Hm, actually I read two books

     I finished The Green Child fairly quickly, you know, with only ten pages left.  The last ten pages summed up the entire book.  Looking back at the story it seems a progression of scenes that are more and more Utopian.  The first is rural England in a small town village.  Remember that idyllic England was exactly those small, isolated areas filled with good people and calm serenity.  In fact it is not since people are lazy and stupid there as elsewhere.  The second scene is closer to perfect, a small independent country in South America.  The people are portrayed as inherently idle and simplistic.  Agrarian living is seen as a perfect society and a benevolent dictatorship (the protagonist) rules them towards a better living.  The final setting is in 'the green child's' homeland underground.  It is an isolated group of humans who seem to be more, well, more verdant.  I railed about the green child a bit in my last blog but it holds a bit more context now, having seen the society she originated in.

     The ideal society has no fear of death, no hardship and no variations.  There is one race and a strict caste system and all are complacent with it.  Even Olivero, our hero, enjoys it after rejecting his knowledge of the outside world.  There a five tiers to the caste which act more as levels of maturity which can be breached as wished.  The lowest is the level of youth and pleasure where casual sex and idleness are encouraged.  Above that is unskilled and skilled laborers who harvest their dull food supply and craft crystals which is the closest they have to art.  As with all Utopian novels the deeper influences of the author are pressed into the reader through the emphasis or neglect of all the variables of life.  It's not really fun to list but read a few Utopian novels and you can easily pick out what I'm talking about.

     While I was waiting to finish The Green Child I went back to the library and grabbed a few more books.  Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Asimov's I, Robot among others.  I have been trying to read I, Robot for years.  UCF lost their copy about eight times and the Orlando system didn't ever have it in stock.  I could have paid for it but I already own too many books (haha, I don't think so really) and try not to buy anything I cannot pick up elsewhere.  Actually, it was in the search of I, Robot that lead me to reading The Foundation Trilogy also by Asimov.  I, Robot lived up to the airs surrounding it.  While a series of short stories it brought up ingenious scenarios and consequences that I think has been the fuel and fodder of animatronics and the imagination ever since.  Someday I will work my way through the rest of the Robot Chronicles as homage to one of the foundations (hah) of the science fiction universe as we know it.

     Also, I didn't post on St. Patrick's Day since I was pretty sleep deprived and I would have just written a post like this: co uyfe]]\h efwh uen nwefjb ewfi  eufeb ef ef  grr re jyhgfx  we3544g.... et cetera.  If you celebrated it then horay! If not well it was a Thursday.  I work til next Wed I think so I might not update until then although I have a speech contest to talk about.  I didn't compete, mind you, just observed.

501 books count:  59

It Snowed Today

     This is the first time that I can remember where snow has fallen.  Except vague impressions of the brownouts/blackouts of 1989, when in snowed flurries in St. Petersburg, FL.  Even though the snow didn't fall hard nor did it fall in abundance I enjoyed it immensely.  We went over to near Battery Park to the American Indian museum (admission: free) and saw the exhibits there about the Horse Nations and a general showing of paraphernalia of various South, Central and North American Indian tribes.  It was an interesting viewing and had some beautiful artifacts.  Also enjoyed just hanging around the old Customs House but I'll see if I can go back and get pictures of the four 'Continent' statues and their racist stereotyping.  Just to gape at them I suppose.

     After finding out that the train we needed to get to the Cloisters is currently not running for about three to five stops we attempted to try another train, which also doesn't run uptown this weekend.  Great.  We ended up going to the New Amsterdam Market on Front St which has small vendors and will be open til Valentine's Day and then weekly beginning May.  We tried some naturally and home brewed cream soda, some strawberry sorbet and expensive cashews.  I thought it was going to be a lot bigger than the small room it was in but it has some really nice shops to meander through.  Despite the delightful food we didn't buy anything big and just nibbled a bit.  Actually, our cost for all of today is nine dollars.  We bought week unlimited passes to the subway, bought a melon-pan from a store in the Financial District, spent five dollars at the Market and then after wasting all this time headed to midtown to check out the Guggenheim museum for two dollars admission.  Saturday from 5:45 til 7:45 PM they have "pay-what-you-wish" admission price which to me meant a quarter but Tad guilted me into a dollar each.  We took most of the free audio tour and saw Picassos and this and that and I cannot see the cyclist in this.  Tad sees a 5 at the top from his back but I thought it was his face until he pointed out that it's a sideways five.  That means too abstract for me. 

