Zoe’s Journal

Well, hi. How was your weekend, might I ask?

Mine was just great. Fancy fine, in fact. On Friday, the LotR and I went to see the Suns play vs the Orlando Magic - we won, of course (but it got exciting toward the end). On Saturday, we didn’t do much. If I remember correctly, I just lounged around the house reading ‘A Storm of Swords’, book three in the Song of Ice and Fire series. Awesome books, those. There are still 3 more books still to come out! I hope the author doesn’t die first - like the author of The Wheel of Time series, who died in the last and final book of the 12-book (?) series. George RR Martin is getting kind of old, yeah? Eh… he’ll live. The force of my will shall make him live and finish those books.

But I digress. Saturday evening, we went to some sort of game developer bash - where the guys (and some girls) just sat around in a big building programming. Four of us sat down to watch Blue Velvet, which one reviewer described as “The Hardy Boys on drugs”. I brought a couple of books, just in case it was bad, but it was good…

Sunday morning, I got up in the morning around 10. I was expecting to go to a movie with a friend from work, but she wasn’t feeling well, so I hied myself off to go shopping - to a new store! Last Chance - all Nordstrom’s clothing, but at cheap prices - last chance, y’know? I ended up spending $50 and getting 8 great new sweaters. I’ll have to go back there to finish up my Christmas shopping.

Then, that afternoon, I had Callipygian come over, and we baked all sorts of cookies and brownies and stuff. Chocolate chip cookies, rice krispy treats, molasses spice cookies, and even some chocolate brownies. She took some home, and I put a lot of the rest in the freezer, so that I hopefully won’t have to bake so many for Christmas this year. She left around 6:00, and I got on the treadmill for a bit… by 7:30, I was sound asleep in bed. I slept until 3, when I woke up and realized that I wasn’t sleepy anymore. Meh. I slept again - until 6:20. Then I got up and got on the treadmill for a full half of an hour. Wow!

Now it’s time for some delicious soup - the LotR’s mother is coming to visit in January again, and we had best empty that freezer or else risk her mild disappointment…

There are so many books on my shelf that I have to read - and even more that I plan to read, which are, actually, at the bookstore. Right now, I’m working my way through the second book of the Game of Thrones series by George RR Martin. REALLY GOOD BOOKS. Aren’t these the ones that they’re making a tv series out of?

I started this second book last night, while watching the Suns lose to the Warriors. I didn’t get much out of the book - that could either be because the Suns were lagging behind the whole game, with the possibility of catching up… or it could have been that I drank three glasses of cheap red wine and was nursing a headache. Either way, once there were only two minutes left in the game, and the Suns were down by 15, I decided to concentrate more on my book.

That lasted all of 3 minutes, until I looked at the clock and saw, holy crap! It’s almost 11!… I went to bed.

But I took the book with me today to work, for reading during lunch.

There are only two more after that - at least, until the next one is released. And then there is a book that I desperately want to read, “Elves of Cintra”, but which is only in hardback right now, with no release date for the paperback version… Oh, oh… I want to read it, but… I don’t buy hardbacks! Well, rarely, that is.

*going to read*

Yep, it’s time for the great book listing to begin.

Those who know me well know that Terry Brooks and his Shannara Series have held me captive for a long time. Well, I recently found that he has been continuing the series! I bought The Genesis of Shannara: Armageddon’s Children at the bookstore, but I couldn’t find the next one. No mind, I sat down and read it through anyway. But it ended in a cliffhanger! Now I really want the next one! Dragonlance books I bought include Kendermore, The Lioness, and Destiny (Volume Three of the Elven Exiles). I also bought the very popular George RR Martin series - Song of Ice and Fire - all four books. He’s still working on more. And then I bought a new (to me, at least) David Eddings series called The Elenium.

People keep telling me that I should read Anne McCaffrey’s Pern novels, so I purchased a trilogy - Dragonriders of Pern. I see that there are a LOT of books in that world… but we’ll see how much she impresses me.

I think that was it, except for about 4 other non-fantasy books.

**This is going to be one extraordinarily long post, so I shall divide it up into as many sections as needed.**

Let’s start with our get-away to Seattle. Now, I know that this format of the site sometimes has a few problems showing pictures and their tags properly, so the ones I upload today will be smaller than usual - don’t fret, you can see any larger image simply by clicking on the small one, okay?

———————-1st Night in Seattle ————————–

First Impression - Snowy Mountains!

Second Impressions? Colored leaves and tall buildings!

