Mortaine’s Blog

This is an archive of my shorter book reviews and notes, which historically have been posted over at the 50 Book Challenge on LiveJournal, but which I’m starting to move over here. I’m posting them with altered date-stamps, but they might show up in my LiveJournal cross-post anyway. Bear with me, please.

Note: Many of these books also have full reviews available in the book review podcast (RSS).

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I’m going to barf tonight. I know, TMI. John made sausages and I’m pretty sure one of the ones I ate was bad. I even thought so at the time, tried to get John to confirm with his super-nose, but he said it smelled fine (I don’t trust my own nose, which now interprets honey butter smell as “unclean diaper smell”– and I used to like honey butter!)

Every time I belch, I taste rotting meat. Really, really gross. One thing I miss about being a vegetarian: I never ran the risk of eating rotten meat. Ew.

Based on This exercise.

Dear Manda,

Well, today was a long day at the polls, as it usually is. I got there at 5:30 to setup the e-booths and the eligibility testing equipment. My clerks got there at 6:15, which is a little late, but I sent them out with the signs to post up.

At 7, when we opened the polls, we had a pretty good line, and it didn’t really let up until 10. Man, those tests take a lot of time! We had a guy object to affixing the clips to his scrotum, and I had to call in and find out what to do– he voted provisionally, with no test, and I’m afraid he’ll probably end up being disqualified. He had a pink tie on.

Anyway, by 10:00, most of the earlybirds were either done or had left cause they knew they wouldn’t pass the eligibility test. This test is new– it’s better than the one we used in the primaries earlier this year; it measures both bloodflow to the area and electrochemical stimulation, so it can catch not only the homos but the pervs, too.

Anyone failing the test got their “think pink!” provisional ballot, if they wanted it, of course. Personally, I doubt they’ll get counted, but oh well. It’s not my job to count the ballots, just to give them out.

Oh, hey, we had one dyke try to fake us out– she kept looking at one of the pollsters, a guy, and closing her eyes and stuff, but y’know, my job was to put the equipment on the females, and as soon as I touched her to take them off, the needle jumped. She was crafty, but hey, I caught her in the act! Hah hah hah….

By about 1:30, I think everyone knew we were serious about the testing; we hardly had anyone between 2 and closing the polls at 8. Even the after work crowd was pretty absent, though that might be cause the adult theatre down the street just opened last night, and they were handing out leaflets on the street.

Anyway, just wanted to let you know how the election went on this end, sis. Hope things are well with you and Michael and Artemis; you guys make such a cute triad!

Love,
Your sister Susan.

Thanksgiving was pleasant, if a bit, uh, loud. I’m not entirely sure what the plan for media was at my brother’s friends’ house, but one of the residents put on Casino, which is a 4 hour mobster movie with a lot of gratuitous violence and bloodshed (uh, why?), and then periodically my brother would come in and co-opt the stereo system to play some music.

Like, Diana Ross. Um. Cheesy 70’s love songs playing over gratuitious graphic bloodshed…. why?

Not to mention the fact that the house was set up very nicely for being completely immersed in the audio experience. Which means the speakers were right next to the sides of the sofa. So through the entire evening, I had unescapable sound– either movie sound or music– blaring into my eardrums. I kept asking if they could turn it down (since the stereo goes through some kind of soundboard a la DJing equipment), and every time they did, the sound would go fractionally lower (like the difference between 10 and 9 on your stereo), and within a half hour, someone would come in and turn it back up again eventually.

In the midst of this, we decided to play some of the games I’d brought. So we had 7 people playing Apples to Apples, with blaring Diana Ross or Al Pacino in the background.

*sigh* But seeing my brother was nice, and it was good food and I didn’t overeat, though I think the turkey didn’t set right with my stomach.

And Friday was cool– nice party with nice people. Ran the Looney Labs mini experiment and gave away flowers and Star cards, which was OK. I learned to play Zendo, which is a neat, Zen-like pyramid guessing game– I think it’s one that and would like.

Saturday was a day off, so I wrote and chilled and slept. I slept a lot. First I slept in on Saturday morning, and in the afternoon I slept for about 3 hours to get rid of the migraine I was getting and because I was just really exhausted.

Yesterday at the write-in, I reached my 50,000th word, and stopped right there. I added 95 words last night, and another 40 this morning, but I left the laptop at home today for a much-needed break.

I had my D&D game in the afternoon– we defeated a 400+ hit point scorpion (yay), but I lost nearly all my hit points, and most of my strength. Ew. I think if we can heal up the fighters, and don’t have any massively huge challenges like that ahead of us, we could still face the death knight on our way out. But I don’t know.

And Hammer has a big nasty infected wound on his toe. I think the nail’s going to fall off, and I’m worried about a mole that’s grown to big nasty size recently that I found on his leg.

OK, my official holiday wish list is here.

For purposes of this post, here are the 10 things I want the very most:

1. I want my mother to quit smoking. If you’re not my mom, but you smoke too and want to give me a gift, you can quit too. The less cigarette smoke in the world, the better.

2. I want a new bread machine– a very specific model that makes just a little loaf in under an hour.

3. I want more time to spend with my husband and my dog and my writing.

4. I want The Time Traveler’s Wife, and will download it from Audible if I don’t get it for XMas.

5. I want a job in Santa Cruz County that pays enough to cover my current salary.

6. I want to feel appreciated at work.

7. I want everyone I made presents for to be overwhelmed by their gifts this year. I worked really hard on those, they took a lot of time and planning, and I started working on them in July.

8. I want to change the world. If you do, too, you can donate to the ACLU as a gift to me for the holidays.

9. I want my sister to get a day off. Actually, I want her to just get more support at home in general.

10. I want a kitten.