The amount of reading that I accomplish these days compared to when I was a teenager is miniscule. All of the joys of being employed, maintaining the place one lives in, and various other sundry details that are involved in being a responsible adult entail; all of these serve to get in the damn way.

What this means is that I have to be more selective in what I do read.

I started the calendar year with the desire to try expanding my horizons regarding authors. I have succeeded in this to some extent. If I have failed, it is only in the limited number of authors that I was able to get to.

I do not recall if I mentioned this, but I have one bad reading habit that I am trying to break. I start a book, get distracted by another, and I end up with a pile of books at varying stages of completion. I am attempting to get through said pile without starting any new books.

An immediate consequence is that my pace has slowed considerably. It is time-consuming to doggedly trudge through a book that you have discovered is not to your liking. But, if I wish to have a better working knowledge of authors, and to be able to participate in conversations about them, this is what is necessary.

Another habit that I have is that when I find an author that I do like and has what I call an easy, flowing manner of writing, I tend to read several of the author’s works either in a row, or close together. This is not a bad thing, but it does mean that I am not reading another author. I have to try spacing the books out better.

In the interests of planning, I went through our bookshelves, and wrote down the names of some authors.

Abraham, Daniel
Bakker, R. Scott
Card, Orson Scott
Clarke, Arthur C.
Donaldson, Stephen R.
Erikson, Stephen
Hobb, Robin
LeGuin, Ursula
Leiber, Fritz
Powers, Tim
Simmons, Dan
Vance, Jack
Williams, Tad

What do all of these authors have in common?

I have never read anything by any of them, at all, ever. Absolutely nothing.

So, next year, or this year, if things change for the better, I will be attempting to get through at least one novel of each of these people.

Some of my choices are quite obvious. We have Ender’s Game by Card, the Anubis Gates by Powers, and three of the four books of Abraham’s quartet.

I am not stating that I will be reading from this list exclusively. Many other possibilities exist; I have never read any of Frank Herbert’s non-Dune works, or, ironically, any of George’s non-Asoiaf work.

Come the end of the year, I will be amongst those who publish the various works that I managed to get through over the course of the year. Accompany reviews will be included, although I will be attempting to keep that to a minimum.

Tags: books
Current Location: Home
Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: The sound of the clothes dryer

Ode to New Hampshire

It's winter here in New Hampshire and the gentle
breezes blow!
Seventy miles an hour
at twenty-five below!

Oh, how I love New Hampshire
when the snow's up to your butt;
you take a breath of winter
and your nose gets frozen shut.

Yes, the weather here is wonderful,
so I guess I'll hang around;
I could never leave New Hampshire
'cause I'm frozen to the ground!

I found this posted on the wall of my chiropractor, and found it amusing, so I copied it.

Tags: snippets
Current Location: Home
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Star Trek soundtrack

We received our first advertisement/piece of information about Boskone in the mail yesterday.

The guest of honor is someone called Alastair Reynolds, whose name I recognize but have not read anything of.

Of far greater interest to me, however, is the special guest - a gentleman by the name of Tom Shippey. A scholar of medieval literature and of modern fantasy and sci-fi. He is also an expert on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, and was one of the consultants used by Peter Jackson for the LoTR trilogy.

If he does any panel at all, I expect that I would enjoy him for that last fact alone.

Tags: snippets
Current Location: Home
Current Mood: curious
Current Music: None

My one annoying co-worker was in fine form today.

"You two are not listening! I could be lying here dead on the floor, and neither of you would care! You will miss me when I am gone!"

To be fair, we were not listening, but that was because she was being an overly dramatic pillock.

But, give me credit when due.

I did NOT say, "Nonsense. That is not true at all. Not only would I care a great deal, but I would be calling someone in the hospital immediately. You do not think for a second that I plan on putting up with the inconvenience of having to step over your rotting corpse every time I want to go somewhere, do you?".

Thusly, do I continue to ensure my just reward in heaven.

It better be worth it, God damn it.

Tags: hospital life
Current Location: Home
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Two Towers Soundtrack

My supervisor is retiring.

