Cecilia Dart-Thornton
I read The Ill-Made Mute over the holidays. I had heard a whole heap of reports, most of them negative bar one. I got a bit annoyed with her style – she tries too hard to be poetic, twisting her sentences around way too much and using words I have never heard before and could only guess at from the context. However, I did enjoy the plot and the characters a bit, and I was so frustrated when I finished it I nearly shrieked (truly; it has a very clever ending). The one person I heard a good report from, though, I thankfully saw at church that night and she has today given me the next two books (thanks, Krick), so that’s good… except that tomorrow I have Parent/Teacher interviews so I start at 2pm (until 9pm!), and I really ought to do some work rather than just reading which I will be very tempted to do.
Fish and all
Haven’t written here in a while. I am thinking of renaming Ajax, or at least giving him a sobriquet: Action Snail. He has been zooming around quite a bit lately, which has been rather exciting, particularly when Mum was here – she thought he was pretty cool.
There are no new babies left. I didn’t realise this for a number of days, and then I looked carefully and realised there were none left! Notwithstanding being moderately cranky when they were born, I am a bit sad at them having been et. Oh well.
The lily pad plant is going nuts, which is great, and the chain plant is also going well. I do think I need to buy some new plants, though, since they are the only two plants I have left, which is a bit sad. I am also thinking about new fishies… maybe slightly bigger ones, to give a bit more presence to the tank. I’m considering silver dollars.
Dead fish
He died a couple of hours after my last post. I moved him into the little isolation tank to get him away from Bitch Fish, and I rather suspect that the move probably contributed to his death. Poor little thing… he didn’t have a very happy little life…
Fish, after a week away
Yes, have been away for a week… the fish survived… but. I was on the ‘phone just now, and I noticed that the very-non-alpha male, which has been in the QT for quite a while now since he was getting bullied by the alpha male in the main tank, is looking very sad. He’s got black happening on his sail fin – I don’t know whether this is a problem or not – as well as swimming very listlessly. Worse yet, Bitch Fish is having the occasional go at him… he looks like he is missing a few scales in places. He is swimming sometimes vertically, sometimes with only one fin although there is nothing noticeably wrong with the other, and often just going with the flow. I don’t know what to do with him, because I am sure that the alpha male would have just as much of a go at him as She does.
On a brighter note, the main tank is looking fairly good. We still have some algae issues, climbing all over my plants, which is annoying me a lot. I need to go and buy some more plants, I think… the chain sword thing is going well, although it hasn’t grown as much while we were away as we had anticipated.
Ajax is, of course, very well.
Dirty Dozen
When I was at the video store the other, I saw The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission. It had Lee Marvin, and Ernest Borgnine, and I thought that it might not be too bad. How wrong I was. It’s appaling; I’m watching it at the moment. Even Lee is wooden and stilted. Very sad. I’m blaming the script, personally; it’s very close to the original, in some ways, but with no panache; quite different in others, but really bad.
Books
Well.
I read and finished Garth Nix’s Mister Monday, and I’m excited because there will be 6 more in this series and that’s really, really cool. I am really looking forward to reading the rest.
Then, I had to choose something to read next. I had yet to find Rise of Endymion, about which I was very cranky; so I started The Gutenberg Revolution, by John Mann, which J bought me ages ago. I’ve read the introduction. Then I got restless, so I started The Ill-Made Mute by Cecilia Dart-Thornton. Interesting: a number of people have told me it’s crap, then another friend told me she really enjoyed it… so it really will be interesting to see what I think of it. I’ve read the first chapter and a half. And then…I went into the city tonight with Kate because she was involved in a reading night with her CAE class. So, I thought I’d check out Readers’ Feast in the off-chance that they might have it; no. So I bought Ilium, also by Simmons, instead to make me feel better. Then Kate had a brilliant idea: go to the CAE library! And because I have a library card with Yarra-Melbourne libraries, I can borrow there. And they did have it! Hurrah! So excited.
So I’m reading that.
No more quarantine tank
That’s right, no more quarantine tank. Instead, it has turned into a molly hatchery.
Bitch Fish, Queen Hera, lulled me into a false sense of security: she didn’t have any fry in ages, and she doesn’t look all that fat, so maybe she isn’t preganant… then I wake up this morning, and what do I discover? About 10 fry, and a very skinny mother. Grrr.
J doesn’t see what the problem is.
The main tank is threatening to get algae happening again; it’s on the sword plant a bit, and some other bits… I did some rather brutal-looking aquascaping the other day, in that I chopped out all the bits that had no leaves on them. As a consequence we look like we’ve lost a fair few of the plants, but actually they were bits that just looked rubbishy anyway.
I only have four rainbows left; this is a bit sad. All of the harlequins and Colombian tetras are still going, though, as is Ajax of course. So… I’m thinking I need more plants… ones that might actually survive, this time. And I’m thinking about new fish, too. Serpaes, perhaps. Or silver dollars.
Simmons and others
Just finished Simmons’ Endymion, and I really did nearly cry because I have yet to find The Rise of Endymion and I’m feeling a bit desperate for some closure, thanks to the tantilising nature of this one. Doesn’t matter that I have almost a zillion books to go on with; they’re not the one I want.
I’ve got some books from school to read. One is for the English faculty – Mister Monday, by Garth Nix – to see if it’s fit to be a set text. The others were in a box in the staffroom yesterday for holiday reading, not sure why – whether they’re new (although some weren’t), or the librarians just make up boxes for teachers’ delectation. One is The Pirate Queen, by Alan Gold, which looks like a lot of fun – Elizabethan, not sure if it really is based on fact or not – the blurb says “Through the daring of her piracy Grace nearly bankrupted the English treasury; she caused nothing but trouble for Elizabeth I.” The other book I grabbed is The Ill-Made Mute, which I have largely heard poor reports of but I want to make up my own mind. Bold move, I know.
World hum
Have added a new link to the ever-expanding side bar: but how on earth could I have forgotten to add World Hum? One of my favourite ever websites, their tag is “travel dispatches from a shrinking planet.” I’ve read some of the coolest stories thanks to this site, and found some of the weirdest websites (travel by plane a lot? There’s a site to take pictures of your in-flight meal, post and rate them, or a site that tells you the best airports for sleeping in). Love it.
Bad history
I bought this book at Borders called something like A Handy History Handbook; it wasn’t quite that bad, but it was $10 and I thought it might have some interesting and/or useful facts in it.
It does.
Like the fact that the Roman Empire began in 27BC when Julius Caesar became emperor.
Randomly Yours, Alex 