![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Updates
Lesse. Back from spending Memorial Day with my dad in Oklahoma; now to see if we can get the trailer loaded up in a day or two and get on the road to Alaska!
Orion wanted to leave tomorrow, but I don't think we're gonna make it.
Oklahoma was more fun than you might expect. We drove south, and southern OK is actually very pretty, with windy hilltop roads, ancient Indian mounds, a gigantic runestone that might or might not have been left by Vikings (and located in a little valley with stone stairs built by the park service that look, I kid you not, like something straight out of Middle Earth, especially at dusk), caves and such. We spent the night in Mena, Arkansas, and in the morning stopped at a roadside rock shop in front of (also around, and inside) this guy's house -- normally I'm not much for touristy things like that, but we drove by and saw a bunch of makeshift tables, sheets of plywood on top of sawhorses, covered with hunks of rock ... and had to stop and take a look. "This is what happens when hobbies run wild," the owner said. He'd been all over the world collecting rocks and told us all about the geology of Arkansas and Arizona.
Everything in Oklahoma is so close together! We had one of those big many-page road atlases with up-close detailed maps of all the different counties in the state. We'd drive for 20 minutes and be across one of the maps and into the next one! By the middle of Monday, we'd seen everything we wanted to see, so we came back a little early and I had some time to visit with Grandma before having to fly back on Tuesday evening.
It was nice to spend a couple of days not thinking about moving.
There's a huge used bookstore in Tulsa where I picked up more of these James Bond books to which I'm becoming re-addicted, and read two of them on the plane coming home. *warning: blatant fangirling ahead* Why aren't the movies this good? Or *are* the movies this good and I've just been missing them? I like how Bond's abilities in the books are more or less human, not superhuman. When he goes up against two or three big tough guys hand-to-hand, he frequently loses, or at least gets mangled. In fact, I think he loses more fights than he wins. He's always getting caught and needing to be rescued. There's a neat scene in Diamonds Are Forever (the one I just read) where he realizes that the only reason he was able to win in that book is because of his friends -- Felix and Tiffany and Felix's cab-driver buddy. Speaking of Felix Lieter ... FelixFelixFelix! I like Bond but I adore Felix! One of the things I like most about him is that he's able to bring out a playful side in Bond. When they get off together, they're just like a couple of big kids.
[Lieter] "I use my ears for hearing with, not for collecting lipstick."
Bond grabbed for a handkerchief.
Lieter watched him scrubbing his ear. "What are you doing?" he asked innocently. "I wasn't for a moment suggesting your ears were anything other than a natural red. However ..."
He ducked under Bond's swing and they both burst out laughing. They were still laughing when they arrived at the hotel.
(from Live and Let Die)
Neat books. Definitely a product of their era, but, as with many of the other pulp writers of the time, if you're able to let some sexism and racism slide, they're a lot of fun.
Orion wanted to leave tomorrow, but I don't think we're gonna make it.
Oklahoma was more fun than you might expect. We drove south, and southern OK is actually very pretty, with windy hilltop roads, ancient Indian mounds, a gigantic runestone that might or might not have been left by Vikings (and located in a little valley with stone stairs built by the park service that look, I kid you not, like something straight out of Middle Earth, especially at dusk), caves and such. We spent the night in Mena, Arkansas, and in the morning stopped at a roadside rock shop in front of (also around, and inside) this guy's house -- normally I'm not much for touristy things like that, but we drove by and saw a bunch of makeshift tables, sheets of plywood on top of sawhorses, covered with hunks of rock ... and had to stop and take a look. "This is what happens when hobbies run wild," the owner said. He'd been all over the world collecting rocks and told us all about the geology of Arkansas and Arizona.
Everything in Oklahoma is so close together! We had one of those big many-page road atlases with up-close detailed maps of all the different counties in the state. We'd drive for 20 minutes and be across one of the maps and into the next one! By the middle of Monday, we'd seen everything we wanted to see, so we came back a little early and I had some time to visit with Grandma before having to fly back on Tuesday evening.
It was nice to spend a couple of days not thinking about moving.
There's a huge used bookstore in Tulsa where I picked up more of these James Bond books to which I'm becoming re-addicted, and read two of them on the plane coming home. *warning: blatant fangirling ahead* Why aren't the movies this good? Or *are* the movies this good and I've just been missing them? I like how Bond's abilities in the books are more or less human, not superhuman. When he goes up against two or three big tough guys hand-to-hand, he frequently loses, or at least gets mangled. In fact, I think he loses more fights than he wins. He's always getting caught and needing to be rescued. There's a neat scene in Diamonds Are Forever (the one I just read) where he realizes that the only reason he was able to win in that book is because of his friends -- Felix and Tiffany and Felix's cab-driver buddy. Speaking of Felix Lieter ... FelixFelixFelix! I like Bond but I adore Felix! One of the things I like most about him is that he's able to bring out a playful side in Bond. When they get off together, they're just like a couple of big kids.
[Lieter] "I use my ears for hearing with, not for collecting lipstick."
Bond grabbed for a handkerchief.
Lieter watched him scrubbing his ear. "What are you doing?" he asked innocently. "I wasn't for a moment suggesting your ears were anything other than a natural red. However ..."
He ducked under Bond's swing and they both burst out laughing. They were still laughing when they arrived at the hotel.
(from Live and Let Die)
Neat books. Definitely a product of their era, but, as with many of the other pulp writers of the time, if you're able to let some sexism and racism slide, they're a lot of fun.