The obligatory weekly LJ post
Unfortunately, there hasn't really been a whole lot happening, at least not stuff I can point to and say "Yeah, this happened."
I did waste a couple of hours and some gas driving down to the VA Medical Center today for a vascular lab appointment that isn't until July, and I spent some time this weekend with Mark T getting caught up on Balticon, Game of Thrones, and stuff like that, but otherwise it's been pretty much the same demoralizing round of futile applications for possibly notional jobs, punctuated by Civicrack, Facebook, and
occasional blogging.
A couple of things I didn't mention when they happened: haikujaguar's novel Spots the Space Marine: Defense of the Fiddler
arrived in the mail while I was trying to prepare for the CPA exams and finals, so I didn't actually get around to reading it until last week. The novel was originally serialized here on LJ, and it retains some of that flavor in dead-tree format, which is not at all a bad thing; while it is kind of a doorstop at 500+ pages, it's a doorstop that comes in bite-size pieces, and this is Good. The story itself...I don't know if I agree with the book description on the website that describes it as Pollyanna meets Starship Troopers, mainly because I've never actually read Pollyanna, but this is a fairly unique combat SF novel whose plot revolves around a middle-aged Marine reservist sent to a security company that's holding the perimeter of a station that holds something vital to Earth's defense: the alien weapons engineer called Samuel Colt. Our heroine isn't unique in being a female Marine, but she is older than most of her comrades, and being a mother of two turns out to be something on which the whole plot turns in a surprising way. Also available on Kindle, with all the art of the dead-tree edition. It does read a bit like a script, which apparently got up some of the reviewers' noses, but it's a very good story for all that. Recommended.
Finished Footfall, Duty Calls
(one of the Ciaphas Cain WH40K novels), and am currently working on James Lileks' Falling Up the Stairs
as well as the Erfworld graphic novel It's Raining Men.
Among more important decisions about school, work, freelance accounting, and stuff like that, I am occasionally thinking about how to put together a mix CD with Hall & Oates and Lacuna Coil, assuming such a mix is desirable.
I did waste a couple of hours and some gas driving down to the VA Medical Center today for a vascular lab appointment that isn't until July, and I spent some time this weekend with Mark T getting caught up on Balticon, Game of Thrones, and stuff like that, but otherwise it's been pretty much the same demoralizing round of futile applications for possibly notional jobs, punctuated by Civicrack, Facebook, and
occasional blogging.
A couple of things I didn't mention when they happened: haikujaguar's novel Spots the Space Marine: Defense of the Fiddler
arrived in the mail while I was trying to prepare for the CPA exams and finals, so I didn't actually get around to reading it until last week. The novel was originally serialized here on LJ, and it retains some of that flavor in dead-tree format, which is not at all a bad thing; while it is kind of a doorstop at 500+ pages, it's a doorstop that comes in bite-size pieces, and this is Good. The story itself...I don't know if I agree with the book description on the website that describes it as Pollyanna meets Starship Troopers, mainly because I've never actually read Pollyanna, but this is a fairly unique combat SF novel whose plot revolves around a middle-aged Marine reservist sent to a security company that's holding the perimeter of a station that holds something vital to Earth's defense: the alien weapons engineer called Samuel Colt. Our heroine isn't unique in being a female Marine, but she is older than most of her comrades, and being a mother of two turns out to be something on which the whole plot turns in a surprising way. Also available on Kindle, with all the art of the dead-tree edition. It does read a bit like a script, which apparently got up some of the reviewers' noses, but it's a very good story for all that. Recommended.
Finished Footfall, Duty Calls
(one of the Ciaphas Cain WH40K novels), and am currently working on James Lileks' Falling Up the Stairs
as well as the Erfworld graphic novel It's Raining Men.
Among more important decisions about school, work, freelance accounting, and stuff like that, I am occasionally thinking about how to put together a mix CD with Hall & Oates and Lacuna Coil, assuming such a mix is desirable.