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 |  "Clean cup! Move down!" ~~the Mad Hatter, Alice in Wonderland, Walt Disney cartoon |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Sometimes in life, you have to pick up and move down the table. A regroup, a fresh start. A clean slate. |
Day One of Camp NaNo went excellently. My writing goal is essentially 1000 words a day. Today I hit 1627. Woot! Excellent first day.  I did the first scene and semi-second scene. I posted them here: "Invalid Item"  if anyone is interested in reading along. A cautionary note: The book is/will be SciFi Fantasy. It will be just as cursewordy as my blog. It will contain sex scenes. It will have nerdy, nerdy science in it. Yay nerdy science! (That's a big part of the world building.) It will have guns and violence. It will be the first in a set of trilogies. (Not sure what to call two trilogies besides a set of them.) That's right! I have the story arc for six books planned on this world and these characters. I love it when things happen like that. Woot! Although, come August, I'm backburnering this project and dragging out the book I wrote the first time and having a revision August. Yeah...Hubby's idea. He said, "What, you just keep writing them? Then what?" Then what, indeed, Hubby.  I'm a horrible revisionist. I just keep telling myself, "Yeah, yeah, I'll get around to that." Then I don't. I just write new horrible things that need revising.So..NaNo this month, Revising next month. Read along if you like. Or for as long as you can stand. Please be kind but honest with your comments--remember this is a NaNo Novel....it's supposed to be crap.  |
| So......I was doodling around on the interwebs and found this. Camp NaNoWriMo So....then I signed up. Cause....I've got this book in me that needs to be born but I'm a big 'ole super sucky procrastinator. But...the last time I did NaNoWriMo (when I wasn't super crazy timewise) I actually won it. So....starting July 1st... Wish me luck. |
| So....doctors suck. Even vets. Here we were ready for our last goodbyes. Bonnie was THAT sick. Like bad sick. Like stopped eating or drinking, lying around the house, stopped all interacting with the rest of the family sick. I took her to the vet got her hydrated because part of the problem is she was super dehydrated. So I brought her home got her comfy and talked to Hubby. We decided that if this was it, we weren't going to torture her by making her take anymore pills. No more "heroic" or intrusive measures. You know? Just let her be. Damned if she didn't start perking up. Ten days now since she's had any pills and she's healthier than she's been in months. Not even kidding here, this cat is playing with everyone, running around the house like she was never sick, playing tag with Sofie the dog and eating like a horse. She has gone from not eating at all to eating a full can of food a day plus I've caught her snacking on the other cat's dry food. (She doesn't have teeth, so she doesn't get her own.) So...yeah. Aside from a runny nose (like a little kid who catches something at daycare) she is fine. Better than fine. She is back to playing and climbing all over me wanting to be loved on. She is back to being the lovey kitty. She climbs up on me no matter where I am or what I'm doing, until she is on my chest so she can butt her head at my chin and face and then lick and bite my chin. Purring like a maniac the whole time. If I pet her she purrs LOUD. Like so loud Hubby has to pause the TV because he can't hear it over her. Last night I was taking a bath and she came in there with me. She went from sitting on the closed toilet lid to perching on the side of the tub. Then she started trailing her tail in the water. She is a long haired cat and when I told her she was getting her tail wet and my water fuzzy she started purring and climbed out into the water onto my chest so she could butt my chin. Didn't even care that she was getting her feet and belly all wet. She just kept purring. Crazy cat. So Hubby comes to see what I'm laughing about and he's all "What the hell?" There sits the cat in the middle of my bath, soaking wet, purring up a storm. I couldn't even read, she was pushing my nook out of the way so hard. I was afraid she would dunk it in the water she was so pushy. If it wouldn't have featured me nude, I'd have taken a picture of it because it was so freaking funny. I've never seen a cat do that. Just blithely climb into a warm bath. So...for now, the cat is fine. I guess the doctors (plural--we got a second opinion) just didn't know what the hell they were talking about. She was just over medicated and dehydrated uninterested in eating from the meds. So, no meds=problem solved. Now she's just a happy little lovey fuzzy wanna be mermaid. |
