I read in your last re-read post that the next one was supposed to be yesterday. Did I just miss it or was it delayed?

Leigh, Grab the file at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24634810/LastTheory.mp3 This is my recording of the Last Theory Panel. You can pass the link to others if desired.

Hello Leigh, in COT part 11, you mentioned the Andorran succession was tickling your brain. You were probably thinking either the Holy Roman Empire or Poland of the 17th &18Th centuries. But Wikipedia gives a few more examples, wouldnâ??t use it for a term paper, but good enough for now. Iâ??ve been playing catch-up with the re-read, and sometimes I just have to comment. Thank you for the great job! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_monarchy#Historical_examples

No prob, lol

Leigh - Ivan book first draft is done. Publication expected Nov. 2012. Thought you'd want to know. Rob

I had to share this with you, because you are the very first thing that popped in my head when I saw it- kind of made my day: http://thisisnthappiness.com/post/10485738755/hulk-smash

Hey! I am a long-time reader of your WOT re-read and ASOIAF read, and I thought of something totally awesome and new and exciting! Well, I suppose "new" isn't too accurate. Someone must have thought of this before, but I have found no evidence of this, so I'll just spit it out. Once you are finished with your WOT re-read, I was thinking that perhaps you could start another one. It may be a "read," but that's not important, as your ASOIAF read is greatly successful. The Sword of Truth is another one of TOR's greatest epic fantasy series, written by Terry Goodkind. It had presumably ended in 2007, but apparently a new series with the same characters has being started, so there's more on the way. Well, I hope you haven't found my extensive babbling a waste of your time, but even if you have and haven't read the Sword of Truth, you must! It is my second favorite book series, beaten only by WOT and just passing ASOIAF...and...I'm done.

Hey Leigh, I'm slowly reading your Wheel of Time re-read and am loving your voice. Your writing has me chuckling throughout your posts and at the same time, you teach me so much about this series I love. You frequently point out things I had no idea about! I'm looking forward to re-reading the series myself once I've finished reading all of your posts(as no doubt it'll take me until the final book is completed at the rate I'm reading) with all of the insights and knowledge I've picked up from your posts. Thank you! Big squishy hugs, Anwenn

Leigh, I've been enjoying your read of A Song of Ice and Fire, especially since I'm also reading the first book for the first time. I've been wondering though, why are you only posting two chapters a week? At that rate, it would take nearly a whole year to just get through the first book in the series.

I'm sure you have heard stories from a billion people by now, and more relevant to your interests at that (since I wasn't in NO). But I was thinking about it, and I guess that it was, at least in some ways, a lot more stressful to be on the outside for Katrina. My mom drove up to GA to stay with some friends, so she watched everything unfold on the news - something we didn't get to do - and by the time she got down here two days after the storm, she was a wreck. I think it was more frustrating for her than it was for me because she was way up in GA, helpless to do anything about it. I'd managed to get a text message to her from my sister's phone the night of the storm - 'I'm not dead, but the house was flooded' - cause I figured that would both ease her mind a little and prepare her for the facts. But when she saw the house....she cried for hours. She spent years fixing up that house - it was a fix-me-up when she bought it - and she didn't have flood insurance, because even Hurricane Camille didn't flood our house, so it wasn't required. I remember driving down to the house after the winds died down - I was staying with a friend in north Gulfport (she was pregnant, so she was worried she would go into labor) - and though we watched a lot of trees and carports and such get blown down, I still had no idea what I was in for. When I finally got down there, I had to walk a block or so to get to the house, since there were trees down everywhere (only six-lane hwy 49 and downtown grid streets allowed me to get that far), and after I climbed over piles of debris to check out the house, I figured I'd climb over a few more to get down to hwy 90 and the beach. I can't even describe what it was like, as I got close to the highway. The wind was still so strong that it was almost impossible to keep going, and the sand was blasting in my face, but I kept going anyway. At that vantage point, you can see about a mile down the highway in either direction. The highway itself was destroyed, broken into pieces with huge pits at intervals, all the way down to the drainage system several feet below the highway...and as far as I could see, with the exception of a few high-rise buildings, everything was gone. Just gone, like it never even existed. Even traipsing through the rubble of my neighborhood didn't prepare me for that. The reason I think it was different down here was that nobody's story was particularly special. Everybody was in the same shitty situation - either homeless, or living with a crowded house, because everyone who had a home had to take someone in. I think that's part of why Theoryland was such a therapy for me - only there was my story something special, though I probably exaggerated the degree of 'special' a bit in my head. And if course it didn't hurt that I loved WoT, was already starting to get into it hardcore before the storm due to RJ blogging and whatnot. It was interesting to see that even he was affected - he blogged about taking in his brother's family (they live in Jefferson Parish somewhere...I'm sure you know exactly where, but I don't - Metairie I think). The next summer, I quit my job and went to work with FEMA for a few months, mostly in Jefferson Parish, as an inspector for tree crews. That was the first look I really got at NO, and I don't think much had changed since the storm. There were still huge camps of people living in tents underneath the interstate, not to mention piles of flooded cars, untouched. Still almost no sign of life at all in the 9th Ward. The Pontchartrain bridge on I-10 was barely worth the name - the gaps were bridged with pre-fab things that were scary as shit to drive over. The traffic on 610 and beyond was godawful - it usually took me about two hours to get out of town from Kenner (which actually made me happy that I had to be at work at 5:45 am). That was probably something relatively new at that time - I imagine it took a few months for people to start returning. To be honest, I think I am still a little traumatized by all of it, which is why I'm here in your shoutbox unloading about it yet again. :)