Underestimation

A while back I bought Queen of Babble in the Big City, by Meg Cabot, an author that I've nejoyed for a few years. I've read nearly every one of her books. However, when I began this particular book, the lead character irked me a bit. I suppose I just wasn't in the mood for her ditzy, talkative personality. But I recently picked the book up again, since it has been in my to-read pile, and I found that I am enjoying it quite a lot.
The Queen of Babble finds herself in New York with her new boyfriend, who has quit his high paying career to go back to school to become a doctor. Through a series of events, she finds two jobs, one that pays in cash, and one that pays in experience toward her dream of becoming a wedding gown specialist. What enues is an enjoyably light read, filled with a few giggles, a bit of a shocker or two, and a realization (for this reader, at least) that the Queen of Babble may have a big mouth, but she more than makes up for it with a big heart.
I would recommend it to any fan of chick lit, or for anyone who enjoys Meg Cabot's characters and books, or just wants a light read. it'll be worth it. Trust me. However, if this book does strike your fancy, I recommend reading Queen of Babble first, since it is the beginning of the series.

Ok, Ok. . .

So, it's been forever. But, I did find a neat little idea from velocibadgergirl, and I'm steal, urm, borrowing it.


I say ... and you think ... ?

1. Unwanted :: sad
2. You’d better :: not shout
3. Woman :: man
4. Weighed :: truck
5. Upright :: no scoliosis!
6. I feel :: happy, Oh so happy. . .
7. Ill :: ailing
8. It’s like :: You know!
9. Poor man :: he lost his puppy
10. Great :: balls of fire!

I'm a little strange, if you haven't figured that out already. . .

Absolutely Creepy-Yet Amazingly Gorgeous

For some reason, I have Yahoo! set up as my homepage when I log onto the nets, so this was the picture that greeted me. I've always had a strange fascination and respect for snakes. Immediately I wanted to learn what I could about this amazing specimen. To learn about it and other species that scientists have recently discovered, including a rat species thought to have been extinct for 11 million years, click here.

When I first studied the picture of the green piti viper up close, I was trying to compare it with the snakes I'd seen over the years. Something about it's face didn't seem quite right. And then I realized, those big black pits that seem to be glaring at you? Yeah, that's it's nostrils. It's eyes are behind them, and when I finally realized that, I was thoroughly chilled. Just because I think the creature is beautiful doesn't mean I ever want to meet it in person!

Only Fall Out Boy Looks Good In Tight Jeans and Eyeliner

Since I'm bored, and have been watching Fall Out Boy videos on YouTube all afternoon, I have to say that I've seen guys dress like them in real life, but I've never seen anyone pull it off besides FOB.

Also, Pete may be the "looker" of the group. . .


but the lead singer has an adorable geekiness that I find just as appealing.

Twice Tagged

I was tagged TWICE, by my sister and my lovely friend, Tiffany. The rules:

Link to the person(s) that tagged you - (see above).

Post the rules on your blog.

Share 6 non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.

Tag 6 random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.

Let each person know that they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Let your tagger know when your entry is up.

After speaking to my sister over the phone about everything including blogging, she said that since I was tagged twice, I should do twelve habits/quirks/non-important things about myself. I think it will be a challenge, but let's see what I can come up with. . .

1. I think the color gray is so pretty. Other people see a gray day and think it is drab, whereas I feel my spirits uplifted by it, or a gray shirt and think it is boring, whereas I own a bazillion different gray shirts and I adore every one of them. Of course, it helps that I have the coloring that works with gray. :P
2. I find a lot of pleasure in really jamming out to some pretty hard rock. If a good Rob Zombie song pops on the radio, I'll turn it up as loud as my car radio will allow me. I also enjoy System of a Down, Seether, Flyleaf, Drowning Pool, and Disturbed.
3. However, I make it a point to keep the songs on my iPod upbeat and uplifting. There is nothing like walking to class while listening to "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," by Daft Punk. It's also hard to be in a bad mood when taking my dog for a walk and listening to jack Johnson.
4. I love different kinds of ethnic food. Among my favorites are German, Italian, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Greek.
5. I am unable to deny my dog anything when she puts her mind to getting something by utilizing her big brown eyes and cute little face.
6. I am an avid follower of Questionable Content, and ICanHasCheezburger.
7. I think I'm missing the gene that makes me able to come up with cute, creative things, and the artistic ability to achieve them when I DO happen upon a cute idea.
8. My favorite dinosaur is the T-Rex.
9. I find geology fascinating.
10. I love to star-gaze when I can.
11. Taking me to a bookstore has been likened to taking a kid to a candy-store. In fact, my brother-in-law lost me once in a small bookstore. It's not hard; I'm pretty small and end up in unusual book sections.
12. My hair is almost black when I'm indoors, but when I'm outside in the bright sun, and you look closely it's actually red. Seriously, my sister might not believe me, but my hair is dark red when I go outside to take my dog for walks. I should know, I'm the closest to it!

