Reading. While I lay around like a dirty old towel this weekend, sick, I managed to finish the two library books (one of which was getting on in overdue fines) I’ve had since before the move. Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs and Tales of the Otherworld by Kelley Armstrong. Briefly, without spoiling anything I’ll say this:

Silver Borne was great. It felt, for the first time in a few books, like Mercy was back to her old self—though with a clearer maturity than before. The series regulars/favorites were back, but in some cases with deeper characterization than in any previous volume (Darryl and Auriele, Ben; even Samuel) and overall while the plot tended to veer this way and that a few times, I really enjoyed it. Glad to see Mercy is going strong again.

Tales of the Otherworld felt like an indulgence, like that extra dollop of whipped cream you really want but know you should probably abstain from if someone else is watching…but what the hey. It felt like that. The stories were pure backstory, enrichment, extra tidbits and explanations, the little pieces here and there finally fleshed out in narrative form (my favorite, naturally, being Clay and Elena’s backstory story). The two novella-length stories (Clay & Elena’s and The Case of El Chupacabra) were probably the strongest, but that’s probably because I think Armstrong is at her strongest with novel-length fiction.

Other than being sick, my other despite-being-sick accomplishment this weekend was installing Office for Mac on the new computer. Not that I wasn’t surviving without Word and Excel…not that I couldn’t… but yes. I caved. I need them. I am too strangely addicted to Excel for organizing character detail in extensive chart form for me to purely go word processor, and I’m too used to Word to think I could adapt to a different program without Word as a standby (though I am planning on using Scrivener, at least for the free trial, because it’s so clever).

Also in regards to the [shiny, lovely, new] Mac, I am trying to get used to the idea of the touchpad. I have been an external mouse devotee forever; the Mini made it not only necessary but absolutely vital for me to use an external mouse because my hands were almost too big for its keyboard and it’d always jostle the touchpad accidentally. With the Mac, though, I am delighting in its multi-finger functionality so far. Call me easily entertained, but it’s very fun to scroll down a page with two fingers. Much smoother than the scroller thinger in a mouse. (Technical term, that.) Though for dragging and dropping, an external mouse is still undeniably necessary. Wow, I can’t believe I talked about that for a paragraph. I am a wordy, wordy lady today. (Cough. Always…)

Must now dive back into work. It’s so exciting, finally being able to write again!