Healy's Journal

Today I had the privilege to witness two separate blowups about Marie Kondo in my regular online hangouts. (Marie Kondo, if you didn't already know, is the decluttering guru who goes around people's houses and asks them "Does this bring you joy?" Or, well, something like that; I've never actually read her books.) Apparently, the main point of contention was her advice about books, in which she advises readers to cut down on their collections quite heavily, claiming she has only 30 books in her home herself. This struck folks as just too few books, I guess.

Anyway, inspired by this, I decided to take a look at my own bookshelves, and see what I could bear to throw out. I kept asking myself, "Would I really miss this if it was gone?" It turns out at least 15 books didn't make the cut, so I'm dropping them off at the local library after work tomorrow. And, thanks to my decluttering, a bunch of books I do actually like can now fit on my bookshelves! Thanks, Marie Kondo!

Well, it seems the wifi on my computer stopped working; I'm connected to the internet right now through a wire connected to the router. Looks like we're about to reach Computermageddon slowly but surely. Least it's taking it's sweet time. I figure I can wait it out until the newer model laptops come in. In the meantime, here's what I've been reading the past couple weeks:

Infinity Gauntlet, by Jim Starlin and George Perez: I'm not a big Marvel fan, but after seeing this in the library one day I thought, why not? It turns out it taps into all the weird, off-the-wall ballistics I love superheroes for. It got a bit repetitive, though, and I couldn't help but be amused by the fact that almost the whole plot is about Thanos trying to impress some lady with his god-like powers, with Mephisto egging him on ("you should totally fight that group of superheroes at like half strength! chicks'll dig it!").

Snarked, by Roger Langridge: I got the first and second volumes of this out of the library a few years ago, but only recently was I able to find the final volume. This is a delightful romp through the world of Lewis Carroll, starring the walrus and the carpenter as two con-men who team-up with the young queen Scarlett (about 8) and her little brother, Rusty, in order to save the Red King from his untrustworthy advisors. It's a very funny series that's poignant in places, especially near the end; I highly recommend it.

Adventure Time: Sweet Shorts v. 2, by various: This is a collection of short comics featuring the Adventure Time cast by a wide variety of comic writers and artists (Frazer Irving draws a story!). I particularly liked the cute little comic by Kory Bing about the Earls of Lemongrab having a picnic at the beach. Most of the stories are of pretty good quality, but I'm not sure how much a reader who isn't already familiar with Adventure Time would like them.

I updated my laptop yesterday (Windows Vista, in case you wanna know), and now it's acting up in the strangest ways. When I booted up today, the standard Aero theme was gone, replaced by the Windows theme from '98. (Here's a good example of what I'm talking about. There was also a message about non-admin users not being able to log-in, but I didn't catch all of it.) I tried to fix it in the personalization menu, but, well, the Aero theme wasn't loading properly there, either. I think I may be using up too much memory on this machine for Aero to load, as sites are loading kinda slowly too. I'll shut it down tonight and boot it up again tomorrow and see if it fixes itself in the morning; if that doesn't do it, I've got a diagnostic test that a friend showed me that I can run, and if that doesn't turn up a solution, we'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, this unfortunate turn of events has caused me to delay Currently Reading Wednesdays to Thursday. Don't worry, folks, I got a real doozy of a post planned for you guys. Also, because of this, my computer may be in the shop for a while (perhaps a month), so my internet presence here and elsewhere may drop off suddenly. Thank you, and have a great rest of the week.

In case you missed it, last Wednesday I decided to swear off soda for Lent. I am pleased to announce that so far, about a week in, I haven't had a single drop of soda! Hooray! I have had a couple of sweet drinks, like juice and sweet tea, but so far none of the fizzy stuff. I'd like to stop drinking sugary drinks completely (as well as knocking off all the candy and sugar treats), but we'll take it one step at a time here. For right now I'm pleased as punch at my Lenten progress. Hope I can keep it up for another few weeks!