I seem to have fixed my sleep cycle problem to some extent by going to bed this morning at 0100 and rising today a little after 1200. The late rising was more out of sheer laziness than anything else, since I woke up roughly once an hour from 0700 onward, but with nothing on the schedule today I didn't see any reason to stir forth and do stuff.

I did finally go out and get the mail, which included drugs from the VA, the new (and horribly screwed up) Sprint bill, the quarterly statement from my brokerage (didn't want that retirement fund anyway) and a helpful letter with flyer from the VA about their suicide assistanceprevention line. I don't think I'll really be needing that, so I chucked it along with the rest of the junk mail. Sprint had done exactly what I asked them earlier in the month and switched the numbers on my phones, so that the Centro -my main phone- is in the 703 area code, and the Katana -my "home" phone- is in the inappropriate 301 area code. Unfortunately, they didn't switch the plans along with the numbers, so I got billed for some texting and data use. :( Fortunately, Sprint being Sprint, they have outstanding customer service which fixed this problem, credited me with the charges for the texts and data, and also credited me another $50 for extending my contract on one of these phones for two years. Ha! It's not like I'd ever voluntarily leave them in any case, so it was free money. :)

The Forgotten Army is a pretty depressing book. Granted, just about any book about the ARVN would be, but this one is particularly poignant since it's not only a once-over-lightly organizational/social history of that doomed army but also a biography of a pair of colonels who came from similar backgrounds, were acknowledged as two of the best young officers in the ARVN, and wound up in very different and tragic places. It's also depressing to see how our Army and the press screwed the ARVN out of the credit for winning the battles of Hue and Hamburger Hill, among many other dumb mistakes the US made in South Vietnam. I'm not done with it yet, but it's hard to keep going when you know how it all ends.
UPDATE: Done with it now. I need a drink, but I gave that stuff up. :(

Time to go out and replenish the groceries, maybe hang out with some friends if they're available.

God, I miss EVE. I'm not really cut out to be a forum whore, and reading the op threads is monumentally frustrating.

( Hyperion )
Related: Definitely going to the PRSFS meeting tonight to talk about SF. What a concept! A SF fan club that actually talks about SF! MADNESS!

Sort of related: Since my sponsor into Goonfleet had the bad grace to not only quit but get himself banned from the forums, I am casting about for a new sponsor and thinking glumly that I just might have to fork over my $10 to Lowtax and start posting at somethingawful.com. thaadd thinks I ought to do an ask/tell thread about Anime Detour. It could happen. UPDATE: It did happen.

Definitely related: Previous post about the League of Wonder provoked a lot of comments (props to burnunit for dropping by and responding) and if it does nothing more than put the LoW on notice that there's a lot of fans suspicious of the concept, then good. I don't know how much time I want to spend on the subject, since as I explained, whatever they do will have minimal impact on me since it's all going to happen in the Ninth Circle of HellMinnesota and not down here. Still, as one of the founders of Detour I feel some responsibility to keep an eye on "my" convention and occasionally stick my oar in, especially when major stuff like this heaves into view.

I'm on somewhat of a Vietnam War kick at the moment...
( Would you like to know more? )

Got a fresh box of needles today, and just in time, too, since today's outings included a trip to Wal-Mart to get some generic syringes. Stopped by Harris Teeter to cash in my Sub Club points (a fig on thee, Subway!), test their chili (mild, but not bad), and pay the ignorance tax for this week.

The online job fair I thought was today is actually next week. :(

No post yesterday since I was pretty much caught up in events, so I guess I'll play catch up now.

Neighbors in the apartment next to the laundry room moved out; maintenance people were in there stripping out the carpet and doing other stuff yesterday.
Speaking of which, I did my laundry, which took most of the morning as I was periodically distracted by Civicrack. Poncho liner now looks strangely fluffy.
Finished Amy Chua's World on Fire, which is basically a polemic regarding economically dominant minorities and why democracy in Second/Third World nations that don't have a strong legal tradition is a Bad Idea.
( Good, but... )
Spent the late afternoon and evening getting caught up with Mr. Taylor, who was not down in the valley with his dad the Master of Llamas after all. This of course precluded the drive up to Hagerstown for baseball and fireworks, but I'm willing to argue that I had a better time in Reston.

So I missed the Big Announcement from Governor Palin. Initial reaction: it's her life, and if she wants to quit being governor for the benefit of her family, that's up to her.

