We got a bedroom door installed that has a kitty door built into it. Archer has taken to opening it no problem, but Lana doesn’t want to push it to start the process of going through. If I crack it open she will squeeze through. We tried keeping her out last night, to try to get her to force her way in, but that didn’t work. I opened the door for her when I got up so that she could snuggle with Stephanie for a bit. Archer was fine with coming in and out during the night.
We had a great time going to see Inside Out with a bunch of other people at Shoreline theater. We had Adam, Jeremy, Kevin, Lindsay, Andrew, Debby, Riley, Rong, and Brian there with us. Stephanie set up the day, and we got great seats. I really like that the seats can be reserved now, and they are plush couches that recline. The movie was fantastic, especially that most of the movie was for adults, and the subtle scientific theories thrown in. This is a movie that will hold up with time. The during credits views in other’s heads was also amazing. The short beforehand wasn’t very good though.
I really liked the story in this book, and really disliked the magic system. The magic system was so core to the concept, and so contrived feeling that I really couldn’t take it seriously. I especially thought the immunity was contrived, and in the end not all that important. Normally when there are powers like this in a book I think about what I’d do with them, but the system was contrived enough that I couldn’t think about it.
This was a great book, and the development of the characters was really nice. I did find the resentment between the two good Drow to be a bit too fabricated. I also thought that they weren’t very careful on their making up, which led to their downfall. The fixation on Drizzt by the faceless master was also odd, since it was more of an issue with the family and not with him in particular. Him stoping with knowing what family it was that did the deed struck me as odd, as I expected him to want the details and throw those in the face of the ones involved. I guess it did take him 15 years to find out which family had taken him out. It might be worth reading further in this series, and I’ll try out the next one.
I like the super human part of this, but I didn’t care for the concept of the one ‘real’ city. It made things really confusing in some ways, as the concept of shadows was confusing. The story was good, and the crazy painter character was fantastic. The ‘trumps’ he made seemed like an odd concept, especially if he is the only one to make them. The descriptions of the battles were dry by being too over the top in many ways, and not descriptive enough of the inglorious parts of the battles.
This was an amazingly well done book. I liked much of the writing in that it shows his understanding and at the same time it shows how much he doesn’t understand. I especially like the parts where he is too smart to understand that everyone else isn’t on that level. The ending has some really sad parts, but I liked that he eventually became a really nice guy again.
I didn’t particularly care for this book, especially the resolution. I think the characters in it were very well developed and had interesting stories, I just didn’t like them. That seemed to be part of the point. I’m liking that I can go through some of these classics and read them, but I’m not always liking what I find in them.
I have really enjoyed this series so far, especially the interesting play of humanity, freedom, and civilization, and how many gradations of those concepts there are in the book. I liked this one in particular because of the later reveal to the others that the captain used to be a ship.
After a few minutes I didn’t notice the she pronoun being always used, and imagined amorphous people until they did some action that I considered particularly masculine or feminine. These actions were typically were they being pursued or pursuing when it came to sex.
We had people over to our place for the fourth, since we miraculously got the pool house. I was surprised since the cost of renting the pool house is only $25 for the day, and I checked on July 1 if July 4 was available. The complex was pretty empty so I guess everyone must have been going to visit people elsewhere.
We had a ton of food, and people started arriving with more food. Jeremy brought some amazing paneer kebabs over, and a great tasting asparagus to grill. Amit and Tina brought over some of the best steak I’ve ever had, and Adam brought over some sausages. Lindsay and Kevin brought a few salads, and Riley and Rong got some drinks. We lounged by the pool, and eventually got in. We also got a good bit of soak time in the hot tub. I managed to core a pineapple without breaking through the bottom, and used that as a cup for the second half of the day. It made me really happy that I was able to do that.
We played a few rounds of Hanabi, which is appropriate since the original theme of Hanabi is fireworks. We happened to be playing with a drink themed version.
We split up to clean up, then met up at Amit’s place to head in for the Shoreline fireworks show. We played Hanabi a few more times while waiting for the show to start. Once it did we got a really great view through a window in the trees we were sitting under. Stephanie had picked out just the right spot for the view. We all headed back to the car and went our separate ways after that.
It's an Exciting World 