today has had its ups and downs
though having woken up multiple times coughing uncontrollably in the night (or possible morning, i didn't bother checking the time), managed to stay in bed until noonish, when customer service called and said my dad's present (coffee flavor thingys) was being discontinued; ended up cancelling and reordering elsewhere online (where hopefully they still have a couple left in stock).
it was less windyridiculous than the last couple days, so i popped a ricola and dragged myself out to get cough medicine/tea (finally--i've been making do since saturday with hot water, honey, and salt. not the best of plans.). once at cvs, after long internal debate over brandname vs cvs-brand (cvs was < half the price), cough drops vs no cough drops (can never have too many cough drops; also, make good gifts), i realized the checkout line was approximately 3 miles long. le sigh.
and then, as summarized on facebook: i got carded while buying cough medicine. apparently the correct response to "::suspicious look:: how old are you?" is not "::blink:: uhm... 21?"
in my own defense, with questions with variable answers like these (what year is it, how old are you, what are you reading, where are you going), even if the answer is something i know really well, it takes me a second to think of the answer (i'm terrible at the sheet game*).
also, my mind had been somewhat wandering through the 20-minute line, and i didn't realize expectorant and cough drops were high on the list of things-teens-will-make-drugs-from (i mean, yeah, robitussin, but these are tablet expectorants and cough drops whose active ingredient is menthol. i guess the computer flagged it as cough/cold items, because there was a note printed with the receipt (possibly one i wasn't supposed to see) about how cvs protects teens from cough medicine abuse? maybe i just looked totally suspicious.), so my first thought was, "what, you think i'm skipping school or something?" followed by "lady, if you'd heard me coughing earlier, you wouldn't be asking questions."
but i got my cough meds, so 'sall good.
*an icebreaker where you split into two groups with two people holding some sort of opaque cloth in the middle. each team sends a rep, the cloth is dropped, and the winner is the one who names the other person fastest. loser switches teams, and you continue until everybody's on one side or people are tired of the game.
picked up tea (YAY) and honey (yay) at giant and headed back, but stopped at the library on a whim--a good one, because unseen academicals and and another thing... were sitting on the "new arrivals" shelf waiting to be taken home.
decided to be somewhat productive and get my textbooks for next semester before starting a book... yeaaaaah. only needed two of them, but prices shoot way up after christmas/new years. the price of procrastination? $35.60. siiiiiiiiiiiigh. at least they're ordered, though.
the first time i heard about and another thing... i was skeptical at best, but the sanderson/jordan thing seems to have gone over well so i figured there was hope.
nnnnnnnno.
let me preface this by saying i haven't finished the book. i cannot actually bring myself to read more of this thing, and i've suffered through about 100 pages, so it's time to give it up.
now, it's been a while since i read the hitchhikers books, but i remember then as quirky and eccentric, depressing at times, full of random hilarity, and overall fun reads. also, i enjoyed the movie. and the text adventure (though i did use hints liberally).
imho, colfer just doesn't get it. or he does, but he's trying too hard. or SOMETHING.
it reads somewhat like artificially adams-flavored word salad, and not in a good way. i could barely recognize the characters (also, random (the daughter) is back, and nobody likes random). also, why is zaphod (or was it ford? because i'm totally reading ford as very zaphod-ish. must have been ford) referring to himself as a "froody dude"? what's wrong with "hoopy frood"? also, is it just me or does "froody dude" just sound wrong? not to mention zaphod removes one of his heads so he can use it to pilot the heard of gold, and turns out the head ("left brain") is an analytical genius who's been repressed by the other head all his life? what?
on a further stylistic note, colfer tries to do the clever-footnote thing, except instead of nice unobtrusive footnotes, he has frikking "guide notes" embedded in the text. not like, nested on the side of the page, or in sidebars or something you can read over to get to the next sentence without breaking the flow of reading. no. he has frikking paragraph-separator bars cutting across the page so he can stick in half a page of "guide notes" before getting back to the actual book.
and yes, there is random, but it feels so forced. it's like the difference between conversing with someone over im/gchat/whatever and reading one of those ridiculous i-am-an-adult-writing-in-im-speak-like-teenagers-how-clever book. it's painful to read.
adams had rambling sentences. but rambling in a good way, where it kind of carries you along (i'm imagining somewhat like the small world boat ride at disney). eoin colfer rambles in such a way that it makes me object to his punctuation. or something. he rambles about random things and tries to pick up the sentence in another sentence which by that point has gotten lost in the tangent.
compare the adams quote on the back cover...
