guardianlunnaei

Heh...Hey everyone.  Been a while since I’ve posted much of anything.   Life’s been boring for the most part. X3;;;  Same ol’, same ol’, ya know? 

Been a week yesterday since getting my toe worked on.  It’s healing nicely, and, while still an open wound, it’s not quite /as/ open.  It’s closing up slowly and weeping less, so that’s good. =3  And not numb anymore, and surprisingly doesn’t hurt most the time.  Hurts the most when I’ve got to mess with it a bit to clean it and put medicine on it, which is a resounding “DUH!”, but also unavoidable since I don’t want it infected. =3;;  It’s doing really good! =3!

Got to see my nephews again!! ~<3  My sister and brother-in-law this time too!  And I’ll see all of them again....tomorrow actually!  My brother-in-law is a pastor of a church in Houston, TX, and both he and my sister were ordained at a conference that’s going on in San Diego this week.  My parents and I drove out to San Diego Saturday, and picked up my sister and family from the airport Monday.  That night they were ordained. XD  I came home yesterday, ‘cause I needed to get back to work (Bleh), but they’ll all be heading here tomorrow (Thursday).  I’ll work a half day and pick up my sister and bro-in-law from the airport here, and my parents will be driving back with the boys tomorrow after dropping my sister and bro-in-law at the airport. =3

And.....can I go back to San Diego now? TT~TT  Better yet....can I move to Georgia already!?!?  I’ve determined (once again) that it’s GOT to be my house at the /very/ least that hates me.  My sinuses are clear, they’re SOOOO much better than they were, but I still fight with them a bit.  By Sunday afternoon in San Diego, no...by Sunday /morning/ (and morning’s are always the worst for my sinuses) I was /great/ (sinuses were anyway).  Not plugged up in the slightest, blew my nose once and not again the REST OF THE TIME I WAS THERE.  Well....Monday night excluded, since walking into a building full of people wearing bottles of perfume, cologne, and various spray-on-hair-products just does a number on my sinuses....  But the rest of the time, sinuses were /completely/ clear, unclogged, or (more likely) un/swollen/.  I think swelling from irritation to....../something/ is the problem most the time, ‘cause more often than not there’s nothing to come out, I’m just “stuffed up a bit”.  By the time I went to bed last night, I was already fighting with my nose....still am....though I’m sure the COLD didn’t help last night.

You see...I got home last night to a brown out.  Kitchen light wouldn’t turn on at all, but I think that’s because it’s a fluorescent light, and fluorescents don’t “dim”.  Everything else was really dim and things like fans were running slow.  Turned the fans off anyway, it was 65 in the house when I finally checked later that night, and with the brown out the heater wouldn’t come on (it tried....it just couldn’t though).  About 10:30-ish power whet out completely.  Glad I was in bed by then, would have been a pain trying to get myself and everything situated in complete darkness.  My poor lizard is probably freezing though. T~T  I keep a dimmed heating lamp on all night for him, keeps it about 80 in his tank and just enough light for a nocturnal animal to see just fine....with no power though...... It was FREEZING, I mean....I even went to bed with socks on, and I just DON’T do that (drives me NUTS to have something on my feet when I try to sleep).  Left early this morning too, ‘cause it’d dropped to 63 in the house by morning, and I just couldn’t make myself stay longer than I had to, and with my nose giving me fist I was up about 10 min early too. >,>...

On a happy note, I’ve started a new book!  “Wizard’s First Rule”, the first book in series that the television series “The Legend of the Seeker” was based off of.   I love the show, I really do, and like anything that’s gone from book to television, there are differences.  I can’t really say (yet) that I like one over the other.  I really LOVE that I have a /definite/ visual of these characters in my head.  Like reading a fanfiction.  I already know what Yami looks like, I can SEE the look on his face, /hear/ his voice (be that the voice of his Japanese or American VA, the point is I “know” his voice).  So as I read this book, I can see the look on Kahlan’s face, hear Zedd say this or that, see some of the looks Richard gives people, I can see the clothes they’re wearing, visualize the boundary as they approach it.  I LOVE IT!  For anyone interested in the series, I’d highly suggest watching the series first.  TRUST me, it will NOT spoil the book for you.

