Ugh

Ugh. Last week was a bit of a disaster. I traveled for work to visit a supplier in Juarez (when you do that, you travel to and stay in El Paso and just pop across the border on a supplier shuttle during the day). Weather, however, made the trip back very annoying. Got delayed in DFW due to snow and lack of sufficient inventory of de-icing solution. For no less than three days. I was supposed to arrive home on a non-stop from DFW on Thursday afternoon, around 4:30 my time. I got home instead on Saturday at about 11 PM, after passing through Washington DC. I also got a pretty bad cold, so I was stuffed up, sneezing, coughing and pretty miserable. Luckily, since it was a work trip, I could call my work travel agent and they'd book me a hotel in Dallas when it became clear that I wasn't going to get a flight out, so at least I got to go sleep in a hotel. And although food selections were limited, I ate fine. In fact, the blackened shrimp and catfish on a bed of dirty rice from Pappadeux was excellent, although it'd probably have been better (and cheaper) outside of the airport.

It also wasn't all that bad because I had my phone with me, my music, and several books. I finished, on the trip, three books in fact, The Bones of Haven by Simon R. Green, Sandstorm from the 3e era, an environmental source book, and Dance of the Damned by Alan Bligh, an Arkham Horror tie-in novel. 

As soon as I got back, I turned to my The Cthulhu Stories of Robert E. Howard collection, picked up the d20 Call of Cthulhu book, and will read the next two novels of the Lord of Nightmares "trilogy" that follows Dance of the Damned. Not a bad start at all to the year in terms of reading. 

Next week, I'll be going back to my old house in the northern Midwest, which we still own and which my son and his family are living in right now. My wife will be with me for the weekend, but she has to leave on Monday to get back to work; I can work remotely. Of course, I'll spend a lot of time with my son, my daughter, my grandkids, etc. and maybe even some old friends, but I should have plenty of time to read on that trip too, so I want to make sure that I bring sufficient material to keep me busy. Sadly, a lot of what I really want to read I still haven't found which box in my garage those books are in. So I have three of the old Lovecraft trade paperback collections, I can't find the other three (I think there were six in all. Maybe I'm wrong and there's only five? I can't remember now.) I do have the complete works on an old mobi file, but I prefer to read actual books. I wonder if I should just read the ones that I have, and then go through the Kindle reading the ones I missed? Or I just read the ones that I have, then wait until I find the others eventually to read them? Or just read it on my Kindle all around? Or just read something else? It's not like I haven't read Lovecraft before. But for some reason, I'm jonesing to re-read him again right now. Then again, sometimes a little Lovecraft is enough; three collections of trade paperbacks may not have all of the classics in them, but it's probably more than enough for me to decide that I can turn towards something else after reading that much. After all, I'm also reading a Cthulhu game book and I have five more Arkham Horror tie-in novels to read sitting on my shelf.

Although I really like that mode of fiction, I might be in the mood to mix it up after that, and do something a little more heroic and cheerful. Maybe I'll re-read Raymond Feist's four Riftwar books after that. After losing three of them in a neighbor's move (I ended up with a few of his things too; it worked out OK, I guess) I rebought the original edited versions that I had originally had of all of those books, which I like better than the "director's cut" versions that have been in print for the last few decades. Thanks, Thriftbooks, for making them available! I have a few more books that are "out" as in not boxed up, and I have relatively easy access to most of the boxes that have most of my books. And I've got a ton of Kindle content to read.

That's the biggest gripe I have about our current living situation; we're in a temporary house that we're renting, but it's smaller than our last house, and we just don't know what to do with all of our stuff. I need to turn a room into a permanent office/library eventually, but that is unlikely to happen until we buy a new house here.

In any case, on the docket for gaming books, I think maybe I'll read my two Privateer Press Monsternomicon's next. I do have a pdf of the 3.5 update of the first one, but given that I don't care that much about the specific stats, the original 3e hardback is fine. Those are among my favorite gamebooks that I own too.