Lighter than Air

I'd love to be snuggled under a blanket right now, hiding from the chilly rainy weather that doesn't seem to want to go away this month, and the only thing stopping me is that my Kindle still needs to charge a bit more. I have 2 books to read by the end of the week, 1 of which I'm halfway through already (Betsy Dornbusch's Exile, also a reread) and 1 which I haven't started yet (Craig Cormick's The Shadow Master) but that I've promised a review by... Oh, for some reason I thought it was June 1, but it's actually June 4, so I have longer to read it than I thought. I'll be able to get it done by the 1st, though, really, since Exile won't take me too much longer (I'll probably be able to finish it by the end of tomorrow), and I don't have much planned for my days off work on Thursday and Friday except for some cleaning and cooking, and I highly doubt I'll be doing enough of either to take up 2 days of time. So I'll get to enjoy some relaxing time with new books then.

I expect I'll get a lot of reading done next week, too. I switched shifts around with a coworker, so instead of having a 4-day weekend, I work Saturday to Tuesday, have Wednesday off (for reading), work Thursday, then have Friday to Sunday off. Roommate's coming back for my birthday (which is June 7) and will arrive in the evening on Friday, so I'll have most of that day to read, and leaving early on Sunday, so I'll have most of that day too. And on Saturday we can go out for a delicious meal and possibly some book shopping and maybe taking a nice walk if the weather's good! Then I'll only work 3 more days before I'll have my usual Thursday and Friday 'weekend' off work again and can catch up on more reading.

I say 'catch up' because I have fallen behind somewhat, and review copies are piling up faster than I can read them. They already have, really, and always will, but it's getting particularly bad, so I want to has a massive reading fest or something so that I can whittle down the pile a little and get more reviews written.

It's an addiction, reading and reviewing all these books. It's hard to believe I've been doing it for almost 4 and a half years now. There have been times where I've thought that maybe I should stop, that I don't really want to keep up the responsibility of having to review when what I'd rather be doing is just more reading, but I keep going back to it, and I do enjoy talking about what I think about the things I read. And I like knowing that I'm doing a little bit to help publicity for good books, too.

I shaved my head last weekend. Not for the first time, but I liked it a lot before and it was getting long enough to be annoying, but too short to just tie back out of the way. So out came the clippers and away went the hair. I like it best this way, I think. It makes me look more boyish. Not manly, but boyish, and that's closer to what I actually want for myself, so I'll take it! Even if everyone else who looks at me sees only the outward signs of being female (boobs, me wearing a long skirt because it's comfortable and nobody can see my legs), I know I can look in the mirror and see a face that's a little more like how I think I ought to be. And that makes me happy.

I've been making more use of my camera, too, and getting more pictures while I'm out. I'm not bad, really, but I'm not that great either, and I think it wouldn't hurt me to read a couple of photography books so that I can get some tips on improving. For every picture I get that I like, there are about a dozen that are mediocre, and about 3 dozen that I just reject out of hand because they're not focused properly, a bad angle, looked great on the digital camera screen but aren't so great on the computer screen... I know that much of it is trial and error, and a bit of editing too, but I think my skill has hit a plateau and I need something new to get me improving again.

Aaand I just discovered that a cheque finally cleared my bank account, so I have enough money to get cat food and stamps without having to use credit! Possibly some cat litter, too, but I think I can make what I currently have stretch until I get my next paycheque if I'm careful, so I may not need to. But the other things are definitely needed; cats need to eat, and I have an important letter to send! So now I can depart the online world happy. My Kindle isn't fully charged yet, but I don't want to wait any longer, since time's running out and I don't have long before it'll be time to go to sleep so I can get some good rest for work tomorrow.

~ Camera finally died yesterday. Well, the battery died, anyway, and I still can't find the charger, so for all intents and purposes, it's dead. I'm still holding out some hope that I can find the charger with at least a few days to spare before the surgery, so that I can take advantage of the nice weather and get some more good pictures of the new plant growth that's exploding everywhere. I managed to get a couple of good pictures yesterday before the camera death: Chestnut Bud and Poplar Catkins. Took more pictures than that but these were the best ones of the bunch.

Still in need of a new and better camera, though, since this one's got lousy zoom focus and has this weird little dark smudge that I can't seem to get rid of no matter what I do...

~ Today's review on Bibliotropic is A M Dellamonica's Indigo Springs, which is an awesome book with quality magical realism. And also certain characters who remind me disturbingly of people I knew in high school. It made it a bit of an uncomfortable book to get through at times, seeing an old friend reflected in a character who goes mad with magical power and starts a cult in which she is the central goddess... Yeah, the people we meet in our lives, huh?

~ Got 3 more reviews and one post about what females in geekdom are and aren't allowed to do, all scheduled to last Bibliotropic for content until I go away for surgery. Well, I say scheduled, but I haven't actually written them yet. That will come tomorrow.

~ Still need to badger people about guest posts for the time I'll be gone, too...