| I hate making end of life decisions for pets. It burns my soul like acid to know I have done everything I can for my little Bonnie and now I have to make the hard decision about quality of life for her. This will make three pets we have lost. My heart breaks a little more each time. I have to go pick her up from the vet now. They gave her fluids because she won't drink. She is going to spend a few days here with us for final goodbyes. I think the truly sad part is that Sofie will be even more broken hearted than Hubby and I. |
| This was another difficult book for me. Was the book well written? Yes. The world building was excellent. The characterization was chilling. You really feel like you are dropped into this world. Did I like the book? No. I appreciate the author's skill as a writer, but on a personal level, I lived with a drug dealer/user. I don't like revisiting that time in my life. I don't like reliving the violence or the uncertainty. I wound up skipping pages and finally whole chapters before just giving up on the book altogether. It was triggering too many tear-filled nightmares and flashbacks. So, I'm left in a quandary. Would I recommend the book? I don't know. Maybe? It would depend on the person I was recommending it to. I didn't enjoy it. At all. But at the same time, I recognize that it is a very well written book about a difficult people and a difficult subject. I know that I'm sorry I purchased it on my nook instead of checking it out of the library. Overall, I give this  . |
| I will begin the discussion on this book by stating that I have never read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina of which this is apparently a modern day retelling. What little I have read of Tolstoy makes me not a fan of his work. I should also state I'm not a fan of Russian literature in general. I read for three reasons: primarily, to be entertained; failing that, to be uplifted; and the final fallback, to be informed. This book barely met the third requirement. Barely. I was not entertained by the writing or the writing style. Throughout the book, the author panned out the lens of the story and "spoke" to me. That takes me away from the story in progress. Unless you are the narrator in Winnie the Pooh I don't want to hear your voice while I'm reading. I want to hear MY reader's voice. I want to hear the character's voice. I don't want to hear the AUTHOR'S voice in an almost Victorian Era "Gentle Reader" tone. That grates on my last good nerve--I am neither a child nor a dog, don't speak to me in a patronizing tone. One of the reasons I stay away from Russian literature is because it is depressing as hell. The Russian people as a whole are depressing as hell and they seem to revel in it. It seems to be a badge of pride for them. Personally I ain't got time for that kind of thinking. Being depressed and wallowing in it as a way of life.....sheesh. I also can't understand Anna K.'s thinking throughout the book. She is the weird kid through junior high and high school and then guys discover her so she begins to think her shit doesn't stink. She decides to work her body and play the men. But then realizes at some point that men are working her. Here's my question: Once she works it so she lands a big fish, why fuck it up? As Nadia puts it: "Yes, I see, but your son, and the money, these are the things that last. I mean, I'm not talking about an affair here and there, which of us hasn't done that? But to be so foolish as to only think about today. Don't you ask yourself what will happen tomorrow?" Honestly, why walk away from a sure thing. Why walk away from the money and the security for someone who could...what...talk books with her? Get a grip! Join a damn book club. They are everywhere! Oh, I know, she didn't like the other Russian women. So go get new friends! Freakin' buy them! I just can't have any sympathy for a woman who would leave her son to go have an affair with some jackass who pretends to write books about her. It just doesn't track. And then she won't get a job. She keeps holding out for the "right" job. Go to fucking McDonald's. Just get a job bringing money in. Quit thinking your fading looks are going to work it for you anymore. I see women making this mistake all the time. She also managed to fuck her life up so horribly that she finally decided her only option was the final solution? Really?! This was a depressing book because you could just see her going off the rails and making bad choice after bad choice. Like a character in a TV show you just want to scream at her, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING, YOU CRAZY BITCH?!" Sigh. The other characters feel like afterthoughts, too. I don't like them. They don't really add to the whole. They are appendages and on the one hand you feel that the author is giving you too much information on them and then on the other hand, they are more interesting and deeper more rounded characters than Anna K. I wasn't entertained. I wasn't uplifted. I did however learn something about the plight of the Russian Jew but only because I googled "Bukharian." Overall....I give this  . |
