For those of you just joining in - I’m trying to write about the books I read (the ones that are not just fluff, anyway) here. I finsished Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale a week or two ago, but haven’t gotten around to writing anything about it yet. Not going to do the write-up right now, but I will give you some of the quotes that made it from the book into my little notebook.
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I was trying to find episode recaps for Smallville (I just started watching and so have missed most of the episodes) and stumbled across some stuff about previous Superman shows. I looked up Lois and Clark because I remember liking that show, but there wasn’t much information. Just the cast list and a list of episodes and air dates.

The last episode of Lois and Clark aired on June 14, 1997. I saw that date and thought wow, that really wasn’t that long ago, not even five years. Then I thought about where I was then. I’d just finished my freshman year of college. I had six months to go before I decided to take an extended break from school. I had about the same amount of time to go before I met M. I was all in pieces over some guy or another I’d been dating - now I can barely remember him. No wait, I think we’d been broken up a month or so by then and I was already well over him. Really can’t remember that well.

Anyway - I see five years ago and it doesn’t seem that long ago for a show. I think that same amount of time in terms of myself and it seems to be a lifetime ago. Back then I thought my life pointed in a different position than it does today - I was a different person. I wasn’t the one who watched that show - it was someone who I used to be who watched it.

Strange thing, time is.

I hate it when people mis-label mp3s on audiogalaxy. I jsut tried to download “Outside” by Staind and got something by Micheal Jackson instead. Ick.

I’m finally getting around to replacing some of the mp3s I lost in the CD fiasco. So far tonight I have downloaded

• Allison Kraus - “It Doesn’t Matter”
• Bif Naked - “Love Myself Today”
• David Gray - “Babylon”
• Five for Fighting - “Superman”
• Michelle Branch - “Goodbye to You”
• James Taylor - “Fire & Rain”
• Laika - “Black Cat Bone”
• Stroke Nine - “Little Black Back Pack”

Still downloading!

Currently listening to “All Uncovered” by The Watchman.

No, I haven’t exactly done the no communication thing again. Not quite, anway.

I’ve just been feeling really crappy the last few days. Physically crappy. Constant headache, sore neck, sore back, tired no matter how much sleep I got, etc. I don’t know if I had a touch of the flu or what, but I seem to be feeling better again now. I’ve got the energy to write and think and do again, anyway.

The first time I did the quiz:

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src="http://mysite.freeserve.com/Intereo_Liberi/mythresult/dragon.jpg"

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I took the

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target="_blank">What Mythological Creature Are you? test by

!

Then I accidently closed the window before getting the code, so I did it again later and got a different answer. I had to go back and found one question I had answered differently the first time and changed that to get back to the Dragon. The second time around:

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src="http://mysite.freeserve.com/Intereo_Liberi/mythresult/erinyes.jpg"

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I took the

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target="_blank">What Mythological Creature Are you? test by

!

When M. did the quiz he got:

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src="http://mysite.freeserve.com/Intereo_Liberi/mythresult/orc.jpg"

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I took the

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target="_blank">What Mythological Creature Are you? test by

!

I should have guessed that I was married to an orc. It does explain a few things…

I learned a new word today. Pleaonasm: the use of more words than are necessary to express an idea. That so fits me and just about every thing that I write or say - except that I don’t think that it was intended to express quite my style of wordiness. Still, one of these days I will learn to be succinct. Maybe. I suppose there is about as much a chance of that as there is of my writing always in complete sentences, but one never knows.

I took the week of from, well, everything. Every contact, anyway. I was all depressed on not wanting to talk to anyone or BE anyone so I didn’t and wasn’t. I don’t think I have even left the house this week, just stayed home and pretended not to exist.

I haven’t answered the phone except when I knew from caller ID that it was M. calling on the cell from the store or dentist or wherever he happened to be to ask me about one thing or another. I haven’t called anyone. I haven’t even checked my email.

This is bad. The email especially. My real-name account that my family sends stuff to is on Yahoo which has a six megabyte limit and once you’re over that by a full megabyte they cut you off until you free up space. My email box was close enough to seven megabytes a week ago that I probably went over the limit within the first day or two of my withdrawl from society. I hope that no one tried to email me anything important.

The email listed all over this blog is the one I use for all blog/journal related stuff now and I have also subscribed to a few mailing lists and discussion groups with it. It’s the discussion groups that are the real killer, after a week of not checking my email I have over two-thousand new messages. It took forever to download them all - mostly because the virus scanner is so slow in scanning each message that I was tempted to turn it off. Once they all landed safely in my inbox I took a good look at the endless list of subjects and closed eudora. Two-thousand and some odd emails is so not what I feel like dealing with right now. I have a feeling that the majority of them will end up deleted while still unread. I hate doing that.

This is yet another reason why I need to get off my ass and find a job, besides the obvious need the money reason. With a job I wouldn’t be able to do this sort of complete shut down. I wouldn’t be able to cut myself off so completely. I would have to get up and go to work. If I am unable to cut myself off completely then I am less likely to cut myself off at all. It’s better that way, in the long run, I think. Every day as I look at my Eudora icon and fail to check the email; every day as I ignore the phone when it rings and refuse to call anyonel; every day that I don’t go for a walk or at least write here I know that it is so bad for me.. and yet still I can’t bring myself to connect.

I am back now, I think. I still haven’t cleaned out my Yahoo account, read mail on discussion groups, called anyone, or actually left the house (I do plan to tomorrow - maybe) but at least I am writing here again. That is a start, isn’t it?

