Draginon

I finally got around to finishing House of Leaves. Interesting book but a very hard and infuriating read at times, enough that I would go a couple months inbetween chapters. The portions pertaining to The Navidson Record were fun to read, Zampano’s ramblings got way too academical at times that I would space out and skip sentences, Truant’s footnotes were a chore since they tended to be nonsensical ramblings and were way too run-on in the beginning to be fun. The letters by Truant’s mother were fun as well. TBH I’m not sure how an accurate movie of this would work since the different stories are very different style wise, tone and even font so maybe having multiple directors would help but the Zampanò ramblings would be cut since it would be so forced if included while Truant’s story would need to be a framing device while the letters… I don’t have a clue. I’m glad to be done so that I can finally get onto something else since I wanted to finish this book before starting something else. Not quite sure what’s next but I think I’ll head into my Brandon backlog.

Lord of Chaos is good, my only negative is that it’s the start of that dumb long summer plot that I hated reading during summer and needed a break from. Good luck finishing Monte Cristo in a reasonable time.

I did like the relationship between the lead and her eventual husband but the overall mystery is a dud for me. I like how her early stuff is random like this, since in her first decade she was still figuring out what worked for her, and I wanted more stuff with Anne after this but we do get Colonel Race again as an old friend of Poirot so this is connected to her main canon of work, unlike Tommy & Tuppence which are fun offshoots not connected at all. I’m not sure what to think of Race himself since he takes a weird role of being a good guy but also a suspect and red herring antagonist so I’m hoping his role is better defined when he’s next seen. I’ll also be glad to get back to a Poirot since I’m reading her stuff in publication order and I have another one off next before returning to ‘that pompous man’ that I enjoyed in that first book. Also interested to see what Marple is like when I get to her books, though I have heard she’s different in her first book so I’ll have to read and hope I like the real Marple when I get to her.

Got around to finishing The man in the Brown Suit. Didn’t really have much time to read thanks to plenty of late shifts and moving. This book was more espionage based compared to Christie’s other books but did start with a death. It eventually turns from ‘Who is the mysterious Man in the Brown Suit’ to ‘Who is the Evil Mastermind known as The Colonel’ and frankly I can’t tell you why the evil mastermind needed to be taken down. The people responsible for the earlier thread were dead and he was just an associate of theirs for the crime. It would be like Gaston dying halfway through Beauty and the Beast and focusing on bringing Lefou down. Going to take a brief break from Dame Christie to read something a little seasonal, House of Leaves. And yes I’m reading the full color edition.

Not bad, just a ‘why??!!’ moment. I had ordered something off Amazon and it arrived but it was the wrong item. The only option given to me was a refund, not even a replacement or sending me the correct item. Then I went to the store to get some iced tea and they were all out. I then went to grab something to eat and get tea there and they were out too.

Earlier I watched Six. It’s a great musical concert with a wonderful cast of women. Everyone in it was fantastic and did their own renditions on the songs. I was in a mezzanine box, so I was off to the side a little, but it was based off the discounted tickets available through work and these were the few good options I could get without going back of balcony seating.

Thank you! They’re Billy’s from IKEA. I wanted a contrast between the regular sized ones with the thin ones and having my Sanderson shelf be in the middle opposite the door made sense. I have another small bookshelf not showing in the picture that I’m going to put my comics/manga on. I’m hoping to be done with all this before Halloween since I got delayed thanks to my dad being a nuisance around the house. All the placements are in flux as well since I’ll find more of certain stuff that might need a different shelf to be on. I actually might get another shelf later but I’ll have to do delivery since my car is too small to pick it up and too heavy for me to lift without help. I can assemble it myself, it’s just hauling it is the problem.

Currently in the middle of rebuilding my library, and more importantly getting a better setup for a Sandershelf, and just from sorting I think I’m going to need a couple more shelves to be safe since I want to leave some empty space for growth purposes. In the picture the short shelf I’m planning on having be my Sandershelf with the wall space to hang my Bridge 4 poster and my Kickstarter goodies on top of the shelf. This is all work in progress since I’m mixing movies and books with this setup. So far I’m going to keep all Doctor Who stuff on one bookcase, all comics/manga together, all Marvel films together, etc. so it’s going to take me some time to finish this.

