The Neverending Series

Now that I find myself living near the Hollywood library, in Portland, I've been reading more. I'm sure you're just dying to find out what, exactly, it is that I've been reading, so I'll tell you.

I started out with Exile's Return, by Raymond E. Feist. I was pretty excited to read this, as it's the last book in the series Conclave of Shadows. Basically, this guy, Kaspar, former duke of Olasko finds himself exiled to the far side of the world for doing some pretty bad stuff and has to find his way home, turning into a much better person along the way. As it is the last book in the series, I was expecting to have some sense of closure at the end. Unfortunately, this was not to be the case. As I got near the end, it became obvious that some important issues were not going to be wrapped up in time. They were to be saved for a different series, the Darkwar Saga. I just finished the first book in that series, Flight of the Nighthawks, on Sunday. Now, I have to wait an undetermined amount of time for many copies of the next book to be returned and checked out by other people with holds until I get my turn to read it. Then, I get to wait a year (or so) for the last book to be published. This isn't too bad, all things being considered.

Look at the other book that I read, Phantom, by Terry Goodkind. It is the TENTH book in the Sword of Truth series. I don't even remember how long ago I started reading these books, but it was probably about ten years ago. That's a long time. When I started them, there were maybe two or three books out. Unfortunately, I really liked them and couldn't wait for the next one to come out. And it went like that for the next decade. I'd read one book and get really excited about it and then it would end, and I'd have another year (or occasionally two) to wait until the next book came out. In the meantime, I did other things and pretty much forgot what was going on by the time I got to read the new book. Did I mention that this went on for, oh, at least 10 years or so. And now I've read 10 books. The next book, thankfully, is the last book in the series. It is called Confessor. I'm sure it will be good. But I won't know for sure until it comes out, supposedly on November 13, 2007. The wait is almost over.

But what about for those breathlessly waiting for the finish of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan? For a while I was a close follower of this series, as well. Then it started taking two, or even three years between each book. This is ridiculous. And then, Mr. Jordan comes down with amyloidosis and cardiomyopathy, so there is a very real possibility that he might not live to finish the series. Personally, I hope he finishes it because I'd like to read it sometime. I'm not sure what book I'm actually on, but I'd just start at the beginning and read them all. I won't hold my breath, though. The 12th and final book isn't due to come out until 2009 (a staggering 3 or 4 years after the 11th book was published).

I don't know how it became stylish to write such long series. It was sort of cute back in the day when Douglas Adams wrote his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy that ended up being five books long. But a dozen books is just too many, especially when many of the books approach or exceed 1000 pages in length.

I guess I can understand with the Harry Potter books. A book for each of the years at Hogwart's, though I'd have to say that at least one of the books was a whole lot of nothing happening and probably could have been squished into one of the other books without losing much.

In summary, a series should generally contain a number of books suitable for counting on a single hand. In rare cases, two hands may be necessary. Under no circumstances should I need to use both my hands and a even a few toes to tick off all the books in a series.

Chile Brownies

You'll never guess what I did last night.

Stumped?

OK, fine, I'll tell you. I went to a party!!!

And how did I get invited to a party (being the social non-monster that I am)? I helped a friend move yesterday. And as a result, they took me along to a party on Hawthorne. It turned out to be an early birthday party, thrown by the birthday girl, herself. It also turned out that I have the same birthday (May 5). Neato. So in the spirit of cinco de mayo, there was a bit of a mexican theme to the food and drink. Margaritas, of course (and margarita jello shots, too), Sol, Corona, taco lasagna, quesadillas, and chile brownies.

Have you ever had a margarita jello shot? Basically, it was lime jello with some tequila and margarita mix (not sure whether there was actually margarita mix or not). Tequila and jello shots are an odd combination. I didn't know when I did my first one, and I could definitely tell that they had tequila, and lots of it! Also, as an aside, in the link that I put up for margarita jello shots, someone claims that there's margarita jello mix. I couldn't verify this, but who knows.

Towards the end of the night, the much-hyped chile brownies were broken out. The baker says she used real chiles instead of chile powder. Yum. Everyone said they were really hot, but I didn't think they packed too much punch. Overall, a very tasty treat.

We also played a fun game, but I can't remember the name. I'm working on figuring that out as we speak. You should play it. While drinking. Heavily. And pretend every clue has to do with porn when the other team is guessing and shout it out regularly. Yes.

Update: The game is called Catch Phrase

Crockpot Cooking

Well, my new house came along with a couple of crockpots. I'm sure none of you know this, but I've been threatening to make some beef barley soup for several months now, and I managed to find a recipe for Crockpot Beef Barley Soup. I finally got around to getting everything together (got 5 cents off my food because I brought my own bag (woohoo)) the other day and set out to make the soup. Never having used a crockpot before, I was a little leery of just putting raw beef in with all the other stuff but went ahead and did what the recipe said. I also wanted to put some potatoes in because, well, who makes beef barley soup without potatoes, I mean come on recipe, get with it. Unfortunately, the crockpot wasn't big enough to fit anything else in, not even a single piece of potato. So I waited the 8 hours it said to cook everything and had a bowl. It was darn good, even without potatoes. But with the room that my eating a bowl of soup created, I cut up some potatoes and put them in, cooking the soup for a couple more hours. Voila. It's good both with and without potatoes. Sometime I'll have to get a bigger crockpot, so I can make it with potatoes right off the bat. I think I'll call it beef barely soup without the potatoes. That seems good to me.

