Break Week
Nov. 21st, 2010 05:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowWith Thanksgiving coming up, I'm off all week. I don't have any special plans; just relaxing, mostly. There are some things I promised I'd do for E, and this will be my best opportunity for that before Christmas. Reading (Erikson's Gardens of the Moon at the moment), watching DVDs (early season 2 Farscape), cooking and eating (pineapple-cashew pilaf), playing with the dogs, stuff like that.
I ordered some books from Amazon yesterday: The Five Ages of the Universe (recommended bypompe); Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson (recommended by hilzoy, before she retired from blogging); Arika Okrent's In the Land of Invented Languages, which I heard about, I think, on LanguageLog; Pallahaxi Tide by Michael Coney, recommended by... somebody on the LMB list; Geoff Nunberg's The Linguistics of Punctuation (mentioned by GN himself on ADS-L); and volumes 8 and 9 of Girl Genius. I was displeased to find that Amazon didn't have volumes 4 and 5 of Digger; I had to order them from Sofawolf Press instead.
I've been playing Civ IV Duels lately, using map choices that involve only one continent, so as to come to grips with the enemy as quickly as possible. Montezuma is a great choice for that; playing as the Aztecs, I just kicked Alexander all around the playground, for a 48K point victory. (M's big advantage is being able to build Jaguars as soon as you develop Iron Working, without having to get hold of an iron mine. There were only two iron sources on the continent; I captured one right at the start of the war, and destroyed the mine at the other before Alexander could build more than one or two Swordsmen. He also had no copper mines.) If I recall correctly, Huayna Capac should be about as good a choice, thanks to the special characteristics of the Que-Cha units.
After break, there'll be two more weeks of classes, then finals; then I'll be heading out to California for the holidays. Have to find someone to dogsit....
I ordered some books from Amazon yesterday: The Five Ages of the Universe (recommended by
pompe); Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson (recommended by hilzoy, before she retired from blogging); Arika Okrent's In the Land of Invented Languages, which I heard about, I think, on LanguageLog; Pallahaxi Tide by Michael Coney, recommended by... somebody on the LMB list; Geoff Nunberg's The Linguistics of Punctuation (mentioned by GN himself on ADS-L); and volumes 8 and 9 of Girl Genius. I was displeased to find that Amazon didn't have volumes 4 and 5 of Digger; I had to order them from Sofawolf Press instead.I've been playing Civ IV Duels lately, using map choices that involve only one continent, so as to come to grips with the enemy as quickly as possible. Montezuma is a great choice for that; playing as the Aztecs, I just kicked Alexander all around the playground, for a 48K point victory. (M's big advantage is being able to build Jaguars as soon as you develop Iron Working, without having to get hold of an iron mine. There were only two iron sources on the continent; I captured one right at the start of the war, and destroyed the mine at the other before Alexander could build more than one or two Swordsmen. He also had no copper mines.) If I recall correctly, Huayna Capac should be about as good a choice, thanks to the special characteristics of the Que-Cha units.
After break, there'll be two more weeks of classes, then finals; then I'll be heading out to California for the holidays. Have to find someone to dogsit....