Classes are done for the spring semester. Grades are back. C's mean degrees.  I'm just glad I'm done with Stats. I continue to hate math. Apparently the feeling is mutual. I also figured out not to take anymore classes from a certain Geography professor. I have classmates who have said that they have taken classes from him in the past, but this semester was particularly trying with him for some reason. I think his health is failing. He is older. Rumor around the department is he is slated to retire. Soon, hopefully, as he was singularly ineffective at teaching Urban Geography this semester. (That was not just my opinion, by the way, that was the class consensus.) The final day of class we spent an hour and a half looking at slides of oil paintings he has done over the last thirty five years. According to him, he is a painter of some renown. Huhn. Unfortunately, I signed on for a GEOGRAPHY class not an art appreciation class. It was bizarre. The whole semester was full of odd classes like that. He'd randomly show us pictures he had taken while visiting downtown Houston in the 1980s or Edmonton in 1994. Um...ok? And they weren't examples of anything. They were like boring vacation photos. It would have been different if he was showing us examples of say...architecture or ghettos or urban renewal or, hell, ANYTHING to do with Urban Geography. Whatever...as I said...C's mean degrees. This summer I was slated to take back to back sessions of Spanish fulfilling my year of foreign language requirement all in one twelve week blitz. Alas. We couldn't find $2500 in the couch cushions to pay for two sessions of summer school. SOOOO.....I got tricky and I'm doing plan B. What, you ask, is plan B? Plan B is, I checked out the actual requirements for my major. It just says I have to have "one year of foreign language or the equivalent." Ah...the equivalent. The equivalent, my friends, is me spending the summer working and cozying up to a Rosetta Stone Spanish program so that I can CLEP out of Spanish. I don't need the credits to graduate, I just need the requirement fulfilled. Woot, woot! Yup. I'm learning it on my own for $400 (Plus, I think, $30 to take the test.) instead of MSU teaching it to me for $2500. Go me! Way to think outside the box, Teresa! Hubby was happy. So not only will I be able to work more hours (=more $$$) we don't have to shell out for summer school. Plus we can go on some of the summer weekend getaways we never seem to be able to do because I can't ever miss classes. Yay! It's win-win-win. I love it when a plan comes together. I also have been actually writing since I'm not all stressed out about school. Like, you know, WRITERS do. It's pretty spiffy. It's like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Holy crap, December can NOT come soon enough. |
| This book is my pick, so, naturally, I love it. When I was in elementary school, I read this for the first time. I loved it then and I love it now. I love it every time I reread it, which I do every couple of years. Each time I do, I remember how exciting it was to read it that first time. This book introduced me to mysteries and even today if a mystery can't hold my attention and keep me captivated like this book did and does, then I consider the book a failure. Even though the target audience for this book is 3rd, 4th or 5th graders, this book works well for any age group. Every time I read the book, I find something new in it, some new twist, or some new angle. The book was originally written in the 70s which was when I grew up. When I read some of the dated material in the book it transports me back to my childhood. When Turtle and Flora are sitting and watching stocks tick instead of seeing them stream live on a cell phone, I see the stocks ticking across a long board. When Turtle is selling her rainbow candles door to door, I remember making candles like them. The many tricks and turns of the mystery are wonderful. I enjoy reading through the will like the players. I enjoy trying to see new clues each time. When asked about it, Raskin said that she didn't really write it for children and that when she was writing it she didn't know at the beginning where she was going with it, it just fell into place as she went. I find that crazy. It is so twisty, so intricate, that I can't imagine not planning it all out. All of the tiny clues had to be planted, all the pieces of the puzzle had to be sprinkled in the readers' path. Raskin has several other books and I've read a few of them. None are as wonderful as The Westing Game. Some are close, though. Overall, I give this book . Although, maybe I shouldn't get to rate my own book. |
