this and that

 That's odd, I'm sure I posted once between the end of March and this post, I remember because I thought to myself, 'this writing is so bad I don't even know why I'm doing this'. I can't guarantee the writing will be better tonight however. I suppose I can take solace in that I don't think anyone reads this. I wanted to celebrate my first win in Fantasy Baseball this season, so cheers to me. After losing the first, what quarter of the season? I finally got into the win column and currently sit at 1-4. matches are decided from points scored from Monday to Sunday, head to head. I'm actually quite proud of my roster, and if I can back my way into the playoffs I could have a shot in my casual league. I also believe I've learned some valuable (in the free fantasy baseball universe) lessons about drafting a team. But enough about that, onto the next paragraph.

 Since coming to Japan I got back into reading novels. I guess between college and World of Warcraft I lost interest. After arriving in Japan, with a slow computer and really no friends (except a girlfriend who was a senior in college at the time), I didn't have a lot of ways to escape to America. Nevermind that the first two novels I read were about Japan (Silence, and Shogun), they were written in English. From there I found a copy of It by Stephen King in the bookstore and thought, '1000 pages...$9? great!'. The book was exceptional. Eventually I got married and Maki got pregnant so my free time was less, but you ride trains in Tokyo, and I don't like listening to music all that much, so I read. I started browsing fantasy lists and went back to Stephen King for the Dark Tower, a seven book series, that I finished in about 6 months. 6 of the books top 500 pages and 3 top 800 if my memory serves. Next came George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, I was reading book one during most of Aquila's birth. Having six younger siblings, three of which were home births I learned a long time ago that women in labor don't really pay attention to what your doing, they'll remember it afterward, but they won't care. The pain and subsequent joy mute whatever else was going on. They can usually recount with disturbing clarity everything that was said or done in the room, even though at the time they appear to be completely out of it. Anyway, my son was born and I finished four published Ice and Fire books and check GRRM's blog daily for updates on when book 5 will be released. I started reading Brandon Sanderson's debut novel Elantris, it was in a bookstore in Tokyo and it's a stand-alone so I gave it a shot. Sanderson is famous for his Mistborn series and as the guy who is finishing Wheel of Time. I'm almost halfway through but I got bored and bought China Mieville's Arthur C. Clarke Award winning 'The City and the City'. The guy is 3 for 7 on Arthur C. Clarke awards, which is the best sci-fi novel published in Britain in a given year. I wanted to read Mieville's debut, which sounded much more fantastic, though with less phenomonal reviews, but it wasn't in the Japanese bookstores. While waiting on GRRM's Dance with Dragons I've been searching for my next book (after City and Elantris) and may have found it in Peter V. Brett's debut which I've forgotten the name the something something man, I don't remember. Ah well, getting late. I'd love to write my own novel someday, not expecting to get published just to write the best novel I can,  but it's hard. Plotting, drafting, research, etc. Sigh. Well, it's a comparatively cheap hobby. That's all.