Karmatic revenge; rather, a bad cold

I'll upload some pics of family and events tomorrow when we return home and I am out of work. Some unexpected friends are appearing tonight, in fact in a few minutes.

I have come down with a sudden cold, stuffy nose and achy head all abound. I'm hoping the coffee shop we head to will help clear my head. If not a good night sleep is exactly what I need.

Saw Julie & Julia with parents and I must say it was great. I love cooking as always and watching both Julie's and Julia Child's story was worth the aching head and the voracious need to make delicious foods. I should lose 30 pounds so that I can wear more skirts and aprons. It leads me to wistfully desire making food with quality ingredients and the desire for meat. But I have neither so I hope my cheap ingredients can at least make me something good. Oh well.

More to come on me tomorrow. Also, I think that driving back tomorrow will finish off Ringworld, so I will give a synopsis on the plot and my opinion after work. Also, let's see if that will make the title in italics. Damn macs.

month long hiatus ended!! Old-time headliners back in style!!

     I am only going to explain my absence in one way: retail hell + final exams + ninja clan wars = busy Kai.

     OK, maybe not so much on the ninja clan wars, more like the ninja world wars.  No really. OK, it was exams for a week (where I ended up with 12 hrs of sleep for five days) and then closing at work so late that I woke up just in time to drag myself back to work.  Tad did come back for the holiday season and is staying through late January, so despite everything I am happy and still exhausted.  ::happy::  See?

     Christmas was good and kinda sad at the same time: we visited four, count that four! houses of relatives.  We visited my brother and my niece at their house but it seems the only thing two year-olds want is a Zhu Zhu pet and a coloring book.  Not bikes (which she got) and not just about any other toy, just coloring books.  Next year I'm going to get her crayons and I will be the best auntie ever.  Muahahaha.

     As for my present list?  I did get a new camera which was desperately needed as my old one won't even turn on now.  Best part is it has image stabilization so my crappy shots?  Not anymore.  Yay!!  Also, Tad is getting a couple of pots for his dorm's induction stove top which the in-laws are sending up to him once spring semester starts up.  That will save us lots of money on shipping. 

     I did get these awesome new sheets from sissy.  I finally have something to match the bedset (from IKEA).  Tad's napping away there, and in the corner you can see The Hour of Our Death, which I'm still trying to get through.  In note for other books, I got grandma's old Brother Cadfael books, which is only five in total but all ones I haven't read. 

     Lastly, listening to Ringworld audiobook that Tad found and we're headed back to visit relatives while I have a few days off.  I'm hoping to show off a couple more pictures of everything going on over there.  See you later!

Holidays and rest days

     Last day before the official season starts.  Happy thanksgiving to everyone out there.  I am thankful for having my parents I can always come and visit when I need comfort.  Also that I have friends to keep me company and that I can dote on when I need to show caring. Here's the family ready for the best dinner of the year. 

     I just hope there's someone to love and take comfort with.  If nothing else, remember, Buddha (and Jesus) loves you unconditionally.

2 for 1 review

     I started this entry about 5 days ago.  And I just deleted the single sentence I had written.  It's one of those days/weeks/weekends/months/etc.  On the book front I am doing great though.  Two more books off the list: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Stepford Wives.  As someone who was raised on the Gene Wilder movie and (unlike most people) enjoy the Depp version, reading Charlie was a bit of a wake-up call.  If you've ever read any of Dahl's works then you should know there's a deeply set belief in justice to a character based on who they are and how they act.  Mr. Wonka is in no way, shape, or form malevolent.  He is just a kookie old man who constantly gets befuddled when trying to deal with the children.  He is a bit obstinate, still acting partially deaf but it comes out at childish.  He genuinely cares for them but constantly claims that everything "will come out in the wash".  What that entirely means I don't know but I do know that Wonka is no longer holds a bit of a mad scientist air and instead falls under the absent-minded professor genre of genius.

     The other book, The Stepford Wives is actually written by the same author as Rosemary's Baby and if you've seen the movies you can start to guess the similarities.  There's a proactive female main character, a false and a true (deeper) conspiracy.  Also, there is no definite ending.  Sounds great.  Woo.  It was a short read, 123 pages, and should only take a few hours.  Definitely worth it but really, not a keeper.  I do want to read the other books by Ira Levin just to see if they also follow his pattern.  Also, according to the introduction by Peter Straub this is actually a satire, which I can also see.  The male reaction to feminism and gender equality illuminates that deep in the mind of men women are just inconvenient lower beings good for fantasizing and servitude.  The oddest part is that the main character's husband goes through the entire process from loving a real woman with, we can only assume, normal desires and regrets to idealizing and segregating the woman into an inconsequential and minor role in life.  Also they never explain if they kill the women or what so maybe there is more to the story.  I want to read a few critiques about the whole idea but at the moment I only know what Straub told me. 

     On the list coming up is Dahl's autobiography Boy: Tales of Childhood, which is a children's book as well and Primo Levi's The Periodic Table, which is a series of short stories written by a Jewish Chemist who survived Auschwitz.  So far it is just as good as I suspected it would be.
 
     I will update tomorrow if I have time about real life and my non-book projects but otherwise I expect to be detained by Retail Hell starting tomorrow and lasting until New Year's.

Finally another off the list

     Well, finally finished with one of the books I'm reading.  Unfortunately, it is not Age of Cathedrals which is getting nearer and nearer to the end but instead Out of the Silent Planet.  This, as a quick reminder, is the C. S. Lewis sci-fi book written with Christianity built in.  I think it can be described as Narnia for adults.  Where the whole Narnia series was an indirect Christian allegory Silent Planet is instead an argument with a de facto Christianity.  Actually, there was no Christ in this instead just an argument for the existence of god.  Hmm..  I wonder if the other books in the series (of which there are in total 3) go on to argue the other tenets of Christianity.

     Ok, I cheated and read Wiki about it.  It seems it is a bit of an argument against space travel as, we being a fallen species, will only bring destruction and evil on the good, untouched Edens of God's universe.  The next book has something about Venus I guess.  I dunno. 

     I did find out that the reason books like this one, the Barsoomian Series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. G. Well's War of the Worlds, etc have a dying Mars is because Lewell, some astronomer, misinterpreted results he got while looking at Mars' surface and said there were huge canals.  Obviously that means they were intelligently created and that Mars had these canals to drain water from the ice caps.  He was wrong on about all accounts but oh well, at least it was an attempt. 

     Well besides finishing this off and barely continuing anything else not too much has happened.  Worked more on my quilt but not much.  Did laundry and still haven't returned it to the closet.  Bought some dress patterns but want to lose some weight before I make anything.  Worked.  Worked.  Worked.

     Worst is that even after sleeping a full night I wake up exhausted.  I was trying to finish Silent Planet last night but I decided I was definitely too tired when my eyes closed and I was only woken up by the book dropping out of my hand.  Oops.

     Weather is still balmy and warm, highs in the lower 80s and lows in the 70s.  Nice for Florida but not cold.  Dammit.  Oh well, maybe for Thanksgiving.  Which should consist of my parents, me and maybe my niece.  She is two.  Not the greatest company.

Gonna work on some HW tonight before it is due tomorrow morning.  Then going to work on homework during the day which is due by 6.  Damn, physics sucks sometimes.