101 Things Update

Okay, I have not been terribly good at keeping up to date on this thing, but I wanted to write a post giving a bit of an update. I have crossed a bunch of things off the list because of developments in the past year. I have resumed teaching both blues and lindy, I have been giving hugs like crazy, I have been doing tiny good deeds like crazy, I have been reading almost continuously, I visited Cedar Point, I took a few long(ish) road trips, and all of the other things I've updated since my last edit.

The fact of the matter is that I am not going to complete my list. I have to acknowledge that some of the items were overly ambitious for someone who has no money, but I have some plans to go to Europe, either for a conference or for fieldwork, and I still have hope that I can begin making some other firm plans on other items. Still, while I will not complete the list, I am pretty proud of what I've accomplished, considering my limited means.

I'm not sure when my 101 days expires (I'll figure that out some other time), but I will make any alterations that are necessary as I do other things. I hope I have time to cross some of the other things I want to accomplish off the list.

If nothing else, I'm going to learn how to follow... ;-)

My First Good Deed

So I had the urge to do something nice yesterday. I was walking out of one of the bookstores in Bowling Green and I located the meter with the shortest amount of time left and popped a quarter in, giving them another hour.

Small, I know. But even small deeds can be good.

Okay, so I've been a bit AWOL for a while now. I not only forgot the password for this blog, but also the email I used to sign up for it. I guess I set up a gmail account and used that, but I had forgotten about that, so there you go.

Anyway, I realized that I had accomplished a bunch of things over the past year, so I felt I should go ahead and update what I had done.

Aside from reading a few new books (number 90), including a non-fiction about Bedrich Smetena (number 85), I went to some local band concerts (number 7), went camping a few times (number 33), gave my senior piano recital (number 17), went to a few museums (number 16), had a few snowball fights (number 96), went sledding (number 97, which I incidentally did in a construction barrel, of which there is video on my facebook), went to a Tigers game (number 74), grew my hair down to my shoulders (number 89), got into grad school for musicology (number 24), and climbed the Lake Michigan Overlook on the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive. Interesting story there...

I was camping (number 33) at Inerlochen with Krissy, my girlfriend, and we had done a little drinking the night before. And by "a little drinking," I mean we tossed back a fairly substantial amount of booze. It wasn't anywhere close to another Caraffe Night, but it was a nice start on it. Very rare for me.

Anyway, I woke up the next morning a little hungover and maybe a little bit sick, too. I hadn't been feeling great, so I might have been at the start of a little stomach flu. I also didn't eat anything for breakfast and didn't really have anything to drink, either. The end result is that I was already more than a little dehydrated by the time we arrived at the precipice of the Overlook.

I had an enjoyable jaunt down the 450-foot 70 degree sand and rock face. I tried skipping a few stones on Lake Michigan at the bottom. I walked on the beach for a few minutes. Then I began my ascent.

I'm not as young as I used to be.

I made it up in pretty good time (about 20 minutes), but struggled the whole time. My legs were jelly, my breathing was heavy, and I felt a bit lightheaded. I had Krissy drive and I reclined the passenger seat so I could rest. In the meantime, it started becoming more difficult to breath and I started feeling more disoriented.

We decided to head to nearby Glen Arbor, but first Krissy wanted to see Glen Haven because there was a maritime museum. We started driving through Glen Haven and I was growing concerned that I might need a little help, so I told Krissy we needed to get to Glen Arbor.

We eventually stopped by the fire station and Krissy helped me in to talk to the paramedics and they checked me out and got me some water. Their diagnosis was that I was badly dehydrated and overheated. They offered to take me to the hospital if I wanted, but I was already feeling a little better, so I politely declined. We shot the bull for a little while longer until I felt strong enough to walk again, then we grabbed a bite to eat and headed back to Interlochen. I was still not feeling great, but definitely much better.

After that, it was pretty much smooth sailing. I woke up the next morning feeling much better and the crisis was over. But throughout all of that, I accomplished something very important.

Number 39? Done and done!

Catching up on the reviews...

So I read a couple more books that I haven't discussed here. Since my wrist is causing me some pain and I think I should take a brief respite from practicing, I thought now would be a good time to catch up.

First up is "Mistborn" by Brandon Sanderson. The premise of the novel is that the world was saved by this guy who has these remarkable powers granted by that world's god. As a gift to his loyal (and royal) followers, he bestowed some of them upon him. He did not grant any of these magic power upon the proletariat, though.

Okay, the book doesn't refer to them as the prol, but that's what they are. They are actually called "skaa" and they are just the slave workers for the emperor.

Anyway, what follow is a millenium of slavery under the thumb of the immortal emperor. Of course, there are now a few skaa with these powers as the result of "inbreeding" between royalty and skaa.

The novel focuses on a group of such skaa who led life as a crew of successful thieves, but now are attempting to bring about the end of the empire and freedom for skaa everywhere.

In all honesty, it was a pretty engaging read with a nice little quasi-plot twist at the end. I would recommend it for any fantasy fans.

My next book, however, was not quite as enjoyable...


This one was "The Harlequin" by Laurell K. Hamilton. The Harequin is the 8 millionth book in the popular Anita Blake Vampire Slayer series. Laurell was a pioneer of the urban fantasy genre with Anita Blake and her other series focusing on Meredith Gentry, a faerie princess living amongst humans.

