Kushiel's Justice

So awhile back I wrote about the Kushiel books and my issues, shall we say, with the cover art. The weird lines of the face, the clothing that looks like it's carved out of stone, the boringness of it. Well, the new book has cover art by someone else. And sadly, it's not an improvement. I mean, yes, the fabric looks more like fabric and whatever weird thing was going on with the faces on Palencar's women isn't going on here, but it looks cheaper somehow. The red curtain doesn't look great, the blend of colors seems less than subtle, and it just generally looks less appealing. But all this misses the central issue. That being, what the fuck is wrong with her right thumb? Because seriously, (and you can click on that picture for a bigger view) it looks like the artist got a bit Picasso at the end of that. Not cool.

In other things-that-annoyed-me-today news, while crankily riding the 6 home from work today I was reading the ads, as one does. Delta has an ad that says, "There's also more kiosks for smoother check-in." I'm sorry, but if a company can't even be bothered to follow basic grammatical rules in an ad that's going to be plastered all over the subway, do I really want to fly in a plane they're operating?

Ouch...

So my problems yesterday all started with this little darling. I like to consider him the perp in this story.


Adorable right? He actually has the ability to be so cute it hurts. This is obviously Darwinian because it probably saved his life. Forget survival of the fittest, what we have here is survival of the cutest.

Anyway, I have a table (it's really a sewing machine but it folds into a table) behind my bed, on which I have two rows of books. In the morning Pyramus likes to climb on top of the books and knock them over. It's part of his it's-breakfast-time-feed-me-before-I-whither-and-die routine, which he does about an hour before his actual breakfast time. It's incredibly obnoxious, not only because it wakes me up but because I'm a bit obsessive about alphabetizing my books and every time he knocks them down I have to re-alphebetize. So yesterday morning he climbed up, and I reached over, as I generally do, and went to keep the books from falling.

If I'd been successful, that would have been nice. Instead I smacked my face right into the edge of the table which, as you can see in the picture, is fairly sharp. I cut myself just above the eye, and it's just a tiny little cut but it bled all over the place. I iced the cut/bump on and off for about an hour to prevent it from swelling too much and took some painkillers for the accompanying headache. It ended up not being too bad although it's both a bit more swollen and a bit darker than it looks in the picture.

Once the headache and some nausea subsided I put on a nice skirt and rainboots, took a moment to be glad that I part my hair to that side so it hides most of the bruising, stuck dress shoes in my purse and headed to work in the pouring rain. And then, as if the morning wasn't long enough there were signals out on the subway line and the ride took nearly three times as long as it normally does. So all in all, a pretty sucky start to the day. The rest of the day was fine though.