Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

I know there are colder places in the country and the world. That doesn't make me feel any warmer.

When I lived in New York, I frequently went out in the snow without a coat on and in a short sleeved shirt. I seemed to never feel the cold.

Ever since I moved to California, I've been getting colder and colder every winter. It doesn't help that the apartment building I live in has no insulation, just brick walls (so it holds the cold and radiates it in, and in summertime it's like living in a brick oven). You can feel the cold coming off the walls. I keep the heat on 70 and I still have to wear a knit hat and fingerless gloves while at my desk (near a wall).

I went out for lunch and I got chilled to the bone. I've been home an hour and my fingers and toes are still icy cold. (With gloves, socks, and slippers on.)

What in the world happened to my ability to keep warm? (Part of it is that I have short hair now. While I love my new ("new") haircut so much, short hair is so so so much colder.)

Now, books! I got up to 30 books for 2012, which broke my goal of 25. Woot! Here's a rough scale of how they broke down:

Loved: 12 (Trading in Danger, The Pride of Chanur, The Wind Through the Keyhole, Jurassic Park, The Children of the Sky, Beguilement, Legacy, Passage, Horizon, Life as we Knew It, Leviathan, Behemoth)
Liked: 2 (Marque and Reprisal, The Enemy)
Neutral: 4 (The Mist, Five Short Stories by GRRM, A Fire Upon the Deep*, The House of Silence)
Disliked: 5 (Flowers for Algernon, The Warrior's Apprentice, This World We Live In, Prey, The Handmaid's Tale)
Hated: 7 (Thrall, Engaging the Enemy, His Majesty's Dragon, Fur-Face, The Dead and the Gone, The Fear, Next)

* Only because it was a reread. First time I read it I loved it.

( The 30 books back here... )

Lessons learned:
I cannot count to 30. I made two mistakes, but at least they canceled each other out and my total really is 30. A nice round number to end on.

I was worried I hated all the books I read this year. Further evidence that I have the memory of a goldfish! I loved 12 of the 30 books, and hated only 7!

I'm going to keep my goal 25 books for 2013. Also, I'm going to keep posting about them. I like being able to look back and see what I read and what I had felt about them.

Last thing I do before bed is check the weather. So tonight I went to weather.com, clicked the 10 day forecast for my area, then blinked.



Showers with a 100% chance of Vietnamese?

I feel bad not knowing what language that is! Based on Googling, it doesn't look to be Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. It doesn't look Vietnamese to my eye, but I'm far from an expert on languages. The whole page was an odd mix of languages:

[My town], [state] (ZIP) Weather
Updated: 三月 12, 2012, 9:45下午

Best. Summer. Ever. July, nearly noon:



Sitting by an open window to read and it's actually almost too cold! It's been like this for two weeks now, and weather.com tells me for the next ten days our highs won't get out of the 70s.

We've had only one hot period so far this summer. It'd be more than perfectly fine with me if it were our only one.

Back to reading! A Dance with Dragons is starting to pick up a bit. 18% in. (Page numbers don't translate between ebook and physical one.)

I was looking through the Ice and Fire app that I wrote about the other day, checking out the eeee screenshots and weather around the world, when I came upon New Delhi (India). The app claimed the weather was "smoke". Confused, I went to the Weather Channel page, weather.com, to see what they had to say.



I do not want to know how "smoke" is a weather! Haze? Yeah, okay. But smoke? Time to move!

February 5th. 2:30 in the afternoon.


Party at my place! Bring your shorts! :D :D

And in totally unrelated news, the Oxygen channel is doing a Glee marathon! It's interesting to see the early eps again. (And we can add "Will planting drugs on Finn to make him join Glee club" to the list of reasons why Will is so skeevy.) At first they showed only the best eps (Madonna, Gaga), which made me remember why I loved the show so much. Then they moved on to the current season... All the horrible mean stuff they did to Beiste, all the reasons I'm no longer really comfortable or happy with the show.

Apparently Oxygen is going to have a new reality show. "The Glee Project". Whoever wins it will appear on Glee. I'm assuming it must be a singing contest, but there were no details mentioned.

Oh well. I'm still looking forward to the new Glee ep tomorrow! And it's so lovely having all of my windows open all day. Yay airing out my apartment! :D

Edit: Oh hey, and for Groupon folks, there's a "super Groupon" out today, $10 for $20 at either Barnes & Noble store or online. I bought it. It becomes active tomorrow, expires 4/11 (at which time it becomes worth $10 instead of $20, so not a total loss!).

Have I mentioned how much I love this summer?



Tomorrow, August 5th, our high will be 67. :D :D :D

Who wants to move to California!

Edit: Wow, and it's going to continue that way! Highs for the next ten days:

5th: 67
6th: 68
7th: 67
8th: 66
9th: 64
10th: 63
11th: 66
12th: 70
13th: 70

Our highs! In August! :D