This and That
Jul. 1st, 2005 03:41 pmWhee! My latest phonespammer hit the trifecta, with a prerecorded message from UNKNOWN CALLER, beginning with the words "Please don't hang up." Sayonara!
I went to the dentist this morning for stage one of a root canal. The experience itself wasn't that unpleasant, but now that the anaesthetic's worn off I'm oscillating through periods of dull ache on the right side. Aspirin is helping a little, but not much. Stage two is scheduled for Monday the 11th.
In addition to the two books I mentioned a bit ago, I'm on a bit of a Vernor Vinge kick. I reread Marooned in Realtime and am currently in the middle of A Fire Upon the Deep. I'll probably go on to A Deepness in the Sky after that. I'm still startled by the suddenness with which VV emerged from being a workmanlike but unexceptional writer (cf. The Peace War) to the stature he's achieved now.
Another Amazon package arrived yesterday: The Unicorn Hunt, book five of the House of Niccolo; The Steerswoman's Road, by Rosemary Kirstein (I already had the first half as an independent book, but the pb of the second half is only available used, so I bought the combo); Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction, by Nick Montfort (recommended by somebody at LanguageLog); Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud; and the much-ballyhooed Freakonomics. It'll be a while before I get to any of them, though.
I went to the dentist this morning for stage one of a root canal. The experience itself wasn't that unpleasant, but now that the anaesthetic's worn off I'm oscillating through periods of dull ache on the right side. Aspirin is helping a little, but not much. Stage two is scheduled for Monday the 11th.
In addition to the two books I mentioned a bit ago, I'm on a bit of a Vernor Vinge kick. I reread Marooned in Realtime and am currently in the middle of A Fire Upon the Deep. I'll probably go on to A Deepness in the Sky after that. I'm still startled by the suddenness with which VV emerged from being a workmanlike but unexceptional writer (cf. The Peace War) to the stature he's achieved now.
Another Amazon package arrived yesterday: The Unicorn Hunt, book five of the House of Niccolo; The Steerswoman's Road, by Rosemary Kirstein (I already had the first half as an independent book, but the pb of the second half is only available used, so I bought the combo); Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction, by Nick Montfort (recommended by somebody at LanguageLog); Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud; and the much-ballyhooed Freakonomics. It'll be a while before I get to any of them, though.