I hear it's playing soon in Philly.  I'd love to go see it. I've seen the movie version with Malkovich as Tom and Karen Allen as Laura.

I doubt the special effects will be as good.

I've been a big reader for many years, but my reading pace has slowed down a lot in the last couple of years.  Two or three years ago I managed to do a Goodreads challenge where I read 100 books in the year, partly in response to the year before that where I'd spent three entire weeks slogging my way through Steven Erikson's Toll The Hounds.  I managed it, yes, but it was little grueling, forcing myself to a hard page quota so I could spend no more then three days on a book.  Mostly fiction, neglecting the nonfiction I also enjoy, and tending to also avoid thicker books that would take longer.  After that I slacked off more--and started reading longer books again--so the goals have gotten harder to attain.  I've also been doing more rereading, and since I imported large chunks of my reading history into Goodreads it's harder for it to count those.  (If you want up-to-the-day, or at least week, updates on what I'm reading, you can always follow me on Goodreads...)

For fiction, I recently finished Guy Gavriel Kay's River of Stars, last of the Aurora Award nominees for the year; I may actually vote this year, though I haven't decided for sure yet.  I'm a little disillusioned with awards right now--why, I won't even nominate my friends' books any more.  I've been rereading David Gerrold's War Against The Chtorr, and recently continued into a reread of his Dingilliad series with Jumping Off The Planet; it's not clear to me if it's really a related series, despite some overlapping references, but I thought I'd do it anyway, since he's going to be a guest at Pure Speculation this year.  I'm also reading Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series to Simon (in the middle of Memory), and The Wheel of Time to Luke (most of the way through Lord of Chaos).  I just finished Kelley Armstrong's Stolen, sequel to Bitten (which was on TV this year, but I didn't watch it past the first episode), which was okay, and am about to start on Adrienne Kress's teen-steampunk The Friday Society; not sure if I'll like that one, because the books of hers that I've read and enjoyed before are more middle-grade, but I'll give it a try.

For nonfiction, I've got a few, on various burners.  Some time ago I started Eleanor of Aquitaine And The Four Kings, and I haven't given up on it yet, but I don't pick it up often; the prose is a little bit old-fashioned, though the book's only from the mid-twentieth century, so I suppose I should call it "affected".  But my recent Crusader Kings II playing has lent it some appeal.  I'm also working my through a book of lists from the Uncle John's Bathroom Institute people, which isn't holding my interest as much of some such books have done in the past.  More recently, I picked up A.J. Jacobs's Drop Dead Healthy; on the one hand, I tend to like his stuff, but this one I bought remaindered, and admittedly it may not be his best.  He's trying to make himself healthier, in a year, and looking at a lot of ways to do so, of varying degrees of wackiness; while it is occasionally entertaining and/or informative, so far it just reminds me how little I've come to trust anybody saying anything about what will make you more or less healthy.  While I was at When Words Collide last weekend I was intrigued by someone mentioning the book What If The Earth Had Two Moons?, and, because we live in the future, put in a library request for it while sitting at the panel; it came in yesterday, and I just started reading it.  Meanwhile, in the wings, I have Of Dice And Men, a history of Dungeons & Dragons, which I'm going to let wait until at least I've finished one of the others.

I also signed up for Marvel Unlimited a little over a year ago; it's a service that lets me read any of the comics that Marvel Comics has made available online.  It's far from a complete collection--newer comics only come out a year after their physical release, though that doesn't bother me because I'm not reading anything new; it's more the middle-range stuff that I'd want to look for, like the Defenders.  What I've ended up doing, though, after looking at a few scattered issues here and there, is starting from the beginning, with Fantastic Four #1 in 1962, and reading from there.  It's taking me a while--I'm only up to early 1967 right now--but I'm enjoying it, especially now that we have a tablet to read them on.  It was physically possible for me to read them on my iPod, but it was far from convenient or easy, and the tablet is working much better for me.  "Spider-Man" and "Fantastic Four" are already really good, and "Thor", "Avengers" and "Doctor Strange" are not bad; "X-Men" is not too hot, though, but then I'm a big Claremont-era fan.  As for the others--"Daredevil", "Iron Man", "Captain America", "Hulk", "Nick Fury", "Sub-mariner"--I was never too much into them, and they're only passable.  A lot of them are still into half-issues right now, so maybe it's the shorter-length stories, and "Daredevil" was never really my thing anyway.  I do look forward to the stage where Stan Lee relaxes his stranglehold on the writing credits, though...not that Roy Thomas has been a big boon to "X-Men" so far.  Hopefully they'll have filled in some of the gaps before I get up to the point where I'd notice them.  (I confess I'm skipping "Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos", as well as any western titles, or "Modeling With Millie"...)

