House of Leaves

Subject: Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves
Summary: A story about a house that is bigger inside than outside. Mind-boggling pages of research consumed with painstaking (fictitious?) footnotes. A dizzying array of commentary upon commentaries upon commentaries. An intro to the wonders of typography.

All of this and it leaves you with a blank stare and an expression of WOAH on your lips.

Anyway, I encountered an interesting paragraph today...

We watch reality television that has nothing to do with reality and use an information superhighway where the quality of said information is easily called in to doubt, regardless of the speed at which it arrives. We make the dangerous assumption that what we are seeing is real despite the fact that these media and many, many others have become detached from reality. Our language is changing, losing its meaning, its points of reference, being able to surf, chat, or interact without actual physical activity, words or visual reference is only the start. Our technology is altering the way we understand distance and location to a point where bringing us closer together can also mean that we won't know where we are.¹

¹ Moss, Luther. "the book you are reading doesn't exist." 606 Magazine. May 2004. .

Quarter Century Mark

This past weekend I celebrated my XXV years of existence on Earth. I indulged myself with a three day weekend. :) On Friday, my DH and I went shopping for earrings. His first ever gift of earrings, which he has been waiting for a while to get for me. teehee. :p

Saturday was a relaxing day of reading, lounging, a bit of tennis, and dinner with the parents. There were these two cute little high school kids who came up and asked us if we wanted to play doubles against them. And they didn't realize how old we were because they thought we were brother and sister! hahah!! :D After we told them that we were married I think they were thinking to themselves "ok, these two are so old!!" haha!

Blood...*squirm*

Anything related to blood always makes me a tad squeamish. Had a doctor's appointment today and she brought up the fact that I should get a ? test done for this year and to visit the lab down the hall after our appointment. I tried to get out of it by saying that I get that test done only once every two years and not every year. Ok, that failed.

Had to suck it up and visit the freezing lab room where stacks of empty vials, waiting to be filled with red viscous fluid, were flauntingly visible to the timid. Ok, I'm pretty terrified about getting my blood drawn and I probably looked it too because the lab technician was very cheerful and constantly assured me that he was going to look out for me. The man is amazing! The needle made a small jab and before I knew it, he had already filled six vials. (I came to the same room, same technician last time and he was also very very cool.) This time he rewarded me with a Daffy Duck band-aid and a can of orange juice. :)

Giddy rush...teehee ^_^

Yesterday night, I returned a phone call and got a firecracker surprise...an engagement!!!

One of my dear dear friends is now engaged!! YEAH!! News like this always makes me so giddy and super excited. :D It's a natural high. So happy for the newly engaged couple!! Can't wait to know when their wedding will be. heehee. wee!

Just thinking about it leaves me with a big silly grin on my face. :p

Boating weekend

DH and I went on the annual group boating trip this past weekend. :) Once again, we had perfect weather - hot and sunny enough to warm up the lake. Last trip, we water skied. On this trip, we did wakeboarding. There were two other couples there that owned boats and watching them wakeboard is so amazing. They get out of the water with such an easy grace and they zip along the water effortlessly. I, on the other hand, contributed many spectacular falls, thereby providing entertainment to the passengers on the boat. However, by the second day, DH and I were able to stay on the wakeboard for a decent period of time. heheh.

We also did some tubing. This time, we used a tube where you had to lie on your stomach and hold on to the grips on the tube's side. You were then dragged behind the boat. Some of the splashes that hit your face really blind you. But it was so fun being tossed around by the waves. When I fell, it was so sudden. One second I was on the tube and the next second I was in the water. Falling into the water is really fun though, kind of a pleasant surprise. haha!

Going on these boating trips really makes you want to own your own boat! It's a total departure from the usual weekend activities. But I'm definitely feeling the sore muscles in my arms and legs today. :p

The two couples who own boats are also the two couples with the newborns. Both babies were 5 months old. I can't believe they brought the babies with them and hiked up and down from the house to the lake front with those babies. AMAZING mothers. The babies had plenty of baby sitters though, thankfully for the moms. All the girls took turns taking care of the babies. Both of them would drool all over you because they were both teething. :D

Non-Militant games

This Labor Day weekend was a lazy three days of sleeping in until noon.

DH and I finally saw Spiderman 2 this past Saturday. Like everyone else, I thought the second one was better than the first. After a quick dinner, we headed up to a friend's for game night. What ended up happening was that there was one dedicated table of bridge and everyone else just played other board or card games. Of course since DH is a huge bridge player, he was pretty much at that one table the entire night. Occassionally checking up on my games when he was the dummy.

So one of the guys there was kind of a game connoisseur. He brought four big bags full of games! Half of them were German because apparently German game makers are the best. So the funny thing is that I noticed that there is a BIG difference between German-made games and American-made games.

Most of the American games are more about power, money, and/or taking control. The German games were friendlier and less about greed. There were some pretty funny games out there. We played a pizza making game, a pirates escaping prison game, a color game, a game that changes rules each time a card is played (Fluxx), a chicken stealing game, and a game of slacking. Yes, many games we played. We played until the bridge players were finished...which always takes a long time.

So we ended up staying until past 3am to play all this. :p