     Once again I've let the day slip away from me and cannot review half of what I've seen and done in the city in the last two days.  I will try to write another post catching up in the morning, 

Sleep is for the weak, aka me

     I have been back for a while today but I have only just now gotten my photos uploaded to the computer and onto facebook.  I will take time tomorrow (I swear!) to talk about the parade and what else I've found in New York.  One thing I will say is that the information about the parade was useless.  The site, which hosted the parade, claimed it was at 11:30 AM.  The parade did not even start until 1 or 1:15 PM.  Until tomorrow.

In the Winter, In the City

     Flew into NYC today.  There was a toddler behind me on the flight but he was adorable.  He grabbed my shirt while I was reading and then we played Peak-a-boo.  Luckily he fell asleep right before we descended so he didn't ruin his good impression with lots of screaming from aching ears.  I am only wearing three layers outside, I'm rather proud of myself: a long sleeve shirt, a short one atop of that and a trench coat.  My toes were numbing by the time we stopped in at a restaurant for lunner (lunch/dinner) so I think I need a second pair of socks for now.  Me and my wimpy extremities.

     Tomorrow is the Chinatown Chinese New Year parade so Tad and I are going to head over that ways tomorrow morning. I was going to say more but really, I will talk about it tomorrow.

     On a random note the only books I brought with me to NYC are Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson and a book of poems on NYC that my mother gave me.  The Mars trilogy is an award-winning trio of books mapping Mars from its start as a scientific colony to its own political and social force.  I'm about a hundred pages in and I really have enjoyed it.  I admit it isn't on my list of 501 books but sometimes you can't get everything.  This was recommended to me by a guest at Target one day a good year or two ago after we got talking about science fiction and Asimov and who knows what else.

Liquor

     I have decided to read a book every week until I have finished off at least some of the 501 list.  Isn't that awesome.  Also, I have drunk wayyyyy too much tonight.  I feel very open and refreshed.  Also numb, feeling that is, not like emotional and all.  I have read Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles which was taken from a series of short stories in 1949 and 1950 into a series of perceptions staring from 1999 to 2026.  I suppose most people don't care about the science of it all but I do.  I see the canals of Mars made their impact felt since there is a dying Martian race.  The impact of humanity of a foreign race and the impact of that race on us, that was the main focus of this book.  I love it; it has this dream-like quality built into itself that I thrive on.  I feel like I'm reading the Redwall series again in middle school and Dad and Sis are playing Donkey Kong Country just in the other room.  This is the nostalgia I feel.  I feel that nostalgia a lot though, reading to music that embodies the novel/author in my head by the music played.

     Also, Tad comes home Tuesday!  This will be the first time I will see him in  months or so.  Oh how I miss him.  Come home soon, Tad, I dream of you.

     I also noticed a lack of females in this sci-fi again!  I should start noting that so I can keep track and maybe write a paper on it some day.  I bet no one reads sci-fi like I do!!!  I miss Tad.  He'll be home soon, right? Tuesday is too far away.  That's right!  Tuesday Tad comes home.  What a good job that is.  I like Tuesdays, or should I say  Tadsdays?  I dunno.  Feeling a little odder, so might get some more hard liquor to succor this detachment and displacement.  Maybe a better analysis tomorrow, after the schnapps has worn off...

501 books count: 48

Iron Man 2: Tony Stark is an amazing jerk, part 2

     Name changing is hard work.  It's not like you just change your Social Securtity number or license and voila, everything is there.  There's the bank, the credit cards, car information and insurance, your job, any organizations you are a part of, blah blah blah.  Some of it just takes a phone call but my license was a journey in itself.  I needed my passport (or birth certificate), my social security card, my marriage license and two forms of residential identification.  Arrrg.  Because of the annoying living situation I am in I had to drag in my roommate and wait forever, as always at the government buildings. 

     I did see Iron man 2 last night.  That was amazing.  Since two-thirds of the movie has little to do with Iron man and robot battles I believe it would not be wrong to say that we watch the Iron man movies to see Tony Stark be a mad, drunken genius of an asshole.  Robert Downey Jr. pulls it off so well too.  He builds a particle accelerator in his basement.  Yea, that thing CERN built that was 12 km long? He did that in his basement using books and the freaking Captain America shield to steady it.  After accelerating the particle beam he shot it through a crystal matrix of some sort (a not-glass prism) and his a freaking triangle with the beam to create a new element!!!  That is the reason I got into science.  To make crazy tech that should break the laws of physics.  ::sigh::  If only I could do that.  You are my hero Tony Stark.

