It Is the Flu

Posted by Cyn | Filed under Health, Kvetching, Reading

And now I have it, too. Damn it. I had tried to get back to blog­ging dai­ly, but good inten­tions just did­n’t hold a can­dle against the entire house­hold com­ing down with the flu.1

For some rea­son I thought Tam­i­flu was a one or two-pill affair, but I sup­pose I had it con­fused with one of the oth­er antivi­rals. I have to take this for ten days! And appar­ent­ly it gives quite a few peo­ple stom­ach flu symp­toms on top of the mis­ery they’re already in or try­ing to avoid. Hap­pi­ly, that isn’t hap­pen­ing to me so far.

I’m not feel­ing very chat­ty, though. So I think I’m going to curl up with the new deliv­ery of mail­box books from the library and apply myself to some brain­less read­ing. Any­thing that requires brain will have to be sent back and request­ed again some oth­er time, because I won’t be able to appre­ci­ate it. (I admit­ted that I was sick when I kept re-read­ing the same few pages of Halt­ing State with absolute­ly no trace of com­pre­hen­sion.) Now I wish I’d made dif­fer­ent selec­tions!

1 Kiyoshi isn’t infect­ed, but he isn’t very help­ful at the best of times.

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Read more | Comments (1) | March 13th, 2010

Between Naps

Posted by Cyn | Filed under Health, Reading

I gave in to my body and stayed in bed all day yes­ter­day. It helped. If I’m not try­ing to do any­thing else, I can take my break­through pain meds and mus­cle relax­ants. They make me too flop­py to walk around safe­ly or use dan­ger­ous tools like but­ter knives.

I’m doing pret­ty much the same today, but want­ed to post an update. Not that there’s real­ly any­thing much to talk about, oth­er than nap­ping.

I have con­tin­ued to read when I’m awake, thanks to Sam’s will­ing­ness to go to the library to sup­port my habit. I fin­ished the first four books in Eileen Wilks’ World of the Lupi series. I think book 4, Night Sea­son, was bet­ter than the first three. The focus switched from one cou­ple to anoth­er in this book, and both of those peo­ple were def­i­nite­ly grow­ing and changing—always a plus in my mind.

I did fin­ish Caitlin Kit­tredge’s Pure Blood, but it was a close thing. The main char­ac­ter is a whiny, imma­ture brat who blames every­thing on the fact that she’s a were­wolf. The oth­er weres in her world don’t seem to have such poor con­trol over them­selves, so that just does­n’t wash. She’s also stu­pid, con­stant­ly run­ning off into dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions with­out let­ting anyone—like, say, her fel­low police officers—know so they can back her up.

I final­ly got my hands on Hands of Flame by C.E. Mur­phy, the last book of her Nego­tia­tor tril­o­gy. It was won­der­ful! All the impor­tant threads from the series were tied up, includ­ing some that I’d thought mere­ly back­ground. There are five Old Races liv­ing silent­ly among humans in Mur­phy’s uni­verse, and I love the way she avoids most of the clichés about them. I would like to have seen a few more shades of gray in the por­tray­al of one race, in par­tic­u­lar, but all in all she did a very nice job. It’s easy to imag­ine many, many more sto­ries in this uni­verse, focus­ing on new char­ac­ters.

I haven’t decid­ed what to read next. Sam was so enthu­si­as­tic about Halt­ing State by Charles Stross that I might switch over to sci­ence fic­tion for a bit. It real­ly depends on how well I’m able to com­pre­hend it—Stross’ writ­ing is real­ly good, but more chal­leng­ing to the read­er than any of the urban fantasy/paranormal what­sis books I’ve been dawdling over.

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Read more | Comments off | September 12th, 2008

Scattered

Posted by Cyn | Filed under Family, Fun, Reading

Any­body else using Live­Mocha? Espe­cial­ly to learn French? I just joined (as Tech­noMom, of course) and would like to have “friends” there. I start­ed with the begin­ner lev­el, les­son one, and actu­al­ly learned a few new vocab­u­lary words. (My wee bit of for­eign lan­guage instruc­tion in high school sucked, to put it mild­ly.) You’re sup­posed to ask your “friends” for feed­back on your lessons, but I don’t have any and don’t real­ly want to ask total strangers about how bad­ly I did.

Sam and Katie have been at Dragon*Con for the past few days. We had a house guest, David, but I did­n’t real­ly “meet” him because of the late con hours and hav­ing a real­ly bad pain flare. Sor­ry David! He went home this after­noon. I’m glad Sam has the day off tomor­row to recov­er. I’m glad Hope got to come to D*C, but pout­ing because I won’t get to see her while she’s in town. I know that she has bright­ened Sam’s week­end.

I fin­ished read­ing The Jen­nifer Morgue by Charles Stross last night, and start­ed Phae­dra Wel­don’s Wraith. I liked Morgue, but it was­n’t quite as strong as The Atroc­i­ty Archives. The short sto­ry at the end of the book, “Pimpf,” did­n’t do too much for me, but I’m not a video gamer so that prob­a­bly has a lot to do with it.

I’m real­ly lik­ing Wraith. A lot. The fact that it’s set in Atlanta is nice, because I can fol­low along the geog­ra­phy as the char­ac­ters move around. (Usu­al­ly, such things go right past me, even if there’s a map.) Thanks to Good Reads, I know that there’s a novel­la, “Out of the Dark,” on Wel­don’s site that takes place between this book and Spec­tre.

I’ve also been brows­ing through the archives at Two Lumps, thanks to a link from . I had a pair of Russ­ian Blues who were entire­ly too much like Ebenez­er and Snooch! If you’re a vet­er­an of cat cohab­i­ta­tion, be care­ful when read­ing. I rec­om­mend not hav­ing a drink in hand (or in mouth) and being care­ful to emp­ty your blad­der before you start read­ing.

Kyoshi is busy telling me that he still does­n’t want to cud­dle with any­body but Katie, but he wants her home NOW! RIGHT NOW! And that we real­ly have to stop let­ting the kit­ten out of the house with­out his per­son­al super­vi­sion.

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Read more | Comments (3) | August 31st, 2008

Review: The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross

Posted by Cyn | Filed under Book Reviews, Reading

The Atrocity Archives The Atroc­i­ty Archives by Charles Stross

My review

rat­ing: 5 of 5 stars
I don’t give many 5‑star rat­ings, but The Atroc­i­ty Archives deserves one. You may need to read it with a web brows­er open to look up ref­er­ences using Wikipedia or Google, but if you enjoy Torch­wood, Men in Black, or Snow Crash, I think you’ll enjoy this one.

The vol­ume actu­al­ly includes the nov­el and a novel­la, The Con­crete Jun­gle. Both are good read­ing, and I rec­om­mend giv­ing your­self time to enjoy the fore­word and after­word, as well.

View all my reviews.

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Read more | Comments off | August 30th, 2008