Muli Ben-Yehuda's journal

The dreaded lethargy fell upon me again yesterday, coupled with the beginning of a cold. I slunk into bed around five in the afternoon, and crawled out of it this morning, feeling much better. If only I can carry my resolve to do everything I need to do until tonight! Every day is a struggle on its own.

I wonder if they know my contract with the Lab is up for renegotiation at the end of the year?

Last night, ladypine and I went out for a brisk walk in the neighborhood. Along our path we happened upon a bench carrying all sorts of books, left for the taking. ladypine picked up four copies of ‘Fantasy 2000’, a Hebrew science fiction magazine that was published a long time ago, and I picked up Heinlein’s The Cat Who Walks Through Walls in Hebrew and Time Enough For Love in English. There were many other good books there, but we left them. One shouldn’t be greedy, and we still had a long walk ahead of us…

Checking my Heinlein book shelf now, it seems that I already have a copy of Time Enough For Love. In the spirit in which it was found, I’ll mail it to the first person who leaves a comment that they want it. Cheers!

Looking forward to the automn wind caressing my freshly shaven face and nearly shaven head. More when we get back.

On the ICON front, tomorrow’s outing is canceled due to Orson Scott Card’s event being sold out. Boo, hiss. In the unlikely event one of you has a couple of tickets to spare, let me know.

On the Haifa Film Festival front, we went to see Calendar Girls, which was an amusing, “feel good” flick. You can’t go wrong with British accents and breasts! (In my defense, ladypine picked the movie).

We also bought tickets to see two other movies, on Friday: The first is To Kill a King, a historical piece set in England, 1645. It meshes in nicely with the book I’m reading, Quicksilver, which takes place 15 or so years later. The second, Intolerable Cruelty is the newest Cohen brothers film. The brothers’ reputation precedes them and I have high hopes for this movie.

Well, it seems that my keyboard didn’t survive, it just took a couple of hours to die. Thankfully, I had a couple of keyboards waiting in the Magical Box of Computer Stuff I Might Some Day Need. One was even working, and I’m using it to type this now. Working, but that’s about all I can say about it. A trip to the computer store is certainly in order. There I will ogle, fondle, and eventually take home a shiny new keyboard.

ladypine and me will be going to ICON tomorrow, to hear Orson Scott Card and see the movie ‘equilibrium’. If you’re going to be there, drop me a note and maybe we’ll get together for dinner or drinks?

but it survived! and every key stroke is strawberry flavored now!

– over at jwz‘s journal, there’s a discussion on the level of suckitude of Neal Stephenson’s latest, Quicksilver. I’m about 200 pages into it. The verdict so far: very interesting in an encyclopedic sort of way, but not much of a story. I will continue reading to the end, but I sure hope the pace picks up.

– q_skud_ has an interesting book meme going on.

3 books you use most often for reference: Bovet and Cesati’s Understanding the Linux Kernel, W. R. Stevens’s Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment, and google, because while not a book, I use it for reference far more than I use any book…

3 books you read on “high rotation”: Stephen King’s It, Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, anything by W. E. B. Griffin (yummy brain candy).

3 books you read for comfort: Stephen King’s It (knowing which character I always identify with shouldn’t be too difficult), Jeffery Archer’s The Prodigal Daughter and James Clavell’s Shogun (I guess I’m weird).

3 books you really ought to read: oh, but there are so many. Let’s see, just looking at my amazon wishlist, anything by Knuth, but especially his Art of Computer Programming (I’ve read bits and pieces, I should read all of it AND do the excersizes), Feynman’s Lectures on Physics, and the complete works of Shakespeare…

3 books you will never read: there are far too many to mention. Not because I don’t want to, but because there are not enough hours in the day.