The Life and Times of El

When you have suffered a disappointment there are certainly worse ways to console yourself than reading Jane Austen, and so tonight I have read the entirety of Sense and Sensibility for the first time.


( My thoooooooooughts, for the three people who do not care to be spoilered )

I've started writing poems in Latin. I think this is generally known as the point of no return, "abandon hope all ye who enter here"* territory. Thanks to the Perseus Tufts website, I give you a poem written in Latin with a vaguely haiku format. It's all about the multiculturalism, really.

(And now we have poem mark II, hopefully now sans mistakes and now that I've had time to poke at it. Meaning is still the same, I think.)

Bellum adgreditur:
Milites pergunt, sacerdes precorantur,
Et ancillae in tenebris contremiscunt.


War approaches:
The soldiers march, the priests intone,
And the slave-girls quiver in the shadows.

All feedback on the Latin will be welcomed with open arms. I'm still not entirely certain about the third declension.


*If you have already abandoned hope, please disregard this notice.

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In other news, I finished reading Master and Commander today! And I have Post Captain waiting for me! Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah! Drinks all around!

Once upon a time, a peasant boy of dubious parentage from a Doomed Home Town was saved from an evil overlord (which earned his undying hatred, of course) by a wise mentor, learned some awesome new skills, saved the day and got the girl. Sounds like just about every other fantasy novel in existence, but this one is set in Japan! With ninjas! And magic! How could it not be awesome?

I'll be telling you soon.

Before I start, I must say a few things: I liked the books, truly I did, but they could have been so much more. As it is, I've read only the trilogy, not the sequel nor the prequel so perhaps there are things I'm missing. And Lian Hearn is writing for young adults, not nineteen-year-old uni students with a slight addiction to TVtropes.com. Still, I came away feeling that it was competent. And that's not such a good thing when you're writing feudal Japan fantasy. But I digress.

Argh, how long has it been since I updated my 50bookchallenge list? Too long, anyway.

17. The Assassins: The Story of Medieval Islam's Secret Sect by W. B. Bartlett
18. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
19. The Pirates! in An Adventure With Scientists by Gideon Defoe
20. The Tent by Margaret Atwood
21. Temeraire: Black Powder War by Naomi Novik
22. Across The Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn
23. The Amazing Maurice and his educated rodents by Terry Pratchett
24. Grass For His Pillow by Lian Hearn

I now wait impatiently for Empire of Ivory and Brilliance of the Moon, which belong to separate series but are equally awesome.

It's hot. Argh.

I feel as though I haven't updated my sadly-neglected journal since christmas, which is broadly true, because three words and a link do not an update make, however awesome the news. I was not eaten by zombies, declared an enemy of the peace, or awarded the Nobel Prize for Being Awesome, which doesn't exist but should. I guess it's a bit late for bragging about christmas swag, so I shall say only this: owl calendars, Spamalot t-shirt, and all four seasons of Blackadder ftw.

What happened...

...almost a month ago: we flew to Adelaide on christmas day. I don't know why either, the plane was packed anyway. I miss the good ol' days of travelling to Europe when you could have three seats to yourself because everyone was afraid of SARS. In any case, I bought Hogfather at the airport so all was well. It was nice to see the relatives, and my little cousins are growing up to be very cute. They have the same set-up as my brother and I: girl and boy, two and half years apart. I think it works well. Adelaide itself feels more like a big country town than the capital of a state, but I will say this: the sky is beautiful there. They have a special sort of afternoon light that makes the hills red and orange, and it doesn't exist in Melbourne. I think it's because of the humidity in the air, but it's beautiful, and makes for great stargazing. My inner scientist is slowly taking over, because I was mostly excited about stargazing and investigating an old quarrey up in the hills. Geology and archaeology in one burst, huzzah! I convinced my brother to come with me, and we started off up the hill. It was steeper and less tree-ish than I remembered, but we pressed on. We eventually gave up about halfway up to the top, but the views were nice. We learned later that it was not, in fact, the way to the quarrey at all, and we'd tried to walk up there at midday, in mid-30s heat and 5% humidity. Sometimes we're kinda dumb that way.