Let’s put it this way, the basic plot is the same: The Seeker is named, and Darken Rahl MUST be stopped before his gets his hands on a VERY powerful magic that can control everyone as he sees fit.  But the details, the things that happen, and, in some cases thus far, the /way/ they happen are completely different from book to show.  Minor example.  In show Kahlan comes to Westland looking for “the great wizard Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander”, she knows his name, and she even seems to know him when she finds him if I remember right.  In book, Kahlan comes to Westland looking for “that great wizard”.  She doesn’t know his name because no one does, Zedd made sure of that when he left, so when she meets Zedd she’s no idea who he is and that he’s is the one she’s looking for. 

Oddly enough the differences don’t bother me at all.  It’s kind of nice, and most of them I can /completely/ understand.  Things like the Sword of Truth, and what it does to Richard, how it makes him feel and think when he draws the sword....there’s NO way to get that across on screen without having someone narrating his every thought and feeling.  So they dropped that aspect of it in show.  Another that wouldn’t have worked on screen is the fang/claw that Richard wears around his neck.  In book he keeps it hidden, it’s a secret that /means/ something more than just being a sentimental memento of his father like it is in show, but it’s something he’s not /said/ anything about yet, and likely won’t for a while (if ever) in book...and so you’d only “know” about it if you had a narrator in show telling you about it.....lame.  So its importance was dropped.  There are other things too, but....  I dunno...I almost find the differences refreshing ‘cause it’s not “I know what’s gonna happen, I watched the show” (or vice verse for those that read the book first), it’s new, it different, it’s something completely separate to enjoy as its own story.  The basic plot, the “story” is the same, and yet vastly different in ways, and so enjoyable, especially if taken separately rather than together as though they’re meant to be the same. =3

So yeah....go watch, then read if you’ve not already. XD  It’s all so much fun!

Mmmm....I should probably get some work done now......been here for three hours and have done nothing work related yet. T~T;;;

Warning!:  Mild spoiler warnings for a handful of books.  Nothing to do with plot so much as a brief look at first chapters for the sake of examples...

I think I’ve become rather spoiled and picky about the books I read.  I finished an AMAZING book last week; Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.  It’s a little on the dark side, lots of action and/or intrigue, and when “something” isn’t happening it’s chalked full of either witty banter, or it’s the reader’s insight into how wrong the characters are in their assumptions of other characters and/or situations, which is always amusing. XD  The guy has also come up with the most ingenious and /original/ magic system I’ve seen in a fantasy setting of /any/ kind.  It’s a mix of psionic and physical abilities and all based on metals rather than elements.  Great book, and I can’t wait to get my hands on book two of the trilogy.

But until then, I’ve got to find something else to read while passing my lunch time at work.  And that’s...when I found out how....picky I’ve gotten.  I expect a book to catch my interest and hold it, I expect the writer to drop me into the middle of something interesting right from the beginning, and dare me to keep reading to find out what happens next.  And I found a book that absolutely refused to do this.