| Tenth of December by George Saunders. I'm sort of ambivalent about this book. I want to like it and I had glimpses of things I could have loved throughout it. And yet...and yet....I just wound up being disappointed by what it could have been. It could have been so much more. I would start reading a story and think, "Wow  ! Where is he going with this?!" And then the story would peter out and I'd realize....nowhere. He's going nowhere with it.  "The Semplica Girl Diaries," just when the story starts to take off, he ends it. HE ENDS IT. I want to know more. I want to understand. He spent the whole story making me figure out that these were PEOPLE in the yard and then when he gets the detective involved and the action is about to begin and there could be a whole....I don't know....thing, especially since it was the youngest daughter's bleeding heart who let them go. There was just so much more to explore. So much more to dig into here and I felt like he just just left me hanging. I read the last paragraph several times because I almost felt he left me mid-sentence. I hate that! "Sticks" felt like it was just a jumble of ideas that was almost a story and with a little more work, could have been; same with "Al Roosten." The only story that felt whole and stand alone was "Escape from Spiderhead." I liked his ideas from this. I didn't like that he recycled the fake drug ideas from this for "My Chivalric Fiasco." They were different worlds. It felt like recycling. It felt like he was plagarizing himself. I don't like that. Not in the same book. So...Could I have loved this book? Yes. I could have. I wanted to. Could I have hated this book? Yes. I could have. I sort of did. Overall? I give it . |
| I feel bad because I read all of your entries and comment on them, but then I don't ever write entries of my own. It's like I'm just stalking all of you. I don't write anything because my life is boring. I get up, I go to school. I get up, I go to work, I go to school. I do bullshit busywork projects for school. I do bullshit busywork projects for work. Meh. We had fun while Monilad was here. I could talk about that. She came to visit. She had a list of demands. (Just kidding.) She had a list of things she wanted to do with us while she was here. Things like: go to the museum, eat at her favorite restaurant, eat at her other favorite restaurant, hang out with us, etc. We managed to check off everything on the list. It was her birthday while she was here, so when we'd go out to eat each time, we'd tell the waitress it was her birthday so they'd come sing and clap and be obnoxious at her. It was awesome. We love doing that kind of shit to her and to one another. Her VERY favorite restaurant is a little mom and pop Mexican food place where when it is your birthday they bring out this AWESOME giant sombrero for you to wear during the meal. It's epic. And shiny. And you have to be careful so you don't bash your seatmate in the booth every time you turn your head during the meal. It weighs about ten freaking pounds. Gives your neck a workout while you eat. It was funny, in the past when we've taken her there, they brought her free sopapillas, but this year, evidently thinking it was her 21st birthday (it was her 20th), they brought her a birthday shot of tequila. We all just shrugged and she shot it like a champ. Then choked and turned about ten shades of blue and red while she coughed. Hubby and I both asked her if she'd never shot tequila before because she skipped the salt and lime. She was all, "What?" She declared tequila NOT her drink of choice. The funniest thing we did while she was here, though, was she insisted we watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Traditionally, as a family, we watch it while we decorate the tree every year. Every. Year. The last couple of years, Monilad has been out on her own, so she hasn't had anyone to watch it with. She owns the movie, but she declared watching it alone isn't the same. So....in March, with no tree to decorate and no snow in sight, we sat and watched Christmas Vacation. We can all quote almost every line in the movie, so we did that. She seemed content. I think this next year, we'll call her up on Skype and let her watch the movie with us while we decorate the tree. Well, I'm sitting in the MSU library outside the Documents room with stacks of 1990 and 1970 Census Tract books that I need to comb through for yet another pointless project. ~sigh~ I need to get to getting. Now y'all can stalk me.  |
| When you read Lamb by Christopher Moore, you have to take the author's beginning blessing to heart. I won't quote the whole thing, but basically it breaks down to: what you are getting out of this book is what you are bringing to it. Kind of the attitude behind most religion when you think about it. While I was reading this book, I just tried to divorce myself from any preconceptions and read it as purely fiction. Once I was able to make this suspension of disbelief, I found I truly enjoyed the book. I laughed and giggled throughout it. It was only at the end, when the story told comes back in alignment with the biblical stories did I find my disbelief faltering. As much as we are geared to just LIKE the Joshua character (he's Jesus! Come on!!) my favorite character in this book is Biff. I like the friendship component he brings to the