Week 7: Performance Art

Leaves, flowers, rock music, fire. I'm experimenting with thumbnails, Scrapbook this week and not cutting; shout if any of these choices or the formatting makes you cry. (I know it looks really ugly to me. Watch this space for future tables.)


In the gardens at the National Arboretum. Resizing, gradient map (black-and-white, normal mode).


Bonsai'd azalea at the National Arboretum. Good timing on that trip. Auto color, resizing.


Gin Blossoms at Artomatic. Resizing.


Firedancing by Flights of Fire at Artomatic. Resizing. If you google "flights of fire" dc you can pull up a flickr account with someone else's much cooler pictures from the same evening.

Surprises in the Margins (April Reading)

Late, they tell me, is better than never.

Star Wars: Alleigance (Timothy Zahn): Rebels post-Yavin, Imperial corruption, Emperor's Hand, shake well and mix. Who cares about the details, it's Zahn writing a SW original trilogy novel! We all know that I am a gigantic fangirl for Zahn, what with the original characters I don't want to die and the prose that I can read without wincing, so this is all about the happy indulgent storytelling. Seriously, people: lightsabers!

One for the Money (Janet Evanovitch): Stephanie Plum has lost it all - her job, her savings, even her car. Her last hope for financial solvency is Joe Morelli - or rather, the $10,000 she can earn by bringing the New Jersey cop-turned-killer to justice. Will Stephanie overcome her mixed feelings for Joe to make the case, or will Rex the hamster be forced to eat hamster kibble for the rest of his days?

cathydalek recommended this, and she was smack on the money. I kept thinking of people while reading this - if norabombay lost her car, this would be her life - every sketchy NJ city story aoumd mentioned - the possible appearance of a cousin of cathydalek's family's Biscayne in the next book.

Pure junk reading, literally. I read this while compulsively chomping Cheetos.

Sixty Days and Counting (Kim Stanley Robinson): If you know KSR's previous novels, you know how this one goes, except maybe with Phil. I'm putting the gigantic rant below the cut, becuase it boils down to the novel (and the trilogy) being a policy story, not a policy secondary impact story.

( There is a river dividing Anacostia and Arlington. )

Fortunately, I'm 80 pages from the end of a nice nonfiction polio book, so there's only so much griping you can expect in the May list.