I read a book! (Madness of Angels, Kate Griffin)

So after posting about how sad I was not to be at Wiscon, I tried to think of some small thing I could do to feel better. While driving to munchkin's  school, I thought about the wonderful Wiscon dealers' room and decided that the local Barnes & Noble would be a horrible substitute, but much better than nothing. Since I had about fifteen extra minutes, I went to the bookstore to check whether they had _Redwood and Wildfire_ in stock. Of course they didn't. So I wandered the "new" section of the sff section. There I saw a book with a blurb from N.K. Jemisin on the front cover. I took this as a sign and went and found the first book of the series in the not-new section.

IIRC, Jemisin's quote was something about how well Kate Griffin did urban magic. I found that to be spot-on with this book. Definitely the way she renders the magic is the most lively and enjoyable part. There are some parts of the book where she goes on and on with descriptions about non-magical London that I found dull. Also, the protagonist is this weird hybrid of person/other being that made it kind of hard to relate. Especially since gradually revealing the nature of the hybrid and the other being was kind of what she used to propel the book forward. I like character-driven stories, so it was a little annoying to not really know the dang protagonist until the end. She did pull off a nice satisfying ending and did a good job of character development/reveal at the end, so that was good. I would have felt quite cheated if she hadn't.

I'll probably read the next book in the series, unless I don't get around to ordering it or maybe decide to stop wasting so much time enjoying myself and instead do all the responsible family stuff (scrubbing down the house to prep for a home birth, playing with older munchkin/taking her places, buying little baby suits, setting up the baby environment, prepping to move in August). In general, I recommend this book in a mind-candy-plus-vitamins kind of way.

More musing about maybe getting into a tech profession

I almost titled that "more about professional fantasies" but that would have been total bait and switch!  Seeing as I meant "enjoyable mentation about potential tech careers" and not "hiring a professional to enact fantasies."

Anyway, I was talking to Spouse today in passing about how I could totally be a network security super geek (this came up because he had to go upstairs to pay the bills and I can't climb the stairs these days and I was like, 'just set up your fancy new router so you can run the desktop from your laptop' and he was like, "um, no"). Anyway, I was feeling confident that I could become a kick-ass network security person/hacker because there is a finite body of knowledge I'd have learn plus problem solving, so I could just start at the beginning with basic reading and then look around for some fun online community to talk about interesting stuff with and finding fun practice projects.

Then Spouse was like, "Yeah, in all your spare time." And I was like, "Well, after Junior is a year old, you know. It would only take a few years. Oh! and then when he's like Munchkin's age, I could get that motorcycle! And I'd be this super hot biker chick with bad ass hacking skills!! Like a Neil Gaiman character!" It sounded like so much fun.

And then I thought how, seeing as I'm not trying to make myself do any real fiction writing because my life is too freaking hard right now, I could maybe write some awesome, self-indulgent shit about a bad-ass, motorcycle riding, pink-haired hacker chick. What fun! I mean, I wouldn't have to, like, show anyone or associate it with my real name. And that kind of thing worked out okay for Heinlein. (Oh, look! Another novel about three hot young women jumping on the jock of the smart old guy!)

Seriously, you guys, I think this is me escaping into intellectual fantasy to try to combat how fucking freaked out I'm getting about being an infant-mommy again. OMG, friends. Please don't laugh at me when you see me all covered in my own breast milk, blissing out singing little lullabies and draping the baby room with organically-dyed silks. Okay?