Weekend Post #1: Walking and Shopping, Writing and Internetting

Well, of course the weekend starts with the both of us being fully awake at 6am, which means lounging around watching Holmes on Homes and other HGTV/Style shows and drinking coffee.

Once we had our act together, we headed up California to Franklin and then to Fillmore to buy a few things and check out the Fillmore strip on foot (higher-end stores and restaurants, nothing too exciting). Another bus-hop to the Laurel Village shopping center (also on California) to check out the Books Inc as well as marvel at the Ace Hardware/5 & 10 store there, which had everything--including a Jesus flashlight on a keychain. Oh, and our original reason to stop there, to buy bus passes. :p

After a very long walk, we made our way to the foot of Clement Street, which is like our local Main Street. All sorts of stores, restaurants and whatnot here! We stopped at Green Apple Books, which is a really neat new-and-used bookstore that's very dangerous for the both of us. Lots of things bought here (more on this in the next post).

Stopped for lunch at this divey place called Hamburger Haven, which claims to have opened in 1968 and looks like it hasn't renovated since then. $20 for two Country Breakfast plates which included biscuits & gravy, VERY BUTTERY eggs, bacon, and sausage. YUM! And of course our walk today wouldn't be complete without stopping at Coffee Luvers around the corner for some iced java.

I'd say we easily covered a good few miles' worth of walking today, even got some Christmas shopping done, so we don't feel guilty for goofing off the rest of the day.


In other news...
We ordered a couch online. Yes, Virginia, you can pretty much order anything online in this day and age (I commented to Emm that the weirdest thing I've probably ordered on the net was Fluff). We ordered from Home Reserve (thanks to my sis for pointing the site out!), specifically the Avenue style in a dark brown hickory. Good prices, great styles, well worth checking out!

That said...our internets seem to be working fine at the moment. we traded out the DSL filter we had, and I unplugged and replugged everything, so I'm thinking that it may have been the phone line. I was able to work from home on Friday, so all is well.

Writing...this present chapter is KICKING MY BUTT. I'm not even sure if I'll use it, but I'm writing it anyway. I'm only getting about 200-300 words a night for this chapter, where the last one I wrote flew by in about four days. Will see what happens...

Music...for those who missed it, I posted another Noughties video post yesterday, this one for 2004. I should follow _nimisha_'s suggestion and put these under a normal tag, but I can't seem to come up with one that I like. Any suggestions are welcome! If I have the time, I may post the one for 2005 tomorrow.

Work...well, work is work. Nothing new to report here.


Aaaand, that's my life at the moment. How's tricks on your end?

[Books] Weekend Post #2: Purchases and Reads

I am psyched that I bought not one but two books I didn't know had come out: Douglas Coupland's newest, Generation A (a sequel of sorts to his debut Generation X), and Pseudonymous Bosch's newest, This Book Is Not Good For You. I'm a big fan of DC's work and had no idea he had something new out already! As for the PB book, it's the third in an incredibly silly and fun YA series (actually, it's in the young readers' section, but well worth reading). I've been good with the impulse buys book-wise (I keep reminding myself that I need to work through my pile of unread stuff, and that usually works), so two buys today isn't too bad.

That said, recent books I've read:

And Another Thing... by Eoin Colfer, aka, the sixth book in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy. As said to Emm, this one felt a lot like it was written as fanfic. A very good and well-written fanfic, though. It had less of the absurdist silliness of the first few books and more of the satiric Britishness of Mostly Harmless, of which this is a kinda-sorta direct sequel. It took the characters in interesting directions, especially Zaphod and Ford, formerly caricature-like and somewhat one-dimensional. They were both shown in a more expanded, deeper fashion. And extra points for a character quoting Bladerunner with a completely straight, serious face and making me giggle uncontrollably. Interesting expansion on the series, if anything...I'll probably end up picking it up once it's in trade or mass-market.

My Most Excellent Year by Steve Kluger. LOVED this YA book. Not only is it fun and silly, it's epistolary (in the form of an english class journal assignment, multiple emails, and IM sessions, all in multiple POVs, including the parents), and it captures blue-collar Boston brilliantly. At the heart of it, it's a simple boy-meets-girl, girl-despises-boy, boy-wins-girl-over (boy's-silly-sidekick(in this case gay and realizing it for the first time, after everyone else in the novel including his love interest has figured it out)-getting-all-the-laughs) type of story but so full of Boston-smartassery and sheer goofiness that I was tempted to read it again right there and then. HIGHLY suggested.

CURRENT READS:
Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes, by John Pierson. Been meaning to read this one for quite some time now. Man, this book is like I'm reading one of my college textbooks again! :p Seriously, it's a bit dry and self-important in some places, but at the same time it's an interesting read about indie movies that came out during a time when I was watching a lot of them in college. Interesting read, but not really sure if it's one I'll keep.

Farthing by Jo Walton. Reading this as my commute book. Very well written, it's like reading one of those old Ngaio Marsh/Agatha Christie sort of myster novels, but it's set in an alternate history. Emm's already read the two sequels and deems them AWESOME, and I'm inclined to agree. :)