Tag: weekend

This update was partially delayed due to some problems with our domain name. And depending on what the old bank balance looks like after paying my bills; I’ll be seeing about moving musings to it’s new host/domain name/style (maybe).

Most days of the week, I end up staying up far later into the night than is good for me; so I sleep late on the weekends to help catch up on my sleep. This last weekend, I actually managed to drag my sleepy but out of bed and make it to the bank so I could store some stuff in my safety deposit box. Whew!

After I got back from the bank; Ariesna and I headed over to the Coralville Public Library Booksale. We picked up a few interesting looking books, including one that I later started hoping wasn’t somebody else’s purchase.

See, CPL has a freebie section and a purchase section. We always go into the purchase section first and buy whatever strikes our fancy before going through the freebies. We’d done that and while looking through the freebies; I noticed a small book, titled Understanding the Scots, in a box near the door into the purchase section. Being part Scottish, I picked it up and started flipping through it. While I did this I turned around to see what Ariesna might be up to and then turned back to see if any other books in that box were of interest. Alas, the box was gone. Now, I don’t know if those were supposed to belong to somebody else (e.g. they’d finished in the purchase section and just set the box down) or if they were legitimate freebies and somebody grabbed the box with all the rest of the books. *sigh* I doubt I’ll ever find out.

After the booksale, we headed to downtown Iowa City for their 2004 Art Fesitval. We did a lot of walking around looking at all the cool stuff and I bought Ariesna a silver bracelet with a daisy in the pendent on the bracelet. She loved it and was going to just walk away from it, but I couldn’t have that so I bought it. While I’m not sure that it was a sound financial move; the smile on her face was well worth it.

Oh and I took some photos of the Art Festival with my new camera but I haven’t had a chance to go through them yet. Once I have; I’ll see about posting them here.

Later in the afternoon, we met up with Ariesna’s sister (Dee) and her husband (Ken) to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter 3). To sum it up, I think the overall production values were higher in this film than any of the others but the story was very badly hacked up and if you’ve not read the book; I can’t image how you’d be able to follow what was going on. Still, if you’re a fan of the series; it’s worth seeing on a matinee.

As mentioned in a post earlier today, I got a new toy this weekend. I probably shouldn’t have, but Ariesna kind of ambushed me into doing it and I’ve researched my choice of toy enough to know that I’m going to like it.

What is the new toy you ask? I finally got myself a new camera. My old one was a Pentax K1000 SE (all manual, 35mm). My new one is a Canon PowerShot S500 Digital ELPH. It’s a 5 megapixel camera but it’s teeny-tiny (roughly the size of a deck of playing cards) and the best part is that even my bear paws fit on the thing without smashing half the buttons. There’s a nice wide, clear spot on the back to put my right thumb, the lens is shifted enough to the left (as seen from the back of the camera) so that I’ve got room to put my fingers across the front of the camera giving me a fairly, solid grip. The left side is a bit more crowded, but there’s enough room on the top & bottom of the camera that I can steady it when needed. The zoom on this camera is nothing to write home about (3x optical, 12x digital) but that’s the price you pay for compactness. I’ve only played with it a little bit so far, but I can say that I’m really digging it. Though my co-workers are a bit annoyed seeing the flash go off. That’s ok; I won’t be taking any more pictures around the office (for now) and will delete the test shots that I made. Though I do plan on carrying this camera with me everywhere, since it’s so small and since there’s been so many times that I’ve wished I was carrying a camera.

Oh and in a related note, though the camera’s specs say it only works with Windows & Macintosh computers; I was able to browse/download the photos on the camera using Digikam under SuSE Linux 9.0 Pro under KDE 3.2.2. Score!

Right, back to work for me. Again. *sigh*

We’re just returning to work after a 3 day week (hope everybody enjoyed their Memorial day) and it was sooo nice not to have to get up & come to work yesterday. Alas, I’ve to find anybody to sponsor me to live without working; so I’m back to work today. :p Not too much to report about the weekend; I slept late everyday and didn’t do very much other than that.

Friday night, Ariesna and I visited our friend Bryon (and Sekhmet and Baset and Toby-san and Cap’n Jack). We all went out to this sub-shop in Vinton that Ariesna & I had never been to and it was fabulous! They have a similar setup to the Quiznos chain, but they do a much better job. Then we went back to Bryon’s place and watched some anime. I can’t quite recall the title right now, but I’ll look it up later and add it in the comments or update this post. It was cool and I’ve bumped it higher on my playlist (at the moment, I’m watching PlanetES).

Saturday, we basically slept the day away and the same for most of Sunday. Monday, we only slept have the day away and then went out to do some shopping. I got some new shirts and a new toy, but I’m not talking about that yet because I’m going to surprise some of my co-workers with it first (and I know at least one of them reads this blog).

Muhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Back to reality and time for the reviews….

I finished reading The Onion Girl by Charles de Lint and while it wasn’t bad; there’s definitely a sense that I read this book out of order from the series it appears to be in. There were issues that somewhat came up that never got really explained and that annoyed me to some extent but they weren’t vital to the story; so it wasn’t too big of an issue. The other thing I noticed about this book is how different the writing style is from what I generally read.

Most authors that I like tend to dump massive amounts of detail on you with a shovel. Mr. de Lint didn’t do that; instead, he only gave a bare minimum of detail and spent the rest of the pages dealing with the emtions & personality of the characters. It took me a bit to get into the book; but once I really got going with it, I found it most enjoyable. Overall, I give it 3.75 out of 5 points.

Then I went ahead and read The Little Country also by Charles de Lint and found it to be a much better book. The story was much richer in detail and I found it easier to empathize with the characters in this book; as compared to the ones in The Onion Girl. It probably helps that this is set over in Cornwall and I’ve always wanted to visit the British Isles. 😀 Overall, I’d give this book 4.25 out of 5 points.

Oh and next up, I’ll be reading Elizabeth Peter’s Children of the Storm.

<sarcasm>
Work is such fun today!
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Our corporate network got hit with the WORM_SASSER.B virus and since I work out of a remote office that relies on servers in the main office; I’m effectively dead in the water today. I wish we had some more Linux boxes on the network, so that maybe we wouldn’t get hit so hard by viri like this. Unfortunately, all our company’s software is Windows based which doesn’t give us much room to do that.

Ah well, at least I’m having plenty of time to read Assimov’s I, Robot (I borrowed a copy from “my friend Fritz”) and so far, so good. It’s nice to go back and reread the works of some of the masters of Sci-Fi once in a while. Oh, I should mention that I finished Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast over the weekend and enjoyed it but while he explored an interesting concept, it wasn’t one of his better books. Overall, I’d give it 2.5 out of 5 points.