Relax; take it easy...

This weekend I finished reading Lonesome Dove and was utterly blown away by it. It truly was an epic book, and I never wanted it to end. ::sigh:: I picked up the sequel from the library today - I'm looking forward to another good read. I also finished a story called St. Agnes' Stand. It was also a western, and it was a good action-adventure story with two interesting characters (a loner and a nun - yes, really!). If you are ever inclined to read it, fair warning on some gory moments; I admit to being pretty squeamish, and I lost my appetite a few times while reading. Luckily, it only took me a day and a half to read (or not so luckily - I could stand to eat less!).

Tomorrow morning, around 1:30 AM Eastern time, there's a shuttle launch scheduled that I plan to try to stay up for. This mission is STS-128, and for those keeping track, it's the one that's going to carry the treadmill named after Stephen Colbert to the ISS.

Finally, good luck, Discovery crew!

In other news, there's a nifty Eagle Cam that you can watch. Situated in New Jersey, it's a Ustream.tv video of nesting bald eagles. There were three eggs in the nest this weekend, and one of the eggs hatched yesterday. So far I've been able to watch the parent eagles take turns sitting on the nest and feed the baby. They had dragged a huge fish up to the nest yesterday, and this afternoon it looked like there was a squirrel. And the baby eagle is an adorable little fluffball, if you get the chance to see it. More often than not, one of the parents is sitting on it. It'll be interesting to see if either of the two eggs that are left end up hatching.

Oh, and look at that. I can embed it:

Of course, it's dark out now, but be sure to check it out tomorrow, East Coast time (GMT -4).

And that's because I've been head-over-heels in love with Firefly and Serenity.

Probably everything's been said that's to say about how fantastically awesome this show is. I'm kinda glad I never knew about it while it was airing because it no doubt would have broken my heart when it was cancelled.

What's nearly as much of a crime, though, is the fact that, two short graphic novels and the movie novelization aside, there are no official books to continue the adventures of Serenity and its crew. And you know that they'd do well when it comes to selling them (well, okay, I don't know if that's true beyond me buying them all several times over to read myself and give to my friends and family - isn't that enough?). I mean, people have written and performed music from the show as well as tried their hands at making Jayne's hat (there's even this adorable sweatshirt jacket inspired by his hat). I just can't wrap my head around this, I guess.

( More Firefly squee )

So, I've only ever posted one ficlet in my entire life, but as an avid reader, I still have some ( fanfic things to rant about. )

I went two weeks without having to teach my hated enemies second grade students, but alas, tomorrow is another day. I blame my sudden M&Ms binge on their impending arrival. Seriously, I think I've eaten my weight in candy-coated chocolate today.

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I was going through this year's collection of wall-calendars-sent-free-in-the-mail, and judging them worthy based on whether or not they had pictures of apes. I can't stand them; gorillas and chimpanzees freak me out. I don't wish them any harm or anything crazy like that, but I certainly don't want to see their pictures on my wall for a month.

Strangely, orangutans don't bother me near as much, and I'm not sure why.

___

I'm afraid that I've read all of the decent G/B fic that's posted on the web, and I'm going through withdrawal. I forgot until recently just how ridiculous it is getting into a fandom that is essentially just limping along on the memories of yester-year. Note to self: in the future, stay away from fandoms that have not had new canon material in five-plus years.

However, if there is still professional fiction being written for DS9, there's still some canon in the making, right? In fact, just a week or two ago, I read the Star Trek SCE (Starfleet Corps of Engineers) eBook #55 Wounds Book 1 and # 56 Wounds Book 2 (though I bought mine through Sony's eBook store since that's the hand-held I have), and I really enjoyed it (them, though really it's all one book just broken into two parts that you have to buy) because it was chock-full of Dr. Bashir torture. I just wish that there was more fall-out to the story (the next DS9 book in the series, Warpath, doesn't make mention of the events of Wounds, though if I remember correctly, they were published the same year, so there you go). I'd love to see some Bashir fic written about the DS9 Relaunch books; there's still a lot of potential left for the character in the canon universe.

On the other hand, I'd settle for some new Bashir-fic, period. Beggars can't be choosers, and all of that.