Challenge started: December 30th, 2008

50 / 50 books. 100% done! Goal Reached: 7/15/09

63 / 75 books. 84% done!

15043 / 15000 pages. 100% done! Goal Reached: 6/06/09

22566 / 22500 pages. 100% done! Goal Reached: 10/31/09

307 / 365 days. 84% done!

( book list )

Last updated: 10/31/09

It's October 15th.

I don't live in the mountains. I don't live in Scandinavia, Canada, or Russia. Yet, it is snowing - snowing enough for it to actually stick to things.

Why? D:

RANDOM THINGS:

1. Re-reading the His Dark Materials series. It is seriously awesome. Wow.

2. Things at work are actually a lot less stressful! I seem to be working one-on-one with the owner more, which is good because it doesn't have a middleman complicating things and making go "wait, what? NOOOOO" every five minutes. He's sort of scary... but not that scary, I think. Also, we had a technician come in and look at the printer, and this one file (where something brown kept coming up as green) was deemed to be unprintable in the shop because the printer's drivers suck. IT WASN'T ME. YAAAAY. still have no idea why it's going through the Very Expensive toners like nothing, though. D:

3. I just realized that I've done basically nothing this summer but work. o.o The last thing of real interest I went to was Paganfest back in May. Next week is Edguy (which is Do Want, but sort of unlikely unless I can get my mom to drive me to Rhode Island and my friend to drive me the rest of the way to Boston. WHY DO WE NOT HAVE COMMUTER RAIL IN CONNECTICUT TO MASSACHUSETTS.) and -- oh, right, Doro's playing the Webster the Sunday before Labor Day! :O I'd sort of like to see her, but I really don't know any of her stuff, even though she is Teh Legendary. goodgollygopher, we should make a completely last-minute journey to Atlanta to see Diablo Swing Orchestra at ProgPower.

Other than that... I don't have much to say. :D

lol, tornado warning. :|

My weather-nerd self is not sure how to feel about this.

Epica's playing the Palladium on Saturday, January 30th...

and Blackguard's supporting. o_________o

DO. WANT. *_*

Lewis Black is awesome.

That is all.

GOOD THINGS:

1. Sonata Arctica's doing a headlining date RIGHT IN HARTFORD. It's on a Monday, though -- it just so happens to be Columbus Day, but we don't know if Mom can get the night off (since her holiday would be the Sunday night before). I WILL HOPE. -crosses fingers-

2. I got to work five hours overtime today. Hooray for munniez.

3. My aunt's here. She's very cool, so this makes me happy.

4. I dunno, I just felt like putting something here. :D (and I'm continuing to get better! yay.)

Ugh.

Just... UGH. -facewall-

I wish I had a car.

I'm craving for a road trip. I have been for a while. I want to see that there's more than New England -- or Connecticut, really.

Maybe if I save up enough money, I'll move to New Mexico. I want to see the desert, even if it's just once. And I really, really want to witness a dust devil. Man, when I got into the College of Santa Fe, I actually downloaded a guide to the insects and arachnids there, because they looked so unfamiliar and cool.

Or I'll go see the prairie instead, or the Great Plains, and witness a thunderstorm building from afar -- a real storm.

I don't know, man. :\

Life Lesson: When you have a co-worker from Laos sharing homemade food, and he mentions that something has "hot pepper" in it? You better listen. Better yet, imagine that "hot" is emphasized. With three lines, and with "**WOWZA!1**" afterwards, like on a restaurant menu.

He's a very good cook, btw. He always brings enough food for, like... a feast, and he always shares it with everyone. :O

I need to get to cleaning my room. Need to especially work on my bookcase. ._. Annnd I got the new Madder Mortem album in the mail today, along with a poster, yaay. If my room wasn't so susceptible to leaking, I'd put it up along with my signed SymX poster, but alas, the memories of my anime posters falling away to reveal MILDEW OV HELL have kind of made me hesitant to put anything up ever again. Sigh.

Thinking more and more that the "sinus headaches" I keep getting are actually migraines. Dad picked me up some Aleve a few days ago. It surprisingly works wonders.

Also: go away, Mercury Retrograde. Go away. :< -hides-

Oh, X-Men Animated Series, how are you made of so much awesome? I thought it'd somehow lose its flavor after having not seen it in like... ten years, but it's somehow better. Just... GAMBIT BEING FLIRTY AND GAMBIT-Y. CABLE AND HIS CHEESY THEME SONG. BEAST BEING AWESOMELY BOOKISH. And it might be dragging me back into fandom.

Conclusion: It is a worthwhile investment and I lurve it. :')

1. The first 33 episodes of the X-Men Animated Series from the '90s are out on DVD now. I picked up the first volume a few nights ago. Watched the first four episodes, and it's even better than I remember. :D

2. There are thunderstorms popping up around Connecticut right now. Parts of New Haven County are under a fucking tornado warning right now. What the fuck, New England. :| They seem to be mostly going north of my county, but... yeeahh, still kinda scary.

Work has been... okay-ish. There were a few days in which it's been DEAD and I've been left flailing helplessly because I'm doing nothing, but lately, I've been given the task of feeding envelope/flyer things in machines. Which isn't bad, but a) sometimes I put them in the wrong way (to which the co-workers say, "don't freak out, srsly, it's happened to all of us"); b) sometimes the machine gets STOOPID and starts screwing the papers up (which, after my mind getting frazzled, sometimes leads back to a); and c) I tend to dwell on depressing things while doing mindless work. Siiigh.

