My hands are covered in ink.

Today as part of my second job at Spectrum Eye (the first bit was finding, pulling and re-filing 2000+ files), I started faxing 929 new doctor announcements. Except first I had to cross off all of the out-of-state doctors. Then all of the in-town doctors. Then all of the doctors with no fax numbers (duh). Then I had to go through and find all of the optometrists and ophthalmologists to make sure I fax to them first (hello yellow hi-liter). I went from 929 to 373 doctors. 97 of those are now hi-lited. My hands are covered in ink from crossing stuff out. I don't just do lines, I do big wavy scrawls. No curlicues, just big waves. That way I know it's really crossed out.
After an hour and 39 minutes I decided I was done for the day.
I haven't sent a single fax yet.

In other news, you guys suck. I got zero votes on what review to post today! My feelings are hurt. On a scale of one to permanent scarring, I'm at about a knee scrape. Screw you guys. :(

So I picked the review of The Great Gatsby. Mostly because I worked really hard on it. It took probably 3 hours total to write, edit, re-write, re-edit, finish, polish, find links, format and publish. So be grateful. And go read it. I'm pretty pleased with it. Of course I could have written more or changed a few things...but I say that about every piece, every time I go back and read it again. I've learned to just let go a little. Once it's out there, it's out there. I'm chill with it. It's a good review, and I like it.

The only rotten part is now I want to watch the movie version except I know it will depress the hell out of me.

Today I'm going to be working on a review of The Perks of Being a Wallflower (thanks again Dirk), and possibly going to the library to pick some stuff up. I got Walden Two (which I'm working on) but the two other books I got I haven't even cracked. That's a bad sign for them...usually if I grab a book and let it stew for a couple of days the suspense drives me nuts and I blast through them. These two are just sitting there, bored and useless. That means they need to go back and I need to find something else.

Right now then I have TPoBaW, W2 and Interview with the Vampire to work on; Alex is going to lend me Parallelities when he gets back from NYC (cue jealous grumbling and bitching) and I'm hoping Jonah will let me borrow a sci-fi book he was telling me about, which is called either Up or Down the Line (my memory is horrible).

Other than that, I still need ideas. I'm going to go through my own books and pick out a few I remember well enough to review without rereading (Assassins of Tamurin which I've read upwards of 6 times is definitely one, maybe A Canticle for Leibowitz... we'll see. Memoirs of a Survivor. Stuff like that), but I still need ideas.

I'm also going to be writing a piece on what literature is for my super secret special project, and I want some outside opinions. What do you think literature is? Write as much as I want. If you give me good ideas, I'll use them and credit you in the blog entry about it and be forever grateful to you. I have some outlined ideas which I'll be keeping to myself so as not to bias your comments (which had better be many), but I would love to hear from you all. All...what, 5 of you who read this? If I'm lucky.

Part 2

It's up! WOO party party. Everybody DANCE. Just kidding, you only need to go and check out the review. It'll make more sense if you refer to part 1 and then go to part 2 (especially if you haven't yet read part 1).

In other book news, I went to the library yesterday and, as expected, they had 1 of the 10 books I went in specifically looking for. Let that sink in. I went in looking for 10 books (which is a lot, admittedly) -none of them are rare books. None of them are particularly obscure. You know which one they had? Walden Two. My public library does not even possess a copy of Ender's Game. It wasn't checked out (or missing, a la Generation X, thanks to a certain someone I know), they just don't have it. How they get away with not having one of the most influential sci-fi books around, I don't know. They have plenty of copies of awful books that no one will ever read ever in a million years (not even me for the sake of a review. Okay maybe me), but not Ender's Game. They don't have Population Bomb -or On The Road by Jack Kerouac.

I speak sincerely when I ask with great gusto and much shaking of hands, what the fuck?!

I go to my local library a lot. No, really. I'm there about 2x a week on average, and that's 2x checking out new things (or trying to), not taking stuff back. It's not a bad looking library. It's got nice big windows and it's well-lit. The books and shelves are getting a bit worn, but they disguise that by constantly moving sections around so that if you don't go for a couple of months, when you come back nothing makes any sense whatsoever. There will be Christian Fiction where the Anne Rice used to be (Christian Fiction, by the way, is something that confuses me. Is it just overtly preachy? Why can't it just be moral fiction? Where's the Hindu Fiction?), and that's a little bit trippy. Speaking of Anne Rice, I finally, finally, on my umpteenth attempt, managed to snag one of the two copies of Interview With The Vampire that the library has. I've been trying, 2x/week since June 12 to get one.

Yeah.

My library is not good. It's never been good, although I may at some point have been under the impression that it was, since when I was about 12 I used to check out pretty much the same 5 or 6 books every time I went and I would just buy everything else from B. Dalton (another rant for another day. I do have to go to work at some point this morning). This is even before funding got shafted.

I really don't know what can be done about a shit-tastic library. Anyone have ideas? I'm considering trying Paperback Swap, despite it costing me in postage. It'll save on gas and (possibly) time and frustration. Does anyone have experience with it? Good? Bad? Some in between or extreme? Are there other sources you've found besides the library for inexpensive books? My income is small and quickly exhausted, despite me only buying coffee and books and occasionally a necessary item of clothing.

The used bookstores in Findlay aren't really calling to me at this point (although I have reviewed them) since the people I know who frequent them do so to get a new stash of trashy romance novels. While I have nothing personally against trashy romance novels -aside from their being trashy romance novels- I don't particularly want to read them.

So! Today went up the review of TTTM + Frankenstein. Maybe Friday will be something new, if you're lucky. Like The Great Gatsby. We'll see!