a textbook about Joseph Campbell's work, but none of the actual Joseph Campbell books. Batman and Philosophy was found over in the Religion section. Something on the origins of words. And a nonfiction book about vampires.

It was a pretty good haul. That first booksale got me $160 worth of books for $14. This one came to $320 for $30.

As for scanners? There was a lady with a suitcase (the giant size, going away for a month style) scanning books with her PDA. She and her bag blocked the classics table so long I didn't get to look at it. Some guy stood with his phone scanning romance paperbacks so long I gave up on looking at them either. I haven't decided if they or the people with the kids who scream, have no interest in what's going on, and block the shelves are worse.

(In case you're wondering about the numbering of booksales- The second one was in Newnan but I didn't go)

Bourbon Street and Headstones

Probably it's the trip to the Marietta Cemetery for class this morning but I suddenly really want to reread Interview with the Vampire.



And maybe The Vampire Lestat. And Queen of the Damned. Man, those are some good books. The first time I read them was in the sixth grade and those three are still my favorites of the series. Good, long summer reading.

What I did on my Spring Break

Mostly: nothing.

The booksale was the last day before break, so I had plenty to read. Made some headway into Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, read chapters here and there in Sitchin's Cosmic Code, flipped through the Esperanto book and tried to explain to mom why it's a brilliant idea.

Did a lot of knitting. Hobby Lobby isn't what I usually think of when I think 'yarn shop' but they have their own in house brand of yarn and it's mostly insane artsy acrylics which, when that type of yarn's time is over, go on sale for $1.99. Which isn't bad for a skein of yarn; it's even better when it's neat yarn with bright colors, all sorts of unusual styles and types. I bought this lemon-lime yarn that reminded me of those subliminal message Sprite commercials from last year and did a thin summer weight scarf out of it; Mom went nuts seeing it so I gave it to her. Another yarn I bought was this purple furry yarn with bits of sewed stuff in it; it's called ragg yarn and it looks like it's spun out of lumber jack shirts and muppets. Mom started giving it the 'that's mine' look but I told her I'd just knitted her something (and it's not like she doesn't know how to knit). I finished the purple scarf in South Carolina and Aunt Marilyn got the same look.

Monday we watched Castle, which was funnier than I thought it would be.



Thursday we drove down to Hilton Head to visit my Aunt and Uncle at their vacation home, which is in one of those golf course resort neighborhoods. I hadn't seen them in a year or two, and I loved taking pictures of the Spanish moss covered oaks in the area. We couldn't play golf with them because I have no idea what I'm doing, and secondly I brought clothes and then a dress, and the clothes weren't nice enough for golfing and the dress was too nice, and thirdly I don't even have golf shoes. Apparently golf is such a historical sport you have to dress up for it. I just found the whole thing a little silly and weird; I mean, how are you supposed to try it out?



We went to the beach once, so I could see it, and it was freezing and the wind was blowing like a hurricane- It was still stunning, especially since there was enough fog on the ocean to make the horizon invisible. The Savannah River side of Hilton Head was somewhat warmer- I poked around the beach there picking up seashells and looking at a few beached jelly fish; the largest was the size of a colander.



Friday night we ate at a local place called Pepper's Porch where I had fantastic jambalaya. I got to watch Bones on my laptop that afternoon, since we missed it the night before- Booth and Brennan continue to be the highlight of my tv week.

Headed back today and I made the mistake of taking Dramamine on an empty stomach- I slept eight hours last night, the entire ride back up, and a five hour nap this after noon. Went to get the dogs from Fred's house just in time to catch the premier of Kings...

Kings was epic. I like the drama of it, and the politicking, the uniforms, and David. David spent the whole episode being badass without even noticing it; he can't sleep so he rescues his fellow soldiers, he faces his court martial without reservations, hides from the King's party to play the piano... Spends money buying his fellow soldiers beer and video games.

Which reminded me this has been an incredible year for television. Not just since January 1st because a lot of shows have been on midseason break, but this season since last fall. Fringe. Bones. Leverage. Castle. Lie to Me. Kings. Being Human. Dollhouse. (i'm probably forgetting something) Practically everything that's been on has been fantastic. I was eating dinner the other night and turned to Mom and said "I miss Leverage." right out of the blue and she was like "Me too.". At least there will be more of that this summer. Fringe there's still something like 20 days until a new episode. Bones is going to be new until the season is over. I have no idea what Kings' schedule is going to be like, but I'll be glued to my seat when it's on.

Yay for tv!

In other news, I remain jobless. I'm trying to keep my chin up about the whole thing, but it's really depressing and aggravating. I'm the next person to be hired at two places, if anyone leaves. But who's going to leave right now? No one. Mom's got the same thing going on. Since I got home I've filled out at least two or three applications a day, more when I wasn't in class, and I've had one interview. One. I got the job at Aero because of how awesome Kevin is and the fact I'm an epic employee- I was supposed to be seasonal for Thanksgiving, not until January. I just worked like a powerhouse and impressed everyone and they kept me on until they couldn't anymore. It's even more ridiculous when you're on these job finding sites and they're like "Now Hiring!" so you rush to fill out the application only to get a reply back asking if you have a commercial drivers license when they weren't advertising for *drivers*.

Anyway, we got home from South Carolina early so I can make it to my England to 1688 class tomorrow- it the best thing I'm taking this semester.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

This book is seriously awesome.

There's magic, and fair folk, and the Regency Era, and the word 'showed' is spelled 'shewed', and there are *footnotes*. They're fake ones that go to books that aren't really real, but *footnotes* for god's sake in a fiction book. Referencing fictional stuff.

It's even written like that era. Here's the first sentence so you can see: "Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians."

And it's one of those massive, tome-sized things that they keep coming out with these days. I remember when I was a kid and the Narnia books could keep me busy for hours; now they're maybe an hour and a half's reading (and when I clocked that it was outloud reading). This thing feels good in your hands.

And apparently they're going to make a movie of it.