Howl's Moving Castle was on the tv on Christmas night, and it was a nice end to the day. They may have taken a few liberties with the plot, but the art made it awesome. Dammit, I want to live in a house that can change locations, walks on two legs and has a snarky fire demon. I think by this act I introduced my aunt to anime, which is all good. I just hope she finds the tamer shows first.

...two weeks ago: more holidays, this time to a beach house on the coast of Victoria. While Melbourne sweltered under 40-degree days, we sat back and laughed and, er, sweltered under 40-degree days. But we had sea-breezes, so hah. I got sunburnt and it still hasn't faded, but such is the price I pay for English skin. I burn faster than an oil-soaked wad of tissue paper in the Sahari desert. We walked along the beach and waited for the New Year, and aliens tried to abduct us*.

We drove along the coast to see the Apostles Of An Indeterminate Number, and my inner geologist squeed. My family winced as I took a multitude of pictures of the eroding coastline, and listened rather unwillingly to me pointing out the layers in the rock and how the beaches were formed, etc, etc. My father and brother will warn you against travelling in a car with me along the Eastern Freeway in Melbourne, because I will not shut up about geology. Is it my fault that the freeway has an awesome collection of geological features? Seriously, they have a monocline and layered beds and synforms and antiforms and faults in the rocks and erosion and a completely different set of dark volcanic basalt rocks, I could make a geology bingo game if I could find some other people to play with...

I'm doomed, I know.

*well, surveillance helicopters. But they had large searchlights like all proper aliens.

...a week ago: I thought that my efforts to cover my local shops with resumes had finally been useful, because I got a call asking me to come in for job training. 'Huzzah!' said I, 'I will have money and a reason to get up before midday!'

The experience made me swear off shop assistant jobs for life.

I disliked wearing make-up and heeled shoes, but I could accept that as necessary. But I would have been all alone while I worked, and I am not naturally talented at selling things to people. I did six hours of training last week, and wondered if the store owners would look down on me for doing the crossword at slow points in the job. Besides that, it's been a week and no phone call, no email, no nothing. I don't even know if I've got the job, and at this point I'm inclined to decline it. I'll go back to Wholefoods and practice serving food instead. I don't mind being paid in food stamps.

On the plus side, I spent a book voucher on Reaper Man (the book that changed my views of shopping trolleys forever) and Feet of Clay. I feel like a true Discworld fan. I've read all the books apart from FaustEric and Wintersmith, and I am the proud owner of:

Guards! Guards!
The Wee Free Men
Good Omens
Reaper Man
Hogfather
Going Postal
Feet of Clay
Thud!
Making Money (which I'm disinclined to include, because I didn't enjoy it.)

...this week: I have not done very much apart from reading metaquotes and fandom_secrets, and visiting the library. My goal this year is to read fifty new books, and I'm up to four so far, although I went to the library and came back with... er... seven. My backpack is a thing of beauty. Spacious! Red! Padded straps! Multiple sections! Pockets! And what I like most is a little carabena hook for keys. It is awesome.

I also bought new sunglasses, because my old ones have been with me for at least five years and I was getting sick of tightening the screws constantly, even if doing so with my penknife was interesting on the bus. The new ones are black, and apparently have seven layers of protection, which makes me feel better about the price. 'Forty dollars!' quoth I, 'this is a sore price on a uni student budget!' But they sang sweetly* and convinced me.

*the constant stream of strange music at K-mart may have influenced my mental state at this point.

...this weekend: Apparently, the wildlife of the eastern suburbs of Melbourne loves me. While out walking during the last two days, I have crossed paths with kookaburras, a turtle, a tiny possum and two Tawny Frogmouths (and as I now know from my perfectionist brother, they are not in fact owls, in the same way that daddylonglegs are not spiders. But I digress.) I got within two meters of the second one, and it was beautiful, if rather stupid. It flew down onto the gutter, and then didn't move when a car approached. I had to shoo it away, silly thing. I have also had to escort a grasshopper from my bedroom, and a spider from the living room.

And now I must go away and beat my muses into submission if I want to get anything done at all. Yes, Beruthiel, I am looking at you. And it doesn't help that I want to write The Muse's Guide to AuthorsWriting Slaves.