(New books! New books!)
Today was a busy day. We're getting closer to two major deadlines - Clone the Elder's Science Fair project, and our annual family reunion in Tennessee. So more of my time is going to be spent with chores and helping with school. Like today f'rinstance:
We (by we I mean mostly Ape) cleaned, did laundry and dishes and other prep for Christmas decorating. I know I've said Halloween is my favorite holiday, and I stand by that. But only in the context of the singular day. There's something magical about the Christmas *season*, the decorating, spirit, weather, etc. that is heartwarming to me. And I forgot to mention that last week I saw my first Christmas display and it was very nice! ^^
While I did help Ape some with the chores I also got on AIM a bit. Got to chat briefly with Autumn and Kushi.
From home, we headed to one of my favorite places on this planet. Chamblin Bookmine is a used bookstore. But it's not like many regular stores. If you can imagine a largish building, with at least one annex jutting out of it, filled floor to ceiling with books, you almost have it. The aisles are nearly as narrow as the shelves are wide and there's plenty of odd angles and curves. It is a claustrophobic place, and what must be a firetrap to boot. And I'd live there if I could. They have books from around the world and of all vintages. All genres. Nothing is beneath or beyond them (so far at least).
I bet I could find 95% of the books on my list there, if only I knew where to look :3 All kidding aside, I went straight for the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section to find three things. Silver Metal Lover (Tanith Lee), Magic's Pawn (Mercedes Lackey) and Burning Alive (Shannon Butcher). I found the first two but not the third. I wasn't surprised as BA is pretty new and by and large the new books seem to be from major launches, not a romance series. Yes, BA is shelved in Romance, as I found out when I asked the guy at Books-A-Million Friday night...
The other great thing about Chamblin is they will take much of your old book inventory for generous credit. And since most of what they stock is half-off cover price, it's not too hard to leave with a respectable number of titles in exchange for the stuff you've already read.
April hates being in there and gets sick quickly. See, she *is* claustrophobic, poor thing.
From there, it was off to Ape's school to complete the observations needed for the project. We finished the actual experimental part of Elder's project. Now all we have to do this week is to organize the logs and data and prep the board and report.
The experimenting took longer than Ape expected so we were hustling to get wrapped up and off to evening Mass. This time, instead of the contemporary service on Sunday that irks me so, we went to the church we both attended for years as children, and the same one (same priest even!) wherein we were married 15 years ago! After Mass we bought two T-shirts. They're actually quite nice, with the name on the front and a nice picture of their rose window ringed with Psalms 96.
The rest of the evening was dinner at one of Ape's favorite BBQ restaurants (oops, originally typed resTARUants lol), a little shopping at K-Mart (I like to think of it as last chance shopping it's so dreary and draining - everybody looks half-dead in there), and finally home.
Just saw a great Law & Order while blogging - a little terror-mongering?. Also, given my feelings on the subject, I wonder why SVU is my favorite L&O? Maybe it has to do with Det. Benson? -runs away-
I finally made it into Vana'diel only to find Kushi and Kepi online in shell! If Deej had been on too it'd have been a right reunion! ^^ There was some chatter, but about half the shell was doing advanced CoP. Hiketun and K were working together as K PLed Hike on SCH. I took up Trail's offer to go to Kuftal Tunnel to skill up. At my levels, all I had available to me was Staff, but what the heck.
We had no trouble with he on DRK and me on WHM/SCH. Later, he asked if we could raise a friend in the Desert. I agreed of course, and some time later we found the corpse. Stoik's corpse! So I raised him after a little griefing, then he joined us as the SU became a Blue Mage spell party. After an hour and a half of effort though, Stoik still didn't have Death Scissors...
TM had left us around midnight to go eat with a friend, and when I left Stoik at close to 1:30 TM hadn't returned.
There was some chatter in shell about WHM and SCH aversions with someone asking who'd want to max WHM. I jumped up of course, saying for me it's all about the party support. Kushi shot back with a grin, "We all know /your/ excuse, Aer." Har-har ^^
In any case, I got to see Stoik again and help out TM, who I kinda had to leave hanging that night with Red. And I got 4 full levels on Staff, and an odd fraction or two on Heal and Enhance.
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I started the Last Herald Mage trilogy with Magic's Pawn tonight. I got two chapters in and already I can tell this is going to be a powerful, emotional read. This one was up-voted many times on that recommended reading list, and Kepi has a lot of feelings for this series as well.
It only took a few pages, but it's clear I'm going to be affected by this one because I already see a lot of my youthful self in Van. A *lot*.
When I'm reading second-hand books, especially from a place like Chamblin's, I really wonder about the last owner/reader...
And finally, my heart aches for one of my friends - we talked about some stuff and I really wish there was something I could do for him...
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