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I've been attempting to laze about a bit as a recovery from our round the west trip, but I've never been very good at that so instead I got my motherboard fixed, went to the library to pick up books, restarted by PhD search, registered for the GRE, and opened up my book several times to stare at it.
I read Holly Black's Tithe today and was largely disappointed. Her writing style is a bit too flowery for my tastes, though I suspect others might not mind. The plot was only so so, and the main character of the series is as dumb as a brick. I feel very sorry for teenage girls who identify with this series. I think I was also disappointed that there was no sense of wonder to the series to balance out the bad. The general message seemed to be that fairies suck only slightly more than humans suck - boring.
I got some realistic advice about my PhD, which is going to take me a few days to research and digest before I make any decisions. Fun fun.
This evening, I went to bujinkan again, and was able to work out some of my stress. I was happy to see one guy there, J., who I'd trained with in the beginning but hadn't seen for ages. My training partner was a nice guy who put up with Jack and J. occasionally wandering by and saying things like, "Be careful, she's a killer." and "She's crafty. See how she just slips out of there." (I felt much like I was the animal in a nature documentary after that one *L*) We had a good time and the training was simple stuff using kamae to block and then ura and omote throws. My partner spent the whole time smiling, especially at my jokes (I joke around when I'm fighting and having fun.) so I made a special effort not to injure him too much since he was a nice guy. Our weapon was the knife which is always fun. The first knife move showed us how to relatively safely remove the knife from your attacker (though the first thing you do when someone attacks you with a knife? Run.) and the rest were are more usual, keep the knife away from you but otherwise ignore it moves since grappling for a knife always gets you in trouble. Much easier to just break their other arm or something. They'll drop the knife then, I promise *eg*
Afterwards, I chatted with M. for quite awhile (in the summer, we go for ice cream, but since it's winter...) before taking off. The police are out in force on the parkway tonight. I saw six police cars in a 30 mile drive.
Tomorrow, I have a flu shot in the morning, then lunch with my mother.
I read Holly Black's Tithe today and was largely disappointed. Her writing style is a bit too flowery for my tastes, though I suspect others might not mind. The plot was only so so, and the main character of the series is as dumb as a brick. I feel very sorry for teenage girls who identify with this series. I think I was also disappointed that there was no sense of wonder to the series to balance out the bad. The general message seemed to be that fairies suck only slightly more than humans suck - boring.
I got some realistic advice about my PhD, which is going to take me a few days to research and digest before I make any decisions. Fun fun.
This evening, I went to bujinkan again, and was able to work out some of my stress. I was happy to see one guy there, J., who I'd trained with in the beginning but hadn't seen for ages. My training partner was a nice guy who put up with Jack and J. occasionally wandering by and saying things like, "Be careful, she's a killer." and "She's crafty. See how she just slips out of there." (I felt much like I was the animal in a nature documentary after that one *L*) We had a good time and the training was simple stuff using kamae to block and then ura and omote throws. My partner spent the whole time smiling, especially at my jokes (I joke around when I'm fighting and having fun.) so I made a special effort not to injure him too much since he was a nice guy. Our weapon was the knife which is always fun. The first knife move showed us how to relatively safely remove the knife from your attacker (though the first thing you do when someone attacks you with a knife? Run.) and the rest were are more usual, keep the knife away from you but otherwise ignore it moves since grappling for a knife always gets you in trouble. Much easier to just break their other arm or something. They'll drop the knife then, I promise *eg*
Afterwards, I chatted with M. for quite awhile (in the summer, we go for ice cream, but since it's winter...) before taking off. The police are out in force on the parkway tonight. I saw six police cars in a 30 mile drive.
Tomorrow, I have a flu shot in the morning, then lunch with my mother.
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