I've felt off lately

and YKWIA has noticed it too. I'm wondering if it's the Strattera I started a couple of weeks ago for attention-deficit disorder. I've been on it before, several years ago, without problem, but my mood has been somewhat depressed and blah of late. I don't know if it's my normal mood fluctuations, or if it is the medicine. I'll give it a little more time to see. I go back to my doctor in early September, and I haven't quite reached the therapeutic level yet in terms of ramping up the dose slowly. I'm close, but not there yet. So far I haven't really seen any really beneficial effects, but I'm not at the full 80 mg yet, either, of course.

Despite feeling off, I had a good day. We went out to Masala, the Indian restaurant for the buffet, and my friends picked up my meal, along with a scoop of Baskin-Robbins ice cream (pumpkin cheesecake) afterwards. Then we went to Barnes & Noble, which is in Hamburg (Masala is in Beaumont, so on opposite sides of town). I stayed in the car during that (my back was still bothering me, and the seat in the car is comfortable. Plus, I find it somewhat painful to go into bookstores when I have no money to spend). :) I accidentally left the ignition on accessory, and didn't notice because I'd turned the radio off, and the battery almost didn't start, so that was a little worrisome--but it did, on the third try, and I drove enough to get the battery back up to speed over the rest of the day. After Barnes & Noble, we went to Lowe's there in Hamburg (I had not been in that one before). After I took my friends home, A and I went and did the grocery run. After that, YKWIA and I watched an episode of 'Lost Girl' (we're in the second season, now). During that, Brenda called. Her son is getting married next month and she had forgotten that the second bridal shower was tomorrow, so she'll be going to that instead of the game. This put me off the hook for having the game notes finished by tomorrow, and it also means I can go over a little later in the day. Yay!

I've been home for awhile and have been working on revising a document with my characters' pictures in it (mostly actors and actresses that YKWIA or I thought would match them well). I put it into a format his version of Word (XP) will read--he has no desire to upgrade to one with tabs and a ribbon, so the one he had from school still suffices for him. Here are the people that were picked:

• Zooey Deschanel
• Emilie de Ravin
• Lisa Edelstein
• Melina Kanakaredes
• Dana Delany
• Anne Hathaway
• Morena Baccarin
• Max Greenfield
• Kristanna Loken

There is one character that I cannot find a photograph for, but I found a very representative drawing that worked. She was originally modelled somewhat after Gillian Anderson, but had a couple of physical transformations that made her hair white, her eyes green, but otherwise she looks like an ancient Aegyptian. That's hard to find. :) But I found a portrait of a woman who looked right who had a headdress on so you couldn't see the colour of her hair. Oh, did I mention she is both a doctor and a necromancer? Oddly enough, we have another one of those, a male non-player character that started out as a player character (until she left). He is married to the latest of my characters, the one who looks like Kristanna Loken.

Anyway, I sent that on to him. I'll print out the newer pictures (I did some revisions, based on his input) and affix them to my character sheets. So that's been a fun couple of hours.

I think I'll do some reading now. I'm wanting to watch 'Galaxy Quest', but I don't feel like going out to the living room, and the little DVD player I have is out there, so it's either hook it up here to my ancient (circa 1990) TV, or take the fan, with its wonderful breeze, out there. :)

Seems a little childish to me

especially as they're still selling them online, but have pulled the print content from their brick-and-mortar stores. Hmpf. This reminds me why I prefer shopping with Amazon to Barnes & Noble. I first heard about this from Neil Gaiman through his Twitter feed.

Barnes & Noble Removes DC Comics After Exclusive Amazon Deal

Barnes & Noble has begun pulling off works from DC Entertainment, formerly known as DC Comics, from its shelves, in response to the publisher's agreement to exclusively offer digital versions in Amazon Kindle format.

Success!

Yesterday, Brenda gave me a gift card to Barnes & Noble for the holidays. She said in retrospect it should have been to Amazon since I have the Kindle, but I'm on the same side of town as Barnes & Noble and she thought I could stop by. I was quite happy with it. Books are books, no matter where they come from, and there are occasionally books I can find there but not at Amazon (such as the HP Lovecraft collections I got everyone in the game one year, that were actually put out by B&N.) So I started thinking, what book would I like? I had been on the PaperBackSwap site the other day because I'd sent off a book and when that person gets it, they're supposed to mark it as received so I have a credit. There were two books I was interested in, and one was available, Patrick O'Leary's The Gift, which in paperback is still $18, and I dearly loved it when I read it from the library. So I'll order that through the reciprocal book club if it's still up for grabs.

