journal for 2002-09-21
it’s saturday all day today
This morning, Gloria started her day by working out, and I started mine with extra sleep. I managed to sneak onto onto the GameCube before she got logged in (she was on the phone), and I played while she took her post-workout shower. She took her turn, I took another one, and then we headed out for breakfast.
We’d decided pretty randomly on going to the downtown deli for bagels, but they were closed. Gloria suggested that we should go to Granny McCarthy’s Tea Room, since we’d meant to go there a week or two ago. We did, and despite a long wait to get seated and served, the experience was good, just like our previous visit. We both had the “traditional Celtic” breakfast, which was darn good. I had some Scottish breakfast tea, polluted with milk and sugar. After breakfast, we had some ice cream. I had pumpkin pie, which was darn good.
Between breakfast and ice cream, we’d gone into the Moravian bookstore. When we came out, some guy was giving me the stare treatment. I thought he was kinda familiar looking, but I couldn’t place him. When we got closer, he reminded me: he was Tim, one of the guys who lived in my suite at the philosophy house at BU! Apparently, he’s been living in Bethlehem for about a year now, and had wondered when he was going to finally run into me.
I gave him my card and told him to give me a call sometime; I’m not sure if that’ll happen.
After breakfast, we poked around Blockbuster (and found nothing). I picked up some replacement batteries for my Dreamcast’s VMU, and we looked for stuff at the mall. I had a look at the Canon S200’s, but they were all 75 USD more than online. If I get one, it’ll be on the web.
When we came back home, Gloria played some more AX, and I ran an errand or two (in Animal Crossing) before we headed out to the Greek Food Festival. The Greek food was pretty good, although I think we both felt, afterwards, that we would’ve preferred a gyro to what we got. We might try again, tomorrow.
After that, Gloria played some more AX while I sorted books, and then I played some while she finished Shadow Puppets. It’s her turn again, now. She’s definitely a much more devoted errand-runner and letter-writer than I am. I sort of poke around and shake trees and kick the ball around town. She really Gets Stuff Done. By the time I get back from Cardiff, I bet she’ll have a statue in her honor in front of the train station.
Shadow Puppets is the third book in the Ender’s Shadow series, or the seventh in the Ender series, depending on how you define the series. In the great Orson Scott Card tradition, it is much worse than the previous book (so far) and keeps sinking into self-indulgence and sentimentalism. Also, I really can’t stand the way that so many books in mass-market series begin with pages and pages of exposition. People who read the previous books should remember details like, “Peter was elected Hegemon,” and people who didn’t should go read the first books first. I don’t want to slog through prose like:
"Hello," said Peter, who had been elected to the once-powerful but now greatly weakened office of Hegemon only last year when his brother Ender, who had saved the world from the Formics, also called Buggers, who wanted to destroy the human race and cover earth with wiggly little hives.The buggers wanted to do that, not Ender.And Peter's last name was Wiggin.
Ugh.