This week

Guilty Pleasures, Laurel Hamilton: The first Anita Blake vampire hunter novel, and my first by this author. (Also my first vampire novel since Memnoch. Fun, worth the five or six hours ;) (paperback)

Schroedinger's Cat, Robert Anton Wilson: I'm almost halfway through this meander through quantum multiverse theory, primate anthropology and American politics. It's more twisty and jumpy than either Illuminatus! or Timequake (Vonnegut), but there are some great gags in it.. like Ulysses (SBW btext)

X 2, Chris Clairmont, Novelization of the upcoming motion picture sequel. A fun read, but too much character shear. I recognize mutants by their names or powers, and they turn out to be the wrong age, in the wrong place, falling for the wrong other mutant ... particularly irritating considering the novelization is by the guy who wrote the X-Men for 17 years, including the run when I was a big fan. I am particularly upset by how they used Deathstrike, it that was even her... (paperback)

Philosophy of the Matrix: various, They turned loose a bunch of philosophers and authors on the movie The Matrix and then put their essays up on the movies web site. All sorts of yummy, crunchy stuff about the eternal debates about the nature of reality, brains-in-vats, and the nature of Heaven and/or the First Matrix. I'm around halfway through the newly updated material. (web, http://www.whatisthematrix.com, after the fluff click news, look for the update)

Quicksilver: Neal Stephenson's new book is still not available, but there is a fun excerpt at the end of the latest paperback edition of Cryptonomicon. Starts in Boston, middle of the 18 C CE, by my guess, and the protagonist is named Enoch Root ;) Oops. If you are wondering, the book is not free, but unpriced. Sorry for any confusion. YOu may be able to find the excerpt online, I dunno.

http://www.kurd.com : Interesting data and propaganda about Kurds and Kurdistan. Look for the map of the territory they might claim to see why all of the states in that region are suspicious of them.

Dreams Underfoot, Charles de Lint: I read the first two stories in this collection before deciding to just blast through X2. Wow, apparently urban shaminism has it's own genre. Well-spun tales about city folk meeting imaginary creatures, interacting with them dramatically, and trying to srt out their world-view in light of it. (paperback)

And wedding insanity, and the arrival of spring (Yep, I've been sniffling for almost two week straight now)...

Oh bother. She still hasn't come out of the shower. Ah, procrastination.. I had ought to go dragging her out of there (figuratively) .. Edit: Well, I procrastinated on fixing this post and she emerged from the shower, only to slip into her room. *sigh*

Welcome to new readers who be-"friended" me. I have reciprocated. Edit: And the three more I missed first go round have since been added. D'oh.

Addenda

I left off arguably the most important thing in that update,
and since people have already commented on that thread:

The vision in my left eye has gotten noticeably worse in the last fortnight. While reading X2 on tthe couch, I found I could not make out the words to read with my left eye. I think it's a really big "floater" that obscures a large portion of the field of view. If it doesn't change (for the better) I may have to go see the opthamologist (who offered no help when the problem manifest).

Okay. So, without glasses, I have to hold the back cover of the Dilbert book at about three inches to be able to read it (this is just my nearsightedness/astygmatism. Switching between eyes, I find that with the left eye, there is a parsistant blurred stripe meandering down the cneter of my field of vision, maybe just to my right of center. It tracks with my eye, and the words that fall behind it are unreadable. This does nto seem as bad as with the novel this morning, but the text size and contradt are different.

Addendum: Appointment with opthamologist thursday (~$100 USD)

Further: It $130 USD for the eye exam Apparently that is the "cash price". (For those abroad: The Yank healthcare system is so screwed up that people with insurance pay as much as twice what uninsured people would be billed for the same visit, drug, treatment. The twist is that the government (Federal) is the insurer that picks up most of those bills, so the money is guarenteed, and the rachet the price 10-15% a year reliably in most parts of the country.)

I have a slighter better understanding of what's wrong, including the lack of effective treatment options. I also have an appointment for Friday with the retinal specialist, who will likely discomfort me further and agree with the opthamologist. Last time, when the first visit was ~ $75 USD, the retinal specialist was about $300 USD.

(1 + ((130-75)/75 )) ) * 285 = ?? more than three hundred
dollars for nothing.
I'm currently trying to talk my way out of seeing the specialist. I don't really want to pay money to hear another doctor tell me: "Well, it usually just goes away in a short time."