But it's money. And I've been using some of it on... books and CDs. Fuck shoes, those are the banes of my money's existence. D: First, post-Paganfest stuff; then, other stuff that I just happened to see at the time. Like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies... which is pretty damn awesome so far. XD

And! I might be seeing Lewis Black in July! He's coming to the Mohegan Sun the day after Dad's birthday... which happens to be on a Saturday. AWESOME.

-stumbles in-

PAGANFEST. ♥

- There were epic pits, but it was moshing done right, with people actually following protocol -- helping up people they knocked down, holding out shoes and hats that were lost. That was good to see.

- Swashbuckle was ehh, not my thing. Blackguard were really fun, and they were really pumped because this was their first U.S. show, ever. Their vocalist mentioned that he'd been coming down to the Palladium for the New England Metal and Hardcore Fest for six years now, and to be playing that same stage was incredibly, incredibly awesome.

- I went for Primordial, but I seriously don't know whether they or Moonsorrow were the best band of the night. Holy hell, I need to buy Moonsorrow-related things now.

- Guy walking up to his friend after Moonsorrow's set: "I came. :')"

- Nemtheanga is fucking insane. In a very, very good way. During "The Golden Spiral" (in the "I stood in the stream..." verse), he actually jumped down in the space between the barrier and the stage and sang level with people.

And "As Rome Burns", homgggggg. "Do you know what's coming? Can you hear it? ... It's time to sing to the slaves!"

AND. GJASDF. "GODS TO THE GODLESS". FUCK. I STILL NEED SPIRIT THE EARTH AFLAME.

... that passed by way too quickly. :( COME BACK SOON, PLEASE.

- I brought $50, thinking that would be enough. Nope, it was sprung on me at the last second that I'd have to buy my own ticket... and parking was $20. BECAUSE THERE WAS A FUCKING BULL RIDING COMPETITION IN THE DCU CENTER. WHAAAT. Buuut I nabbed myself a Primordial girlie, and I'll probably be blowing more money on Moonsorrow and Blackguard stuff soon. xD

- I had to leave a few songs into Korpiklaani's set... which actually really disappointed me, because I thought they were fun. Mom's legs were killing her, though, and she sprained one of her ankles a few weeks back so she shouldn't even be standing on it. :/ But hopefully they come around again. They're just so... HAPPY. o_o Especially their vocalist. I smiled a lot during the songs I heard. A bit disappointed they got the headlining position, but even then, I got what I came for.

... -goes into post-concert withdrawal-

I get my first paycheck juuust in time for Paganfest.

1. Holy shit, I has money.

2. PRIMORDIAL TOMORROW. \m/

:D

Yesterday was the three-day hump. Tomorrow will mark the first full week.

So, my official title is "digital press operator". I make things -- business cards, tickets, postcards, and the like -- in InDesign, we export them as .pdfs, send the proofs to customers, and if the customers approve, print them. Today, I designed a postcard advertisement for some guy running for mayor in a nearby town. His campaign people sent us a thing they made in Word of what they wanted... and it was absolutely awful. D: We had to clean the whole thing up to make room for the return address, stamp, address space, and just make everything neater in general.

This is EXACTLY the same stuff I did in high school. Except now I'm getting paid for it. :O I am happy.

ALSO: Paganfest next week asdk;fjdkl;asfjdl;asf :D :D :D

Apparently, Amazon's stripping the sales rank of any book it deems to be too "adult" -- which, in their eyes, means anything GLBT/feminist, regardless of actual explicit content. Even REFERENCE BOOKS are being deemed inappropriate. WHAT.

Here's a quick experiment, to prove how damaging this actually is: search for Lady Chatterley's Lover from the main Amazon page. Observe how difficult it is to find an actual paperback copy of it.

Now, select "Books" from the menu and search for it again. Ahh. There we go. Now, where was that all along? -facepalm-

I know nothing about Twitter, but it's really quite awesome watching the whole word get out here. There's a general roundup post here, and here is a list of books known to be affected so far.

Especially important: Smart Bitches, Trashy Books' definition of Amazon Rank. Link to this, for this is part of a greater plan.

Time to start searching for alternative book sellers. \o/

EDIT: Oh my god. At the moment, when you type "homosexuality" into the search bar from the front page... the first three results are:
A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality
Separate clickable category for homosexuality, fiction and non-fiction
You Don't Have to Be Gay: Hope and Freedom for Males Struggling with Homosexuality or for Those Who Know of Someone Who Is

Holy shit. Just... holy shit.

At the advice of my friend (and random Internet people), I went against intuition and read The Host.

I was hoping for a decent adult sci-fi novel. Instead, it makes the Twilight series look like high literature.

My brain's still recovering from the mangled science. It hurts. ;_; Never picking up another one of that woman's books again. Arrgh.

It's sixty degrees out.

In February.

In Connecticut.

... ... ...

This is kind of wrong. D:

HAHA, YES.

Within Temptation - "Ice Queen"
My version: "On cold wings, she's coming / You'd better keep moving / Follow your beloved higher"
Real version: "On cold wings, she's coming / You'd better keep moving / For warmth, you'll be longiiiiIIIIIIiiing"

Slipknot - "Vermillion"
My version: "She's the only one who keeps me sane!"
Real version: "She's the only one who makes me sad!"

... and that line was the only reason I even sort of liked that song. :p When I found out what it really was, I couldn't enjoy it afterwards.