Not a bad day but just a ‘this coworker is being frustrating’ thing. This particular coworker acts like everyone, and I mean everyone, is giving too much ice cream away. I was trained that you fill up the cup and for cones have 3 swirls on top but she thinks that’s too much ice cream. She even gave a ‘demonstration’ on how much and she even said it was still too much. I could understand if it was just our area but every single venue that has ice cream? Heck the Harry Potter area has 4/5 swirls as their standard for cones and she was livid at that one. What made it worse is she thinks her standard applies to places not even owned by Universal itself like McDonald’s and Disney World. Theres another coworker and she always acts like a jerk. One venue it had been a few months since I was there for closing so I needed a moment to remember all the steps of what was needed and that was unreasonable for her. Heck I was squeegeeing the excess water towards a drain and she had a problem with that. When emptying the shake machine for cleaning she got on me for not getting big enough containers for the shakes even after telling her I got the biggest ones available.

Had a permanent address all lined up and the inspection came back showing there was at least $6000 of mold repair, a new AC needed & a water heater as well. My sister was the one keeping in contact with the realtor since my hours are unpredictable, I might have a 8-5 shift one day but a 1-9 the next, and she decided to cancel the contract so now I’m meeting with the realtor on my day off to look at a couple more places. I loved how that place looked and I’m just tired of being in flux like this and just want to have a home to call my own. I’m hoping the new ones lined up look nice otherwise I don’t know what I’m going to do.

Wasn’t sure where to post this. Last month my mother had found out she had stage 4 cancer. She was put into the hospital a couple weeks ago after fluid got into her lungs and they discovered that the cancer wasn’t on the lungs like they thought but inside them and eating it away. They put her on morphine last night to ease her out of the pain and she passed away at 3AM. My sister and dad are both there taking care of the arrangements to get her cremated and get rid of some of her stuff we won’t need now. I’m not there because I’m halfway across the country and work at a theme park so I can’t just drop by and be there without letting my supervisors know. One thing my sister wants us to do is go on a Disney Cruise and scatter the ashes at Disney’s private island but I did the research to see how legal it is and, unless you contact the cruise beforehand to make an arrangement, you could get into big legal trouble, as in banned for life if caught. I really don’t want to do something that could get us into trouble at that level. People caught scattering ashes at the theme parks get lifetime bans and I don’t want to get banned from something I love. I even told them over the phone when they told me she passed and my sister didn’t care about doing it properly and legally. It’s going to raise some red flags if they see ashes coming aboard but none leaving since they screen the bags before and after and it would be morbid to be carrying ashes in a carry on bag. I didn’t love my mother at all by the end, she was a toxic person who mentally and emotionally abused me, but even I don’t think breaking the rules is worth doing that just to give her a final resting place. I’m also trying to figure out when we could even go to do something like this. Do it at Christmas? Around her birthday? Just a random Tuesday? I’m just torn over what to do in this situation at the moment.

Finished Murder on the Links yesterday. Not as golf centric as the title implies since the body was only found on the golf course. Its actually kind of amusing how much of a romantic Poirot is since he can look at two people and instantly tell they like each other and tells Hastings to ‘back off’ from the girl, not that it helps since Hastings is a Casanova falling in love with every ‘goddess’ he sees. Even this book has Poirot help Hastings get together with his future wife by the end. It’s just amusing since Poirot is such a rational person and doesn’t like getting into sentimentality at all. So in essence Poirot is all ‘get your mind out of that gutter and focus’ but when he sees it’s true, innocent love he’s a wingman! Next up is The Man in the Brown Suit which is a stand alone since the characters don’t become regulars like Poirot, Marple or Tommy & Tuppence.