This is not surprising. My co-workers and I have known that this was coming for some time. He is 62, he has worked at the hospital for 40 years, and he has been feeling that it was about time. The deciding factor was that he had had the recent misfortune to have had life throw him a very unpleasant curve ball. This last point is such that we are all wishing that he was going to be able to retire under significantly happier circumstances.

He has been the best supervisor I have had to work for in my life so far. He is old school, which in this specific instance means unpretentious. When someone is out due to sickness or vacation in the stockroom, he takes off his suit jacket and tie, rolls up his sleeves, and is out there moving and lifting pallets and boxes right next to the rest of us.

On one occasion, he was pushing a hand cart through the hospital, making a delivery of necessary supplies to a department. The department's supervisor met him long before he got there, and asked him if he was slumming to see how the other half worked. His reply was, "My department is understaffed, and your department even more so. Your choices are that I deliver this, you take this from me now and deliver it yourself, you order one of your staff to delay treatment of a patient to bring it to your department, or your department shuts down completely due to not having these supplies that it needs. Did you have a preference?"

No one reading this should have to wonder whether the other supervisor said anything else. Although the officious little prick did not take the supplies up himself, either.

He led by example, and if he asked me to do something (and it was always asking, and not an actual order, per se), I did it because I did not want to have him be disappointed in me rather than any of the standard reasons that would also apply.

Our circumstances are going to be interesting. His replacement is one of the people who works down in the Finance department, which is in a different building down the street. Due to the complete inability of his moving to where we are, I suspect three possibilities. Either the entire purchasing department will be moving en masse down to where he is, he will be getting periodic visits from the next highest ranking purchasing agent, or he will occasionally visit. Whatever happens, we will be quite self-regulating and autonomous at least until the next calendar year.

The general mood of the purchasing department and stockroom is one of depression, but subdued. We all suspect changes, but when and what form they will take remain to be seen. Some people are taking it better than others. One of my co-workers was the one who has been groomed for years as my supervisor's replacement. I have not asked, but I presume that his take on this whole situation is not a positive one. I am trying very hard to be charitable, because my one single annoying co-worker has been even more irritating than normal as of late; I am chalking this up to the supervisor's imminent departure next month.

Ah, well. There is absolutely no sense in worrying about one cannot know or have any control over.

Anyone excited about the looming holidays? HA!

Tags: hospital life
Current Location: Home
Current Mood: cynical
Current Music: Blessed silence

I realized that I have not posted in my usual couple of months, so I figured I was due.

I (read:  we) just got back from a long weekend, so as usual, a lack of commentary over the last five days does not mean that we did not read or care about anyone's posts.

It is now officially dark outside when we wake up and when we get out of work, which is depressing, and thoroughly not useful, either, as I have not become a vampire.  Yet.

I have two new flannel shirts.  Or, rather, I have the same shirt twice.  I hate/loathe/despise shopping for clothes, so when I find anything that fits at all, I get at least a second one so as to put off having to do this again anytime soon.

I appear to be entering the initial stages of mid-life crisis.  More on this later, once I figure out a pithy way of phrasing this idiocy.

More later.


 

Tags: snippets
Current Location: Work
Current Music: None

FLANNEL
This one was expected, and easy.  I happen to usually be wearing flannel when attending conventions.  I had to look up the definition of the word, because when it comes to clothing, I am, and have always been, blithely oblivious as to fashion.  I wear clothing based on two criteria - is it comfortable, and can I go out in public wearing it and not be stoned to death.  The latter is an exaggeration, of course, but you get the idea.  I think that I can safely say that I have never worn an article of clothing to impress my peers, make a statement, or express my individuality.  Unless the last one includes a sigil or picture on a t-shirt of something that I happen to like, like a specific comic title or television show.  If that is the case, then I have technically done that.