The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distand hills, like a man saying "And another thing" twenty minutes after admitting he's lost the argument.
...to the first two sentences (these are of the... preface? it's on page vii anyway):
If you own a copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the one of the last things you would be likely to type into its v-board would be the very same title of that particular Sub-Etha volume. As presumably, since you have a copy, you already know all about the most remarkable book ever to have come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor.
i had to go back and pore over that for a couple minutes before i figured out what the "as presumably" was supposed to signify, and once i figured it out it bothered me even more. it's kind of a sad book that cannot draw me in enough to forgive the punctuation that i disagree with, though in this case i'm inclined to say it's grammatically inaccurate. there are other examples, i'm sure, but none that i'm up to looking for at the moment. it just makes the reading experience unpleasant.
maybe i'm being too picky, but... i can't even tell what the plot is. not that the previous books had particularly clear plots (at least to me) but you could tell people were off in a direction with some sort of purpose. i feel like colfer is having way too much fun making (sometimes obscure) references to the hitchhiker canon and that i can't figure out where the characters are going. it's like reading fanfiction, and also feels like a kids' book. yes, he's the author of artemis fowl, but that's no excuse.
whatever. i am done with this book.
anyway. having acquired cough medicine, i am indeed coughing less. hooray breathing!
on the down side, i'm realizing how much i've screwed up my throat (seriously, how does this happen with just coughing?). also, that the reason my abs have been sore is from coughing. suck.
on the bright side, have tea, honey, herbal tea, cough medicine, and a new pratchett book. and tomorrow will be laundry day. mmmm dryer-toasty clothes.
it was less windyridiculous than the last couple days, so i popped a ricola and dragged myself out to get cough medicine/tea (finally--i've been making do since saturday with hot water, honey, and salt. not the best of plans.). once at cvs, after long internal debate over brandname vs cvs-brand (cvs was < half the price), cough drops vs no cough drops (can never have too many cough drops; also, make good gifts), i realized the checkout line was approximately 3 miles long. le sigh.
and then, as summarized on facebook: i got carded while buying cough medicine. apparently the correct response to "::suspicious look:: how old are you?" is not "::blink:: uhm... 21?"
in my own defense, with questions with variable answers like these (what year is it, how old are you, what are you reading, where are you going), even if the answer is something i know really well, it takes me a second to think of the answer (i'm terrible at the sheet game*).
also, my mind had been somewhat wandering through the 20-minute line, and i didn't realize expectorant and cough drops were high on the list of things-teens-will-make-drugs-from (i mean, yeah, robitussin, but these are tablet expectorants and cough drops whose active ingredient is menthol. i guess the computer flagged it as cough/cold items, because there was a note printed with the receipt (possibly one i wasn't supposed to see) about how cvs protects teens from cough medicine abuse? maybe i just looked totally suspicious.), so my first thought was, "what, you think i'm skipping school or something?" followed by "lady, if you'd heard me coughing earlier, you wouldn't be asking questions."
but i got my cough meds, so 'sall good.
