Felicia Day

So, I’m shooting a commercial tomorrow and then going out of town for a little mini-vacation, because more than 4 months in LA without a break is impossible to tolerate.

It made me think, what the hell is Labor Day for anyway? For me, the only significance of Labor Day is that in college, it was the weekend I had to get my crap together. Classes always started the Wednesday before, and I always had to figure out what course to drop that weekend, because my schedule was always overly ambitious, like 20 hours ambitious. I never got around to taking that gem cutting class I lusted after, but I did register for it a few times, then dropped it in a panic on the weekend.

Anyway, I looked it up and it’s supposed to be a day dedicated to the “working man” and, basically the Labor movement. And the last day you can wear white. And, unofficially the last day of Summer. Yawn o rama. I tried to see if anything exciting happened on any Sept 3 and found this:

So…yeah. Exciting memorial this is not. Just consider it a day off and enjoy yourself without any religious or patriotic guilt That’s a vacation in itself.

I’ll be back Monday, have a great weekend everyone!

I am pretty proud of how optimized I am for web surfing these days.  If anything in my life is organized, it’s the way I browse the web every morning.   I guess I shouldn’t brag about it, but it did take some planning and prioritizing.  Not only do I have my iGoogle homepage tricked out with RSS from my favorite sites (divided into 5 categories) and my daily to-do list (which, ahem, RARELY gets done),  but I have an addition list of Google Reader RSS feeds of trashy celebrity sites, fantasy review sites, technology sites, weird news sites…all the sites I put in the “if I have time to waste I’ll read this crap” category.   All tagged neatly as well. After my homepage browsing I always start at popurls.com and open tabs on any articles I think look interesting.  The time drain spirals out of control until I can blast myself out of my chair a few hours later.   It’s a daily ritual that I’ve settled into, and it’s rare that I add new sites to my daily regiment because I try to at least be a little considerate with my own time.

But tonight, I got a few more!  I found this great article from PC Magazine.  They just came out with a list of top 100 “unknown” websites.   Drool!  Now, I don’t mean to brag, but I knew about a bunch of these, ’cause I’m incredibly cool…er, incredibly chained to my computer…but there were some really neat ones I came across that are worth a look.    One of the most interesting to me was www.kiva.org.  It’s a place where you can loan money to real people for micro loans, say, to buy land or buy chickens for them to raise.  I’ve heard/read stories on the emergence of the micro-loan and how it’s really helped third world people, especially women, avoid borrowing from loan sharks and I think this is a really cool idea.    It really touched me to see that there’s a way to help a real person directly rather than giving a ton of money to an organization who spends money on sending me BACK address labels and cups and hideous old lady T-shirts (I’m talking to you, Humane Society!  I don’t need a stationery set, thanks!  Just save some dogs for me!)

There are a bunch more I bookmarked while looking through the list, but I REALLY got excited by Good Reads.  It’s a social networking site for book lovers.  You list all the books you’ve read, share shelves with people, be a member of groups dedicated to subjects, write reviews about what books you’re reading…some people have like, 3000 books listed!  You can also post your own writing, which is neat.  This might be a social networking site I could get into!  Oh great, that’s all I need,  another site to check messages for   But, this one might be one I’m actually interested in updating and posting to.  I’ll see if it sticks!

The good thing about working is that there’s a LOT of downtime in the trailer, which I don’t use productively by writing, of course I read fantasy books!  And I’ve read 3 of varying personal satisfaction in the last week or so.

Starting with my FAVORITE (which I ran out and bought the next two just tonight)

 I posted both covers because I wanted to see which one people liked better.  I received the red one in the mail and, having read it, I really think it fits the tone of the book better, even though there’s a McCheesy on the cover.  He’s not popping biceps out of his jerkin though, so I’m on board with it.

Just judging from book #1, this is totally right below Fire and Ice series for me, I couldn’t put it down.  The mythology was really interesting to me, I actually stopped to read the song lyrics and poems (which I usually skim for some stupid reason) and I was really invested in the characters, even the royal family, poor nobility.  There were some surprising twists I didn’t see coming (it could be argued that they came TOO out of nowhere, but I liked being surprised), and it had that great gritty atmosphere that so many new series have lately.   I really think that the fantasy genre is riding high now, it makes me glad to be a reader   Anyway, I can’t recommend it higher, and #1 is in paperback, so…you have nothing to lose!  I think someone recommended it to me in a thread, so thank you that person.  Feel free to claim credit.  I read this book in one day, I couldn’t put it down.

Next, not as glowing a review, much to my sadness for I LOVE this author:

Er, ya.  If anyone read the Curse of Chalion series, or her Vorkosigan SF saga, you know this author is AMAZING.  Definitely worth picking up everything….but this book I’m afraid.  This is basically a romance novel, with a little fantasy thrown in.  It almost reads like a young adult novel sometimes, the main character can be so childish and irritating at points, and there’s almost no conflict between the main two characters, because they are in love instantly and…well, there is some interesting world building, but it was a pretty weird side trip for an author who I adore.  Oh well, everyone is entitled to try something different.    Definitely LOVE the Curse of Chalion, can’t recommend that one more if you haven’t read it.

Last but not least,  the first novel of an author I am really liking; Michelle Sagara West.  It was recently republished.

I have no idea what to say about this book.  I enjoyed it, but it depressed me so much I can never see myself reading the rest of the series (there are 4).  There’s a very interesting love story in here, and I could criticize consistencies in the story, but for something to make me like, SO DEPRESSED is really a feat, LOL.  I would love to hear from anyone else who read this.  It definitely reminded me of one of my VERY FAVORITE books The DarkAngel by Meridith Ann Pierce.   Man epitomizing utter darkness, girl of light…but in the Sundered series…I know you’re supposed to get your main character in trouble to create conflict, but this poor main character, sometimes I wanted her to just die and get it over with, the pain she’s put through in this book.  And that’s just #1.   I really like this author and am working my way through all the other things she’s written.  I would not dissuade you from reading this, but be prepared for a lot of darkness.

Anyway, those are my round-up reviews for this week.  Love to hear from anyone else who read them.  If you’re a boy, I would definitely only recommend The Briar King.  Oh, and the Curse of Chalion.  The other two are very vaginal fantasy.

I might be a little more sporadic with posting for the next few weeks because I’m doing this movie, so please forgive me.  I’d rather not post anything than something boring

I’m having a really good time doing this western though.  They put a lot of movie dirt on me for authenticity, so when I stop by to pick up dinner somewhere on the way home, I look like some dirty homeless girl, and I think the cashier taking my order is more than a little suspicious that I won’t be able to pay.

I had to ride a mule for a few hours today, and it’s REALLY hot in the sun so I’m sweating a lot under the petticoat so…yeah.   Glamor of movie making again struck down

Thanks everyone for all your movie suggestions, I think I definitely saturated my brain with all the genre cliches.  I dunno if it helps my performance, but it was a great education in a movie area I was ignorant of.

The bummer is that our plans to shoot episodes 4 and 5 of The Guild had to be pushed back.  Gotta pay the bills   Good news is we’re about to hit the 100,000 mark on episode #1 and we’re going to post episode #3 right after Labor Day hopefully, so that’s pretty exciting!   It’s definitely nice to be busy.