THINGS THAT OUGHT NOT TO BE EATEN
Go read X-Ray's LJ, then realize that I am her exact polar opposite.  I consider myself to be a boring, vanilla person, and nothing illustrates this better than my tastes in food.  If in doubt, presume that I hate it, and it will be a safe move.  If I have to give specific examples, then they would be mushrooms, seafood, or any animal served raw.  Particularly octopus, cooked or not.  Someone had to be on the brink of death from starvation to think that mushrooms and octopus would be edible.  Food is supposed to be cooked.  Napalm that sucker until it is a smoking, charred hockey puck.  Salt, pepper, and cinnamon are spices.  Everything else is not a spice, but something that either makes me sneeze, or is part of a plot to ruin the taste of my dinner.

BOOKS
The most generic of the words given to me.  I could have gone in so many directions with this one.  I decided to go with historical.  My parents were both teachers.  They started reading to me at the age of two.  I grew up in the middle of six acres of woods out in the middle of nowhere with my parents and one brother.  This was a hell of a long time before idiot boxes, cell phones, or computers, so reading was the main fallback as to entertain oneself.  Plus, we were what I would define as poor, so reading was also a cheap form of entertainment.  I mean, let's face it.  Depending on the length of the book, and how often you re-read any given novel, can anyone else come up with a form of entertainment where you get as many hours of fun and pleasure for as little money?  Spare me the possible comments, please.....  :-)

BASTARDS!  THE LOT OF 'EM!
Of the words that X-Ray gave me, this is the one that confused me the most.  I have no idea where this one comes from, but okay.  This can be applied to any generic group of people who succeed at pissing me off at any given time.  When I get irritated enough, I rattle off a string of invective directed at the group that has earned my ire at the moment.  Nothing serious, just an expression of displeasure, really.  I have managed at getting some strange looks from people on occasion when I do this, because I am not the most talkative or expressive of people where I work.

COMPROMISE
Speaking exclusively with my limited experience and keeping in mind that this is only my humble opinion, if I was asked, I would say that this is one of the two most important things in a working marriage.  I got this advice from Stephen King, of all people.  He said something along the lines of, if your partner does something that irks you, ask yourself a question.  How important is this thing in the overall scheme of things, looking at it from a span of decades.  If what the partner is doing on a daily/weekly/monthly basis is something that will eventually make you look longingly and alternately at the knife selection in the kitchen and their ribs, then you need to speak up.  If not, forget about it. 
Pick your battles, and only engage in the ones that really matter to you.

Tags: snippets
Current Location: Home
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: None

                Someone once said that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of people. After the meeting involving the residents of the condominium association yesterday, I feel that this is an accurate statement.

                When the contractor was in the initial stages of planning this association, the city of Laconia’s planning board informed him that every association of this nature built in the city is going to have an amenity of some form. No contractor who wants to build in this city is exempt; the city lets them know this from the beginning. It does not matter what the amenity is, as long as the city planning board agrees to it. A pool was what we were supposed to get.

                A mistake was made by both the contractor and the planning board as to the location of the pool, because where it was supposed to go is comprised of a granite ledge that makes up the entire hillside that serves as one of the borders of the association. There is a spot on our property where you can walk up to a wall of granite forty feet high which stretches for dozens of feet to either side. The cost of blasting through this to build the pool would far surpass the money that was set aside for this amenity.

                On October 15, if the contractor and the city of Laconia do not come up with a mutually agreed-to amenity for this association, the city of Laconia will take the money and build whatever it sees fit to here. The contractor would understandably like the situation to not get to that point.

                Our association’s management company arranged for a meeting yesterday so that the members could brainstorm and come up with ideas and proposals to present to the city of Laconia. We were allowed to come up with multiple amenities, because of the amount of money involved. The various proposals would be presented to the planning board, and the board would tell us which proposals, if any, would be acceptable. Once we decide which one we want, the contractor would build it. Again, all we had to do was brainstorm ideas to give to the Laconia planning board.

This sounds simple.

                Eight year old children are capable (to an extent) of being disciplined enough to not talk non-stop over each other, and to also raise their hands if they want to ask a question or have a point that they want to make. They also know that until called on, they should keep their hands raised, and to keep their mouths shut.

                Apparently, people who are many multiples of eight in age are not capable of understanding this concept. 

                The last association that I lived in had two hundred sixty nine units. This one has forty-two, and the meeting yesterday was far more chaotic and haphazard than any of the meetings that occurred at the larger one.

