I finally own a copy of "Star Wars: A New Hope". Or, speaking as a senior citizen, just plain "Star Wars ( Read more... )

Recently there was a controversy about SF conventions and if they were doomed because so many younger fans are brought in by gasp! MEDIA. This trend probably got it start when Star Trek's original series made its debut. But in true "Get out of my yard, you damn kids!" fashion, some elder literary fans have been predicting the death of SF ( Read more... )

Yesterday, the weather took a fast turn and rain moved in. My nose was running in sympathy. Despite that, I got a couple of job applications turned in. One of them is at Raytheon and involves checking documents for proper security classification. It sounds really interesting and I hope to get an interview ( Read more... )

Battle Assembly (what in the days of sanity they called "drill weekend") is this coming weekend. There's no budged for lodging-in-kind, so I have to submit receipts for reimbursement through Defense Travel Services. Plus, the weekend is in Los Al, so the San Diego team is only spending Saturday night there, so they can take the APFT (PT test) on ( Read more... )

How does it work? You pay $10/month and have unlimited access to the Kindle library? How long can you keep a book? How many can you have out at a time? Since we ditched satellite TV, lowering my Kindle expenses seems like the logical next step.

I ended up being far less sedentary than I had previously planned. I got up late yesterday and read for a while, (I'm reading the first Harry Dresden novel, in addition to starting Dion Fortune's book on the Qabalah, as she spells it), then worked on my Warhammer 40k miniatures. I actually have enough for a decent-sized army of Brothers Hematic ( Read more... )

Woot! Caitlyn Doughty's Smoke Gets In Your Eyes is waiting for me at the local library branch. Caitlyn's the founder of the Order of the Good Death, and runs the Ask a Mortician video series on YouTube. Really looking forward to reading this.

I think it might have been food poisoning, or it might have been flu. Both have the same symptoms. I woke up last night at about 11 pm with my stomach cramping and my legs in excruciating pain. This started a night full of trying to find a comfortable position in which to sleep and lurching on my pain-stiffened legs to the toilet. Obviously ( Read more... )

desert_vixen, you have got to read this one. I gave it four stars instead of five for the very eighth-grade writing style. This is the harrowing autobiography of a woman who grew up in the Colorado City, AZ FLDS cult that Warren Jeffs later had moved down to Texas. Carolyn was a rare and gifted exception to the FLDS rule in that while she was married to a ( Read more... )

I'm about halfway through Nadia Bolz-Weber's book Pastrix and I can't stop reading. She's a 44 year old Lutheran pastor, married to another Lutheran pastor, with two kids. She is also foul-mouthed, a punk, a recovering alcoholic, and heavily tattooed. She's far from self-congratulatory about her church, The House For All Sinners and Saints and ( Read more... )