Some 60 hours and 700-odd posts later...

[lance_sibley]

... I'm finally caught up on LJ following Dragon*Con. Now I remember why I used to go to the business centre of the hotel I was staying in and read my friendslist every night before going to bed. I hope to get caught up on email over the next few days. I've read all of it, but there are several I want to respond to, including comments others have left here.

Today was a bit rough - my hay fever has knocked me for a loop since returning to Toronto. I took something for it last night (the generic equivalent of Claritin, I think) and managed to sleep through all of my alarms and then spend the rest of the morning in a bit of a fog as a result. I still managed to get some stuff accomplished today regarding allowing users to renew multiple boards at once (right now, they have to do it one by one from the page where the boards they're subscribed to are listed), but I have to put in a few hours this weekend as I couldn't stay late tonight as this was the first night of my bowling league for the new season.

Then I was threatened on the subway tonight after work - I was waiting for the car to empty so that I could get on, and this guy pushed past the people who were still exiting and hit me in the stomach as he did so. I muttered, "You're excused," as he hadn't apologized or anything. When I got on, he yelled at me, "What was that?" I told him that he had hit me on his rush into the subway car, and he accused me of exaggerating. (No, I don't think so. I know what it feels like to have an elbow in my stomach.) He then told me that I shouldn't "play games," that "not everyone is a good guy," and that just because I was on the subway, I shouldn't consider myself to be in a safe place. WTF? I didn't even look at him - I just sat down and worked on my crossword puzzle (though it took about 15 minutes for me to be able to concentrate). He never did apologize for hitting me. Asshole.

On a somewhat calmer note, my nose was running the Boston Marathon this evening, so I took another pill around 7:30, and it's only now starting to kick in, I think. People on the subway were looking at me like I had the plague because my nose was running, my eyes were running, and I couldn't stop sneezing.

And I have no doubt that I'm going to be in extreme agony for the next 48 hours as well, due to not having gotten any practice sessions in at the bowling alley during the summer. (I'd wanted to, but there just wasn't any time.) It was nice to see h8torun, Randy, Mario and Bridgette again, as well as some of the other people there. I had a surprisingly good night: 163, 192, 153. But my legs are going to be screaming at me for the rest of the weekend. I just hope Ambrose doesn't want to go for any long walks tomorrow night after dinner. (Oh, yeah. It's been a few weeks since we were last able to get together, but now we have firm plans for tomorrow night, so I can give him his autograph from Ellen Muth and watch him squee. :) )

For the few of you who hadn't heard - since several people have reported this news - children's fantasy author Madeline L'Engle passed away this week at the age of 88: New York Times. I remember being given A Wrinkle In Time and at least two of its sequels when I was a child, and devouring them. I'd actually been considering checking for copies at my local used bookstore, as I have no idea whatever happened to my copies - they probably went missing in a move or something - and I had a sudden craving to reread them recently. (Watch, I'll buy them and then they'll turn up.)

And I finally finished book one of Peter F. Hamilton's The Reality Dysfunction the other night. This book was the hardest slog I've ever encountered; admittedly, I haven't been making much time for reading over the past six months or so, which might explain why I've been working my way through it for about a year. Normally I'm a fairly fast reader, but I just couldn't get into it. Of course, now I have to read book two as I'd bought them together, and I refuse to let a book defeat me. ;) (And besides, the story picked up in the last 100 pages or so.) That being said, I'm taking a break, and I've read about 150 pages of Terry Pratchett's Thud! in the past three days. (See? Not a slow reader. Peter F. Hamilton just writes a slow story.) And then I have about ten other books on the shelf still waiting to be read, including two Dresden books, a Jasper Fforde, and a bunch of others that I bought at last year's Worldcon.

Comments

[summ3r-daze.livejournal.com]

There seems to be a rash of assholes randomly physically assaulting people lately. I'm sorry that you had to deal with it. It's upsetting when it happens.

[minotaurs.livejournal.com]

I really liked Reality Disfuntion, right up to the ending. The ending may well be the lamest thing ever written in the history of sci-fi, worse even than "then the little boy rolled over in bed and woke up to find it had all been a dream". Do yourself a favor - read though about 1/2 way into the final book, then put it down and make up your own ending - I guarantee you it will be better than what Hamilton wrote.