January 25, 2014

A boring day. I watched YouTube videos, played a little Battlefield 4, and took a nap. I only played a couple games of being an actual soldier in BF4 and kept getting my ass handed to me, so I switched to Commander mode and played a few more games that way. I earn points way faster as a commander. I can level up faster that way but not actually improve my skill at all, so there are pros and cons.

At work tonight I finished reading Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline. I assumed that when I left off last night I was on the homestretch to a happy ending. I was wrong. Another tragedy was thrown in and it sucked. But there was a happy ending so there's that. It is hard to believe that orphan trains were an actual thing. Over 200,000 kids were shipped to the Midwest on orphan trains in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

I also continued reading Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan, knocking out about eighty pages. I am really liking it. The writing is funny and relatable, and I like the real life references. The main character in the story creates a digital representation of the bookstore using the Ruby programming language and now I want to look into that language. I have always been interested in programming and Ruby sounds interesting. A also learned that notes in the margin of a book or paper are called marginalia.

All night I have a pretty decent headache. Most notably when I do anything other than sit perfectly still with my eyes closed. So I'm going to go to bed now and hope I wake up without a headache. But I will end this entry with a few of my favorite quotes from tonight's reading of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore.

"My limbic system has grown accustomed to a certain (very low) level of human (female) contact. With her standing right next to me, her elbow poking me just the tiniest bit, I basically feel drunk." (p.52)

"She's wearing the same red and yellow BAM! T-shirt from before, which means (a) she slept in it, (b) she owns several identical T-shirts, or (c) she's a cartoon character – all of which are appealing alternatives." (p.58)

"Now I've resigned myself to sitting at the front desk, but I can't stop squirming. If fidgets were Wikipedia edits, I would have completely revamped the entry on guilt by now, and translated it into five new languages." (p.80)