P apparently went and talked to animaltofriends last night, and if jamestrainor's reaction is any indication, it went about as well as I thought it would.

Amy Chua got a lot of attention for her controversial World on Fire, which posited that the push to impose liberal democracy on other nations (a favorite project of the Democrats until W got hold of it) would inevitably prove counterproductive, doubles down with Day of Empire, whose thesis is that historically, hyperpowers thrive and grow when they practice tolerance, only to wither when they don't.
( Cut for possible spoilers )

Went up to Frederick last night to consult with brian_edminster about the Failbox, which is still not ready for prime time, and to pull some files from it that I need to complete applications to various Federal agencies. Dinner and conversation were had, after which the usual long drive home via Sheetz.

Am about a third of the way through Day of Empire, which is a pretty good read.

On the agenda for today: interview at 1030, exchange of moldy pitas for (hopefully) good pitas at Shoppers, and continued online pursuit of employment.

Roundtable Pictures talks about how teachers ruin Catcher in the Rye by trying to present it as something it isn't. (AmSpecBlog)

I avoided that book like the plague, deliberately taking forensics and grammar courses in high school to avoid being assigned what people had been sighing over as a "classic". I'd been reading classics for a long time, and I was pretty sure nothing this damn popular with English teachers qualified. It still doesn't sound like something I'd want to spend any time on now.

Managed to pry myself out of the apartment ~1530 to go get a cheap sub (and sushi) at Harris Teeter, ejecting a lot of garbage into the dumpster en route. Hit Walmart next for paper products, Borders to cash in a 40% off coupon on a Bill James book, and B&N to cash in another coupon on another book. While there, killed time during rush hour by reading the first half of C.J. Cherryh's Conspirator, the latest novel in her Foreigner series. This appears to be her second novel retooling "The Ransom of Red Chief" as a comedy of manners involving humans and atevi, and as such seems very well done so far.

Made a dinner appointment with RS to talk about rehosting my Geocities website, which Yahoo! will be closing later this year (date/time TBA).

Did some other shopping at MicroCenter and did dinner with P at Moby's; we also got caught up on stuff since I hadn't heard from her in a week. Got home from that after another stop at Harris Teeter for milk. Wasted time online for a while, and now it's time to hit the rack.

Less sloth and indolence today; bagged up a bunch of garbage and am running the dishwasher. Soon I shall emerge from my burrow and chuck the garbage in the dumpster! Woo! Now if I could just beat this scale into submission, or at least figure out how to be 10% smarter than the tricky power cord/tube combination that's getting in the way of using it...anyway, I also got a bunch of books shelved last night and did some writing.

It's a little disturbing to me that the sun coming out earlier did so much to get me in a better mood. I normally prefer overcast or partly cloudy days (double order of cumulus, side order of Iowa road trip, kthxbye) but after a couple of days of drippy rain I am happy to see the sun come out. Maybe it's an emotional shift coming from the anniversary of Mom's death on Monday combined with finding out that banzchan's little sister had died, and then today realizing that a couple of my oldest friends are having birthdays this weekend. Whatever it is, I feel better now. :)

Finished Cyteen last night, and it helped to have read Regenesis since I noticed a few things going on in the first novel that I'd missed when I'd read it before. Things tied together better this time around, and there wasn't nearly as much psychological horror visited on a couple of the main characters as I remembered.

You would think some of the stores around here would have back scratchers, but evidently enough people have S.O.s with quality nails that there's no market for them. So I ordered one off the internet.

Going to try and get into those Amy Chua books tonight; I notice that I've been putting them off in favor of SF and baseball books.

One of the problems with unemployment is maintaining a proper sleep/wake cycle, and I've been fighting this problem for the last few weeks. Today was a good example; slept in until noon after being unable to get to sleep until about 0300 due to leg pain. Which ought to teach me not to drink Diet Coke in the evening, but then I've been a slow learner lately. :(

Had lunch yesterday with digex, who came by to loan me his ginormous digital scale. Once I figure out how to assemble it, it should do wonders to help with the weight control. Anyway, it was a good lunch at Los Toltecos with a lot of good conversation.

Today, not so much fun and excitement. Reading Cyteen again since I just finished Regenesis. If Stephen King is right about writers needing to spend four hours a day reading & writing, I'm doing okay on that part of it; I just need to get more consistent about the part where I fire up Word and make, you know, words.

