Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
52/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
A better-than-average Romulan villain and a quest for a mysterious quarantined planet make this one quite enjoyable. Wraps up a bit quickly at the end, but even so, does so while bringing in some fun threads that could lead to more stories down the line (though I have no idea if the author wrote more Trek or followed up on any of those threads).
Day 141: Nothing particularly fancy today. We had more opening week stuff at work, but this was more straightforward work planning things and not so much photogenic fun and games. So it’s yet another “me on the couch in the living room in the evening” shot.
Day 140: Next week is the beginning of fall quarter classes at Highline, so this week is our opening week for faculty and staff. We started with a big welcome event, then followed that with a “Highline Bingo” activity that had us going around campus to visit various services and departments, learning a bit about them, and getting our bingo card marked to try to win prizes. I got a Highline lanyard!
Day 139: Continuing to work on processing vacation photos. So far I’ve made it through the Seattle to NYC train journey, our days in NYC, and the NYC to London ocean voyage. Now I’m working on our days in London. Lots of these to go through, so this part will take a few days!
Just a funny thought I had while listening to the new Barbie movie soundtrack album. I don’t do these very often, so the quality isn’t perfect, but hey! Not bad for a quick little off-the-top-of-my-head project.
Download: DJ Wüdi – Choose Your Mortal Kombat Fighter (4.2 MB .mp3)
51/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A very nice “coffee table” book covering the making of TWoK. For someone with a long-time interest in both Trek and behind-the-scenes tidbits and interviews, there isn’t a lot in the text that’s brand-new to me, but there were some things that I hadn’t heard, and the book gives a lot of nice capsule biographies of many of the principal people involved in the film. The look of the book is excellent, much like Titan’s earlier look into the art and effects of TMP. Definitely worthwhile for fans of TWoK.
Day 138: We swapped out our summer front-of-house decorations for spooky season stuff (most, at least; lights will go up later on), part of which involved re-configuring a decorative skeleton from standing at attention (better for storage) to a less rigid (well, for a skeleton, at least) pose. After coaxing this many bones into place, I’m probably a chiropractor.
50/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Not really that great of a book, but entertaining now as a bit of retro-tech kitsch. A bit of noir mystery and a lot of needling of the publishing industry, all based around the then-SF idea of publishing books electronically. In some ways somewhat naïve about the progression of technology, but in other ways remarkably prescient about the upheaval that electronic publishing and distribution would cause in the traditional publishing world. An entertaining curiosity if you come across it, but not good enough to be actively sought after.
Day 137: We definitely like the nice open entryway to our place, but it does make changing lightbulbs a bit more complicated than usual. Slightly more so when you misjudge your step and unexpectedly go down four steps at a time instead of one. No injuries, thank goodness, but it was a bit of an adventure.
Day 136: A couple weeks ago, I got an invitation (complete with $1 bill) to fill out a Nielsen survey. I had to jump through some ridiculous hoops to do it, and then it went on forever and had far less to do with the media I watch and more with shopping and leisure activities, so it wasn’t very interesting. But I slogged my way through, and today got a thank-you note with $10 cash! So…yay?