Finally got around to watching Encanto and for all the praise I heard about it it was pretty average. I know, pretty controversial but I just want to be honest here. I liked the message it was going for, that family isn’t perfect and the generational toxicity aspect of it, but overall it’s not something I would place in my top 20 favorite Disney Animated Canon films (only the official ones from the animation studio so forget about the Pixar films here). Moana felt like a much more relatable film and character compared to Mirabel. I don’t hate Mirabel, she’s just unremarkable for a Disney heroine. In terms of songs they feel very forgettable unfortunately. I can remember the melodies of all the songs from Disney’s previous films, even if it’s just the instrumental version, but I barely remember what any of the songs sound like besides some of We Don’t Talk About Bruno. People praised Surface Pressure and I can’t even remember how it sounds barely half an hour later. I guess my point in the end is the film feels like lip service and an attempt to be diverse on a surface level only. Another way to put it is that when I see any new Disney film for the first time it’s all I can think about all day long, Moana and both Frozen films did that, but Encanto is one of the few that didn’t do that for me. Others that didn’t do it for me were Winnie the Pooh (the newer one not the 70’s classic) and Wreck-It Ralph 2. Heck if I only think about only the current era of Disney that started with Princess and the Frog (film 49) through Encanto (film 60) and compare it to the previous renaissance era of The Little Mermaid (film 28) through Lilo & Stitch (film 42) Encanto feels on the same level as Dinosaur (film 39) and during that era Dinosaur was the oddball film of the group and Encanto definitely feels like the oddball for me in this new group of films, especially if I don’t count the canon sequel films as their own film and just the second part of their initial film, which means we might be seeing the beginning of the end of the Neo-Renaissance era for Disney and might be heading into another Dark/Dork Age era soon.

Finally got around to finishing Dame Christie’s The Secret Adversary. I’ve mostly been reading on the shuttle ride at work, usually one chapter each ride, but I got terribly sick during the middle so I needed to take care of myself first so I only just finished it. It was a pretty good mystery, though it’s categorized more as a spy thriller. I had kept going back and forth on who the perp was and I was down to two heading towards the climax and one of the two was correct. Supposedly the perp is one of those ‘you’ll never even guess’ suspects but I had him on my list halfway through after one key person ended up dead and he was one of only three people there so it had to be one of them. Onto the next Christie book, Murder on the Links

Not about me but this whole situation between the governor of Florida and Disney is getting ridiculous and scary. After Disney stopped endorsing him after the backlash of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill he quickly threw together a bill to dissolve the Reedy Creek Improvement District making Disney World officially part of Orange and Osceola counties. To show how reckless this is the bill was passed without any discussion nor any financial reports made to see how it’ll impact everyone in the two counties. In one report it’s being estimated that property taxes will increase by 25% for everyone in Orange County and even higher in Osceola county. The mayor of Orlando is even saying that to include Disney in their budget will wreck havoc since they would have to figure out where to get that additional money from since the budget was already set when the news dropped. This shows how much damage this one bill is causing to everyone in just two counties and will most likely spread to the rest of the state all because of one man having a feud with a company.

This happened earlier in the week and is more an outrage thing than just a bad day thing. To preface I was scheduled to work in the employee grill area but instead was sent to the front of house order pickup. It was time for my break, around 4PM, and I had just clocked out when this one team leader told me I had to relieve the cashier at the employee grill. He walked away before I could tell him I was on break and the time clock is right next to the manager office and I told the one manager I had already clocked out for my break and she told me to take my break and she’ll tell him what to do. She also told me to get my meal voucher from him and he tried to refuse giving me one until I said that the manager said to give me one. As I was walking to the grill to get myself something to eat I could hear him arguing with the manager in question. When I got to the grill and was deciding what I wanted to get that same team leader showed up and told the cashier to go home since apparently his shift ended at 4PM and the other person working the grill area was getting the tenders and fries cooked up meaning there was no one manning the area and other employees were arriving for their break so I had no choice but to take over for the moment. By the time it had calmed down enough the other employee had showed up in the meantime and I could finally find a moment to let them know I was technically on my break and they couldn’t believe the team leader put me in that position and when I checked when I had clocked out it was almost the end of my break. Then two of the managers, including the one I mentioned earlier, and both of us explained what happened and they couldn’t believe he went that far and adjusted the time schedule for me so I could get my break. I almost had the same type of problem with the same team leader the previous Friday, April 1st, since I was on the clock for an event and I was sent to our icee cart with someone else. One manager, we have 5 or 6 to make things clear, an hour into our shift told us to relieve each other for our breaks and we checked with each other when the other leaves after the manager left. Since my shift ended first she told me to take the break first. When that time came I went to the grill as normal and after clocking back in I was heading back to the cart to relieve her when the team leader I mentioned calls out to me to drop everything and help on front of line pickup. I tried to explain what the break for us was like from the manager but he didn’t want to hear it but luckily the same manager was working at the burger station and reiterated what the break was for the carts and I needed to give the other person their break. When I got back I told her what almost happened and boy was she surprised and mad at the team leader. I don’t know what this guys deal is but in one situation he almost went over a manager and in another he outright defied one. In terms of company hierarchy it’s the worker at the bottom, team leaders and then the manager at the top so yes he pulled rank to the wrong people. And yes everyone knows who’s in which position since the workers have their area uniform, team leaders all wear blue shirts and managers wear regular clothes. Even if you don’t know their names you just mention they wear street clothes and they’ll instantly know how in the wrong he was.

