An Update

Sing Credence Clearwater Revival to me.  I dare you.

Tomorrow will be the conclusion of two months in Lodi.  Not much changes out here.  The site has reached a point of low visible change.  We're doing deep work that produces a lot of soil to be hauled off, but at the end of the day doesn't look that different.  Eventually yes, but not so much right now.

So then there are my evenings.  I get up early.  I'm talking nearly Ninja Space Monkey early.  Nearly.  I'm on site between 10 and 11 hours, typically and then I get back to the hotel.  I make dinner, and read a little.  I tend to fall asleep around 9:30.  I am reminded of the anger my mother speaks of occasionally about how I when I was very little, she would find me smiling and quiet in my crib when she came to get me in the morning.  I'm no less quiet now, and actually quieter than my parents ever were in the morning.  I really don't like a lot of noise until I've been up for at least half an hour.  Or more.

This has made breakfast a bit of a trial at the hotel as they have both a television going with KCRA morning news as well as background music.  I do tend to get the day's ear-worm there though.

Reading has been good.  I finished Pratchett's Discworld, and have blazed through three Stephen King books.  Doctor Sleep is really a great book that answers the questions "Whatever happened to Danny Torrance after the events in The Shining?"  The fun thing about Dan Torrance is that he is about my age.  If it's been several years since you've read The Shining, I would recommend re-reading it before hitting Doctor Sleep.  It's not essential, but it keeps you in the mindset.

Now I'm moving on to a book by Andy Weir.  The route to getting to this book for me was a little circuitous, but still kind of cool.  I read a lot of webcomics.  One of the oldest out there, and truly the standard for regularity in internet publishing (he's missed only one update in over 5,000 strips, and that was a software or server failure) is "Schlock Mercenary".  It has been the source of much humor over the years, one of my favorites coming from an AI saying, "Please don't make me add "rounding pi down to 3" to your list of crimes."

On the side, Howard Tayler paints miniatures, reviews movies, and occasionally reviews books.  Recently he recommended The Martian by Andy Weir.  I immediately recognized the name from a now defunct and truly missed webcomic "Casey and Andy".  Please note that the link goes tot he first strip, because the last strip is incredibly full of spoilers.  Another strip full of geekdom jokes, it makes me all the more exscited to check out the new book.

Reading and More Reading

For most of the trip to Las Vegas, I was reading Stephen King's Under the Dome. As I've said before, it's a Llong book coming in at 1,074 pages.

Now I like Stephen King. I enjoyed Night Shift long ago, have read and liked The Shining and Salem's Lot, and Firestarter is a great book of secret psionics.

Under the Dome is a great concept with things anyone can relate to; not just someone from a small town. I'm not from a small town, but I can see how something like what happens in an isolated town could. And most of the story had me riveted, but when I learned the force behind the Dome...

It was like I was in a car with a flat on the Oakland Bay Bridge. I had to keep going because I wasn't able to stop, but I knew I was going to enjoy the journey as much as I had hoped.

Now I can't say that I could come up with a better source for the MacGuffin, but i just didn't like this one.

***

In contrast (and this is only a pun that come to mind after having read a book full of color references), is Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey. I burned through this book starting the night before we left Las Vegas, and got much read in Long Beach, and finished it tonight.

The Thursday Next books are fun with their literary references, and the Nursery Crime series has grown on me, but this new series (intended to be a trilogy as revealed at the end of the book) kept me focused the entire time.

I can remember reading about Utopias in high school (freshman or sophomore year), and even creating one as a project for the class. We had read Jonathon Swift's Gulliver's Travels, and I had also read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World on my own. This book is reminiscent of those creations.

It takes place in a world where Something Had Happened. The capitals are Fforde's. And in the changed world, people cannot see in the dark, and have limited color receptors. You are graded by the amount of color you see. Commonly you see in one color, some see in two, and (as yet) no one sees with any strength in all three. And around this is a strongly restrictive society built.

It's really a fascinating concept, and I look forward to the next two books in the series.

Reading

One advantage of being down yesterday was that I finally finished all 1,074 pages of Stephen King's Under the Dome.

One thing you can say about King is that the bad guys always get it in the end. It's just that it usually takes so long for their comeuppance that many of the good guys are gone by then.

It was pretty good closure, I just didn't like the mechanism behind the dome itself.

Las Vegas - Day Three and Four [UPDATED]

It's been a couple of full days.

Wednesday, Jennifer and I had another spa treatment; I got a sugar scrub. Then we relaxed around the spa for a while, then got ready to go out.

Wednesday night we ate at AquaKnox in the Venetian, and saw The Blue Man Group.

The music is great; I have both of their albums, but the show is amazing. It defies description.

Today, we slept in since we did not make it back to to our room until after 2:00 AM. we didn't sleep in much, but it was a slow start.

Today we went to see Popovich's Comedy Pet show. it was fun and light, but done in a very classic clown style.

Then we wandered back to the apartment, and caught the fountain show outside of the Bellagio.

Tomorrow is Christmas, so we'll probably be making phone calls in the morning, but the town is open all day, so we'll see where we go from there.

We have dinner reservations at 4:00, and then after that, who knows.

***

I know I haven't been linking these things, and I'll either go back and make edits, or make a list of links at the end. It's just hard without a mouse. I should have brought it but... [Links have now been added through all posts from Las Vegas.]

The Stephen King book I'm reading (Under the Dome)is 1,074 pages long and took up way too much room. And in no way does it need to be. Sure it's a big book, but it's like the hardback was typeset only to save time for paperback typesetting. all they'll need to do is print it on smaller paper, and maybe bring the page numbers up a bit. I'm enjoying it, but the size is a bit... Off-putting

(Yes, honey, just like your hair in high school. I love you.)

I'm closing in on half way. My favorite section heading so far is "The Is Not As Bad As It Gets".