I've been dancing salsa since 2006. For as long as I've been dancing, salsa and its cultural siblings bachata and merengue have been the steps in the clubs. Swing is cool, but you can't go out to a club and just find people doing it; I missed that particular revival.

For the first time in my personal experience– and keep in mind I'm only eight years old as a dancer– a new step is pushing onto the floor. And it's not a latin step. It's from Angola.

I first saw kizomba here in the states a couple years back. And I thought, "this is not gonna catch on until we 'fix' it for us Americans. Because it's too close and too sensual, and that kind of thing weirds us out unless we know exactly what the rules are. And it's also really creative and places a super-high premium on the guy's ability to lead effectively with his body. Maybe once they water it down and make it safe it'll catch on."

Now kizomba is catching on. Last night I took a couple hours of beginner kizomba class and tried out easy steps with a roomful of friends from the salsa community. Good times, and everybody was a lot cooler with the intimacy of the dance than I had unfairly expected. The popularity of bachata, a similarly close latin style, probably helps.

But the real surprise is what I found when I started searching youtube for "kizomba angola." And even more so when I searched for "kizomba luanda." (Luanda is the capital of Angola.)

It turns out a lot of the kizomba songs people dance to in Angola are... peppy and cheerful. And not everybody dances "all up ins" with their partner, either. I'm watching leads who can steer very effectively and sensually with just a forearm. And punctuate the dance with closer contact, not maintain it all the time.

All that "you have to be chest to chest or you're doing it wrong" stuff? That's coming from us!

Serves me right. I gotta remember to check my assumptions at the door of the club.

I feel I should post every day now. So an not to squander my precious gift.

Depends heavily on what day it is and how I feel.   Many of my favorite "songs" are actually instrumental music.  One day it will be the Allegretto Scherzando from the 8th symphony by Beethoven.  The next day I'll be rockin' out to something from 1973 played by a long haired hippie freak.  Sometimes it's the Promenade from the JAWS soundtrack.

Throwback Friday ... me and 5th grader Archer Castle reading The Yarn of The Nancy Bell by W. S. Gilbert.

Hello, world.  It's late and I'm sleepy but I feel like making a short post and kick the tires on 1PW (OPW?).  Formatting looks good (hello italics and bold).  I can post a link to my art, and a picture:

Took me a second to realize I could drop it right here in the middle of the paragraph.  Great idea, Tom.  Pretty cool.

I have a craving for some cheese.  A piece of mozzarella, then crash time.  See y'all tomorrow.

(Edited to fix the damn picture placement.  Took a couple of tries but I figured it out.)

Things are, largely good.  Professionally I am finally in a place where "The Colleagues" don't dis me from the start, continuously and condescendingly.  They don't expect me to do all the work they don't want to do.  They don't expect me to clean up after them, in any sense of the word and they listen and consider what I've said if I'm impelled to speak up.  I am contributing in ways I can see are helpful and ways that nobody else does.

It may be Ironic that this respected and included situation is actually taking advantage of something women are more socialized to enact - I am cleaning up some stuff, making some computer housekeeping  happen.  The fact that I'm still new to the team means I haven't got a lot of entrenched projects or responsibilities, and that helps me look up from the ticket queue and notice things that ought not be - like a situation with customer expectations crashing into what one of the colleagues (the lower case, external contract colleagues) did and communicated.  (A variant of the "we're not gonna do that for you" "oh, ok I'll do it myself and break all your crap," scenario.) I can see structural problems everyone else accepts, because I'm "not from there."

At my old job this kind of thing earned me nothing good.  I had some very good ideas there that were never acted on, until someone else "magically" came up with this really great thing we could do that we'd somehow "never thought of."

This is a huge deal for me, professionally, from a confidence perspective and emotionally.  I am not drained and depressed after work every day.  Sometimes I can't wait to get up and go back because I Got Stuff To Do.  I never dread interacting with The Colleagues.  I think I have heard one possibly insensitive comment since I started - a complaint that the aspect ratio of our "signature graphic" for presentations is wrong, and makes the lady in it look short and frumpy.  You know, like me.  I gave a little jab back about us short women not winning and we all had a laugh.

It's pretty great.

Dealing with CVEs just sucks.  That is all.

Oh, and with all the funky formatting here, we need a preview.  And how come my Firefox built-in spell checking does NOT werk here?