You Know You're a Nerd When...

Well, I'm sitting here about to eat some spaghetti. Why do I feel the need to tell you this, you ask?

OK, fine, if you really need to know.

I decided to make spaghetti for dinner tonight. I'm afraid that I decide that a lot of nights these days, so that certainly isn't very interesting, or nerdy. But anyway, the first thing you do when you make pasta is boil some water. I'm cooking on gas these days, as I believe I've mentioned before, which is supposed to be faster, but I never noticed the water to boil especially fast. Today, however, I forgot to cover the pot. I stepped away for a few minutes and came back to find the water bubbling already. I thought this odd, as conventional wisdom dictates that you should cover a pot to make it boil faster. I guess noticing that it boiled faster is a little nerdy, but here's the kicker. I thought about it for a second and realized that the lid is pretty heavy and I know that it might just be able to keep the pressure inside the pot higher, raising the boiling temperature of the water and maybe taking longer for it to boil. I even asked my roommate, who is a current chemistry major (I graduated long ago with a chem major). He thought about it as well. Neither of us could decide whether or not this was actually possible.

I rather doubt it, but the experimental evidence seems to say otherwise. What do you think?

The Week in Review

I've been meaning to post since last Tuesday, but have had a lot going on. Well, just one thing, really, but it took a long time.

I went to a global warming panel discussion Tuesday evening. The main speaker was Bill Bradbury, the Oregon Secretary of State. He gave what was basically a 45 minute, abbreviated version of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. He did a good job, as I believe he has been trained by Gore to give these presentations. The main message of the meeting was that we really need to do something soon or we're all screwed. I've felt this way for a long time and am struggling to figure out what I can do to help. One means to this end is contained in the 2030 Challenge. I'll bet you didn't know that almost half of all energy usage in the United States goes towards the operation of buildings. Globally, the percentage is even higher. The goal of the 2030 challenge is to reduce this percentage drastically, eventually producing buildings that are net producers of energy, by 2030, of course. If you want more information on global warming in general and how you can help out check out Focus the Nation. Or just look up global warming in your favorite search engine and click on a few of the results.

For the rest of the week, I pretended to be a painter. As in, I helped to paint a kitchen, making a few bucks in the process. I worked long hours and pretty much got up way too early and went to bed when I was done. That takes us through Saturday.

On Sunday, I went to a barbecue. I brought a leather mug that I got at a renaissance festival several years ago and lots of people thought it was super cool. One girl asked when I got it and was rather disappointed when I told her that it was from a renaissance festival nearly 3000 miles away in the general vicinity of Harrisburg, PA. I said she should just look around at renaissance festivals in the area, but she revealed that she already has, as she plays a pirate at various festivals around the area. But then I remembered that I had a card from the company that made it and promised to give her any information that the card contained. If you've never seen my mug, it is the Celtic Square, as pictured here. I also got to use a pair of poweriser brand spring stilts. They were for someone a fair amount heavier than I, so I couldn't get much air, but it was neat to be on stilts for the first time. I jumped around for a bit and wished I had something to juggle.

Well, that's my week in review. Hope you have enjoyed it.

Oops

I thought I had posted since I moved in here, honest. I hope you didn't lose too much sleep wondering how my new house is.

So yeah, I'm in my new house. As I said before, it's in a nice neighborhood that is very close to Hollywood. It's also extremely close to the library, which I should probably start taking advantage of sometime. I haven't really explored a whole heck of a lot yet, but I did ride my unicycle around a little bit. It seemed to get a good reaction, so that's cool.

As for the house, it's taking some adjustment. There isn't a whole lot of storage space, so I'm having trouble fitting some of my stuff around. There's a ton of clutter, especially in the kitchen. So far, the biggest adjustment has been with the kitchen. I don't have a whole lot in the way of cooking implements. The house has quite a bit of stuff, but a lot of it isn't especially useful. There aren't really any good pots, and even fewer lids to match. I've just been making really simple stuff like rice and beans and spaghetti. I'm not sure what I'll do when I decide to make something more involved. It could prove to be difficult. But hey, I'll figure it out, right?

Anyway, happy Easter to everyone. I got a box of candy from my mom in the mail, so I've got all that to eat. Yum. I also got a care package the other day which included some very excellent chocolate covered pretzels. They were scrumptious. Thank you!

In other news, I got to work at a birthday party yesterday. I also setup/broke down all the stuff, which included a giant blow up slide, a crazy bungee bull thing, a big blow up laser tag thing and some other stuff. Craziness.

Well, I'm out. Take it easy.