books, beaches and bad music

i finished ender's game last night. it felt very short - i read it in 2 days. it seems books these days take me at least 3 weeks to read and even at that i don't get them finished. ah well.
so - i enjoyed it, but i did feel that he slipped during the second half. it stopped being so much about ender's emotions and struggles and became a bit more general, more about the setting and the people around him. actually, i got the impression that card stopped showing us the story and started telling it to us. so the second half was more like a recap on events than events actually taking place. but i still thought it was excellent. i really empathized with ender. he reminds me of me a lot, and not just the hard time i had in school, but the way i fear that if i accept help off people i'll never be able to do anything for myself again. and obviously his loneliness and the way he holds himself away from people resonated - but perhaps not quite as strongly as it would have a few years ago. (what's this - is ria possibly coming out of her extreme enforced lonership?! shock, horror. yea, now i just have to get over a lifetime of avoiding people. sometimes it's hard.)

penelope_stone and i went to the beach today. her car only has a radio or a tape-player, so i got to bring some of my old mix tapes along. one was from 1997. woah - that's 11 years ago. seriously - i should be a DJ. i love making playlists and putting songs into an order where every song blends well with the next one and they coast along through different emotions. it's fun. anyway. we listened to one from 2000 (i think it was my last mix tape - i got iTunes after that, when i went to college). but god - there were some dodgy songs on there. a lot of good stuff that i still listen to, but some seriously bad chart music that i cringed to hear. penelope_stone was greatly amused by it all.

the beach was good - sunny, a bit warm and we bounced along the coast - jumping across the rocks and testing the grippyness of our trail shoes.

i applied for a job as a meteorological officer today. it seems like interesting work and you get to work outside. i would endure quite a lot to not be stuck in some dull office all day every week. so yea - i'm so hoping i get called for an interview. maybe i shouldn't though, because then i just get to be even more disappointed when they tell me i wasn't suitable.