Got out to take some flower macro shots the other day. Here’s two of my favorites.
Month: May 2013
Wednesday Reading Meme
What I Just Finished Reading
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir) by Jenny Lawson, AKA The Bloggess. I think B&N had a special a while back that had the book for free or cheap and I picked it up. There’s some really funny stuff in there, including the infamous post about Beyonce. If you can’t stand her blogging style, you’re not going to enjoy this book. It’s understandably similar. But it makes a great book to have in your ereader if you need a quick giggle while eating lunch at work. Only downside of the ebook version was that the photos showed up very small (and black and white since I’ve got an old Sony ereader) and sadly a lot of the detail was lost.
What I’m Reading Now
Deep Wizardry, New Millennium Edition by Diane Duane. The author has decided to take the books, written over the last 2 decades, and update them to fix the wildly disparate technology described in them matches the same error. So no longer do the characters go from having Apple IIEs in the early books to iPods and cellphones in later books. It was something that never really bothered me, but I also grew up during that era and know what all of those things were. Someone young starting the series now would probably be rather confused. I do think she went a bit far and made the tech a bit too now specific (like brand names) and may end up still having the dated problem sooner rather than later. Much like the Myspace reference in Iron Man.
That said, this book is a runaway favorite of mine. I didn’t even read this series until my 20’s and it’s definitely in my top five. This book in particular is my favorite in the series, and not just because it has fish in it. The particular way it deals with sacrifice really hits all of my narrative buttons. Reading it in this updated version makes me pay closer attention to the text again and I’m enjoying it that much more.
What I’m Reading Next
Man, I have no idea. These days I’m not doing a lot of book reading because I stopped commuting via Metro. What reading I do tends to happen if I go to lunch by myself. So it’s going to take a while to finish Deep Wizardy. I have a copy of The Seduction Hypothesis by Delphine Dryden that I picked up because of the fantastic review from Dear Author. Perhaps that will be next, although erotica reading depends on the setting. I may end up reading the next Young Wizard book instead.
A Greta Post
It’s been, um, a while! So much as happened! Well, not really that much, but there was some excitement. For example, for about six hours recently I had two dogs. A stray wandered into the neighborhood and after a number of various hijinx, ended up at my place. The original neighbor who took him in had a male dog he didn’t get along with at all (found out later from the owner that this is pretty common for him) but he got along fantastically with Greta. Weird, right? So we hung out at my house for a while, had some playtime, got some pictures. Eventually returned Nico the American Staffordshire Terrier to the bosom of his family around mid afternoon. I totally wanted to keep him :((((
Here is his handsome mug as posted on FB while trying to find his people:
As you can see, Greta needed to be in all of the pictures.
Stealing Greta’s spot on the couch:
Tandem snoozing!
There’s even a vid of them wrapping up a rough housing session with lots of wagging tails and face licking. Of course they stopped with the funny stuff when I got the camera out.
Haven’t heard from his people since he was picked up. Hope everything is going well. Gives me a bit of hope that Greta can act like a normal dog. Of course, a few days later we ran into another neighbor who had been walking her dog during the “Who’s going to take him?” discussion and Greta totally started shit with her schnauzer. *eyeroll*
How fucking gorgeous is my ridiculous dog?
This last weekend we went to Mason Neck again to go canoeing, not even thinking about the fact that the wind was very high that day. The water was really rough, white capped waves and everything, so they weren’t renting canoes out. Since the tide was out, we decided to meander quite a ways down the beach and let Greta play in the water.
Here she decides to try and rub dead mussel all over her head.
Greta did a lot of “fetching”, as demonstrated in this video.
Mostly she just uses it as an excuse to dive into the water and then run around. Bringing back what we throw is secondary and it completely forgotten if the water gets too deep. However, she will gladly try to chase motor boats (and paddleboats. and windsurfers. #Gretaisadick). *facepalm*
Some boats were anchored offshore and she decided they needed to be destroyed. Thankfully we had already put her back on her long line after another off leash dog had made an appearance and we thought it was best for safety reasons.
I made her sit on this log, but “stay” could only hold her boat rage for so long.
An aborted charge ends with her standing in the waves flying “FUCK YOU!” tail. Oh Greta.
Thankfully, the boats left and she was distracted by the discovery of a large dead carp. It was soundly sniffed and then determined to not be food or really all that interesting.
At the end of the day, Greta is covered in water and sand.
All and all, a successful day.