Howard Zinn is dead. I can't think of anything remotely intelligent to say, so I'll just say goodbye. I hope his passing was peaceful.

I've started a new city, inspired by pennysims's Liberty City. I haven't ever actually lived in the city and I can't remember what a real city looks like, so my city isn't really based in reality. This is it so far - I'll post more pictures in the future! As you can see, it's nowhere near finished though.

I made lots of stuff over Christmas break. This is some of it.



( previews and downloads )

I got two Borders gift cards from my family, so I went to online to browse books. I'm sick as hell, so forgive me if the majority of this is incoherent.

( my random observations while browsing the political and biographical sections )

Also, I got Barbara Kingsolver's new book, The Lacuna, which is quite good. Not as good as The Bean Trees, IMHO, but still enjoyable. The chunk of the novel that takes place in Coyoacán in the late 1930s is definitely my favorite part, particularly the epic/disastrous non-fictional Diego-Frida-Trotsky love triagle. Barbara Kingsolver also pays attention to Trotsky's wife, which is wonderful - the poor woman usually gets ignored. If I ever get a time machine, I'm going to go back in time and bake her (Natalya, not Barbara) a freaking cake or something.

Also, Shattered Memories is pretty fantastic. Much better than Homecoming, in my opinion. The absolutely wrecking of the one normal relationship in the series was really unnerving at first, but I guess that was the whole point. The game looks nice and is fun to play - both pluses.

It almost never snows where I live. We usually get a little bit in late January or early-mid February, but I've never seen it come down this hard and this early. I think it has something to do with El Niño, but eh, weather's not my strong suit so I don't know. It was my school's first snow day in seven or eight years or something like that.

( I took pictures because I'm a dork! )