~ Blood test tomorrow, the last I'll be getting before the surgery. This is good, because it's just a simple CBC and they'll only need one vial, which makes for a happy me because I am really getting tired of people sticking needles in my arms. At least I can have 2 weeks after tomorrow before it'll need to happen again!

~ Catching up on some episodes of Fringe lately while level-grinding in SMT: Devil Survivor. In spite of being a hard-hitter, Thor just can't seem to stay alive for a full battle anymore, so getting experience on him to go up levels is a slow chore. Thankfully experience is awarded each time I defeat an enemy and not just at the end of the whole battle, so I can at least get a little bit of experience before he croaks entirely. Small mercies.

~ Going to spend more of today catching up on some reading. I fell behind in my reading goals again, but at least not so far behind as I was, and I don't know how much reading I'm going to be able to handle while I'm recovering (people tell me I should expect to sleep a lot, especially for the first little while I'm home), so I want to get done what I can while I can, and hopefully meet me goals for the end of the year.

~ Looks like after a week of being back on the double-dosage, the bleeding is finally starting to really calm down. Still there, but not as bad as it was last week, and I feel a lot more comfortable because of it. Yay!

The surgery on Friday actually went better than expected, and the follow-up issues haven't been that much of a problem. I didn't feel ill from the sedative, and in spite of multiple warnings about how I was likely to bleed like a stuck pig for a few days after (the IUD usually does that, plus they cut away a bunch of tissue inside me), I didn't bleed much at all. *touch wood* So aside from that absolutely disgusting night before, things went pretty well.

I did find out from the nurses in day surgery that yes, my reaction to that drug was pretty typical, and no, it seems like doctors never do bother to warn people about the very painful side effects. Personally, I think it's a joke on behalf of the medical and breeding community, since the drug is almost always given to dilate the cervix of women who haven't given birth before. It's like they're laughing at me, going, "You have to experience this at some point in your life, whether you want to or not!" :/

In other news, I finally got back into the swing of things with the book blog. I started by making my come-back announcement... and then didn't write and post a review for 3 days. As much as I wanted to get the ball really rolling again, I just couldn't be arsed to sit down and actually write anything. I would much rather have just spent that time reading more. Figures.

But I did get something done, and posted a review of Mercedes Lackey's Take a Thief. The review of the first volume of Ayatsuji Yukito's Another is scheduled to go live later today. An okay book, but the translation really needed work, and I think it's best used as a companion to the anime based on it rather than a person's sole source for the story. Lots of repetition and circular thinking that got tedious to read after a while.

Today I'm hoping to get 3, possibly 4 more review written. Even if I just get 3 done, that'll give me content until the end of next week, which isn't too shabby, and if I work on things little by little, it shouldn't be too long before I get caught up with reviews and have plenty of scheduled blog content so that I don't have to panic and go, "Argh, what do I write this week?!"

Currently reading John Scalzi's Redshirts, and am more amused by it than I probably should be.

Because my GST cheque came through, I was a little bad and bought myself a copy of Pokemon Conquest. Alternate Japanese history, turn-based strategy battles, and Pokemon? I don't think you could combine many more of my favourite elements into a single game. And because PS2 memory cards were on sale (yes, some places still sell them, though I don't know for how long), I bought one, because I keep losing my others. Half price, less than $10, so I couldn't pass that up when I had a little extra money to spare.

I'm still toying with the idea of selling prints of the photography I've done. I want to, and I think some of my shots are good enough that people might actually want them, but indecision is still dogging my footsteps. It doesn't help that most of the best pictures I've taken are on my old computers, the giant towers that are waiting for me to find the right cables and cords and hook them up to my laptop so I can pull the old files from them. I have very limited amounts of photos right now, and I wish I had all of them so easily on hand.

I'm not entirely sure how much I'd sell them for, really, even if I did give it a try. I look at print shops around here, and while I'm sure they do high-quality photo printing, they certainly don't bother to advertise it, or the prices they'd charge. DeviantArt would pretty much take care of all that crazy stuff for me, but because they take their cut (understandably; they have to make a profit too), I'd probably end up getting less for each print than I would if I just got them printed locally and sold them that way. But it does eliminate me having to bother with that, which may be worth it in the long run...

I mean, for example, if I sold a 12x18 inch print of a photo I'd done, using DeviantArt's base prices, a person would be paying $25 for that and I'd pocket $5. For all I know, I might be able to get the same thing printed locally and shipped off for lower prices and end up pocketing $10 instead.

On the other hand, DeviantArt also allows me to do things like selling my work as postcards and mousepads, too, which I don't even want to think of trying to figure out how to do on my own, so that might also be a good benefit to using them.

Aw, what the hell. I'll do it. It's not like I'm trying to make my living off this, after all, and the chance of being discovered randomly increases on a larger site like that anyway. I'll give it a shot. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but at least I can say I've tried. That'll be one of the many things I work on today, it seems.

Can't say I don't have ambition!