Long Time No Update
Oh dear. I don't know why this is, but for some reason I just .. can't seem to manage to keep up with LJ these days.
I blame the day the LJ plug-in for Firefox, which kept me up with friends page updates and what not, stopped working, those many, many months ago. (But really, that's no excuse, I know.)
The other thing is just that I haven't felt very talkative for some time now. I don't know if that will change - maybe, maybe not.
If I recall correctly, I did mention back in the winter/spring that Pätsu, our last remaining cat, was ... not well off. She's got a tumour right outside (and also inside) her ear, with a 50/50 chance of it being cancer but either way, not operable and not curable.
Well... she's still with us, so currently I'm going with "probably not cancer". She's not doing great - she's been quite poorly for months now - but she still has a healthy appetite and occasionally even attempts to clean herself, and she's happy to be cuddled. And after a strong and fast drop in the state of her health back in the spring, she's by and large stabilised since - she's poorly, but it's a constantly similar state.
The tumour has grown and there's a bit more of it also under her jaw, but other than spontaneous bouts of bleeding from her ear (sometimes once a day, sometimes once every few days). which clearly hurt her but last a few seconds at a time - and leave a bloodbath behind - she doesn't seem in any kind of constant acute pain. Some balance issues, which is why she rarely walks around now, but ... well, to put it bluntly, nothing so acute, no sudden changes of the kind that would have made us able to take her back to the vet for one final visit.
We'll see. She's not going to stick around for very much longer - she's also 14, anyway - but as things stand now, she might still last for several months.
As the LJ-cut title says, the other major thing in my life - the Skulduggery Pleasant series - is now over. Done. Complete.
The final book, The Dying of the Light (isn't that a cheery title? and yes, it's the Dylan Thomas poem reference) was officially released yesterday. I somehow managed to get hold of a copy on Wednesday evening, however, and after eight solid hours of reading, well into the small hours of the morning, and quite a bit of desperate, ugly crying towards the end, I also finished it.
It was.... wonderful. Easily the best book yet. Yes, it made me cry, and there are some things that I'm upset about - some rather heartbreaking things - but overall, and without (hopefully) giving anything away, I'm ... okay with the way it ended. It was a fitting ending. One I didn't really see coming, but ... yeah, it fit.
I don't know what I'm going to do with my life now that there is no more Skulduggery Pleasant.
Well, other than travel to the UK next weekend - leaving on Friday the 5th - and get some more books signed, that is. :D For the record, I'll be in London on the 5th, Sheffield on the 6th, Newcastle on the 7th, then Edinburgh and Glasgow, and spend the last few days of my trip in Belfast. If anyone would like to meet up and it's possible to arrange, I'd be happy to meet with people!
Planning to attend not one, not two, but three signings this time. Derek's going to be heartily sick of me by the time the tour ends. :P
But yeah. I've read ... well over 500 books since I started SP back in 2010, and while I've enjoyed many of them tremendously, not one single book or series has had a similar effect on me, not even remotely. I don't think there is anything comparable around, certainly not when it comes to the most important thing - character development, and especially the relationship between Valkyrie and Skulduggery. That last bit is something truly unique - you just don't see friendships like these in books too often.
Wow.
My Amazon review, for anyone interested, is here.
So, yeah. That's really my life for the last several months in a nutshell - work, Pätsu + wibbling over the end of SP.
I blame the day the LJ plug-in for Firefox, which kept me up with friends page updates and what not, stopped working, those many, many months ago. (But really, that's no excuse, I know.)
The other thing is just that I haven't felt very talkative for some time now. I don't know if that will change - maybe, maybe not.
If I recall correctly, I did mention back in the winter/spring that Pätsu, our last remaining cat, was ... not well off. She's got a tumour right outside (and also inside) her ear, with a 50/50 chance of it being cancer but either way, not operable and not curable.
Well... she's still with us, so currently I'm going with "probably not cancer". She's not doing great - she's been quite poorly for months now - but she still has a healthy appetite and occasionally even attempts to clean herself, and she's happy to be cuddled. And after a strong and fast drop in the state of her health back in the spring, she's by and large stabilised since - she's poorly, but it's a constantly similar state.
The tumour has grown and there's a bit more of it also under her jaw, but other than spontaneous bouts of bleeding from her ear (sometimes once a day, sometimes once every few days). which clearly hurt her but last a few seconds at a time - and leave a bloodbath behind - she doesn't seem in any kind of constant acute pain. Some balance issues, which is why she rarely walks around now, but ... well, to put it bluntly, nothing so acute, no sudden changes of the kind that would have made us able to take her back to the vet for one final visit.
We'll see. She's not going to stick around for very much longer - she's also 14, anyway - but as things stand now, she might still last for several months.
As the LJ-cut title says, the other major thing in my life - the Skulduggery Pleasant series - is now over. Done. Complete.
The final book, The Dying of the Light (isn't that a cheery title? and yes, it's the Dylan Thomas poem reference) was officially released yesterday. I somehow managed to get hold of a copy on Wednesday evening, however, and after eight solid hours of reading, well into the small hours of the morning, and quite a bit of desperate, ugly crying towards the end, I also finished it.
It was.... wonderful. Easily the best book yet. Yes, it made me cry, and there are some things that I'm upset about - some rather heartbreaking things - but overall, and without (hopefully) giving anything away, I'm ... okay with the way it ended. It was a fitting ending. One I didn't really see coming, but ... yeah, it fit.
I don't know what I'm going to do with my life now that there is no more Skulduggery Pleasant.
Well, other than travel to the UK next weekend - leaving on Friday the 5th - and get some more books signed, that is. :D For the record, I'll be in London on the 5th, Sheffield on the 6th, Newcastle on the 7th, then Edinburgh and Glasgow, and spend the last few days of my trip in Belfast. If anyone would like to meet up and it's possible to arrange, I'd be happy to meet with people!
Planning to attend not one, not two, but three signings this time. Derek's going to be heartily sick of me by the time the tour ends. :P
But yeah. I've read ... well over 500 books since I started SP back in 2010, and while I've enjoyed many of them tremendously, not one single book or series has had a similar effect on me, not even remotely. I don't think there is anything comparable around, certainly not when it comes to the most important thing - character development, and especially the relationship between Valkyrie and Skulduggery. That last bit is something truly unique - you just don't see friendships like these in books too often.
Wow.
My Amazon review, for anyone interested, is here.
So, yeah. That's really my life for the last several months in a nutshell - work, Pätsu + wibbling over the end of SP.