So there you go. This is extremely close to a meme a did awhile back, but that one concentrated more on food. Enjoy! Oh, and I tag velocibadgergirl.

How a Geek Girl Keeps Herself Occupied

I promise I am not a ditz. Ok, I have my moments, but show me someone who doesn't! When boredom encroaches at my job, and I'm stuck unable to do much about it, my mind switches to Distraction Mode. And it isn't pretty. Here are some things that I've thought in the last week in DM.

• Wow, I've heard of split ends, but I don't think I've ever actually seen them before. Definitely time for a hair cut.
• Why do people wear so much perfume? She's way over there and I can still smell what she's wearing.
• I wish I could whip out my crossword puzzles right about now. I'm pretty sure I'm losing brain cells.
• I wonder what will happen next in Elantris. Why can't I read books on the job again?
• Why do they call them pants? It's one item of clothing. Sure they have leg holes, but shirts have two sleeves and we don't say, "I can't find my shirts."
• Unless of course we are searching for more than one shirt.
• How can I wear a skirt without freezing my legs off, and without doing the whole "jeans under my skirt, I'm so fashionably forward"?
  
• OMGsh, if my boss comes out to tell me something I already know one more time she's going to learn the definition of smart-ass.
  

New Addictions

A few years back, a friend showed me her set of tangrams, 7 shapes that you must use in order to fill in a larger shape. I must admit that it is a lot harder than it sounds. You have to use all seven shapes, they can't overlap each other, and they can't go outside the lines of the larger shape you are trying to re-create. That still makes it sound simple. And in a way, it is. Not in the sense that it's easy, but that it's not complicated. It takes all of your mental processes to work, but it's almost zen-like in it's style.
When my friend first showed me tangrams, I wasn't all that interested. I tried one, found that I couldn't figure it out, became frustrated, and decided that it wasn't a game for me.

But I recently rediscovered it in an unlikely place. My iPhone app store. I found Tangram Pro for free. It has 8 puzzle sets, with many, many puzzles inside each set, providing for hours of this (for me) stress-reducing game. It's free for a limited time, so I snatched it without much thought. I figured I could give it another go, and if I didn't like it, it wasn't as though I was wasting a buck or more on it. I could just uninstall and be done with it. But I became addicted. I'm actually stuck on one in the second puzzle set, having already completely the first.

I also got a couple of my co-workers hooked. One of them helps me solve the ones I get stuck on, or will just gaze at my phone until he can get himself to ask if he can try. My other co-worker downloaded it onto her iPod touch the night I showed it to her. Now we all geek out at work!

I Have Issues

I am getting beyond angry right now at Mozilla Firefox. It continues to crash, refuses to start up, and leaves me seething while I use the inferior IE browser, instead.

It started about a week ago. Continually, Firefox would give me a pop-up: "We're Sorry" and then go on to explain that it had crashed. I could restart it. So, I did. And the pop-up reappeared. So I quit, providing my e-mail address for information and updates. No information or updates were ever given. I finally uninstalled and re-installed it today, and it seemed to work just fine. I was ecstatic. All of my saved blogs, all of my comics! I could visit my sites again!

Alas, it has decided to crash and refuse to start once more. As I type this, I am looking at the IE browser with distain and trying to remember my stupid foxmarks password.

Urban Shaman

I've noticed a pattern in the books that I lean toward when I'm really wanting a good read. I end up with the urban fantasy genre most of the time. Oh sure I go for more traditional fantasy as well. For instance, one of my favorite authors is Julliet Mariller. I loved her Seven Waters trilogoy, which I just discovered has another book out, which I am totally psyched about. Anywho, I've basically finished my newest urban fantasy book: Urban Shaman, by C.E Murphy. This book was amazing. I loved it. The heroine is totally likable, and her powers are amazing, and the way the author describes the universe from a shamanistic point of view was really transcendant. Definitely worth the read! Sadly, I can't really offer a synopses because there are so many stories and twists and such that it's really more of go-see-for-yourself kind of book. Enjoy!

GeekGirl Wonders. . .