What they didn't have available was the third book of The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, called Against All Things Ending, by Stephen R Donaldson. I have the first two, one of which I got through the paperback club even though it's hardcover, and I've wanted to have all three before I read them. So, that was a great thing to get with Brenda's gift certificate.

Of course, that was $20, and if you pay $25, shipping is free. Plus, Barnes & Noble was running a coupon special today that if you put in a code, you got 25% off one item. This was tempting. So I thought, what would be a second book to get? I decided, oddly enough, on one that I have on the Kindle, but I'd really like to help encourage the writer to write more books, and I love the colour of the US cover. This would be the Pericles Commission by Gary Corby. I decided I wanted to get the hardcover anyway, even though I'm reading it on the Kindle.

That, with tax and shipping, would originally have been about $45 for the two books. But with the deal and the gift card, I'd be able to get it for less than either book by itself.

That was the idea. But this morning I spent over an hour being frustrated by a checkout process that involved odd hoops and dead ends. I couldn't remember my password, so I asked for a reset, but the e-mail never came (it wasn't in my spam blocker, it just didn't happen.) I went ahead and checked out without signing in, so I had to type in everything again. I tried to use the code, but it kept saying it was invalid. I finally gave up and just closed the browser and got ready for work, thinking it would have been easier to schlep through the snow and ice to Hamburg rather than get through their system. I don't handle frustration wonderfully, although I am much less likely to become frustrated than I once was. The is the first time I've been so annoyed in a good long while. But I forced myself to calm down and go out into the world and try to enjoy my Monday.

When I got home, I decided it might be worth trying again. Again, I tried to reset the password, with no luck. But it let me re-create an account. And this time the coupon code worked, so maybe they were having issues this morning. All in all my order came to $15.01, much better than the $45 it would have been originally.

I was determined I was going to get it to work this time. I must say, Amazon seems to have a much easier process, but I could just be biased because I use it so much. But I'm glad I finally got it to work and didn't have to schlep off in the weather. Yay! And thanks, Brenda!

Oh, no!

The book I got the Barnes & Noble card for, HP Lovecraft: The Fiction (Library of Essential Writers), which was published in October, is already sold out online in the time it took me to get the card. Eeek! I've requested a reserve at my local store if at all possible, so hopefully they'll have it. I'm not sure if the card can be used in store or only online, but hopefully it will be the former. That might actually work in my favour, since in order to not pay shipping I'd have had to have an order totalling $25, and this would be about $14 before the $10 gift card, if the price is the same as it was online. Granted, I'd considered getting the next two Jim Butcher Dresden Files books that I don't own (#6 and #7), but things are tight and I can get those later.

I cashed in my points from my bank for a Barnes & Noble gift card

because I'm not particularly trustful of corporate America. You see, my bank is National City. But according to this news story: PNC to buy ailing National City for $5.58 billion, it's being acquired. So I don't know if the points programme will continue. It should, in theory, or at least accumulated points should be able to be used. But like I said, my faith in corporations is weak. Hence, cashing in a little over 5,000 of my points.

What will I get with the $10 card, you ask? H.P. Lovecraft: The Fiction, an unabridged and complete compilation of Lovecraft's stories in a hardcover tome with 1,120 pages. It's just been published, with an online price of $12.95, so I can get it for about $3 plus shipping and handling. Yay.

As you may recall, the last time I cashed in points, there were 40,000 of them and I got the $100 Amazon.com card that I used to buy my digital voice recorder (used mostly for the Cthulhu game) and a CD. I love getting free stuff. :)

Okay, that's enough blogging. I'm going to bed now. Ciao.

PS Did you know 'ciao' comes from 's-ciào vostro' or 's-ciào su', literally meaning 'I am your slave'? Maybe I should take that back, although of course it's an idiom not meant to be taken literally even in the full phrase. Just a bit of random knowledge for the day.

Bob and Sheri are coming to Lexington

on Friday at Barnes and Noble from 5-6 pm. I may drop in. I got the CDs I was sent by the show's staff for mentioning them on this blog. Yay!

Okay, I'm geeking out. I'll quit now. :)