childhood of Joshua. He makes him more human seeming. He gives him more of a feeling of humanity that I think the Church (all churches) drum out of him. I had two favorite scenes in the book. The first was the opening scene where Biff was shouting "Unclean!" as he watched the six year old Joshua repeatedly pop the dead lizard into his mouth and resurrect it for his little brother James. I couldn't stop giggling. Because, honestly, who has ever watched little boys and not understood that if they could, this would be to them a totally acceptable use of this power. My next favorite scene is when they go into the mountains and they meet the second wise man and are sitting in the interview with him and he keeps bashing them in the head with the stick. This scene had my favorite quote from the book: We listened as if they were going to discontinue sound and we needed to stock up. I also like this scene because it shows that although Joshua is intent upon learning at any price, Biff shows that there are things he will not put up with. When he throws Gaspar's stick out the window and politely tells the old man that if he hits the Messiah again he'll kill him, you get the sense of the depth of his feelings and friendship with Joshua. He sees himself as Joshua's protector, in spite of Joshua's attempts to the contrary. I think all of us should have friends like this. Friends who love us enough to take care of us in spite of ourselves. I liked this book very much even though the ending was somewhat inevitable. Like so many things, the story was about the journey of the two men together. I give this book . |
| When I first saw this book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt, my gut reaction was that I wouldn't like it. I was semi-disappointed because I read tons of non-fiction books for school and during the school year have a tendency to avoid them because they are often slower going for me. When I read something for myself, I tend to gravitate to fiction just because I want to be entertained. Going to school full-time fills my need to learn. However, after dragging my feet, I finally opened this book and once I got started on it, I was pleasantly surprised! I really enjoyed it. I found the author extremely relatable and his writing style not the dry textbook/thesis material I was expecting with a title like this. He uses metaphors that you can grasp (I love the rider/elephant explanation for how our minds work!) and he makes no bones about his bias. Often writers/researchers lie to themselves about their personal bias. Even though I am 180 degrees his opposite politically, I found myself respecting him and his methods because of the way he explained up front his viewpoints. Many times I find my elephant rejecting offhand scientific theories if I can't see behind the curtain to the methods and the bias, because I know it is there. Show it to me, explain it to me, be open about it and THEN I will be open to your ideas. But don't lie to me by omission by acting like there is none. There is always bias. I had read a study previously regarding the fact that conservative brains and liberal brains were different, but it was brief and I didn't get into it very deeply. So I knew the underlying science behind what Haidt explained in the book. I like his research methods as well. It's good science. I went to the website mentioned in the book (https://yourmorals.org). There is a series of tests you can sign up for and take and it ranks you according to your answers as to how liberal or conservative you are depending upon how you answer. It was interesting to see how I scored. I was more Libertarian than hard core Conservative. One thing that I found completely fascinating and would be interested in seeing a study designed for was probably a minor point in the book, but it stood out to me starkly. In the section on Groupish behavior and Hive minded behavior, I was interested to read the small bit about soldiers who do really well with the hive mind mentality. Perhaps (and this is an off the cuff observation) those soldiers who come back from deployment the most damaged are suffering from the dual problem of mental trauma coupled with a lack of access to hive minded behavior. They are suffering some sort of....withdrawal from that kind of security that the military hive mind gives them. Something of a safety net that would help them cope better with the mental trauma of battle. It is the dual trauma that causes them to have so many problems. We expect them to both deal with the trauma AND deal immediately with being an individual again. And as he explains in the book....Western culture puts a premium on individuality. Perhaps soldiers from other countries don't have such a huge problem because they have all of the societal conventions upon which to fall after leaving the hive mind. These are just thoughts I had after reading those sections. I worry about our returning soldiers. Sometimes I feel like we aren't doing enough for them. Anyway, I really liked the book. I give it . |
