"Issues"

All this free time is messing with my head. I have so much stuff I want to get done, I hardly know where to start, and I am worried about finishing everything. Everything that I wouldn't have been able to do in the first place if I didn't have two weeks off. 

So if I was busy there would be nothing to worry about, but since I'm not I don't have enough time. So I worry instead. Make sense?

GOT IT!

A grown-up job with a reasonable salary, legitimate benefits and a 15-20 minute commute. How awesome is that? And two weeks off before I get to go live in Anaheim (bleah) for a week and get all trained up.

Thus... a To Do list for my time off.

Get a grown-up haircut
Get some decent work clothes (~1 step up from t-shirts and jeans, it's still a soils job)
Do ALL the yard projects (separate future list)
Clean out garage/ have a garage sale (I now have other people with stuff to get rid of, so this is no longer something to be put off)

Hoo boy. I don't think I ever thought this would really happen. And now I have to save the last Game of Thrones book for those exciting Anaheim nights.

I walked into Matt's work the other day and everybody clapped for me. My week is much improved.

Waiting And Reading

I have been getting antsy about not hearing about this job. My friend who works there said the lady didn't even tell them she was interviewing OR going on vacation but the IT guy showed up at her office and installed a new computer in the empty office so I feel like I might still be in the running (since we're not sure if she has actually interviewed anyone else). So my fingers are still crossed. Because she hasn't told me no yet either.

So to curb my antsiness, books!

I just finished book 3 of the Song of Fire and Ice series. I had to take a little break in the middle because Good Gravy These Books Are Violent. I am not big on violent movies so I think it is official that there is no way for me to be watching the HBO version, no matter how many good things I hear about it. But I heard a great comparison for this book in particular: somebody called it the Empire Strikes Back of this series, and that makes (hopefully for future books) total sense. Horrible things happen to characters you like and it ends on a very uncertain note. But I will definitely be continuing this series. It also helps to remember that it is based on the wars of the roses and there was quite a bit of royalty then that didn't get happy endings. History books just usually aren't as gory.

However, I needed a palate cleanser. Stella Gibbons wrote one of y favorite books of all time, Cold Comfort Farm, and when I was at the used bookstore with my mom a couple of weeks ago, we found one of her other books, Nightingale Wood.

It still has the same atmosphere and style, but somehow the humor is not the same. I like the way she creates a character, but none of these characters spoke to me like the fabulous Flora Poste.

Cold Comfort Farm is a hilarious book, and has to be one of the best book-to-movie conversions ever. The cast is beyond perfect, with Kate Beckinsale, Joanna Lumley, Stephen Fry, Eileen Atkins, Ian McKellen and Rufus Sewell. It boggles my mind that somebody made this, and that it was a TV movie and that they got these actors, and that they are SO WELL CAST. I don't even want to explain it too much, everybody should just go read it. And watch the movie. Nightingale Wood is very much less exciting and fun in comparison.

Still Waiting.

The lady I interviewed with (LAST Tuesday) is on vacation. So hopefully I will not die of impatience before she gets back.

That said, it has been very peaceful around here. I finally succumbed and got Game of Thrones from the library - it was available for the Kindle but book 1 had several dozen people on the hold list while books 1-4 were available right away as a bundle. So I have been trying to make a dent in these suckers ASAP.

They are very well written, I love a good swords-and-sorcery epic and I haven't read one in a while. The nearest comparison I have been hearing is the Lord of the Rings books and that is a good idea of the scale of the world-building going on. There are some parallels drawn to the wars of the Roses in some reviews I've seen and that also makes sense. I enjoy that the perspective switches to a new character for each chapter (and there are plenty, of both characters and chapters), and there are some strong, interestingly written female characters (which you can't really say for LOTR, Eowyn aside). A lot of it follows the same family and the three main female characters in the family are really enjoyable because they are so different and interestingly written.

To be fair, there is a lot of sex and violence. However, I find it pretty easy to self-edit with this kind of writing. Rape is a common weapon for subjugation of whoever and the violence is pretty prevalent, but there is a reason I am not watching the tv shows. When it's in a medieval setting I can tune it out. When it's in a book like Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and it is very realistic and detailed I find that excruciating and unreadable but this stuff I can basically just *bleep* over in my head. And his writing of all the sexy sexy sexytimes is kind of hilarious after a while. Probably the weakest part other than his need to perpetually list knights and their colors when you know they're just going to die. I'm in book 3 now and I need about three mentions of the same knight or some actual character development before I'm going to try and remember his name.

I finished the first two books and there was no wait on hold for book 3 so now I don't have to finish the whole bundle in three weeks. So I can put my Kindle down for a breather now. But odds are I will probably pick it right back up as soon as I am home from work.

It has been too hot and boring to work much in the yard - weeding and futzing with irrigation are two of my less favorite activities. I have been working my butt off in the front yard (no groundcovers in yet and the bermudagrass really wants to get in there, I can't let it get any ideas) so the backyard (a.k.a. where the tomatoes are) has been neglected. I still have ideas about blueberry bushes and lots of transplanting back there so there should be some more action out there eventually, but right now it is too sweltering to dig anybody up and try to move them so not much excitement. And I needed to baby my tomatoes for the first couple months and failed to so now they have some fruit that is tasty but they are only 1-2 feet tall. I guess every garden has a learning curve.