                In addition to the people who would just start to talk in order to make their point, you had the people who had to have the same information repeated to them four or five times because they could not comprehend it the first time. Add in the people who did not have anything important to say but wanted to be the center of attention; add in the fact that no one on the interim council of board members had the metaphorical balls to play the villain and tell people to shut the hell up when someone else was talking; add in the fact that the notice and reason for this meeting went out weeks ago and no one appeared to have given it the slightest thought beforehand until we had gathered together.

                The end result was a meeting that went for an hour and forty minutes when it should have been half that. And this was for one topic which we had advance notice of.

                I cannot wait for the first official annual meeting in September. We need to elect an official five-member council board for the association; discuss the first actual budgetary information any of us will have ever seen, despite some of us living there for two years now; and continue the topic covered here. And that is just to start with; I have no doubt that other topics will want to be brought up by members of the association. 

                I figure I should just resign myself to spending one entire day of my weekend listening to a bunch of collective morons, and try to derive some enjoyment out of the experience.

Tags: condo living
Current Location: The living room
Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Amish Paradise, by Wierd Al Yankovic

                Walking towards the Weirs starts off with going up a steep, sharp hill that is a problem getting up in winter. When it has snowed overnight, the only way we can get up it is to go a short distance up the hill in the opposite direction, turn around, and use speed and momentum to carry us up it. That should give you some indication of how bad the hill is.

                The house that you encounter at the top of the hill is owned by the Brady family. Not the members of the television show, but rather Brady & Sullivan, an extremely large real estate building company that was responsible for building our condominium association. What I have learned about this company has been disquieting, but that is another topic.

                Right next to them is a duplex that both dwarfs the Brady house, and is so close to them that you wonder how either set of occupants could possibly enjoy living there. It is a massive grey structure, with a lawn that does a great job of displaying the flock of turkeys that wander through the area twice a year on their migration.

                Across the street is an abandoned house that has been for sale for the two years that we have been here. I have no idea why it has not sold, or if there is anything wrong with the place, or even who owns it.

                Next up, on both sides of the road, are campsites. The left comprises of Hawg Hill, a place that has had the distinction of being mentioned in my posts before. What confuses me is that it appears to be used exclusively during the annual Motorcycle Week held here in the state. If it is used at any other point of the year, or even the summer, I have not seen it. It seems like a waste of a large amount of space. The right side is a much larger and updated place that takes up several acres. This, too, is strictly a summertime place, and shuts down for the winter except for the owners and caretakers of the place.

                The last thing encountered before getting to the main road is a development that is having something like eighty modular homes put into it. I do not know why it is taking as long as it is for the development to be done; it has been going on for the entire time we have been here. I know that the land has to be completely restructured and prepared for the houses getting put there, but I would have thought that more houses would have been put up by now.

                Once you get to the main road, I always turn right, and go down the hill to Weirs Beach and the tourist area. 

                There is a large open field on the right as you go down the hill, which is used for both parking for the restaurant further down the hill, and also as a staging area for multiple businesses and tents to be set up for the aforementioned bike week.

                On the left hand side is what is probably the ugliest damn tourist attraction in the entirety of the state of New Hampshire, something which Balefont and Jay, along with Mr. and Mrs. X can all attest to.

                Imagine a miniature golf course and water slide park located on a hill that has ever color that you can imagine – red, black, blue, purple, dark and light green, grey, pink, and so on. The slides come down from a constructed volcano that has a plane sticking halfway out of it’s side. At the bottom of the slide is a section that looks like the statuary from Easter Island.

                More on the various sights later. Change of pace.

                I had the opportunity to peruse the WorldCon panel list. I am both excited and irritated, because there is a plethora of panels that interest me a great deal. As usual, there are multiple panels that conflict with one another at the same time that I want to go to. 

                Between the panels, and the BwB, and the vendors, and being in Montreal, it appears that things are going to be their usual hectic schedule. I am hoping that I am wrong; it would be nice to have a slower Con than in past years. The fact that there is only one party is something that I consider to be advantageous in this regard. Looking forward to it a great deal, though. Only a week and a half to go, now.

