Monday, November 7, 2011

It's Monday

Well, it's been a long and warm fall so far. Temperatures in the 80's and 90's...even up until this last week....until yesterday, in fact. We finally had to turn on our heater, it was so cold...and Saturday it rained almost all day. All Day....LOL - actually from about 3 til whatever a.m. Sunday morning. For me, that's all day. During this hot and strange weather, I came down with a cold....it quickly affected my breathing and during a routine doctor visit my oxygen sat was low enough that the nurse wanted to redo it, til I mentioned that I have emphesyma - then she said, "oh" - and an awkward silence followed. Awkward silences - always fun. I happened to already have an appointment set to meet a new doctor (Kaiser is always changing doctors - this will be my fourth new doctor in four years and they all treat things slightly different). So I had to do through the whole question and answer game on the emphysema/smoking/did you quite smoking thing/smoking vs colds, etc. The good thing about this new doc is she ordered antibiotics right away and sent me for a chest x-ray, instead of waiting a month. This is a long way of me explaining why I didn't read or rather finish a book - not one book this past week. I was pretty fatigued and actually missed two days of work, sleeping the days away. Hopefully, I'll start to feel better soon. Had a fun, if sleepy weekend with the grandchildren. I love having them around, even though I'm very tired during the weekend. I could barely talk and both kids had me laughing at the strangest things. I think I'm starting to feel better - or it could be the residual zaniness of having laughter and grandchildren around, so hopefully I'll get better and better this week.




This brings us round to It's Monday, What Are You Reading? The weekly book blog meme hosted by Sheila of Book Journey. The meme is mainly used to showcase what we've been reading, what we're planning to read, etc. Although I end up using it to TMI everyone about what ever health issue or fun thing is affecting me at the moment. Kind of a total round up. LOL. For example, not only were you regaled with my health info (thus the TMI), you get to see what books I didn't finish yet am trying to read AND hear about what movies I watched this week - or at least the movies that stuck in my head. Only thing is, it's kind of hard for me to remember movie names...


Books that I've read at least a chapter of this past week include Snuff by Terry Pratchett (one of the few hardback copies that I will shell out money for); Deadworld by J.N. Duncan (I see that a sequel is already out - haven't bought it yet, don't know if I'm going to like #one yet); and The Stars Down Under by Sandra McDonald (read her first novel during my Sci-Fi obsession summer, and can't quite stay away from the SciFi novels yet... ). I've still been enjoying the occasional SciFi novel, but nothing quite compares to the likes of Ann Aguirre's SciFi series, or Tanya Huff, Elizabeth Bear...This series comes very close though, and has a lot of Australian mythology weaved within the story.

Disappointed! I knew that there were going to be some books released in November that I wanted to buy...Normally I would have been down at Borders, picking up my favorite Authors' works the day they were released...But we all know that now Borders is closed. So I had to go to Barnes and Nobles...Where they DID NOT HAVE the books in. And four days after release day STILL didn't have the books in. So I had to request an order for Magic On The Line, and kept thinking that I had the date wrong while looking for Reckoning by Lili St.Crow. But no, I didn't have the day wrong - it really was supposed to be out, yet no sign of it. Sigh....HUGE FRUSTRATED SIGH... Probably going to have to order it. In fact, I'll probably end up doing more online book buying because I'm not that crazy about Barnes and Nobles (do you want to save 10 percent on your purchases by BUYING OUR MEMBERSHIP card? Hmmmm? No. don't want to have to pay out just to save ten percent, a year. Now if it were a lifetime card, maybe.... ) There's nothing quite as disappointing (in the book buying sense) than looking forward to a book being released up to a year before hand, just to not be able to find it the week it's released.
Movies - watched a SciFi movie tonight. Can't remember the name. Started out interesting - a ship is on it's way to the sun to send a "payload" (bomb) into a sun to kickstart it back to burning life. It's been dying out, and the earth has been getting colder and darker. Now I don't even pretend to understand why a nuclear bomb would help a sun to continue to burn, or why the bomb into doesn't just get absorbed and used up - making it a temporary solution. This is the plot of the movie. So this years long mission starts out well enough and you slowly learn that it's not the first time they've tried this. The first time failed and no one knows why. Finally they're getting close, their ship has a garden that supplies oxygen and food and they get by on recycled water. They hear a signal and find out it's coming from the first mission...and then the movie gets weird. They take a vote to go on with the mission, bypassing the 7 years past failed ship...but wait. one person decides to re-route the ship, and then they sustain some damage, thus making it suddenly necessary to visit this other ship for the extra bomb. Now for one reason and other, (failed repair jobs, etc) people start dying off - usually due to weird mishaps...only after some get stranded on the other ship and one has to sacrifice himself to get the others off the ship in a risky not enough space suits for everyone way - (let's cover ourselves with insulation from the ship walls!) They find a strange last message on the "dead" ship. So now after transferring back to the other ship - in a move that ended up with two people dying, (we've now lost four crew members) there isn't enough oxygen to complete the mission and get back to earth (oh yeah, in another mishap the oxygen garden exploded) they vote on offing the guy that caused the problem in the first place- the one that made the wrong calculations. Only he's already dead. So now there should be enough oxygen only there's not. Seems they have a stowaway - The movie get's stranger in a horror/scifi blend. Oh man. This guy is part computer image part monster who's kind of falling apart. Of course. He's the one that's been causing some of the problem because he's insane and trying to stop the mission. He's been waiting for years, and years. Somehow, after this guy killing off crew members one by one, the last two surviving crew members get the bomb aimed toward the sun, and somehow the last crew member in IN the bomb and he detonates it him self. There is lots of flames and hotness and brightness in this movie...You get the impression that the sun is not only very hot, but blindingly bright (really?)

So now everyone is DEAD. I don't think I would deal well in a situation like this - having to carry through and continue knowing that I'm putting myself at death's door. Consigning myself to dying - no second chances. But the final shot is of the earth's sun suddenly brightening up and day being just like a nice bright sunny day - a snowcovered bright sunny day. So the bomb into the sun apparently works.

weird movie.

I was going to go on about other movies, but my eyes are trying to close up on their own, so it's time for bed and for some sleep!

Good Night everyone and Happy Reading this coming week

2 comments:

  1. I have only recently become a Terry Pratchett fan. How do you like Snuff? Is it part of the Discworld series?

    Anne
    headfullofbooks

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  2. Anne - I love Snuff so far, but then I'm a long time Pratchett fan. I love the way he writes and his world view, the way he expresses it with his writing. Snuff is part of his discworld. Commander Vimes is part of this story. How many of the discworld books have you read so far? There's a lot of them, and many of them can be read as standalones even though they're all "related" to each other. Like a big old happily dysfunctional family with lots of laughs!

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