30th August Weeklyish Roundup

I didn’t even realize till Thursday that the office is closed on Monday. Bonus three-day weekend! There aren’t words for how jacked I am about that. (I once told a company-wide meeting at Interweave that I was jacked about the magazine’s redesign [summer issue]. Whole room cracked up. Then people told me I was  refreshing. Clearly the office needs a vocab shakedown. Any suggestions? It’s my goal in life never to utter business buzz-words, and it’s horrifying how difficult that can be. Not that being jacked about something is a replacement for a business term. Right. A long parenthetical in the opening paragraph. Where’s this going?)

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  In my short-term stint drowning myself in vampires and werewolves and a whiny teenage girl, I finished Eclipse last night (Goodreads is down for maintenance as I write this; sorry for no link). Gotta say, it’s almost as if Stephenie Meyer phased into some new kind of writer halfway through the book. The first half was reminiscent of the slow and steady and lacking New Moon: Bella Swan (the man asked me last night if she was an ugly duckling; I took a second and rolled my eyes and was like, oh, right) was just as annoying, and I again wanted more story development. But then things picked up around halfway through, and the book became a true page turner by the end. I was riveted. And since the riveting parts weren’t about falling in love with a vampire who is arguably the most painfully perfect man ever to exist in the history of literature, it must be that Meyer found her action-adventure legs. That a love story was intertwined in all the suspense and spectacular gore was pretty much perfection. Emotions ran high, and I was glued to my couch. So I’m glad I persisted, and will start on the fourth (and, thankfully, final — because really? I’m thirty-two years old and I have a lot of stuff going on right now and I could do without spending every free moment reading this stuff) book later today.

• I am behind on not one but two Buffy comics. I have appalled myself.
• In the last week I’ve lost interest in taking photos for the 365 challenge. I’ve plodded through, because I know I’ll become interested again. But for now, I’m even a week behind in posting them to Flickr.
• I’ve been in a bit of a state of hibernating on some things. Lots of huge hugeness floating around in my mind of late, and I’ve entered the stage of calm before the storm. This is how I usually operate, and one of the things I love about being in my thirties is that I know this very well. It’s also why I’ve felt repulsed by the idea of doing crafty or photography (emphasis on the “graph” syllable, thx) things of late. It was quite serendipitous to fall into a teen vampire coma; makes the hibernation far more bearable.
• I know that hibernate isn’t really an active verb. One also doesn’t hibernate on something. But it’s the closest word I can think of. I’m not meditating, really. I’m functioning perfectly well in my professional and recreational pursuits. I’m also not actively planning (okay, I am, a little). But mostly I’m clearing my head or shifting my focus and letting the wheels turn in the background.
• I’ve lost you. Maybe I should just delete the last couple of bullets.
• I do not miss coffee one bit.
• I’ve taken to starting some mornings with cinnamon tea with honey and soy milk. The smell of honey makes me gag. I hold my breath when I put some in my mug.
• I will not bring anything pink to a baby shower tomorrow, even though the theme is pink. Can’t do it. Simply unable. I’m bringing books. Habit picked up from my mom, to give books to babies.
• I am Jewish, but I do not practice in any way. There are, however, some extraordinarily sensible practices in Jewish tradition that I follow both because it’s my culture and also because they make total sense to me. One is that stuff for unborn babies is not kept in the house until after the baby is born. No setting up a nursery, no piling toys in the closet. Yes, if you’re familiar with Woody Allen, it’s true that we’re culturally a neurotic and fairly superstitious people (I am not the latter). But there’s no denying the brutality of a tragic birth is multiplied cruelly when there’s a nursery ready and waiting at home. Baby showers make me feel like a fish out of water unlike any other type of gathering I’ve ever attended.
• What’s with this Always Sunny in Philadelphia show? Never heard of it till a few weeks ago, and now it’s mentioned everywhere. We’ve finished hanging on every word of Arrested Development. Should this be next?
• Scratch that. I’m not particularly neurotic, either. Um. Maybe in thirty years I’ll be described as eccentric.
• Oh. Speaking of hibernating, this time in a more appropriate sense. Aside from a couple of very good friendships, I hibernated through much of high school. It was my instinctive way of dealing with loathing everything about my life at that time. I did absolutely zero of the experimenting normal teenagers do (I had a lot of catching up to do in later years). I have never played an RPG, and think it’s time I at least give it a shot online. Recommendations?
• Obama’s speech.
• Oh, how I hate when people downplay the importance of a moving speech. I am a cynical, cynical, over-educated thirty-something lefty expat, and this man’s speeches make me weep. Perhaps that’s why Obama detractors undermine the importance of a killer speech. It’s dangerous for the status quo when the electorate becomes passionate.
• When I’m not reading this weekend I’ll be doing a shocking amount of laundry. If there’s a drought in Vancouver as a result, I apologize.
• Anyone use Disqus for comments? I’m thinking of switching over to it on this blog. Lemme know what you think before I go all changey on ya.