First entry!
Mar. 10th, 2003 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carbonelI suppose the only way to do this is to start in medias res. Just about anyone who's likely to read this knows who I am, and I'm not writing it for the rest of the world in any case. Which means I don't have to talk about my childhood -- not yet, at least -- nor any other traumas.
It's all Laurel and Karen's fault that I'm here. Or possibly the woman who worked in an adult video store, since that was the first LJ I remember reading. Someone must have posted the link somewhere, and I followed the entire thing in horrified fascination. But it was Laurel and Karen, during a hot afternoon in the middle of a lake somewhere near Minnetonka, who inculcated me into LJ culture. No one can say I jump into things quickly; it was summer then and it's winter now, but soon it will be spring and there will again be lakes without frozen stuff on top of them.
The user name, though, is Pamela's fault. She's the one who told me about the Carbonel books by Barbara Sleigh (Carbonel and The Kingdom of Carbonel; there may be a third, but I haven't read it). She described them as an example of engrossing children's books that don't hold up to adult rereading, and reading them for the first time as an adult, I have to agree. But there was something about them that caught my interest, and I loved the name Carbonel. I named a cat that in a fanfiction novel, and when I had to come up with a handle in a hurry for the Delphi Trivia Club, that was the one I chose. I'm not sure I'd respond if anyone called me that in person, but after several years of using it in trivia games, it feels almost natural.
I lost the entire month of February and the first week of March to the Killer Martian Death Virus, but I seem to have mostly recovered. It's a pleasant novelty not to have my throat hurting all the time, and even more so to be able to sleep through the night without being woken by coughing fits.
Of course, there are other reasons not to sleep through the night -- Gandalf the Evil Wakeup Kitty thinks that 6 a.m. is just the right time for me to get up and scoop out the litter box so he can use it. I feed the cats in the evenings, but I don't think there's any cure for this particular ill.
Books in progress: Just finished Diane Duane's A Wizard Alone and Tanya Huff's Summon the Keeper. Now working on Jo Walton's Prize in the Game. I had an orgy of book-buying a few days ago to take advantage of a large gift certificate to DreamHaven books; that was fun.
Also working on Battle Cry of Freedom as the bathroom book (page 820 of 860); I've been at it for months, it seems. And, um, I keep a Regency romance by the computer for rebooting time; current one is Jennie Kissed Me by Joan Smith.
And that's probably enough for now.
It's all Laurel and Karen's fault that I'm here. Or possibly the woman who worked in an adult video store, since that was the first LJ I remember reading. Someone must have posted the link somewhere, and I followed the entire thing in horrified fascination. But it was Laurel and Karen, during a hot afternoon in the middle of a lake somewhere near Minnetonka, who inculcated me into LJ culture. No one can say I jump into things quickly; it was summer then and it's winter now, but soon it will be spring and there will again be lakes without frozen stuff on top of them.
The user name, though, is Pamela's fault. She's the one who told me about the Carbonel books by Barbara Sleigh (Carbonel and The Kingdom of Carbonel; there may be a third, but I haven't read it). She described them as an example of engrossing children's books that don't hold up to adult rereading, and reading them for the first time as an adult, I have to agree. But there was something about them that caught my interest, and I loved the name Carbonel. I named a cat that in a fanfiction novel, and when I had to come up with a handle in a hurry for the Delphi Trivia Club, that was the one I chose. I'm not sure I'd respond if anyone called me that in person, but after several years of using it in trivia games, it feels almost natural.
I lost the entire month of February and the first week of March to the Killer Martian Death Virus, but I seem to have mostly recovered. It's a pleasant novelty not to have my throat hurting all the time, and even more so to be able to sleep through the night without being woken by coughing fits.
Of course, there are other reasons not to sleep through the night -- Gandalf the Evil Wakeup Kitty thinks that 6 a.m. is just the right time for me to get up and scoop out the litter box so he can use it. I feed the cats in the evenings, but I don't think there's any cure for this particular ill.
Books in progress: Just finished Diane Duane's A Wizard Alone and Tanya Huff's Summon the Keeper. Now working on Jo Walton's Prize in the Game. I had an orgy of book-buying a few days ago to take advantage of a large gift certificate to DreamHaven books; that was fun.
Also working on Battle Cry of Freedom as the bathroom book (page 820 of 860); I've been at it for months, it seems. And, um, I keep a Regency romance by the computer for rebooting time; current one is Jennie Kissed Me by Joan Smith.
And that's probably enough for now.
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no subject
Date: 2003-03-11 04:35 pm (UTC)The only thing I can remember about the Carbonel books is the image of those huge glass bottles of coloured glop in the windows of pharmacies being actual magic potions. I think of that every time I see them.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-12 06:55 pm (UTC)The glass bottles were one of those backwards things for me -- I'd seen them in my 1979 visit to England, but they were fixed considerably more firmly in my mind because of the book. There's nothing like that in U.S. pharmacies that I can recall.
The sensory image that sticks the most with me is the brook of fish-flavored milk.