thebitterguy

So I went book shopping with Cynra on Saturday in order to validate our parking (If you buy $25 of books you save $8 on parking. To some people, that might not make sense), and I picked up a book of essays by Ray Bradbury and Blood and Iron by Elizabeth Bear.

Bear's name gets bandied (I love that word, btw. Bandied, bandied, bandied) about during discussions of new genre authors, so I thought I'd get something of hers. I consider this a noble action on my part since Hammered, one of her SF books (about a Canadian, even!) just didn't get my crank turning. I left it to read a cheesy TSR paperback, although I never finished F.R.E.E.Lancers either.

The strange bit was I had a great deal of difficulty figuring out which book to buy. The Promethean Age books seemed interesting (covering urban fantasy in modern and Elizabethan times) but I could not for the life of me figure out which one to buy first. When I was a kid, books in series had numbers on them! And they let us keep track of which one was which! And we LIKED it!

I also remembered that I'd gotten a short story compilation of hers when I was out East for Thanksgiving too. So I'll make my way to that when I finish this one.

Okay. I REALLY want the Morrison New X-Men omnibus. Much more than I thought I did, because it's turned into such a chore to get it. Now, my FNSLCS is selling it for cover (i.e. $120 Canadain). So no. Dragon Lady has promised to sell it to me for less, but a strange quirk of physics has rendered them incapable of having a copy for sale when I'm in the store with money to buy. So, I start looking online.

If I go to Amazon.com, I can get it for
62.99 US. This is actually the best option so far, even if I do get dinged for GST & Customs, which is unlikely given what I've heard. Oh, wait. No free shipping. Fuckberries. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem, except it weight is seven pounds.

While I can get it for$67.14 from Buy.com, they'll also charge me for shipping if I get it there.

Amazon.ca will sell it to me for $100.80, which is NOT a corrrect translation of the US price. However, I'd not have to pay for shipping.

Chapters has the best price, having it for $73.32, also with free shipping. This is, of course, fucking useless as it is out of stock. Thanks a lot, Heather, you whore.

They can also sell it to me for $67.05 used, so I dunno if that's worth it. It depends how 'used' it is, really.

Have I angered the saint of book buying? Am I a bad person?

And mildly heatstruck.

Hmmm. Let's start at now and go backwards, shall we?

Just finished playing several hours of Jade Empire. Addictive little Xbox RPG game. Props to the_adzo for that taste o' Joy.

Ate a lukewarm potato, but only because I stopped off to do a little shopping on the way home from dropping off redeem147. I ate a whopper while she ate her own potato while we drove down the Gardiner.

We were driving from Ed's place where we'd been kibitzing for a bit after a day at Taste of the Danforth.

I was quite depressed, because I had received the previous day a brand new t-shirt from Mater Bitter that I wanted to wear, but forgot. Bright red, the crescent & moon, emblazoned with Turkiye. I'm sure it would have been very comfortable.

TotD was good. redeem147 bumped into a couple of old aquaintances (one of whom was selling Enviro-Cool temperature regulators, the other of whom was handing out flyers for Jews for Jesus).

Had some souvlaki, walked a bit, didn't get any curry or quail or corn, which was dissapointing in retrospect, but it'll be there next year. Popped into Book City where we picked up a few things, and then headed over to Comics and More where I picked up the final Legionnaire to mail out. Mea culpa for the delay.

Last night, it was dinner with the extended family to celebrate my aunt & uncle's 35th wedding anniversary. The venue was a Brazillian BBQ establishment called the Red Violin. Tasty food, and the green/red card makes me happy. "My card is green! Bring me food!"

Of course, two events conspired to cast a pall on the evening. First off, the venue. while nice, you may notice is located on the Danforth. The Danforth. Yeah, there. A strategic blunder on a level with invading Russia.

Which made getting to it from the hotel Mater & Pater were staying at difficult (we figured parking would be impossible, and we were morstly right; just $20 event parking available). So we took a cab.

Oh, that was fun.

The cabby was, how do you say in the English, an Asshole. He took the Don Mills exit, which added about $10 onto our trip, instead of just getting off at Danforth and letting us walk the 10 feet to the restaurant, he got off at Don Mills and wandered through crowded streets for a while.

Fucktard. I'm gonna yell at someone for that.

Previous to meeting up with the parents, I played some gaming and sat in some backyard with nottheterritory, anidada, noodaypaisley and his wife. We played Star Munchkin (including my newly acquired Star Munchkin 2: the Clown Wars expansion) until I didn't win (Cthulhu killed me dead). We then looked at Chez Geek cards. We ate pizza.

Previous to that, nottheterritory and I went to Hairy T's to trade in a bundle of old d20 stuff of mine. The credit acquired thus allowed me to pick up a few things, including Blue Rose, d20 Apocalypse, Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering, Gurps: Weird War 2 (which was a collaboration, not pure Hitey goodness), and a few other things including the Steranko Nick Fury TPB (wow, Stan really did a poor job with his issues). I also got them to throw in a copy of Orkworld, telling them that it had been cluttering up the shelves for five years.

And that was the weekend. Good night.

Basilisk Dreams, the SF bookstore in Ottawa, has apparently shut down.

Which is a shame. The owner was an old GM of mine (TORG GM, too, which makes him brave and foolish), and while a bit of an odd duck, was a not bad guy.

Not enough good game or book stores out there. It'll be missed.