Words words words

I’ve been on a bit of an actual reading streak lately.  I purchased the Millenium trilogy while sitting in a Robin’s Doughnuts right after seeing the American remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.  I finished these last week and my criticisms still stand: I enjoyed the story but not necessarily the way it was written.  But the more I think about it the more I’m certain that a lot of my issues stem from it being a translation, and potentially how Swedish books are written.  I don’t have a lot of experience with Swedish literature, so for the most part I’ll given the books the benefit of doubt.  Regardless, the stories themselves are great.  Though it seems like every male character aside from a few have some serious issues with women.  Which is both depressing and a little horrifying if even a small percentage of men are actually like that.

Last Friday I bought Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.  And then I finished it yesterday.  And decided to re-read it almost immediately.  It’s quite the mixture of current culture mixed with the 80s within a… I’d say a cyber punk setting.  I was pleasantly surprised by how many of the references I actually got.  I definitely had a grin at the Last Starfighter reference early on.  Well I’ll be honest.  With all the references I was grinning quite a bit.  D

As such I’ve been thinking about at least reading a single book a month or two if I manage to rush through a book as fast as I did with Ready Player One.  The problem with this is that I don’t really have a set taste with my books.  I like sci-fi, both serious and comical.  I tend to enjoy expanded universe books, but only really for series that I’m already attached to.  So that leaves Star Wars and Star Trek out, which seem to be the bulk of the EU books.  I do enjoy some serious fiction every now and then.  My fiance has read the majority of the Sookie Stackhouse novels but whenever she tries to explain the story I can’t help but snicker.  Every time she gets to the point about fairies I just can’t keep a straight face anymore.

27

I played more of the Mass f 3 demo last night.  specifically the multiplayer portion of the demo.  I didn’t really know what to make of the announcement of the multiplayer way back in the day.  When Bioware was bouncing back and forth between there is and there isn’t.  I played only a handful of matches, and only managed to get into a full group once.  This was likely due to the fact that the demo wasn’t available publicly until today.  But I can say one thing.  It is amazing and holy hell do you need a balanced team.

I enjoyed the whole horde mode in Gears of War and firefight in Halo.  The Mass Effect multiplayer takes cues from both but adds in random objectives to accomplish at times alongside surviving the wave.  Coupled in with random loot and several classes with their own powers and abilities this may be a mode that I play religiously.

On another note I am 27 today.  That is all.

I can see once again

Writing has been a much slower process then I had originally anticipated.  In that none has been done.  Partly due to my eyesight getting much worse since the last post.  Which was rectified by the glasses I received mid-last week.  Which has led to my eyes not liking looking at a monitor for extended periods while they adjust to my new-found ability to see things clearly.  It is amazing that I was able to get by with how blurry everything was prior to the glasses.  I now don’t doubt my optometrists statement that I could maybe pass a drivers test without glasses.

Mid-Saturday I had my attention brought to a promotional thing EA was doing on Facebook regarding Mass Effect 3.  There was some random code game that gave away either an Avatar item for your Xbox, or a demo download code.  It took four tries but I came away with an early access code.  Played through the demo a few times and I have to say it feels like everything has been improved.  I didn’t mind Mass Effect’s original skill allocation system, but always felt that Mass Effect 2′s skill system was a bit limited.  But now with each skill having a branching paths?  And weapon customizations?  Everything sounds perfect to me.

I’m planning to start writing on Tuesdays/Thursdays and on Saturdays for an extended amount of time.  That is excluding tomorrow for two reasons.  One being that it is Valentines days, and I need to be my charming best.  The other being my birthday.  I have, at least I believe so, pointed out that I dislike my birthday sharing the same day as a made up holiday.  I’ve never understood the appeal of it.  It always seemed like an arbitrary way to intentionally make single people unhappy about being single.  Despite my own reservations regarding how horrible a day it is, I shall put them aside because let’s face it the day really isn’t about me.  It is about her and making her feel special.

Winter

The weather here in Saskatchewan is, at best, schizophrenic.  For example last winter we had an exceptionally frigidly cold seven months with an exceptionally large volume of snow.  Two things, I might add, that I detest with ever fiber of my being.  I can deal with being to warm over freezing any day of the week.  Hell I’ll wear an undershirt, sweater, light jacket, and a heavy winter jacket knowing full well I’ll be sweating all day at work for the sole purpose of not feeling the least bit cold while I hike to the bus.  In a perfect world, at least in my mind, this city would be completely domed.  No snow and no cold.  I’m sure it would devolve into a Logan’s Run-esque world but at least I’d be warm all the time.

I only bring this up because we have had an unseasonably, though I would say unrealistically, warm winter up to this point.  Minus the ball-shriveling cold week we had a while back.  For the most part we’ve been hovering around the -10C temperature, lately around the 0C range.  This of course all happened after Environment Canada said back in the October time frame that this was going to be a hellish winter of nothing but ice and snow, punctuated by our frozen tears as we huddled in our bed hoping that we wouldn’t freeze to death in our sleep.  That may in fact be an exaggeration with the fear mongering but its hard to tell with today’s media.  What I’m trying to get at is that now that Environment Canada has said we will be at a warm, for winter, temperature all the way through to spring I am fully anticipating a drop to near absolute zero temperatures and an ice tornado to come ripping through the streets.  Because if there is one thing that seems to be a near constant it is Environment Canada being wrong about their predictions.

A full night’s rest still eludes me.  My body continues to insist that I get my ass out of bed at 5:30 in the morning.  To which I do nothing because I am usually extremely tired, and extremely lazy.  The days have blurred to the point that I keep losing track of what day it actually is.  It still feels like Tuesday to me.  Each day I get up and feel a soul crushing disappointment that I have three more days of work until the weekend.  That feeling doesn’t last long, but it is a horrifying notion that haunts me throughout the day.  Especially with it being Ground Hog day.  I’ve seen that movie many a time and I can’t think of any crueller fate than that. Though I suppose having the time to learn ice sculpting would be pretty awesome.

Internal Clock

I am growing of the opinion that my body does not like me.  Specifically that it doesn’t like me well rested.  For two straight weeks I’ve been waking up at 5:30 AM on the dot and not being able to fall asleep after.  This is disturbing because, until recently I’ve never been up that early.  Ever.  It is a dark and evil time of the day.  A time that, were it my choice, should not exist.  Now this morning I came up with a clever solution to a work related problem, but that does not excuse this horrible recurring situation.  It is getting to the point that I can barely remember the last time I was well rested.

I feel I’m comfortable enough with the novel’s outline that I’ll be kicking things into gear tomorrow night.  There’s a lot to do, but now that I’ve got a concrete plan involved it all seems less daunting.  I’m definitely excited to get back to work on it.  Last week’s personal epidemic had set things back slightly but not a whole lot.  Writing is a difficult thing when your own thoughts sound like the adults from Peanuts.  The only thing that disappoints me is that I won’t have my glasses in time for the kick off tomorrow.  They will most surely help prevent the eventual eye strain that will happen.

I’m planning on setting up a separate page on this very blog to track my progress on the novel.  I don’t really have a set idea of how many words the novel will end up as.  But from my outline I’m expecting around thirty chapters, of varying lengths.  This number isn’t set in stone; some may be removed, combined, or added as I make my way through.  But the end goal will to mark my progress on the current chapter that I’m working on, how many chapters have been completed and a running word count.  Because why not.  I make databases and like seeing those end totals.  It’s a sickness.