Long lost update

Sep 20, 2010 22:12

Well.  My last post was a month ago, so I suppose I should at least pretend I still keep a journal.

Exercise goal: not quite making it every day, but I estimate I at least do it 3 times a week, on average, 30 min each time.  Not wonderful, but still much better than it used to be.  Plus I get to report it at work and earn extra minutes of paid time off!  And maybe it is just a mere pittance of minutes over the course of a month, but hey, it's more PTO than I had before.  We'll take it.

On the game front, I beat Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga (final verdict: worth playing once) as well as Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box (excellent puzzles, but again the plot is a little on the weak side).  The third Professor Layton game is just out; I anticipate I will have my hands on a borrowed copy within the month!  Plants vs. Zombies was released on XBox Live Arcade, and we beat it to completion within a week and a half.  And by we, I mean mostly me, but rhb helped with the co-op levels.  XD  Don't worry, it has great replay value!

And finally, rhb convinced me (after many persuasive arguments) to play Starcraft.  Except I determined after two crashes (one just the game, and the other involving my entire computer shutting down) that despite Starcraft being about 10 years old, and my computer only being about 3 years old, my poor little lappy is incapable of running it.  This does not surprise me.  It gets exceptionally hot with just about any game I've tried, except maybe the ones that come pre-loaded on it.  Still, I have rather enjoyed the game (except when it crashed and I lost a good chunk of progress on the mission I was working on) and have decided to play it on the Mac Mini instead to minimize the frustration.  Plus that means I have to limit my time playing because rhb uses that computer to write.

On the book front, Way of Kings was excellent - despite my initial (and somewhat irrational) fear that I would not like it solely because of its behemoth size.  (It took me a week to read, which is not too bad considering.)  While I admit it was a pain to tote back and forth to work, I was quite captivated by the strong characters and actually liked the fact that it switches between several viewpoints.  For those who have read it already, do you concur that 1000 pages of the soldier/slave would have been dreadfully depressing after a while?  At least at the beginning, when his life was at an exceptionally low point, I was glad for a switch of scene.  Later on I didn't mind anymore, but the beginning...  There were a few other points with the other characters that were similar (mostly just in the first quarter or third) where I was glad to switch as well.  But by the 1/3 mark, I was so engrossed in them all I didn't mind one way or another.  Overall I was very impressed with how seamlessly the three main viewpoints flowed together.  I wish there had been more of the fisherman character though... he was pretty awesome.

My main complaint is probably just my own personal issue... but I felt that the king's Wit in WoK reminded me an awful lot of the Fool in Robin Hobb's trilogy of trilogies.  And I really, really liked the Fool, so I was rather disappointed by the Wit in WoK because he wasn't the Fool.  Which is kind of stupid, I know, but seriously, there are enough similarities between the two that it was hard for me to not wish the Wit was the Fool.  I am curious to know if other Robin Hobb readers felt similarly.

Haven't read much else recently, but I did finish books 2 and 3 in the Percy Jackson series.  I thought they were decent and that the writing is improving as the series progresses, which is always encouraging.  While I don't find them to be quite as gripping as some, I have enjoyed them and would like to finish the rest sometime.

Next up is The Name of the Wind; we'll see how long it takes me now that work has gotten far too busy for my tastes and I can only read on my lunch break.  I haven't made it very far at all yet, but that's because I spent most of my lunch break getting frustrated over Golden Sun and then quitting when my whole party died.  Blast.  I forgot to bring Fenix Down equivalents, and all it takes is forgetting to heal once...

In other news, our garden is doing fairly well (considering how little attention I give it).  We've gotten a few handfuls of green beans, several zucchini, and a butternut squash out of it, and there is a pumpkin and unidentified melon growing.  The beans became part of dinner, and the squash became a pie - quite a delicious pie too, might I add.  I have some good potential ideas for how to improve everything next year, involving putting the beans by a post near my front door so I don't forget to go pick the ripe beans for a week... (ok, it's only been about 5 days so far, but every time I remember it's already dark.)

Other cooking endeavors of late besides the pie include homemade hot pockets.  While I was not a fan of how they leaked out all over my oven and pizza stone, they got a double thumbs up by our whole writing group AND a cousin-in-law AND rhb.  So maybe I will give them another try (using a pan with sides this time, and sealing them better, and not filling them so full).  I've been slacking and haven't tried any other recipes this month, but I will get right on that... tomorrow.  Perhaps.  Also, I must get better at fixing dinner before 8, because it's hard to exercise when I have to wait until 11 to not feel full. :(  This does not help the whole resolution to go to bed earlier...

Anyway, that's about it for now.  Still loving our new apartment, aside from the occasional spider and the strange smell that I only notice in the mornings and thus have a difficult time identifying the source of...

red-haired boy, baking, exercise, gardening, video games, work, books

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