*an icebreaker where you split into two groups with two people holding some sort of opaque cloth in the middle. each team sends a rep, the cloth is dropped, and the winner is the one who names the other person fastest. loser switches teams, and you continue until everybody's on one side or people are tired of the game.
picked up tea (YAY) and honey (yay) at giant and headed back, but stopped at the library on a whim--a good one, because unseen academicals and and another thing... were sitting on the "new arrivals" shelf waiting to be taken home.
decided to be somewhat productive and get my textbooks for next semester before starting a book... yeaaaaah. only needed two of them, but prices shoot way up after christmas/new years. the price of procrastination? $35.60. siiiiiiiiiiiigh. at least they're ordered, though.
the first time i heard about and another thing... i was skeptical at best, but the sanderson/jordan thing seems to have gone over well so i figured there was hope.
nnnnnnnno.
let me preface this by saying i haven't finished the book. i cannot actually bring myself to read more of this thing, and i've suffered through about 100 pages, so it's time to give it up.
now, it's been a while since i read the hitchhikers books, but i remember then as quirky and eccentric, depressing at times, full of random hilarity, and overall fun reads. also, i enjoyed the movie. and the text adventure (though i did use hints liberally).
imho, colfer just doesn't get it. or he does, but he's trying too hard. or SOMETHING.
it reads somewhat like artificially adams-flavored word salad, and not in a good way. i could barely recognize the characters (also, random (the daughter) is back, and nobody likes random). also, why is zaphod (or was it ford? because i'm totally reading ford as very zaphod-ish. must have been ford) referring to himself as a "froody dude"? what's wrong with "hoopy frood"? also, is it just me or does "froody dude" just sound wrong? not to mention zaphod removes one of his heads so he can use it to pilot the heard of gold, and turns out the head ("left brain") is an analytical genius who's been repressed by the other head all his life? what?
on a further stylistic note, colfer tries to do the clever-footnote thing, except instead of nice unobtrusive footnotes, he has frikking "guide notes" embedded in the text. not like, nested on the side of the page, or in sidebars or something you can read over to get to the next sentence without breaking the flow of reading. no. he has frikking paragraph-separator bars cutting across the page so he can stick in half a page of "guide notes" before getting back to the actual book.
and yes, there is random, but it feels so forced. it's like the difference between conversing with someone over im/gchat/whatever and reading one of those ridiculous i-am-an-adult-writing-in-im-speak-like-teenagers-how-clever book. it's painful to read.
adams had rambling sentences. but rambling in a good way, where it kind of carries you along (i'm imagining somewhat like the small world boat ride at disney). eoin colfer rambles in such a way that it makes me object to his punctuation. or something. he rambles about random things and tries to pick up the sentence in another sentence which by that point has gotten lost in the tangent.
compare the adams quote on the back cover...
The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distand hills, like a man saying "And another thing" twenty minutes after admitting he's lost the argument.
...to the first two sentences (these are of the... preface? it's on page vii anyway):
If you own a copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the one of the last things you would be likely to type into its v-board would be the very same title of that particular Sub-Etha volume. As presumably, since you have a copy, you already know all about the most remarkable book ever to have come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor.
i had to go back and pore over that for a couple minutes before i figured out what the "as presumably" was supposed to signify, and once i figured it out it bothered me even more. it's kind of a sad book that cannot draw me in enough to forgive the punctuation that i disagree with, though in this case i'm inclined to say it's grammatically inaccurate. there are other examples, i'm sure, but none that i'm up to looking for at the moment. it just makes the reading experience unpleasant.
maybe i'm being too picky, but... i can't even tell what the plot is. not that the previous books had particularly clear plots (at least to me) but you could tell people were off in a direction with some sort of purpose. i feel like colfer is having way too much fun making (sometimes obscure) references to the hitchhiker canon and that i can't figure out where the characters are going. it's like reading fanfiction, and also feels like a kids' book. yes, he's the author of artemis fowl, but that's no excuse.
whatever. i am done with this book.
anyway. having acquired cough medicine, i am indeed coughing less. hooray breathing!
on the down side, i'm realizing how much i've screwed up my throat (seriously, how does this happen with just coughing?). also, that the reason my abs have been sore is from coughing. suck.
on the bright side, have tea, honey, herbal tea, cough medicine, and a new pratchett book. and tomorrow will be laundry day. mmmm dryer-toasty clothes.