Just a Sci-Fi Kid Like Me

Went to GA for the weekend. Was delayed over six hours Friday night, so instead of getting off the plane at 6 and meeting myhusband for dinner I disembarked at midnight. Blah. Oh and I had taken two books to read and finished them, and yeah, thank goodness for my iPod so I had something to occupy myself with.

Saturday was errands and exploring the area. Scott's in an upscale 'burb that reminds me a lot of Columbia--all the chi-chi chains and stores and things, bikepaths, etc. We went to a bagel place for breakfast (mmmmm....real bagels) and then to a nearby aquarium store to gawk.

Dude. That store. First off I have never been in a fish store that took care of their fish so well. Each of the smaller tanks had maybe 1-3 fish in them so they were all healthy and brilliantly colored. And they were mostly fancy fish. Like, seriously, in one tank there was a Hawaiian Dragon Eel for $899.99.


This lil fella needs a home!

After that we went to find a used book store, because did I mention how I ran out of reading material and still had another leg of a trip? Anyhow, we found a nice shop called Books for Less that had a truly splendid Scifi section that encompassed a quarter and possibly a third of the store. (They were also a Christian bookstore, but their selection was among the best I've seen in a while, and didn't seem to effect their holdings so much.)

I bought Pamela Dean's Tam Lin which I had heard good things about, and oh my, it's lovely. I read about half of it today. It retells the story fo Tam Lin from a liberal arts college in the early seventies. Something about her writing really reminds me of Madeline L'Engle's stuff in the dialogue--the way characters will talk about books and movies and music, but not in a self-conscious way, just the way that people talk about those things. The dialogue and banter of the characters is very realistic and I guess what I really like is thus far it's been two hundred pages of people just being people: riding buses, talking about classes, geeking out, eating mediocre cafeteria food, dorking around. *looks shifty* I know nothing of this. *coff* Anyhow I'm totally going to be looking up the rest of her stuff through ILL.

Saturday night we got to visit with Karen and Shelby, who are among our favorite people in the world, and who we hadn't seen since, holy shit, 2008? Criminy. WELL WE'LL BE SEEING YOU GUYS A LOT MORE NOW. *S*

Sunday we went to a bbq at my sister's. She and my brother aren't talking to each other again--not sure what it is this time. Sigh. If I'd known in advance I would have tried to find time to visit him, too. It's times like this when I have to wonder at the fact that I'm the baby of the family and have a million phobias but I can generally be a friggin' grown up most of the time.

Huge props to the Familia Samuelson who looked in on my kitties. They are spoiled as ever and wanting cuddles. (Varamathras is currently in the way of my computer screen. Any typos? blame him.)

Anyhow. So now I'm home for a few weeks and can maybe sort of catch up on, oh--Life. Movers are coming next week for Scott's stuff and I'll be taking the day off to supervise. I think the back room will become a study of some sort. I dunno. There will be odd holes around the house with a bunch of stuff in Atlanta. This Friday Carla's taking me out to get my hair done (birthday treat!) and I may go dark red again, as I'm starting to hate the gray hedge witch look. Don't get me wrong, I like being a hedge witch, it's the Looking the Part that gets me.

Stay tuned, folks.

More later,
me.