A bright spot in all this bleakness

And that would be picking a copy of "The Children of Hurin" by J.R.R. Tolkien (and edited by Christopher Tolkien) today. Alan Lee illustrations FTW! I was going to use an email coupon I had to get it at the Barnes & Noble in Lowell, but for some odd reason, they didn't have it; they're notoriously spotty about getting sci-fi/fantasy books in (though they don't seem to have a problem getting the latest boring political screeds in...). So I took the bus to Burlington, intending to go to the B&N there... but I somehow missed the stop for it, and ended up at the Borders in the Burlington Mall. This turned out to be an incredibly fortuitous felix culpa: They had the book priced at a lower discount than the B&N coupon, so snapped it up. My mom, who got me into Tolkien when I was a kid, was thrilled and amazed that I got it so soon.

Other than that, I've been feeling increasingly depressed lately. The shooting at VA Tech did not help my overall feelings of despair.