Sakura of DOOM

Not that I was really that gone, internet-wise.

Addiction? What addiction?

But the rats and I have safely traversed five highways, one bridge, two windy mountain roads, and quite a few lanes clogged up by white trucks going too slowly, and are now back home. The rats seem to be very glad to be back in their normal, large cage again, and they are expressing this by beating Ruki up and flinging litter everywhere.

( Harbingers of DOOM )

( Spy shows: LFN )

( Traditional fooding )

( Rats )

( Spy shows: Spooks/MI-5 )

( Pointy sticks and string )

Also, I managed to miss both cofax7 and cychi's birthdays while I was gone, so, um... happy belated birthday! May the next year bring good food and good books.

Watched Lost. Was not too impressed. ( Read more... )

Went on a friending spree and then realized my reading list was getting really rather large, and trimmed it down a bit.

Have recently been watching BBC's Top Gear with the boy, which is an absolutely hilarious... car show. Yeah. It's a TV show about cars, and I like it (yes, I'm amazed too). Not only do I like it, I think it's absolutely hilarious (although I do have a tendency to wander off when they start getting a bit too technical for me). But honestly. The people say things like, "The only way you would ever pick this car is if you were clinically insane. And by that, I mean if you wake up in the morning and think you are an onion." And they have weird segments -- the one we watched today was "Let's get a nun to drive a monster truck!" And they did, and she did, and did so successfully, and it was the coolest and funniest thing ever. Past favorites include the segment in which they drive cars past the jet engine of a 747 and see how fast the cars get blown away. And I even listen to their car reviews, because the guys on the show are so incredibly snarky (see above onion comment).

( Funny car review )

You know, I never thought I would be posting car reviews in my LJ.

---

Rethinking career options in light of a) no one hiring. The boy made me feel a little better by saying they (who is this unknown entity anyway?) estimated that some 300,000 new jobs would be created, except only 50,000 were. b) my eyes glazing over reading job descriptions and listening to people talk about their companies. c) continually coming back to books.

Also, this is probably influenced by the current giddy euphoria over being able to buy books for the store, so I shall wait a bit and see if I get tired of it. Or, er, if my feet give out from under me, which is also a possibility.

( Job musing )

Have been going on a romance reading streak lately. I suspect it's because they're sort of comfort books and because I miss the boy. Also I sort of rediscovered The Romance Reader and had fun going through essays, and went rampaging through melymbrosia's romance conversion kit.

Read another Connie Brockway because I was quite impressed with All Through the Night. I like My Dearest Enemy. It was enjoyable, though not as hard hitting as All Through the Night. And while I enjoyed having the hero and the heroine meet, I almost wish that there had been a sort of supplementary book that the author refers to, The Unabridged Love Letters of Avery Thorne and Lillian Bede. The letters, particularly Lily's rather acid ones, had me laughing in delight. And I think the rest of the romance never quite lived up to them, with Lily being too attracted to Avery to make as many of her stinging remarks, all couched in that very polite yet scathing tone of voice. I also just liked the idea of Avery reading them aloud to his friends over fires in various remote parts of the world.

Then went on to Judith Ivory's Sleeping Beauty. I will admit, although everyone and their mother seems to think Judith Ivory is absolutely wonderful, I've never quite been able to get into her books. I recognize that they do interesting things to romance tropes and that she doesn't fall back on the often used means of expressing that the hero and the heroine are in love, but they've just never quite resonated with me. For Beast and Black Silk, the writing managed to put me off just enough so that I admired the books but didn't really like them. Black Silk more so than Beast, because I can never refuse a fairy tale retelling, much less a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I very much liked Louise in Beast and I loved the first half of the book, but got rather sick of waiting around for the Big Misunderstanding to be cleared up. The Indiscretion and The Proposal I don't even really recall much. But Sleeping Beauty had the older heroine who was rather jaded and closed off to love, with the understanding that the hero will of course be the one to touch her hardened heart, which is one of my hot button setups. And for once the book lived up to it. Loved the small references to Sleeping Beauty and enjoyed the rather odd setting for a romance novel -- Victorian England, Cambridge, the dentist's office. And I loved Coco and James. I also liked how the ending wasn't perfectly happy with everything resolved, just enough of a few bitter notes to make it believable.

Started watching La Femme Nikita yesterday (netflix is wonderful). I've put off Stargate for a bit, feeling a little burnt out from watching two seasons in a very short period of time. So now I'm overdosing on yet another show! I love TV on DVD. Anyway, I've only seen three episodes so far, but I rather like it, and I am rather disappointed that news seems to be that S2 is not going to be put out. I feel it's got the cool bits of Alias without falling into the bits of Alias that I disliked. Although I will admit that LFN so far does not have Jack and Sloane, who are really really strong votes for Alias. LFN is kind of clunky, tries a little too hard and leaves too many seams exposed, but I like Nikita and Michael is really enough to eat with a spoon. I like Nikita because she's so often the opposite of Sydney. She doesn't have much of a personal life so far, so I don't have to watch her commiserate over her friends' lives when I really just want to see cool gadgets. Nikita's also not as open and vulnerable as Sydney, which strangely makes me like her more. And Michael is really interesting. Well, not really so far, but he's an archetype I like with a French accent and a killer coat. Plus, UST up the wazoo. I think I never quite liked Alias because the leads, Sydney and Vaughn, were too intrinsically good (I say this only having seen half a season). I get hints of danger in Vaughn, of what he might be capable of, but he's really very uncomplicated when compared to Jack (who is awesome). I love Jack because he can be given a gun and told to shoot Sydney, and I can actually think, you know, he might really do it. Whereas I know that Sydney and Vaughn will be good people. I find this odd because I'm a stickler for disliking gratuitous violence and for liking good people, but I find it more interesting when my heroes and heroines aren't shiningly good. I like watching people who may not be perfectly kind and lovely (which is why most standard romance heroines piss me off, with their campaigns for the poor orphans, etc. etc.) and Michael very much fits this. I like having the slickness of a spy show, with the intrigue and the distrust and the aura of fear. Sigh. I miss X-Files.