Metapost: No Poke The Publisher This Week

Hey all! I've been trying to stick to a post-a-day for various topics (as you can see in the lovingly rendered calendar on the Blog Navigation page), and Wednesday is usually my poke-the-publisher day, but I don't have anything written today because I've been feeling pretty crummy this week. Essentially, someone slid a red-hot metal toothpick into the base of my spine while I was sleeping on Sunday night -- or, at least, that's what it feels like, haha! I'm working through it and it's nothing I'm not used to and I'm even thinking that a blog post on the subject wouldn't be a bad idea (although it might be a different tone -- I've yet to really do a health post yet) but in the mean time, here is an open thread to catch up on business and for everyone to play in. Yay!

So a couple of thoughts:

1. Deconstruction Status: I'm about 3/4 of the way through reading The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and have quite a few notes already. My hope is to have the first Narnia deconstruction post up not this Tuesday, but the next. Probably this Tuesday will be another Claymore.

2. eReader Update: Those of you who frequent Mobile Reads may have noticed that I got another eReader this week -- a Sony PRS-950. That brings the total to four eReaders, but I swear it's not an addiction, and I've got at least two posts planned on that as well. Stay tuned.

3. One-Off Deconstructions: Husband and I saw X-Men: First Class last night and I came away thinking it was way better than I had expected and Husband felt that it was way worse than he'd hoped. Funny how expectations color these things. I've got a one-off deconstruction post planned, so if you don't want to be minorly-spoiled, go see the movie this weekend!

4. Randomness: I was excited to discover this week -- I've been so out-of-touch, I swear -- that Mark of MarkReads fame is reading The Golden Compass. I love the His Dark Materials trilogy, and I doubt I'll be able to keep up with Mark's frenzied posting pace, but I know I'm going to enjoy reading this when I do carve out the time for it. (His "Hunger Games" series was pure joy to follow.)

5. Site Layout: Those of you using the site directly will have noticed by now that there is a new "recent posts" Disqus widget on the side of the page. I didn't like that great comments on really old posts were lost on everyone expect those subscribed to the site comments, so now people can post on older posts without fear of being lost in the shuffle.

6. Exciting News: I actually managed to work through the system at my work to get my site unblocked. I cannot tell you how happy this makes me. Now I can see all your posts in real time, instead of through the Disqus manager interface, and I'm just delighted at that. Hooray!

I think that's all for right now. Please talk amongst yourselves about as much randomness as you can muster. *grins*