I finished reading The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Dame Agatha Christie’s first book, and it was pretty good. I’m not sure how much people feel about spoiling who the killer is in old mystery books so I won’t say who it was but I will say they keep changing who the main suspect is almost every chapter after the ‘obvious’ suspect was cleared so you are just as confused as the narrator until the murderer is finally revealed. Poirot himself was enjoyable to read and I’m looking forward to seeing more of him along with seeing Miss Marple and the other detectives like Tommy & Tuppence, Battle and Race. Next up is The Secret Adversary also by Christie and is the first of the Tommy & Tuppence books. In other news I picked up House of Leaves and boy just skimming through it was a trip with that formatting and page layout with the footnotes and other oddities. I’ll keep this one on hold for a while, maybe have it as my spooky read for Halloween?, so I’m looking forward to reading this bad boy then.

Currently am reading Dame Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Poirot’s method so far is fun to read and can’t see why she considered him insufferable to write.

I’m kind of wondering if the Cosmere ones are possibly some of the other stories that Brandon’s mentioned over the years but hadn’t gotten around to writing. Specifically I’m thinking of ones like The Silence Divine (Ashyn), Aether of Night (whatever world that is), The Dust Brigade, the Silverlight story and the kite magic story set on a minor world featuring one of Hoid’s apprentices. Heck one could be a self contained story set on multiple planets because the character is on a scavenger hunt where each clue is on a different planet and this could be fun to read since it would follow a worldhopper and we can see how that lifestyle works.

Anyone think the title on the one manuscript in the video, the feral wizards one, might be a fake title to just keep us guessing and throw us off? I wouldn’t put it past the team to do a mock-up of a title just to keep it secret but still have us speculating on these books.

When you are divided between getting the swag boxes or not and trying to justify the price with shipping since getting the books and swag is $600.

My mother suggested I go to work as a guest tomorrow and kind of observe how things are done so I decided to get myself a couple cozies for some people watching material and not resort to my phone. I got The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Murder at the Vicarage and The Secret Adversary all by Dame Agatha Christie. These are all the first books featuring Poirot, Miss Marple and Tommy and Tuppence respectively. Yes older stories like these tend to be a little… unsavory to modern audiences but I have a cutoff point for that type of thing. If it’s the 60’s onwards I will be upset if they include bigotry stuff but anything older I forgive since it’s a different time and they didn’t know better so I’m fine reading it. Yes I might cringe when it shows up but I’m not going to go on a rant over a book from the 20’s or even the Victorian era making uncouth stereotypes that were widely believed as being true back then.

Got myself a book and a graphic novel to read until all my other books arrive. The titles are The Name of the Wind (10th Anniversary Edition) by Patrick Rothfuss and Magical Boy by thekao. I’ve read the free chapters of Magical Boy on Tapas and it’s a good story where it’s a magical girl world but the main character is trans male so he has to deal with all that entails from his mother, the previous magical girl, and the transformation outfit starting out as a very girly dress. Highly recommend this story since it tells a trans story without being exploitive or unrealistic.

I’m not sure which I’d want. I think what I’d want is that he comes close to what the Ideal is but something more important is there that swearing the Ideal is pointless, like if he becomes a new Herald if they need 10 new ones to recreate the Oathpact, though it might help if he needs to be at that level to be accepted as a new Herald, or if he takes up either Honor or Cultivation’s Shards since at that point it’s pointless to swear it when you’re a God. I’m also torn on if he should die or not since he just made up with his family and everything so to put them into the path of losing him again would be GRRM levels of cruel.

@Experience @Robin Hatter Thank you! I’d been trying since last summer to get a new job and kept getting big fat goose eggs in my area and decided to take a chance out of state and got a hit my first try. It’s really telling since everyone claims there’s job opportunities galore in Texas but no one here wants to hire at all apparently. I don’t have a place just yet but I’m going to be staying at an extended stay hotel for the time being since if I got an apartment I won’t have any furniture so I’ll at least have a bed. I’m working on getting a townhouse in the area so I’m hoping it’ll happen.