Picked up “Take a Thief” by....um...can’t remember at the moment.  In any case...I just couldn’t do it.  The writing style was kind of weird, and I’m not entirely sure I could explain in what way.  I could have lived with the odd style, though, had it caught my interest...but it just....didn’t...wouldn’t.  Chapter one followed the daily routine of a young, poor boy, from starting a fire, to unloading a cart to heading to school merely for a the free and semi-decent breakfast, to sneaking into a lord’s home and disguising himself as a page so he could pilfer some food before stuffing himself in a loft above a laundry area so he could sleep. ....The sneaking in to the lord’s home at least /sounds/ like it should be exciting in /some/ way, but it wasn’t.  He got in unnoticed, changed clothes....avoided tables where his poorer manners would get him discovered....stuffed his pockets with pilfered food, dirtied his clothes so he’d be sent to clean up....changes clothes again and heads to find a place to eat and then sleep where he’d be unlikely to be found... It was all so...mundane...  Chapter two wasn’t much better.  Now...usually when I find that I’m having troubles getting into a book I’ll jump to somewhere in the middle and read a random page or two.  Might have to try a couple times, but usually I’ll find something intriguing, exciting, confusing, curious, /something/ that makes me suddenly /really/ want to know how they got into that situation, or who that person is, or what they heck they’re talking about, or maybe just what is going on!!.....but no....not this one....

So that’s when it hit me that I’ve not had this problem before.  I mean...I’ve had a few books that were a little hard to get into, but nothing like this.  And more recently everything I’ve read has dropped me right into the middle of the action and/or the intrigue from chapter one, if not from the prologue.

Take Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series (now to be finished by Brandon Sanderson).  First chapter or so of the first book (which, mind you, I’ve not read in YEARS) starts off with the preparations for an annual festival, odd strangers showing up in town, the only living parent of one of the main characters taking /ill/, and the town being attacked by creatures that had been assumed to be myths, nothing more than stories told to children to frighten them into behaving.  The series itself has a few slow points, as you’d expect from any book or series of books, but the original author had an AMAZINGLY detailed and thought-out history in place, was WONDERFUL about reminding you when and where you’d seen a particular character (there’s 11 books out right now, after all, and Brandon will be writing the 12th and final book), and had a fun and well thought out magic system for his world.

Tedd Dekker’s “Showdown” was one that hooked you right away too.  It’s something of a thriller without being an outright horror, that’s intriguing and keeps you hanging on every page until the end, while you’re trying to figure out what the HECK is happening to this town!!!  Chapter one a stranger walks into a town, seen by a boy and an old mute man.  They see this stranger as a walking skeleton one moment, then a normal man the next.  Stranger walks over, plucks out the man’s eyes and stuffs them into his own....and walks away.  The old man’s eyes appear to be untouched and as far as anyone else in the town can tell the man died of a heart attack.  And no one believes the boy when he tries to tell them what he saw....  Again.  Straight into WTF and the innate need to know what in the world just happened, are things as they seem, and what will this stranger do next?

Mistborn.  Let me just say...wow.  Amazing book, really.  Again, a little on the dark side.  Whole premise of the book is; what would happen if the prophesied hero failed to defeat the Dark Lord?  Amazing question to ask in the fantasy genre, daring and bold to say the least, and the man makes it work.  Prologue has a man walking into the slave huts on a lord’s plantation.  He enters at night out of the mists, feared by the slaves as mysterious and dangerous, many believe the mists will consume your soul.  This stranger talks of rebellion and freedom...and then, to save a slave girl from being raped and killed by her master this stranger slaughters the lord and his household before telling the now freed and confused slaves to leave before this murder is discovered and they are killed for it.  And that’s just the prologue!  I’m telling you, even the “slow” points in this book aren’t really all that slow.  The man is an amazing writer, and I’m thinking a new favorite.

And so....I’ve been spoiled.  Take a Thief just...didn’t do it for me.  I’ve started another one called “Dwellers” by Roger Elwood.  It’s also an odd writing style, but it’s at least intriguing.  I think I know what’s so odd about the style that Dwellers and Take a Thief are written in.  They’re so blunt and straight forward, you don’t get an abundance of description, and almost feel like you’re being “told” more than “shown”.  Oh well....Dwellers can “tell” me for now, at least it’s interesting and has kept me guessing so far.  Anyway...I’m done with my rant and a half.  Kudos to those that actually read this whole things and cake and ice cream (or brownies....cookies....whatever your indulgent preference) for those that have read or will decide to read any of the books I’ve mentioned. XD;;;;