Tags: snippets
Current Location: Home
Current Mood: complacent
Current Music: Torchwood in the background

                When I come home from work, my first chore is to walk our dog, Hunter.

                He is a ninety pound yellow Labrador, and it is all muscle. He is somewhere between five and seven; we do not know for sure because we adopted him. He is not a pure-bred, but whatever the rest of him is, it does not show.

                Being a Lab, he is exuberant, energetic, and curious. Since he is two-thirds my own body weight, when he gets it into his head to charge suddenly in a direction, it becomes an interesting task to keep him under control, and prevent him from going out into the road, or into a pond, or wherever.

                There are two directions to go in when we go walking. If we go up a hill in one direction, we come to a main road that leads to a beach and several tourism sites. If we go up the other hill in the opposite direction, we are heading further into the woods, towards an eventual dead-end on a different road.

                The weather and time of year determine where we go, to some extent. Sun and snow do not have an effect on whether we walk, nor does rain, but rain does tend to cut the walk short. I like rain, but not being out in it. Sun and snow are fine.

                In the wintertime, I walk the route inland. The snow piles up on the sidewalks in the tourist areas, making passage impossible. On the other hand, since my road is a dead-end when you go inland, the only cars you have to worry about are the few year-round locals. All of the damn seasonal tourists are long since gone, praise be. We walk down the center of the road with no problem.

                Spring and fall are the best, because then the weather allows for travel in either direction, and depending on how early in the spring, or how late in the fall it is, the tourists are not present.

                Ironically, the summer is the worst time of year. With the presumably decent weather, the tourists are out in full force, so I cannot go that way. The dog goes into sensory overload, and is incapable of being controlled with all of the people and other dogs around. I cannot go inland, because the horseflies are at their peak. 

                Black flies are never a problem here, and the mosquitoes, while annoying, are manageable. The horseflies, however, are intrusive to the point where walking is not enjoyable.

                The local fauna is fun, though, when I am able to encounter it.

                My most recent encounter of a new species was a very small brown field mouse with a tail three times longer than it’s body was. Cute, actually. 

The dog sniffed it out of the edge of the grass. I need to be careful to make sure he doesn’t find something that is more problematic than a field mouse.   Usually he goes charging after squirrels and chipmunks.

I have encountered a black water snake sunning itself by the side of the small pond that we go past. It had tried blending itself in with a black tarpaulin that was used to cut down on the erosion by the side of the road by the pond. I say water snake, because there are no water moccasins in this area of the country, although the uninformed would have you believe otherwise.

I have encountered snapping turtles twice. Once when one was trying to get across the road. I took a stick and assisted it, although it certainly did not want the help. They are quite vicious, and the larger ones get to have a shell more than a foot across. More than capable of taking off a finger or a toe, if you are dumb enough to let them get at you. And they WILL go at you; unlike most turtles who will retreat into their shells when threatened, these attack.

The second encounter was with a female that was laying it’s eggs for the season. We gave that one a very wide berth, and I am very glad that I saw her first, and not the dog. I was able to keep him well away from her.

There are multiple grass fields along the inland walk, and they serve wonderfully for displaying the plethora of woodchucks that frequent the area. They go by a couple of names – woodchucks, groundhogs, and my personal favorite, the ground pig. It is amusing to see one of these things running; they are capable of a surprising amount of speed. Their plumpness makes it look like they are undulating across the grass.

The best encounter I have had so far, although it was from a greater distance than any of the others, was this past winter. There is a section of road that has the only street light for several hundred feet in either direction, and makes for a certain level of creepiness if you are walking the route in the pitch black of a February night. We refer to the light as Narnia, after the lamppost that the children encounter in the first book.

So we are on our way back, heading towards the light, and I see a fox. It was almost a stereotype in terms of the setting. The fox was right in the center of the circle of light that the streetlight provided, and was watching us as we got closer. Eventually it slinked off down the road away from us.

More later.

Tags: snippets
Current Location: Domicile
Current Mood: complacent
Current Music: Moulin Rouge soundtrack