Been a couple of days. A lot is going on. Saw two more houses on Tuesday. Both were passable, but the second one was pretty spectacular. It's on the upper edge of our price range. Hell, it's way on the upper edge of our price range. Since the house has been on the market for about 8 months, and the price hasn't gone down much, we can guess that the sellers are not extremely motivated people. So, it might not drift into our price range. More's the pity. We'll see. We're in the process of getting pre-approved for our mortgage, as well, have to fax things off to our lender. The sad part is that the house we really like used to be owned by our lender! How strange is that?

Deron's game on Wednesday went very well. He's done a very good job setting up a couple of mysteries, and given the PCs something to do, and we've all had a combat, which added to the fun. It shows great promise. We'll just have to see how deadly it is.
posted by Jeremy at 9:27 AM

So I'm hip deep in Robert Jordan right now. I'm about 350 pages through Crossroads of Twilight. So far, there have been no earthshattering events like the one at the end of Winter's Heart, nor any real combat, just a lot of characters around talking about who's dealing with whom. Embarassingly, it's been too long since I've read any other Jordan book, so some of the minor characters are very fuzzy, but I'm remembering things as I go along. However, while things aren't happening up front, they are happening in the background. The plot is advancing, but it is very slow, and I was sort of hoping to see some real plot advancement. However, he has spent a lot of time on detail. He is probably the most detail oriented author in fantasy. Nothing wrong with that, but as my friend Todd put it on the phone on Sunday, don't sacrifice it for story! That is what Jordan seems to be doing, now Ten books into his series. There was a day when I would buy his books in hardcover on Day One. This year I waited until Day five, and next time, well, next time, it might be a bit longer, until all of the reviews are in. I think, though, so far I can see the table being set for another climax. I hope it is the calm before the storm, otherwise it will be a truly pointless book.

Hmm, interesting. I just read a post on Usenet that could shed some light on the book. The book's title is Croosroads of Twilight. Each character reaches some sort of Crossroad by the end of the book, where they have a choice to make, or have ade a fundamental life-changing decision. Could that be where the title came from? I suspected more depth than people have generally read into the books so far, and I hope that that sort of depth continues. Along with more PLOT! I hope that this is the calm before the storm, and that there is lots of action to close out the series in the next few books? Will he keep to his schedule of one book every 2 years? I hope so. It's hard to believe that I started to read this series when I was 18, and ten years later, it still isn't done. Is that die hard or what? Sadly, I'll keep reading. I'm a geek, but that goes without saying. I'm just a sucker for punishment. At least I have works by Martin and Erikson to keep me warm in those cold gaps between Jordan books, and I think I do consider those series to be better than Jordan by far. I'll still try very hard to see the Jordan series through.



posted by Jeremy at 10:06 AM

House hunting was good, yet not good. We saw three houses on Friday night, and two were very good. They were right around the corner from our house, and I think one is on our keeper list, and the other would have been on our list if it wasn't for the horrid carpet and the unfinished basement.

Unfortunately, the Realtors association has been switching all of the realtors to an electronic based system of keying into the houses. Well, it's based on the Palm, and our realtor's Palm fried itself in a big way on our way to the fourth and fifth places of the night. She felt pretty bad about it, and I don't blame her, it's not her fault that it crashed. What can she do? So I think we are going out on Tuesday night to look some more.

Went CD shopping this weekend. Between the wife and I, we bought $185 of used CDs, about $110 of which were mine.
Only got 1 CD off of my list, which was Killswitch Engage, a very thrashy disc. Good for some variety, but it might be too thrashy for me. We'll see. Also got a bunch of the Maiden remasters, and some Queensryche I didn't have before. A good haul...don't know if it was necessary, but fun. :-)

No running yesterday or today. Take care of the shin splints. Probably no running tomorrow, either. Want to kill them dead before I really start marathon training. Stupid shin splints. I'll get on the bike today to take care of the usual conditioning, but otherwise, no plans to run.
posted by Jeremy at 1:12 PM