you live your life as if it's real

Oh boy have I ever been scarce. Well, a lot of the reason I've been holding off posting is that I was waiting to hear back on the job I wanted this summer. Also, I've just been hella busy. But I have a lot of really exciting updates that I can finally post here.

First, about the job. I had my interview on Friday morning, and I was pretty confident it went well. Got an email this morning from the prof. in charge, and they're hiring me! So I am officially spending my summer buried neck deep in 800-year old Latin, hurray! I get to proofread the automatic text generated version of scanned images of the text. Mostly I'm sure it will be really tedious, but I get to work with one of my favourite profs (the other prof on the project I have never met before), I get to make some money, and most of all, I get experience that is right in the proper field that I want to go in. I am insanely excited =)

Second, about my teeth. Or lack of them... I had all four wisdom teeth pulled yesterday. It was a whole lot of not-fun, but at least it's done. And I guess I'm pretty lucky too. My dentist, as he was pulling them and telling me what he was doing, at one point goes "okay, so the top two are out. They're usually the easiest, so that's why I started with them, the bottom two are usually harder to get out." Pause while he takes out the two bottom ones, and then: "oh... your bottom two came out even easier than the top." He sounded a little bemused, haha. Anyways, my appointment was scheduled for an entire hour longer than I was sitting in the chair. And I had the nice hygenist. Actually, I think all hygenists are saints, must be a job requirement. But I had the extra nice one. All in all, it was pretty good I guess. It was the nausea and inability to keep anything down -- not even water -- later on in the day that was the worst. Today seems better though. Only a brief bit of nausea, and I've managed to eat soup, and my mouth isn't hurting too too bad.

Third, about my sister. She flipped over the handlebars of her bike last Sunday and the doctors were pretty sure she had a broken elbow. This was awful for her as she was all set to be the star quarterback of her school football team, and something else important (hey, I don't know anything about football) for her touch football team. Plus it would mean that she would have to switch which horse she competes on in the summer, and would probably have missed the first couple shows. BUT! It isn't broken! It was just a ligament injury, so now she just has to do some exercises to regain range of motion and strength. The doctor said max. 2 weeks until she can be doing all her sports again. So today has been just full of good news.

Fourth, about my family/family home. Getting the idea why the past week has been complete insanity yet? My parents are selling the house, a prospective buyer wants a closing date of July 1st, another wants to sneak in fast before we list with an agent, all of our stuff has to be cleaned and packed away into a storage unit, my mom has bought a new house, my dad doesn't even know which city he will be looking for a condo in... it just goes on and on. But I'm really, really excited about all the changes. And my mom has agreed to store my piano until I have a place of my own for it, and my sister loves my nice mirror too much to let it be sold/left behind, so my only two larger and more precious objects are going to be taken care of.

This is getting ridiculously long, so I'm going to stop here, and hang out with my ice packs and Lord of the Rings for a while. It's been so long since I read LotR, it's so much fun to re-read it. The Fellowship, minus Gandalf, has just managed to get out of Moria. And re-reading the book, I am annoyed all over again at Liv Tyler's Arwen for stealing Glorfindel's part, but that's a rant for a different day.

A while back, as some of you may remember, I took a jaunt down to Toronto for the day, to meet some authors and buy an armload of books. Due to school, I've sadly only managed to read two of those books so far, but now seems like a really appropriate time to give them some airtime here. (And no, that's not just because I'm desperately trying to find ways to procrastinate writing my Homer commentary. Well, that helps. But anyways, I digress.)

jimhines was one of the authors I met that day, and it's his two books, Goblin Quest and Goblin Hero, that I've read. I've been meaning for a while now to write an entry about them, so carpe diem etc. etc. Plus, you know, the third book in the series, Goblin War, comes out tomorrow. (Hah. You thought that was going to be another Amazon link. But oh how wrong you were!)



Google is sadly not providing a similarly sized picture of Goblin War for my hotlinking pleasure. Boo. Oh well, those are the two I've read, anyways.

These books are awesome. Goblin Quest: The runt of an underdog race gets dragged off kicking and screaming (well, more like tied up and walking meekly so as not to get beaten, actually) to go on adventures, whether he likes it or not. He survives by sheer luck and a healthy dose of cowardice. This book has got everything your classic fairy tale fantasy has: a heroic prince, a dwarf bodyguard/mentor, a half-crazy ambitious mage, a sullen elven girl, a dragon, hordes of treasure, and the monster sidekick. Only Jig (that's the goblin) is our hero, so everything gets stood on its head. I still kinda liked the prince though, even though he was a pompous ass. He spoke so hilariously.

The ending though. Oy geez. Did not see that coming. Trout?? It kind of upset me, actually. But I'm over it now. I don't want to spoil it, so that's all I'll say here. Clearly I'm really bad at this recap of book thing, so just go out and buy it and read it for yourself, okay? I highly recommend it.

Goblin Hero: The bad guys are pixies. Nuff said. Two-foot tall glittery, colourful bad guys. So awesome. I was reading this one on the bus on the way home for reading week, and I kept laughing out loud and getting really weird looks from my neighbor. I think I like Goblin Hero better than Goblin Quest, actually. Any book where a hobgoblin gets to say "Graceful, as always," to a goblin has got to be wonderful.

So anyways, if you like fantasy, if you like laughing, and if you like brains triumphing over brawn, then I expect you'll love these books. I definitely did, and I'll be buying the third book just as soon as I can. I really hope Riana shows up again in Goblin War.

And I really want a pet fire-spider now. If that's impossible, though, I'll settle for a plushie Smudge.

ETA: and omg thank you, srness, for catching my stupid mistakes and saving me from making an ass of myself. <3 

My newly dyed hair and I went to Toronto today to go to a booksigning at the World's Biggest Bookstore, which both greatly disappointed me and made me very happy. The bookstore, of course, not the signing -- the signing was more than I expected. I think that any bookstore worth its salt should either be very crowded and dark and crammed full of so many old dusty books that it looks like it could turn into a fantasy set piece at any moment, or else very light and comfy and airy with lots of armchairs. Since I had some time to kill before the signing, I was really hoping for the latter. (It was just a giant box store. Full of many wonders, which I will get to in a moment...)

So instead I walked over to the Eaton Centre and got some lunch there, and then meandered my way back along Yonge St. Stopped in at the huge HMV there, and bought Enjoy Incubus, so now my Incubus collection is complete, yayyy! Also bought the String Quartet Tribute to Incubus, on the theory that I adore the String Quartet Tribute to HIM, so maybe I will like this one too? I'm having a lot of trouble imagining Incubus songs as string arrangements though. Haven't listened to it yet.

Alors, having killed enough time (silly ol' Greyhound really did not make its schedules conducive to my purpose, and I actually had to wake up before 8 to get to Toronto in time for a signing at 1), I beelined for the sf/f section of the store. (Yes, I beelined for it all the way from the HMV. Get outta my way, cars! I have books to buy!)

And boy, did I ever score big. I had to exercise great self-restraint and there was many a moment of wishing that it was still before Christmas. January is such a bad time of year to throw me in a bookstore. But anyways, I'm very happy with what I did get, and I can get a lot of the stuff I passed on elsewhere, so. I am a happy bunny. And the booksigning started shortly after.


Now I will try and write past the sticky in "Sparagmos". And I won't force David to wear a sparkly blue shirt in it, even though that's what I saw pretty much as soon as I started seriously pondering. As David pointed out, he dies in a very unpleasant way in this story, the least I could do is leave him his male pride.