Irritation

I am supremely irritable today. Therefore I shall make a nice numbered list of all the things that are currently annoying me so I can mull upon them in an organized fashion.

1. Either a) my dry cleaner has shrunk my pants (again), which means a) I shall have to find another dry cleaner b) I have gained weight so my pants no longer sit as low as they did or c) my pant legs have always been this short but I never noticed with boots on. None of these options makes me happy. C) is probably the best bet, but I am still irritated by the inches of bare leg that now show when I sit down.


2. Six billion urgent things to deal with keep popping up at work so I can't concentrate on my projects.


3. It looks like it will rain. Again. In the middle of June. In California.


4. The Inside made me really sporky and now I am grumpy again because why does it seem so hard to find a good TV show with strong female characters?


5. The LJ team has implemented tags, which are a good idea. However, they do not work with S1, and I am lazy and don't want to figure out how to re-implement all my custom layouts in S2. I am also lazy and don't want to go through 1000+ entries and recategorize all of them. I may just hold off and wait until someone miraculously comes up with a system that allows you to tag your entries and then automatically uses those tags to update Memories. While I am wishing for the moon, I also want a system that retroactively tags everything via Memories categories.


6. I bought a new wireless card for the little portable laptop my dad gave me from his office, but even though the card works, I still can't get on the internet or my home network, so I still can't do LJ from the couch, which is all I really want. Ok, now I'm just sounding whiny, because having the extra laptop is happy. But useless if I can't go online with it

Kirstein, Rosemary - The Lost Steersman

I didn't like this book quite as much as I liked The Steerswoman or The Outskirter's Secret. It starts out promising, with Rowan venturing to Alemeth's Archives, and I very much like how the townspeople don't quite like prickly Rowan and rather resent her for implying that the previous, friendlier steerswoman didn't do a particularly good job as a steerswoman.

Me, I reeled in horror at the description of the state of the archives and the implied loss of the knowledge gathered throughout centuries.

I think the problem with this book is that the mystery solved at the end is nowhere near as interesting or thought-provoking as the world-building mysteries solved in the earlier two books, and as such, I'm not quite as interested in what happens next now. Also, I didn't like Janus, the titular lost steersman.

My favorite part of the book was probably when Rowan and another Steerswoman had a possible Steersman-to-be (pre-frosh Steersman?) look at a Moebius strip and analyze it, because it gets to the heart of what I like best about the series -- pursuit of knowledge and analysis, and the joy derived from it.

Also, I missed Bel.

Links:
- kate_nepveu's review

BPAL Wishlist & notes

For my own reference, to be updated whenever.

( Wishlist )

( Notes )