Arctangential

I’m finally back up and online after moving. It was a tiring bunch of days, but some time spent sitting around an empty house, waiting for people to show up allowed me to get quite a bit of reading done. I won’t say too much about these books I’ve read in the intervening days, except I’m in the middle of Philip José Farmer’s “World of Tiers” series, which is quite a bit of fun, and that Samuel Delany remains one of the world’s best science fiction authors, and Empire Star was no exception. I would recommend it to anybody.

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I finished Dick Francis’ Hot Money like a week ago. I haven’t updated in a while because I’ve been moving house and it’s horribly time-consuming. Sorry.

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I finished The Way of Spider last night, the sequel to The Warriors of Spider, by W. Michael Gear. I don’t have much to say about these books; they’re not really typical by any measure, and I think if I took a couple of pages I could go into some depth about what’s interesting about them; however, it would be a pretty crappy writeup AND I really don’t feel like it. So, these are my current stats:

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I had a surreal moment Tuesday night. I went to Ikea, which is already a strange place on a Tuesday night, cavernous and mainly empty, like a giant mausoleum of particleboard furniture. As I wandered through the deserted spaces, looking for a RIAN and some OMNE, I started hearing the strains of jazz music. This isn’t too unexpected in a big store like this, of course, but what was odd was its directionality. Generally the music is piped in throughout the store, meaning you hear it at roughly the same volume no matter where you are. But, I noticed that the music got noticeably louder as I rounded a corner in couches, and then continued to increase in volume as I walked through bedding, home entertainment and finally kitchenwares. From here I could see the restaurant (Ikea has a pretty good restaurant in it, that serves some very tasty Swedish meatballs), and in the restaurant a jazz band playing. They’re surrounded by a crown of people and the drummer has just launched into an awesome solo. I stand and listen and when he’s done the crown bursts out in applause.

This is not the kind of thing I expect to encounter in a furniture store. Also, they were out of the thing I went there to buy. I’m going to go back next week, but not on Tuesday.