The Myth & The Majesty

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Backing up a couple weeks, because I'm even behind on my xkcd reposts...

It's been awhile, hasn't it? I'd love to blame the holidays for my lack of posting -- after all, it was a bit before Thanksgiving when you last saw me here -- but the truth is simply that I don't wanna. Yep. Don't wanna. But as it's the end of the year -- the end of a very long, very strange year -- I figured it was time to reappear. How are you? ... Yeah, that sounds about right. Had you asked me a year ago, I would have said that by now I'd be in Denver, maybe even back to living alone and enjoying what my early thirties have to offer with a full complement of health benefits and a 401(k). I'd have gone on a couple of road trips and perhaps I'd be saving up for a big trip overseas. As I've mentioned previously, however, this year has not gone as expected. First, of course, was the job situation. When the initial change didn't take, I ended up with a temporary gig ... that just keeps reappearing. Then a few months back, my...

1. So I finally jumped on the "Stranger Things" bandwagon. After a week and now 1.22 seasons in, I'm trying to learn to pace myself so that, among other things, I'll stop being followed by dark tentacle creatures through dreams. 2. I appreciate Black Hills winters greatly. 3. Still wouldn't argue with a little snow, though. A little. 4. Looking at a weird week ahead. We'll see how it all goes.

A year ago, I gave a not-quite-a-review for a book. I read Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore in a Denver hotel room while preparing for a life that ... as it turned out, never quite happened. It was a weird place and time in my universe and on some level, I wondered if my deep, abiding love for that book was inextricably linked to that almost-life. Six months later, I read it again. Turns out this was a book that had nothing to do with where I was. I still loved it. Then, something crossed my radar in September. Robin Sloan , the hilarious and brilliant author of Penumbra , had a newly released novel. ... About bread. Kind of. I finally acquired it last week, and then this week I opened it up. And the next day, I was done. Here's my review: Go read it . The thing that gets me about Sloan's books as a whole is that they are rather hard to describe. They're not directly mysteries or love stories or anything quite that easily classified (well, not yet...

I'm finally hitting that thing on my to-do list that I've been casually delaying for, oh, about six months now. Of course, it immediately went awry. Like most of you, I carry a smartphone that at any given point in time contains hundreds of photos I've barely perused since they first appeared on the screen. Sure, every once in awhile I'll thumb through them, trying to remember what day that hike was or when exactly that aunt visited, and occasionally I'll trip over something oddly memorable. Like this. Or the day I took this. Or ... Seriously, how many cat pictures do I have?    This one caught me a tad off guard. And of course, there are the food photos. I seem to be a digital hoarder. Well, no longer. In the midst of my data cleanse, after I'd pulled everything from the last two years off my memory card and while I was sorting through it, I got The Message. Card Corrupted. Formatting Required....