I finally broke down and bought myself a new laptop recently, and it just arrived the other day.  Bliss.  I was having some keyboard issues with the 5-year-old one, which was just annoying as all get out (and made it very hard to want to reply to emails, write blog posts, etc. when I knew I’d have to copy and paste to get the letters I wanted).  The old one was also incredibly slow.  Painfully.  Torturously.  It got me through grad school and gave its life in the process.  RIP.  Well, not until my brother tranfers all my files for me…

So here I am on a lazy Saturday morning, coffee at hand and an enormous fried egg in my stomach (seriously the biggest I’ve ever eaten – the egg didn’t quite fit into it’s spot in the carton – the beauty of fresh farm eggs).

I finished an audio book that I didn’t care for – The Ghost in Love – and it seems to have put me off audio books, which is a pity since I have Sally Gardner’s The Red Necklace waiting patiently to be listened to.  Yesterday was my last day of work before two weeks of vacation, so I won’t be driving to work and listening in the car.  I might get some listening in on my trip to California, while driving from airport to farm to university town – last time my rental car had a CD player and I listened to most of Laura Whitcomb’s A Certain Slant of Light.  I remember the whole thing vividly because I (being unfamiliar with the car and the roads) accidentally hit the random feature on the CD player and couldn’t figure out for the longest time why the book was jumping around so much in time.   Hmm, that probably influenced my impression of the book (although I did go back and listen in order, parts had already been spoiled).  But I associate that story completely with that drive, and in retrospect I like the book more than I did initially.

Right now I’m reading Eon: Dragoneye Reborn by Alison Goodman – originally from Leila’s recommendation.  It took me a while to get into it – the first 100 pages were interesting but a bit slow – and then yesterday I hit a point of starting to speed through it.  The world of the book is fascinating, and gender roles play a huge part in the story, although you could probably read it as pure fantasy.  The cover art only says “fantasy” and “dragons” but there’s a lot more going on and I’m so curious to see where the story takes me.  The world-building is impressive and the characters are complex and believable.

On the job front, things are looking good.  We’re getting there.  The job I want now exists, and I just have to get it – we’ll see what HR says about promoting me vs. making me apply and interview.

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