Finished William Gibson's Spook Country this morning before breakfast, more because I wanted to get it over with than for any expectation that there would be a good ending to a monotonous drone of a novel.
( No, I didn't like it. )

Got laundry done, filed some applications and sent off some resumes, and ~1900 stirred forth to do some shopping. Hit the Walmart for razors and Oxiclean (that stuff is the bomb for getting white things like underwear & Ace bandages clean) then did Five Guys for dinner and hit the library on the way home.
( library gets )

The week being somewhat lacking in work, I've had plenty of time to read.
( The saga continues )
( Period pieces )
( I don't know how he does it )
These and other reviews have been linked at the Book Review site, which I'm going to need to move somewhere else this year as Yahoo is discontinuing their free web hosting service and I can't afford to be shelling out $5/month at this point. Well, I'll burn that bridge when I get to it, I suppose.

So I finished re-reading Heinlein's The Cat Who Walked Through Walls tonight.
( Improved with age, maybe. )

*Shamelessly stolen from Filthy Pierre; this is the concluding line to his filksong "The Future History", which covers most of Heinlein's work.

No non-fiction this time, mainly because the Alexandria Library doesn't have any of the three histories of fandom Kyle (not gohanvox) recommended to me.
( This week's gets )
( And now for something completely different )

Woke fairly early and hit the breakfast buffet with P before going over to the Hunt Valley to get her registered. Unfortunately registration didn't open until 1000, so we stood around for about half an hour talking with various people in the line and admiring the netbooks Balticon has for their registration staff. (Very spiffy.) After that we headed up to the dealers' room where P was waylaid by corset vendors and I barely escaped from the place with only a copy of the Guest of Honor's new Merchant Princes novel, The Revolution Business, about which more anon. Conversation with Kyle (not gohanvox) ensued, and then I hied myself to the Gaming & Literature panel where I figured to meet deathquaker; I was correct, and we went off to lunch at Damon's after the panel. Conversation ensued, which was good; we then went back to the Hunt Valley where I introduced DQ to P and therevdrnye and more conversation ensued until P insisted on lunch and therevdrnye's presence was required at the LARP. P and I and Mr. Taylor then decamped to the bar for lunch or noshing and met Rob (not RS) there.

So I pretty much spent the day in conversation with various folks (good) and eating (not so good) and then just plain ran out of energy around 2000; I was uninterested in the Masquerade and not motivated enough to hang around for Darker Than Black or any of the room parties. There's some panels I'm interested in tomorrow, and we'll see if I manage to make it to any of them. Like, say, the mustard gas panel. Since I missed the nerve gas panel today, and all.

( New Stross, yay! )

Green shoots bustin' out all over! (Instapundit)

N.B.: Do not click the link if you are under the impression that Obama and the Congress are doing a good job with the economy. Mr. Cavanaugh will harsh your mellow.

Related: Brian Doherty's Radicals for Capitalism is an interesting and concise history of the libertarian movement in America, which goes back a lot further than Ayn Rand and (imao) has a lot of crazy uncles in the attic. Lots and lots of short bios of all the major figures in the movement, some analyses of why the LP hasn't achieved much as a third party, and a lot of background on the anarchist/Left/"soft" libertarians that I frankly hadn't been aware of. Highly recommended.

Any morning that starts off with a description of Twitter as "a box full of imaginary friends" and continues with a thoroughly appropriate photoshopping of a McDonald's billboard is a good one. Thank you, Mr. Lileks!
( This book is full of win and awesome. )

Liquidated (but did not cash out) half the Cardboard Box Fund today; dithering over whether to do the rest now while the market is twitching upward again or wait until next month. So no matter what happens between now and the beginning of July, I'll have the rent covered. The electric bill is also covered since Dominion has refunded by deposit, and I plan to be very very conservative with the juice around here.

Picked up my last check from Wilbar today, dropped it off at the SunTrust in Kingstowne, and will be using a quarter of it to get the Sportage out of hock tonight. It turns out that the starter switch and a loose wire under the dash were the two problems keeping it from starting and from being able to signal right turns, so I got a twofer. Also got the dome light replaced, so I'm street legal again. Plus, this means I'll have enough spare cash to do Balticon on a budget.

Cashed in my BordersBucks and wound up buying more than I planned, since they not only had mzmadmike's Better to Beg Forgiveness and Charles Stross' The Merchants' War, but a trade paperback of Stross' The Jennifer Morgue. NOW HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY???? So it was kind of like a BOGO but not really. I know I know I should have just gotten the Stross trade pb.