There are two shows on Discovery Channel that seem to me to be the exact same, except for different hosts; Man Vs. Wild, with Bear Grylls, and Survivorman, with Les Stroud. Each show has each host out and about in different harsh environments, roughing it and giving you tips that could "actually save your life" if you were ever, say, shoved out of an airplane in the middle of Alaska. They do things like build shelters, and eat dead carcasses, and drink their own pee. Really, the only difference I can fathom is in the host's accents. One is British, and one is American (or at least, he sounds American.)
So, the whole point of this little blog is to pose the question: Why have both shows? Which is better? Is drinking your own pee really a good idea?

Neglection

I have neglected to up-date any of my dear readers on my Fall into Reading Challenge, which I nearly finished, with the exception of reading The Spartans. In my defense, I did end up reading several books that had not originally been on my list. For example: Peeled, by Joan Bauer. I let my sister talk me into thinking it would be a good book, but the young adult fiction? Yeah, I'm kind of passed that now. I fail to get interested. I also read several other books that I ended up buying myself, and now I'm at the sad, sad point where I am out of books to read. Save The Spartans. :(

It's Not Easy Being Geek

I believe a huge part of my geekhood has been inherited by my father, who at the ripe age of 53 still manages to have the best and coolest new games before I even have a chance to drool very much over them in his new PC Gamer magazines. It's hard being a with-it geek when your father has already beaten the game you wish you could afford.
My dad's newest acquisition is FarCry 2. Unlike the old game, which was pretty fixed in most of its environmental content, this one allows far more freedom. Roam at random and blow things up and do your missions with zest and gusto. No more closed corridors where the only doors are to your next checkpoint or maybe just some extra ammo or health packs. You can explore to your little heart's content. Or really, to my little heart's content. You might be a player that wants to get things done and move on with the job. Either way, FarCry 2 is bound to be a grenade belt of kicks and giggles.

P.S. Do I even NEED to mention the beautiful graphics?

Why I Hate People

Seriously, 12 years of free education has failed to teach someone the very basics of science? I remember learning about rainbows in 4th grade, 7th grade, AND 9th grade, not to mention College geology, but I don't begrudge them if they couldn't afford that. Still, does this person do ANY research? Have they bothered to use Google? Will someone put them out of my misery?!

WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?!?!1!

(Go to failblog.org for more great FAIL.)

Get 'Er Done!

I've finished Son of a Witch, which I really liked. Again, it's gritty, but the ending was a-freaking-mazing. I also finished Real Mosquitoes Don't Eat Meat and Other Inquiries Into the Oddities of Nature, by Brad Wetzler. Here's one of my favorite entries:

"What Makes the Moon Look Bigger at Moonrise?"
A: It's called the moon illusion, and it's just that: a trick on your eyes and brain. ...the orb is the same distance from [both horizons]. Scientists have hundreds of explanations many still clinging to a notion Aristotle put forth around 350 B.C.: that the image of the horizon moon is magnified by our lens-like atmosphere. [There is also an] "apparent distance" theory, suggested by Ptolemy in the second century and formulated by Arab phyicist al-Hasan nine hundred years later. . . . When you see the horizon moon, your mind takes into account the terrain in front of it and concludes that it's really far away and, therefore, really big. When the moon's overhead, the cues are gone, and the visual center in your brain is unable to assess it's distance (it's 249,000 miles away, after all) and thus can't determine it's size."

Pg. 19, Wetzler: W. W. Norton Company, Inc. 2005

I love me some good theories, so I thought that was pretty interesting. I'm starting on Einstein in His Own Words now.

Progress

I posted earlier on my choices for the Fall into Reading 2008 reading challenge, which began on September 22. I've realized that I am a bad candidate for reading challenges. Sure, I finished Summer Blowout, by Claire Cook, a rather disappointing chick lit book for which I had higher expectations, and I'm nearly through with Son of a Witch, by Gregory Maguire, which is, of course, reaching all of my expectations and even maybe furthering them, but that's only two books in the last few weeks. I blame The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova. This novel is told from two points of view, or maybe in three, depending on how you look at it. A historian in her late 50's looks back on her teenage life. In doing so, she tells the story from her teenaged point-of-view, but also tells her own father's story in his own words as he recalls his travels around the world in search of the true story of Vlad Draykula, or Vlad the Impaler, as he is also known. This story has me in its little wordy grip and won't let go. But why isn't it on my reading list? Because it's nearly a thousand pages long. I'm a quick reader, but I'm not that quick!