The Birthday

The office baby has now turned 23...and still remains the office baby. Honestly, I find it hilarious every time someone re-realizes how young I am. I guess I'm just grown-up for my age? Or maybe at this point in life age lines are just starting to soften and blur. Twas a good birthday weekend and I got lots of cool stuff from family and friends including this:

Swanky, isn't it? I discovered The Sandman about four years ago in a DIY Scifi class in college. The class was run as a typical lecture/discussion format for a few weeks and then we all broke out into small groups to study an area of science fiction that we were interested in. One group looked at science fiction in comics and used an issue of The Sandman in their final presentation. I'm not sure that they actually cited who the writer had been, but I remembered the storyline and a while later when I found out that Neil Gaiman (the writer) had done a series of comics, I set out to read it. Lo and behold, a few issues in, I came across the issue from the scifi class again. Instant love!

If you haven't read anything by Neil Gaiman, I highly recommend it. My first venture into his work was coincidentally enough also in that DIY Scifi class, which I think may have been the best class I took at IC. (That and a more traditional format scifi class with the same professor, kathryn, who was one of the best teachers I encountered there). Gaiman has a way with weaving together all sorts of old myths and modern day that never ceases to fascinate. For the class, we read American Gods, as I was in the group taking a peek into the role that religion plays in science fiction novels. Although I don't consider myself to be very religious, its fascinating to see how religions morph in the hands of scifi writers.

The Legacy of Gird...

...was not a great book. I feel a little let down by Elizabeth Moon with this one. I've thoroughly enjoyed reading (and rereading) many of her other fic, but this book was not that exciting. I think one of the major flaws in the book is that though a normal length, the action takes place over one man's lifetime. Too much going on with too many jump gaps to accelerate through unimportant bits of time. Also, some of the important moments that occur in the book come out of nowhere and happen too quickly to grasp what just happened. Other things that happen are awfully convenient to propelling the story line forward. For example, the Gods play an active role in the book, but did they simply latch onto Gird to further their ends or did they choose him beforehand to get change rolling? Not enough explanation. Many of the characters are necessarily thin because of the number of them and the limited time to go into depth because of the stretched out nature of the tale. In the end, this book just took too long to read for the benefit reaped. Hopefully on to better tales.

ok, so, I'm getting flack for not updating, so I'm updating. See, are you happy now?

The past month can very nicely be rounded up as insane...and well, October is shaping up to be just a hair less! Why you may ask? Well, lets see September was gala month at the museum which meant a whole lot of planning, replanning, making items, remaking items, dealing with fun people, dealing with difficult people, and topping it off with five hours of fancy dress, silent auction, good tapas, and dancing. Plus, I had the added mental insanity of being offered a new position a goodly distance from Ithaca and the challenge of deciding whether or not to leave PRI behind for new adventures. Well...after a great deal of thought (and tears, cause that's how I tend to deal with stress) most of you will probably be glad to hear that I'll be remaining an ithaca chick. If you haven't already heard the whole story and want to be filled in, gimme a ring.

On to October. Membership brochure, annual fund mailing, grants due, gala cleanup....thank god for helpful interns! I confess that I stayed until 7 tonight cause I'm behind where I want to be. zoinks!

But, I'm still getting some time in for reading amongst the crazy. Since last posting, I think I've read Dune Messiah, Persuasion by Jane Austen, The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery, and Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut. Let's see Dune Messiah was better this time around, Persuasion was really enjoyable which was surprising because I wasn't sure I'd like reading Jane Austen, The Blue Castle is an all time favorite...I've probably read it a dozen times by now, Slaughterhouse 5 was okay but I much preferred Cat's Cradle. I'm really interested to see how well or terribly this book translated to screen when I get the movie version of it on netflix. The time travel in it is actually similar to the time travel in Time Traveler's Wife. Def very different from a man in a time machine!