Mostly ranting

     So I felt good for a while today.  I went and got a cute dress, shoes and a purse.  For the first time probably since my wedding I felt feminine and strong.  Now I'm looking at our accounts for everything and we are running on empty.  This is not good.  We've just taken out money from bonds and we still have no money.  Heck, we seem to have less money than before we took everything out.  I have the research job but that will cover barely anything.  Should I try and make more money?  But I'm doing a lot here.  Tad and I are looking into loans for summer so he can go to Hong Kong but how much do we want to take out?  Just enough to cover or enough to have some money ourselves?  That's not greedy, right? Right?  I hope not because we don't have enough for car insurance and him eating and all.  I hate looking at these things.  We were OK for a while but his school is expensive and I keep regretting that we have to use this money every. single. month. for his schooling when we could just feel comfortable about ourselves with it.
     I'd rather he get this degree though, I think he needs it.  Arg.  Hopefully he'll get the scholarship from his school and we can just take out the same amount of money and actually get some.  It's bad when you max out loans and still have to pay for tuition from your own pockets.  Just some venting.  I'm worried about going to the lab tomorrow and it failing to work out again.  Also going to get my pesky driver's license changed, I suppose.  I'm in this odd transition between names and should I go everywhere and change it or do it slowly?  I dunno.

     In summary, ignore this.  Please.

Quantum HW Hell

It is 6AM and I didn't sleep.  I spent about 4 of the last 6 hours working on quantum HW.  I just don't feel comfortable working normalization integrals.  No matter what I do, they never look right and I feel awkward even setting them up.  I just need to do them and stop wimping out.  I have 3 problems left.  I have been instead rediscovering the amazing group The Freelance Astronauts.  Just listening to them makes me a happy, happy person.  Not going to type more because I still have HW due and three problems to do.  Only really nice thing is that I plan on visiting my parents this weekend and getting my car registration, a new Pur filter and I'm sure something else.  Alas and I'll drive with no sleep...  Assuming it takes me another 2 hours to finish this damn chapter.

Psychomachia

     Learned a new word today: psychomachias, which is the state of conflict in the soul between the spirit and the flesh or between good and evil, in a much more generalized sense.  That is the neatest thing to happen.  Met my brother and his wife and my niece for lunch.  My niece slept the whole time, of course, after having been screaming and blissfully crazy as Disney the whole day.  P.F. Chang's is very bland, really, nothing great in their ma po tofu in at least.  The fried green beans were good but I think that was more to do with the spicy sauce, very fatty and mayonnaise flavored than anything else.

     Made a new header for the blog even though I think I'm the only reading it at the moment.  Pretty good job with the picture I think since it was made without anything more fancy than a scanner.  I have no camera so the variegated background is because the earrings are propping the scanner lid up.  Reading a new book, The Hour of Our Death and so far seems great.  One of the books on the list, but I'll tell you all about it when it is over and done with.

     On the Halloween front, I don't even know if the roommates are having that party or not.  My costume was going to be Heian noblewoman.  Ideas are here (first pic) and here.  The second is a bit late, Tomoe Gozen the famous swordswoman who fought in the Gempai Wars in the 12th century Japan.  It involves about 6 layers, which with the weather still hovering between 80 and 90 in the daylight hours, is more absurd than I will admit to.  Still, it looks amazing and I need to get something sewn and soon.  I haven't moved the machine since I stuck it on the bookcase when I moved in two weeks ago.  Oh well, back to death and all our macabre traditions.

Canticle for Leibowitz

383:Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller, Jr.

I mourn the end of this book. It was that strange Hegelian feeling of wanting the end and shunning the coming parting between the book and myself. I hadn't realized how much time and effort I had spent reading and internalizing the precious agony of this book. Without a doubt this book will belong on my shelf. Next to a Latin dictionary, assuming I haven't already scribbled notes in the margin for the untranslated parts.

Quick plot summary:

Post nuclear war- knowledge destroyed, the priesthood hiding all knowledge remaining and humanity at the brink of complete anarchy. It is three parts, during the dark ages, the renascence of human ingenuity and the zenith of the following civilization. Also, random untranslated Latin which always whets my interest. I won't give plot devices away because I think this is a book to read yourself.

I always wanted to be a monk as a child, not a nun but a monk as pictured in the old novels. I wanted to glorify (not God, even as a child) in the knowledge and the preservation of it to the next generation preferably by reading. I am no Christian, although being raised Lutheran I have my own views on Christ and the "coming absolution" of humanity. I read the book as a focus of the human spirit and the divine (err.. not the best term but it is 2:30AM) qualities of our endurance and hope. This was written mid-Cold War.

One day I will draw a summary between the year a sci-fi book was written and the major themes of the novel. Even in this most imaginative genre there is little variation on a theme.

I believe this is a great random segue into the ending of this post. Next time I hope to introduce things a bit better and without the tangent at the finish.