That night, we went to see the Seattle Symphony perform Mozart’s Requiem. While it was all sung in Latin, I would have enjoyed it a bit more had they not deigned to translate the text on the program into its uber-religious words. I can’t believe some that stuff came out of Mozart!

———————– 1st Day in Seattle—————————

The next morning, we walked down to the Pike Place Market and meandered through several shops.

Then we walked further toward the coast, heading for the aquarium. It was so pretty!

The aquarium was nice too - they had lots of sea & river otters, but, while they were amazingly cute, they don’t sit still long enough for good photos.

This guy looks like a fish-version of Sponge-Bob Squarepants (Argh! I HATE that cartoon show!)

And this guy looks like the shellfish from Futurama!

This was the only otter sitting still long enough for a picture.

All hail an emaciated Christopher Columbus.

But really, there were a lot of cool structures.

After the aquarium, we walked into Pioneer Square. Apparently there was a football game going on down the road.

Vine covered building and totem poles in Pioneer Square.

We saw some pretty weird buildings. We also went to the Seattle Art Museum, but had only an hour before closing, so didn’t buy tickets.

——————– 2nd Night ———————

Not much to tell here - we were dead tired! and stopped to have some dinner at the Palomino.

Oh! I almost forgot (how could I forget!), we also stopped by a Barnes and Nobles. I admit I splurged and bought two entire bags of books. I will go into greater detail about those in a later post.

—————— 3rd Day (Monday) ———————–

We slept until noon, and then went to go see my friend from Vancouver (who sometimes posts comments on here in strange little names). We hung out at a coffee shop for a while, then he had to leave. The LotR and I went to go see the Space Needle. There’s a lot more stuff down there! Things like the Experience Music Project, a science fiction museum, and the international fountain. It was also kind of rainy, so we got to see the ‘real Seattle’.

This is the International Fountain when it’s quiet. It looks like a…a… jellyfish?!

We got caught in the rain again…

I might be happy in this photo.

—————- 3rd Night ———————

That night, we went to the popular Purple wine bar for dinner, along with one of the LotR’s old friends from NASA. The huge pillar went up to the 2-story ceiling, filled with wine bottles. The spiral staircase nearly reached the top.

Indian chieftain is my father.

—————– 4th & Final Day ——————-

The LotR knew some game developer folks in town, so we went to visit before heading back to the airport. While they talked codes and dropships, I played with the two dogs - the pug’s name was Zoe!

She lovered me.

Then, alas, we had to head back to Phoenix. But we did catch an awesome sunset!

I don’t really have much to write about tonight, besides the three loads of laundry and wonderful steak dinner the LotR and I cooked up this evening.

However, yesterday we did go shopping. Grocery shopping. First CostCo, where the LotR also wanted to buy a new game, Eternal Sonata, which is apparently a really cool turn-based RPG with Chopin’s piano music throughout. Here’s the synopsis:

On his deathbed, the famous composer, Chopin, drifts between this life and the next. In his final hours, he experiences a fantastical dream where he encounters a young girl facing a terrible destiny and the boy who will fight to save her. On the border between dreams and reality, Chopin discovers the light that shines in all of us in this enduring tale of good and evil, love and betrayal.

Hmm. I somehow got off track. We went to Costco and got a few groceries. They didn’t have Xbox360 games except Madden Sports, so we went to Target. They didn’t have it either, but I ended up with four new books - one of which is by the DaVinci Code and Angels & Demons author, Dan Brown. This one is called Deception Point, and is set in the Arctic where a team of scientists find something unusual buried in the ice. The White House calls in a couple of experts and sends them to investigate. They ‘uncover the unthinkable: evidence of scientific trickery - a bold deception that threatens to plunge the world into controversy’. Well, I thought it sounded really interesting, and knowing Brown’s writing style, it promises to be a thought-provoking thriller. I haven’t started it yet, but want to.

While at Target, I also found a birthday card for my mother, since her birthday is this week. Since the LotR really wanted that game, we went to the game store in the same shopping area, and then drove off to Safeway to pick up the foodstuffs that were sold in ‘too-big’ quantities at Costco.

Today I didn’t do much except the afore-mentioned laundry, and a bit of homework. It wasn’t much - they’re having us work on our final research papers, and aren’t going to load us up with homework while that project is going on. Which is nice. Because writing comes realllly easy for me. Especially since I already have a 4-page sentence outline written up. After organizing the general points of a paper, I never have problems writing it - it just flows. I guess I’m lucky that way.

But now I’m tired, and have work in the morning. So I shall bid thee farewell, O fair people of the night.