For anyone who is a fan of the "True Blood" series, based off of Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse novels, you are familiar with the urban fantasy genre. In urban fantasy, magical creatures not only live among us, but they are very visible and contributing members of society. Laws have been enacted to protect their rights and they have their own subcultures, much in the way any religion, ethnicity, or racial group might.

This presents an interesting opportunity to address prejudice in a new forum, but also permits the writer to indulge in some wild fantasy about what life would be like if vampires were taxpaying citizens protected by the law.

Hamilton, for example, imagines a St. Louis which has become a tourist spot for vampire watchers. They can visit the vampire district, go to vampire (and shapeshifter) strip clubs, "donate blood," and even become vampire groupies. It's an interesting world.

Of course, since these creatures have supernatural strength and magical powers, someone needs to protect the innocent from vampires run amok with their own power. Enter Anita Blake, state-sanctioned vampire executioner.

At the beginning of the series, Blake worked closely with the cops to solve interesting crimes involving vamps and shapeshifters.

Now, Anita has excessive amounts of sex with excessive amounts of people, Hamilton studies the dynamics of her imaginary preternatural culture, and everybody is along for the ride on an emotional rollercoaster.

They've basically become Harlequin romance novels with monsters.

Speaking of Harlequin, that's the name of the bad guy in this book. Of the nearly 500 pages of book, there are only about 75 dealing with The Harlequin. The remainder is just a flimsy excuse for Anita to have really hot sex with many people and engage in some middle-aged angst.

I'm not saying it's a bad read. I am saying, though, that this series has jumped the shark and is only a shadow of what it once was.

Take that for what you will.

The continuing adventures...

Another Marla Mason book down. Now, all I need to do is find the first one and I'll be all set.

This one pitted Marla against, believe it or not, Death. The thing I love about urban fantasy books is that they always tend to center on some epic ass-kicker who can take on any force of nature... or supernature. Who'd have thunk that included Death?!?

I do have to admit, though, that these types of books are becoming a bit cliche. They all seem to follow the same type of pattern, it's just taken me a bit to recognize it because it's a somewhat newish pattern.

Okay, so there's nothing new about it. It's the same old pattern draped in a new cloth. There's a series about a private eye who inhabits a secret realm hidden in the middle of London. He's kind of the resident ass-kicker there. For some reason, the name of the series and author is escaping me.

Anyway, these books could be just an extension of those, with a female ass-kicker instead of a male one.

I'm not complaining, though. It was a fairly decent read. Just a bit cookie-cutter for me.

As for my next literary conquest, I am going to actually get to cross a complete item off my list. I am going to be reading Principles of Orchestration, by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. That would count as my non-fiction book, would it not?

I'm really hankering to do something grand and exciting, though, to cross some more items off the list.

I'll keep you posted...

At least I'm reading...

Whily my social life seems to have disappeared into so much dust lately, at least I have my books. That's a good thing, too, because I have so many to read to satisfy my reading requirement for the list.

I just finished reading "Poison Sleep" by T.A. Pratt. I always find names like this amusing. The bio inside the cover informs me that T.A. lives in Oakland, CA with "partner H.L. Shaw and their son." That's code for "T.A. is a lesbian who adopted a child with her life partner."

The other interesting thing is her vagueness (assuming T.A. is a her). In her acknowledgments, she mentions "Locus, the best day job a writer could have." Her bio also mentions that she works "as a senior editor for a trade publishing magazine." Locus is a magazine specializing in science fiction and fantasy.

Here's where things get interesting, though. It turns out that T.A. Pratt is really Tim Pratt. He lives in Oakland with his wife Heather Shaw and their son River. Aside from this series that I just wrote, there are a number of other pieces he has written (and won awards for).

And that, my friends, is why it is dangerous to make assumptions and jump to conclusions.

Having said all that, on to the book itself. Very good read. It's the second book in a series following Marla Mason, the chief sorcerer of Felport. I haven't read the first book, which shows that you can pick up some series' right in the middle and not skip a beat.

Marla is in charge of keeping the city safe and protecting the ordinaries (Pratt's term for muggles *lol*) from being aware of the existence of magic. The book is full of interesting plot twists and colorful characters, and it is a fairly easy and quick read. I have the next book in the series and imagine I will be done with that one in a couple of days.

If you enjoy urban fantasy (the genre where the supernatural exists in the real world, with entries such as the popular TV show True Blood, based upon the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris and, of course, Twilight), then you should enjoy this read, as well.

Happy reading!

Damn the Typos!!!

Well, another book down. I'm flying through these things. Three books in, so far, under a week? Not too shabby.

This one, "The Dragon's Touchstone," buy Irene Radford, is about magicians trying too find a new source of magik; On that is less destructive and preserves the balance between magic and nature.

The book was pretty good. The main problem I had with itt was the incredibly large number of typos in it. Weather it was strays quotation marks, making it difficult to tel when a person started and stopped talking, or misspelled words, or varius other mistakes, it made it terribly difficult to read at ties.

I understand that spellcheck misses words that are not the word you intened, but are still spelled properly. In this case, though, there were combinations of letters that simply spelked nothing! As an example, in a sentence about auras, I came across the word "auara." What the hell is an auara?!? Do I need to look that up on Wikipedia?

The funniest part about it is that my built-in spellchecker did not flag that as an improperly spelled word when I typed it here. Hold on a second while I look it up...

According to dictionary.com, "No results found for auara."

WTF?!?

Anyway, the book isn't that difficult to read, in truth. It is a pretty good book, too, with a great cliffhanger, so I highly recommend it.

And no more typoes!!!!!!!!