I’m reading Tanith Lee’s The Book of the Damned now. It’s a hard read - very confusing. I keep having to put it down and come back to it since it is not the sort of book that can be read all at once. It’s like Biting the Sun in that respect, Biting also demanded to be read in bits an pieces. Other than that it is hard to believe that they were written by the same author, the language is just so different. Biting the Sun was set in a futeristic world and used a lot of slang invented by the author. The Book of the Damned, at least the first of the three parts, is set in a imaginary past and used archaic words and manner of speech. As far as word choice goes it is like reading Poe.

I’ve read three or four other books by Tanith Lee, all of a series. I can’t remember the titles now, but they were easy reads that could be read in one setting. Once again, it is hard to believe that this is the same author as wrote those book.

Instead of doing my usual copying down interesting quotes from the book as I read I have been marking the pages of The Book of the Damned so that I may come back later and write down all the quotes at once. Unfortunately the paper I was tearing to use as bookmarks was slick (insert from some prescription) and all of my bookmarks slid out when I held the book upside-down at some point. There were at least five or six quotes that I wished to copy, but I am not sure that I can stand to re-read to find them again.

I can’t write or talk about what is going on and what I am feeling. I just can’t. I don’t deal with things well. I try to escape, forget. Writing makes them real and I can’t handle it. Just to let my readers know what is going on and why there will probably be a mix of deppressing, angry entries with happy ones where I try to pretend nothing is wrong for the next little bit… Look back to the last enry from Thurday night (or possibly the first of Friday mornig - I might have posted after midnight). Know that last night I finally did get up the courage to decide that I was going home. I had plans to pack this morning (well, what passes for morning for me - couldn’t sleep last night and didn’t get up ’till after eleven) then go out to the airport and get tickets or try to fly standby, I don’t know really know how it works at the last minute because I have never flown anywhere without buying tickets weeks in advance. Called home before I actually started implementing these plans.. and found out that it was already too late.

For a change of mood,

Coming back a day later I am editing this entry and moving the text to the extended entry section because my language is a bit worse than what I usually put in here. Click on the more to read what was here. Be warned, bad things are going on and the entry is full of doubt and self hatred. I am a very selfish person sometimes. I know it.. but I can’t seem to find the strength to act otherwise. I’m not always like that… I can be very unselfish.. but in times like these I can’t find the way. (edited 2/15/2002 at 6:50PM)
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As mentioned in my journal, my reading of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is greatly slowed by my copying of interesting paragraphs into my notebook.

I’m on about page two-hundred, but the first passage that I copied down is from page 31.

“There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it.”

We went to the library last night. I had to pay over fifteen dollars in late charges from the last time I checked out books.. oops.

I came out with:

• Fannie Flagg’s Daisy Fay and the Mireacle Man - suggested by several people on Aimee’s wonderful discussion list.
• Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale - I hadn’t planned on checking this out but I came across it while looking for Jeal Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear (which was checked out) and remembered that I wanted to read it.
• Mercedes Lackey’s Oathblood - I find her writing to be quite silly and not really worth reading.. but I read a ton of her books while in my early teens and so when I noticed one on the shelf that had been published a few years after I quit reading her but completed a trilogy of which I had read the first two, I had to get it.
• Tanith Lee’s The Book of the Damned - I don’t have any particular reason for getting this. I wasn’t looking for it, but it happened to catch my eye and I like Tanith Lee. The last book I read by here was Biting the Sun, I reviewed it here.

That’s it for fiction. I also checked out yet another vegan cookbook (one I have borrowed before and liked) and a book called Hold it! which has patterns for sewing all sorts of bags from small pouches to complicated duffel bags. I had copied the instructions for making canvas bags out of it, but lost the copy and I am making another bag and couldn’t quite figure out the measurments to use. For those of you who I had promised to send scanned instructions, I have the book again so they should be coming soon.

I’m reading Margaret Atwood first after having pulled it at random from the bag last night.

There is a new entry in the journal.

Yay! The wedding pictures are finally here! Only six months after the wedding and almost four after we picked out our previews. But they are here!

A few months ago I wrote an entry in the journal talking about purchases made at a garage sale. One of the things we bought was a microwave stand.

Now the most frequently appearing search term in my referral logs is “microwave stands.” Why are so many people searching for microwave stands? Is this something commonly ordered online? Wouldn’t it be easier to just run to Target or Zellars?

I’ve also gotten a lot of search requests for vegan foods since I wrote about eggplant lasagna and and vegan (meaning dairy and egg free) french toast. I’m really tempted to post the french toast recipee online since so many people seem to be looking for it.. but I feel guilty about doing that since it comes from a copywritten cookbook.

If you are one of the many people searching for the vegan french toast recipee email me and I will send it to you (it doesn’t seem wrong to share by email since its not posting it on the web for anyone to see) or better yet, find a copy of PETA’s cookbook. The french toast is really good.. quite possibly better than the normal egg and milk kind. The cookbook also has a lot of other good recipees.

I guess my email wasn’t down yesterday after all.

I double checked all my Eudora settings this morning just to make absolutely sure that I didn’t come off looking like an idiot when I emailed tech support - I hadn’t changed anything recently but all of my other email accounts with the same host were working…

Half of the incoming email server name had been deleted. Oops. I have no idea how that could have happened but I wish that I had thought to check earlier.

So - I have access to my email again and have now (hours later) finished reading the two hundred odd emails I got yesterday.

Email is still down.

I’m going crazy here.

Grr.

My email has been down all morning. Get up in the morning and check my email - it’s what I do. Now it’s one in the afternoon and I still haven’t gotten my email fix. I am not happy.

I think that I have a problem. Is there a twelve step program for email addicts?