Weekend Activity
Jun. 16th, 2003 02:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
galdrinI know - it should probably say Weekend Activities but, truth to tell I only did one thing pretty much the whole weekend.
My youngest brother and sister-in-law, for whatever reason [supposedly 'payback' for something I did for him, I can't recall what] took it upon themselves to present me with an enrollment in a Basic Motorcycle Skills class. This is a 3-day class where you spend about 7 hours in the classroom and a day and a half actually on a bike. Not that I haven' ridden motorcycles in my time, but this teaches some very interesting concepts and will help un-teach those bad habits the self-taught rider is prone to. So I'm in here today, red and wind burned, but in possession of a certificate stating that I had successfully completed their course. That exempts you from having to take the riding portion of the State's motorcycle exam and gives you 90% of what's on the state's written exam. So now I can seriously go look at a 'Wing or a Valk' - the dream of riding off to the 4-Corners area or up the Natchez Trace on a cruiser is that much closer. Actually, about a year 1/2 off now. Right on schedule.
Having finally finished The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy (and thank you very much Rowancat, for that unexpected surprise X-mas gift) that was sitting on my bedroom table, I finally started working my way back into reading multiple books at the same time.
The first, which I am reading at work on breaks and during lunch, is a book that has been highly recommended by a good number of my on-line friends, The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. Although it has been suggested that you really need to have read Jane Eyre in order to understand much of what goes on in the novel, so far I've found it to be an engaging tale, and some excellent quotable material like, "...The best reason for committing loathsome and detestable acts ... is purely for their own sake. Monetary gain is all very well, but it dilutes the taste of wickedness to a lower level that is obtainable by anyone with an overdeveloped sense of avarice. True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good--and we all know how rare that is..." - too cool. I read that and immediately figured out that Acheron Hades and PDS Esq. are birds of a feather.
The other book I'm reading, at home, is the novel Captain Nemo by K.J. Anderson. This is a really fun book which casts Andre Nemo and Jules Verne as childhood friends, both of whom grow up to become ... well, who they become. Jules Verne has always been a favorite of mine and the premise of Verne's "fictional" novels being the real-life adventures of his friend Nemo has, so far, been a pleasure to follow. I've been hooked since the beginning and find it hard to put down. Great for teen readers, too, as it may spark some interest in searching out the rest of Verne's body of work.
Well, that's the short intermission, folks. Got to get back at it, so talk to y'all later.
My youngest brother and sister-in-law, for whatever reason [supposedly 'payback' for something I did for him, I can't recall what] took it upon themselves to present me with an enrollment in a Basic Motorcycle Skills class. This is a 3-day class where you spend about 7 hours in the classroom and a day and a half actually on a bike. Not that I haven' ridden motorcycles in my time, but this teaches some very interesting concepts and will help un-teach those bad habits the self-taught rider is prone to. So I'm in here today, red and wind burned, but in possession of a certificate stating that I had successfully completed their course. That exempts you from having to take the riding portion of the State's motorcycle exam and gives you 90% of what's on the state's written exam. So now I can seriously go look at a 'Wing or a Valk' - the dream of riding off to the 4-Corners area or up the Natchez Trace on a cruiser is that much closer. Actually, about a year 1/2 off now. Right on schedule.
Having finally finished The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy (and thank you very much Rowancat, for that unexpected surprise X-mas gift) that was sitting on my bedroom table, I finally started working my way back into reading multiple books at the same time.
The first, which I am reading at work on breaks and during lunch, is a book that has been highly recommended by a good number of my on-line friends, The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. Although it has been suggested that you really need to have read Jane Eyre in order to understand much of what goes on in the novel, so far I've found it to be an engaging tale, and some excellent quotable material like, "...The best reason for committing loathsome and detestable acts ... is purely for their own sake. Monetary gain is all very well, but it dilutes the taste of wickedness to a lower level that is obtainable by anyone with an overdeveloped sense of avarice. True and baseless evil is as rare as the purest good--and we all know how rare that is..." - too cool. I read that and immediately figured out that Acheron Hades and PDS Esq. are birds of a feather.
The other book I'm reading, at home, is the novel Captain Nemo by K.J. Anderson. This is a really fun book which casts Andre Nemo and Jules Verne as childhood friends, both of whom grow up to become ... well, who they become. Jules Verne has always been a favorite of mine and the premise of Verne's "fictional" novels being the real-life adventures of his friend Nemo has, so far, been a pleasure to follow. I've been hooked since the beginning and find it hard to put down. Great for teen readers, too, as it may spark some interest in searching out the rest of Verne's body of work.
Well, that's the short intermission, folks. Got to get back at it, so talk to y'all later.
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Date: 2003-06-16 02:52 pm (UTC)