still here

Seems like everyone I know who blogs has this problem; after enough years of blogging, you start to have said most of what you have to say about yourself. When I post these days, it’s apt to be a shorter blurb on LiveJournal, partly because I like getting answers to what I write and partly because I’m already there a lot more often anyway.

No, I’m not planning to close up shop here, just making excuses, mostly. But I went to look something up in old entries recently and was struck by how much I used to have to say. When they’re old enough, it’s like reading someone else’s blog and I still find them interesting. (I suppose that’s because the writer and I have so many interests in common 😉

As for what’s going on, work has been busier since they put me in a quasi-leadership role, which is good, but I find I write when I have more going on. We stlil get stuck at work late a lot due to Rudder’s meetings, but it’s eased off a bit.

I’m finished up a pair of Embossed Leaves socks for my SIL-to-be in a pale green – knitting those only in the car and working on an Icarus shawl in flame-colored yarn at home. I don’t mean red, I mean really flame-colored – red and orange and yellow and gray and green – Misti Alpaca Handpaint Lace in this color. So Icarus is being consumed in flames once more.

I’ve been reading a lot more of what’s currently being called urban fantasy lately, largely because a lot of it is available on the Kindle. Because it’s related to romance, some of it’s troubling my feminist sensitivitie – like a housewife who has to keep her demon fighting secret from her husband AND fight the minions of Hell and still feels she’s a failure if the dinner party she has to prepare with two hours notice isn’t perfect. She thinks what a wonderful husband she has every time he walks by, says “Great job!” and offers to help (but never does), yet she had a previous husband who was a “partner in every way” so she knows better. (That is Carpe Demon, which I bought in paperback because later books in the series are on Kindle. It did get better … a bit.) A much better book is Magic Bites, with a well-imagined alternate Atlanta-after-the-magic-came-back. Its heroine Kate kicks ass, gets hers kicked from time to time, saves her friends and is saved when necessary.

I’ve just finished the fourth Percy Jackson book, and am eager for the final one, due in May. I wish they’d put *those* on Kindle! The comparisons to Harry Potter are hard to avoid – boy discovers he’s born to be a hero, subject of a prophecy, loyal to his friends to a fault – but they stand on their own. But more important they’re *good* in the same ways as the HP books – lots of adventure and danger and magic and mystery. Very satisfying.

I’ve also got three more books waiting for me that I ordered from Amazon because they’re not available as e-books. One is Anne Fadiman’s anthology Rereadings, a collection of essays by authors about rereading as adults the books that meant most to their youth. There are a lot of collections of authors writing about books; I keep hoping to find another one as good as That Eager Zest. Having been collected by Fadiman is a hopeful start for this one. There’s also Mothstorm, Philip Reeve’s followup to Larklightand Starcross – Oswald Bastable in space, basically. Delicious. The this is Flora Segunda which sounds like it might have a similar flavor. I haven’t dipped into these three yet partly because it’s much easier to read on the Kindle while lace knitting, and partly because I expect to like all three so much and the sooner I start, the sooner they’re over. I reread everything, but there’s only one first reading.