Flamesplash's Journal: capitulare

It seemed like a good time to go through some randomness of late.

letteratura
 
I recently finished St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, a collection of 10 short stories. It's a pretty nice set in general. All the stories take reality, toss in some fantastical themes, and then tell them from the point of view of their child leading characters. I had an issue with the style of some of the endings, but they don't really matter. The worlds created in the stories, along with the crazy characters are enough even when the endings don't come through. Plus there's a neat picture of a wolf on the cover.
 
I'll soon be done with Of Love and Other Demons. This is a book I've had since my first intership at Microsoft in 1999 where an intern started a book group, but there was way too much going on that summer for me to do much reading. 700 other interns in a new awesome city will do that to you. There are parts in the book where I'm surprised I'm not bored, but I guess Marquez has infused something in the whole store to make it all interesting.
 
I was thinking of reading At Swim-Two Birds next, but the closest half-price that has it seems to be several states away. I'll probably snag it when the next Amazon Credit Card rewards comes in.
 
A couple weeks ago I took a note from Rachel and tossed a bunch of my books up on LibraryThing. So far I've only put up books that I've read and own. Seems I only still own 50 of them. There's several I was kind of surprised to not find; in particular an oddly bound version of Snow Crash. It was slightly shorter than a paper back, but hard back and several inches thick. There was something specific about that binding that made me enjoy reading it. I guess it got lost or dontated during the great migration from Boston to Atlanta.

  litteratus
 
A week or so ago I started a short story that I think is actually ready to be fully written. It's a bit more light hearted than my other ideas which makes it somewhat easier to write. Almost all the stories I wrote in high school had a humorous slant to them by default. This one in particular has a young cave boy as the protagonist and hopes to offer up an explanation for some of the craziness that archeology has told us about cave persons.
 
I say this story is ready to be fully written because I have 2 other stories that are kind of hanging there. One needs a completely different direction so it's not so dull. It's more of an idea story, where the characters are minor to an inanimate object. It reminds me of a book Rachel has of Jacek Yerka's art pair with fairly short stories based on them. I kinda get the feeling that'd be the best route for this, but well I can't draw, so there.
 
The other story is kind of my dream story, the one I want to get right, if I get any of them. The basis for it has been with me since I was fairly young, so I want to do it justice. I have some pieces of the story, but it's not flushed out nearly enough. I do have a title though, if maybe tentative, 'anna.'

moneta
 
Approximately 34 days ago I opened an IRA and filled it out for the year. This happened to give me free trading for 45 days, which caused a small amount of craziness. While I didn't ever make a bad trade, I ran head on into a restriction that really only so called 'day traders' would care about. Due to this I prevented myself from making $300; that's a 7.5% one day gain. It kind of made me pissed with myself, but I guess lesson learned. I now know about this annoying restriction, and have real evidence that even "smart" day trading is just stupid, stupid, stupid. ( If anyone is interested in opening a brokerage account, let me know. I'll get a few free trades that would be useful for my regular account ;o) )
 
In related news, the first stock I ever bought, SGI back in 1999, was canceled earlier this week. That's right, canceled. Sgi has some trouble, went into Chapter 11 bankrupcty. As part of coming out of that, they were able to just toss all their old stock out the window. Ah well.

cattus
 
Abby got her first annual checkup back in september, I've officially had her a year. It's odd, there are times I feel like I've had her forever, that there wasn't a 13 year gap since Teddy Bear ran off into the rain to die, and then there are times I feel like I just got her. I guess that's a good sign of our relationship. Right now she's laying in the top of her cat tree watching me with almost closed eyes.

  pictura
 
Vision, my newer tivo, is still going strong. Currently I'm going through reruns of Dead Like Me, and Arrested Development. These are both shows that people just deserve to be smacked for canceling. I mean come on. I kind of blame marketing for both of their demises. I didn't feel like watching either show until well after they were canceled, so it certaintly took long enough to work on me. I recommend both highly, if you get a change give them a watch, though Arrested Development is one of those shows you're better off starting as early as possible in the series.

Alright, that's enough for one night, bonam noctem.