Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.
Day 98: Over the weekend when running errands we saw a local bakery that we hadn’t noticed before, so today on my way home from work I stopped by to pick up a couple pieces of cake for dessert. Verdict: tasty! We’ll likely go back sometime when they have a larger selection, as it was a bit sparse at 5 in the afternoon.
36/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
An average adventure, mostly focusing on Ro and Worf as they try to manage confrontations between an unusually xenophobic Federation colony being beset by a band of young Klingons who have gone feral after crashing on a planet. Ro is presented pretty well, but Worf’s characterization often felt off – a bit too smiley, and whatever the situation, it’s difficult for me to see him dancing. Arguably there are reasons for this, but it just kept feeling wrong.
Day 97: At yesterday’s Norwescon picnic, I got a couple fun gifts from one of my friends. A full set of Star Trek glassware, with four glasses representing different planets and a shot glass representing a Borg cube, and a very cool but terribly impractical pizza cutter in the shape of the original NCC-1701 USS Enterprise. My friends know me well!
Day 96: Today was the Norwescon Volunteer Appreciation Picnic! I got to hang out with friends and chat about Norwescon, the local Worldcon bid, vacations, home remodels, Star Trek, speeding tickets, DJing, why I don’t like Google Forms, and other random nerdy and mundane topics of conversation. It was great!
Day 95: An excellent dinner of homemade pizza on a sourdough crust. Pepperoni and pineapple for me, mozzarella, basil, and olive for Prairie. Quite tasty!
35/2023 – ⭐️⭐️
This one starts with an interesting premise, as the Enterprise is sent to negotiate with aliens only briefly encountered before, the Jarada (the unseen, highly demanding aliens that were the B story in “The Big Goodbye”). But while there are hints of an interesting society, the rest of the book doesn’t hold together well. Actions are taken by the aliens that are never really explained, and Enterprise characters are either reduced to repetitious mannerisms (Dr. Crusher brushes locks of her flaming red hair out of her face nearly every time she’s mentioned) or simply badly portrayed (I know Keiko and O’Brien have difficulties, but in this book they’re both rendered nearly incompetent by their insecurities). Toss on a rather abrupt end to the whole thing, and this is one I wasn’t disappointed to reach the end of.
Day 94: A classic album by the best band under the twin suns of Tatooine! Amusingly, though I have three different spoofs of the Joy Division Unknown Pleasures album artwork shirt (this one which I’m pretty sure I got from Diesel Sweeties but the store appears to be down right now, Nimoy Division / Vulcan Pleasures, and Depeche Mode / Boys Don’t Cry), I’ve yet to add the original to my shirt drawer.
Day 92: Trader Joe’s Cocoa Truffles are really good little chocolate truffles dusted with cocoa powder. Really rich, so one (or, okay, sometimes two) is a perfect small dessert. Highly recommended.
Day 91: One of the advantages to my wife having the summer off before she starts teaching in the fall is that I can park in the lot next to the building I work in, instead of in the upper lot closer to the building with her office. Of course, the disadvantage to this is that the lot close to my building has no shade, while the upper lot has spot we can almost always grab that is directly under a big tree and nicely shaded. On days when the outside temperature is in the 80s or higher and the temperature inside the car at the end of the day is likely well into triple digits, I’m not sure the advantageous parking spot is really that much of an advantage….
34/2023 – ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A good second half to the far-future grand-scale space opera of Hyperion, moving away from the Canterbury Tales-inspired pilgrim’s tales to spend more time with the rest of the universe as the story progresses. Definitely best seen as the second half to a singular work than as a sequel.
NOTE: Given Simmons’ descent into right-wing politics, including Islamophobia and publicly attacking Greta Thunburg, he has earned a space on my “milkshake duck” virtual bookshelf, collecting those authors whose work I discovered, enjoyed, and might still enjoy, before later realizing that they are what I consider to be rather horrible people.
