You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2014.
I know. I’m so far behind on blogging, I’m practically ahead. I have a string of (what I think are) decent excuses, but nobody wants those! Instead, take this exciting piece of news and chew on it: the official release date for the Five Glass Slippers anthology is June 14th! AND. THERE’S MORE. (*fans you with a towel*) You can pre-order it now on Amazon!
I promise a proper, less self-aggrandizing post…but it may not be soon. Between things blowing up at my day job (not literally, unfortunately) and spending time with my amazing young man (I seem to have one of those now), I’m left with a tiny sliver of time for such necessities as sleeping, eating, and doing laundry. Which is what I’m doing now. The laundry, that is. The situation had become dire.
All that is to say, I may not be sticking to a regular posting schedule for the next few weeks, but a few internet tidbits should sift through here occasionally.
This week included the NeedtoBreathe concert at Campbell University (excellent), ice cream at Sunni Skies (also excellent), learning how to feed and change a baby (educational), lots of great company (superb), and a whole lot of working like a dog. At work, we’re running a 1000-attendee conference at the Raleigh Convention Center this week, so last week was spent scrambling like mad things to get everything done. I will be one happy camper when Tuesday finally comes to an end.
I hate April Fool’s Day: my feelings are expressed well by this Chainsaw Suit comic. A whole day in which I can’t trust anything anyone says? How perfect! Unfortunately, my coworkers really get into the spirit of the day. Several people “quit,” one made it look like my computer was frozen, etc. All of which might have been a little more amusing if it weren’t the busiest month of the year at my company. Still, I will admit that the note on the printer saying that it only accepted voice commands from now on was a little bit funny…even more so when someone caught my supervisor yelling, “Scan!” at it.
Geekery:
- Graph of the IMDB ratings for all Star Trek: TNG episodes. Fascinating…and a little surprising. Surely “Sub Rosa” was worse than “Shades of Gray”?
- Apparently the meme about Picard not aging due to Earl Grey tea has some truth in it.
- The Pugs of Middle Earth.
- Homestar Runner updates for the first time in four years!
Fascinating:
- Unusual terms for chatterboxes.
- Totally like you know, on Def Jam poetry. AMEN. I’m occasionally guilty of committing a few of these conversational crimes, I admit; they’re just so pervasive today!
- A tour of the British Isles in accents.
- Stunning photographs of people around the world.
- The most wasteful form of coffee. I’d never thought about this before, but it makes sense.
- The Women of Weinsberg, supposedly the inspiration for this clip from Ever After.
Hilarity:
- 20 Things Only a Fighting Camel Would Know. #18. : D
- 75 thoughts every runner has had on a jog.
- Dog and crow playing together. I’m always a little nervous about how these videos end, but these guys seem to be pals.
Music:
- The cast of The Lion King sing aboard an airplane.
- Speaking of, here’s a creative way to give your mom a puppy.
- Father sick of “Let It Go.” I sympathize. The neighbor kids have taken to singing it in the parking lot every day this week.
- The Star Wars theme on a pipe organ. Amazing!
Books: I finished A Passage to India at last, and overall I did enjoy it…but I was plagued by the feeling that it could have been better. Forster’s characters are symbols, and as such their individual actions as characters don’t always make sense. He tackles very large themes and reduces them to relationships between individuals, which seems like it could work–but it seemed to fall a little flat. I’ll be seeing the movie soon, I think, and the trailer already makes Miss Quested look ten times more interesting than she was in the book. In the novel, there’s a line something to the effect that the issues Miss Quested brought to the fore were so much larger than she herself, people tended to forget about her as a person. Sums up the whole book, pretty much.
I’m reading The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams now, which is so far excellent. I loved Watership Down, was sorely disappointed by Shardik, and have had my faith restored by Plague Dogs. I’ll admit there are a lot of Watership Down parallels, which may account for some of my affection for the story (there’s a practical-minded dog and a slightly crazy dog, a la Hazel and Fiver), but it’s unique enough to stand on its own feet. The novel tackles experimentation on animals and several other heavy issues, and since I tend to read during meals, that’s occasionally been an icky experience, but it’s very worth it. I still have quite a ways to go on it, so I’ll report more when I’m finished.
Many apologies for the late post this week, but I’ll try to make up for it by posting double! I just received the title page for A Cinder’s Tale, and I’m so excited I’m not sure what to do with myself. Check it out!
Also, if you’re so inclined, visit the Five Glass Slippers blog to read my post on the inspiration for Elsa, the protagonist of A Cinder’s Tale! It’s short, I know, but I didn’t want to give away too much. You’ll just have to wait until June for details. *whistles innocently*
The Five Glass Slippers anthology is on Goodreads, so if your to-read shelf is a little thin on fairy tales, now is a good time to rectify that problem.
Quoth the Girl 
