Personal

The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.

Year 50 Day 99

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Me sitting on a couch, looking down and concentrating on sewing a button onto a shirt.

Day 99: Sewing isn’t a particular skill of mine, or something I do very often, but I did manage (with some instruction from my wife) to sew a wayward button back onto a shirt. A small triumph, perhaps, but a triumph!

Year 50 Day 98

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Me standing in a strip mall parking lot in front of Rose Bakery, holding a small container of cake.

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.

📚 War Drums by John Vornholt

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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.

Me holding War Drums

Year 50 Day 97

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Me sitting in a chair in front of a bookcase, with boxes for Star Trek glassware and a pizza cutter in the shape of the original Enterprise in my lap, holding the pizza cutter.

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!

📚 Imbalance by V.E. Mitchell

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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.

Me holding Imbalance

Year 50 Day 94

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Me standing in front of a white wall, wearing a black t-shirt riffing on the classic Joy Division Unknown Pleasures album artwork, only with text that says Tosche Station / Power Converters.

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.