Fangirlin' It

I've been neglecting you terribly, I know, internet, but...

Yes, well.  This is an incredibly sleep-deprived entry, as I missed so much sleep last night.  The idiot speedway apparently has some kind of outdoor movie night now that they've got the biggest screen in the world, or something, so the damn movie could be heard all the way at my house last night, followed by freaking fireworks until past 11 pm; when you get up at seven every morning, that's not good.  Even after that, I couldn't seem to really sleep, and finally I gave up this morning around six-thirty.  So I'm really tired.

But.  Yesterday I went to the big bookstore in the mall which was having a one-day sale and bought several books.  One of them was a book by an author I'd never heard of, but I liked the sound of the summary, so I gave it a shot.  I love it.  Totally recommending this book here.  It's military sci-fi, so Stargate fans pay attention.  The author is Evan Currie, and the book is Into the Black: Odyssey One.  It's really good on the military stuff, including a section where he essentially says, yeah, combat pilots have to know almost as much about how their craft work as the people who built them, so they're anything but stupid (which, after some time in the SGA fandom, is refreshing--we all know how many fics treat the military as dumb, even pilots like Sheppard or Mitchell). 

The main premise is that, in a post-WWIII Earth, the North American Confederation sends out the brand-new space ship Odyssey, under the command of Eric Weston, on a shakedown cruise of the universe.  Weston was a former fighter jockey in the Marines, and there are lots of Special Forces members of our military as well as Canada's in his new crew.  There are some aspects that resonate a lot with the Stargate universe, but only on the surface.  It's a fascinating and compelling action read with linguistics, philosophy, combat tactics, tragedy, and triumph.  I won't give away any more of the plot, other than to say there are alien humans and alien beasties, and there's a war.  Um, it's a lot better than it sounds from my lame description?  Seriously, though, if you like the mix of military and science that marks the best of Stargate canon and fandom, I think you ought to give this book a go.  It's in paperback, so not as expensive, and I'm fairly sure there will be a sequel, since it's left very up-in-the-air as far as the ending goes.

Anyway, that was mostly the purpose of this post.  I'm a little over halfway through the book, which is nearly six hundred pages in an oversized paperback, though I peeked at the last page, as I am wont to do.  ;)  Which is how I know the ending.  And I'm still feeling compelled to read the rest because it's that good.  There's really interesting science, too; a lot of it is based on things I know are fairly current in actual science, like tachyon properties, and it makes nice extrapolations in the best tradition of the genre.  The alien society they encounter is interesting and somewhat mysterious, even at the end of the book, and the alien enemy is pretty frightening.

So.  What's on your summer reading list, guys?  I also picked up some more Discworld novels, which are an addiction of mine, and the latest Foreigner novel I'd been wanting to own since I read it back in March.  I had to stop myself from spending all of my first paycheck there, since it was only a week's pay.  I should get paid again at the end of this coming week, and it will be the normal two weeks' pay this time, which is good, since I keep having to buy gas for my car and it keeps getting more expensive.  :/ 

Well, in spite of the weather, I made it home alive today.  I ended up getting to work about 20 minutes early this morning because traffic actually co-operated fairly well, so I decided to leave work early.  That was a really good thing, because when I was within half a mile of the interstate exit I get off on to go home (so about five minutes from home), the skies--already ominous-looking--opened up and rain was falling sideways so hard we all were going about 15 miles an hour with our flashers going.  Fortunately, my car is low to the ground and has excellent traction, so all the ponding which was very deep in places didn't even make me hydroplane.

One of the poplars in our yard wasn't so lucky, though; the straight-line winds we had were gusting between 50 and 70 mph, about the force of a hurricane.  It brought down one of our trees in the backyard onto my old swingset. 

On the plus side, tomorrow is casual Friday, so I get to wear jeans and sneakers to the office, and then on Monday I have to drive to our office in Greenville (about two hours from here in good traffic) but I also get to wear jeans!  It's neat working uptown (this city is stupid and what most cities call downtown is uptown here), with the bronze elevators with neat designs on the doors and wood panelling inside and the marble floors, but it's expensive to park ($140/month) and you have to dress up.  Oh well.