| When I first found out we were reading a graphic novel instead of a conventional novel for Book Club this time I was ecstatic. I love graphic novels. I was really excited to discover that Shaun Tan's The Arrival did not disappoint. This was such a unique book. From the title page to the last page of The Arrival, the artistry and story really deliver. I liked that the book was arranged into distinct chapters each telling the next piece of the tale. My favorite layout in the book is in part two as he is traveling to the new world with the time spent on the journey shown by the panels of clouds. This is an incredibly clever show of the passage of time for the Immigrant. It is the little details like this that move this story and help this tale unfold. The origami crane is one of the running themes throughout the story that helps tie the book together. Even when the story branches out to other places and the tales of other immigrants, the crane helps bring the Immigrant's attention back to where you know his heart is--with his absent family. The story is so detail rich. You live the Immigrant's new life with him. With each new adventure, you are confused and trying to figure things out as much as he is. The reader is asking, "Where is he going? What is he doing?" And as you discover and explore with him, you feel his journey, his confusion, his loneliness. And when at the end, the Immigrant's family finally joins him, you experience his joy. I like the hopeful ending as well, the pay it forward of the daughter helping a new immigrant as the Immigrant was helped when he arrived. Overall, I really loved this book. I bought myself a hard copy, I loved it so much and that is big because I'm trying to move my library to all digital right now. I give it ! |
| Spring Break is not next week but the week after. We are almost half-way through the semester. Yay! It's been a good semester so far. Busy, but good. For the most part I like my classes. (Except the boringness that is Urban Geography! Great subject, tedious professor!) My research is going well, too. I am on track in all of my classes. I have a semester long project due the final day of classes in my capstone class. (Luck of the draw, we all have presentations and papers to do. Mine just happens to be on the last day.) I haven't even begun it yet. It's a fifteen page paper and is pretty comprehensive. I have one more test (next Tuesday) in the class and then for the rest of the semester it is just sitting and listening to people give presentations day after day. Woot. I could not be more excited. <---insert sarcasm here. My stats class is going well. The TA teaching the class doesn't like to grade stuff so she encourages us to work in groups on the homeworks and projects so she has fewer things to grade. My partner is awesome and he and I are carrying a high A in the class so far. He is also a great study partner so even though I have a test next Monday, I'm ready to roll for it already. I got a letter yesterday from MSU and I was stressed thinking something was wrong, because I'm a firm believer in "no news is good news." But when I opened it I was pleasantly surprised. I made the Dean's List last semester. Woot! Mostly I don't care about grades as long as I'm passing. My motto for the most part is "C's mean degrees." Or....the grade doesn't matter, passing the class does. So, making the Dean's List was one of those "Hunh, cool." moments. I figure no employer is ever going to ask me my GPA, you know?My new diet and hormones are going well. I feel tons better, I'm losing weight. My stomach has stopped hurting all the time and my skin rash is almost completely gone. I go back soon for blood work, etc., to make sure of the dosages and whatnot. But, all in all, a successful venture. Hubby is convalescing nicely from his surgery. His physical therapist says he is the poster child for how to recover from this type of surgery. He is light years ahead of where he should be recovery-wise. Right now he is waiting until he can get in to see the surgeon so they can clear him to move up off of 2 pound weights onto five then ten pound ones. (His pre-accident weight? He could do easily curl 45 pounds. I have no idea what his max was.) Right now he is using my little hand weights. He looks a little silly doing curls with hot pink two pound hand weights while we are watching TV at night, but he's quite devoted to the regiment. We are looking forward to spring break because Monilad is flying up for a visit. Her birthday is in the middle of Spring Break, so she is coming up for ten days to hang with us. She hasn't been home for almost eighteen months. I'm worried she will be upset that Sofie won't follow her around. But Sofie is pretty bonded to me. We'll see how that goes. Well, gotta get to class. |
| Alternate Title: Jimmy Crack Corn--Cause I don't care. OMG. I only made it to chapter 25 before I had to pull the plug on this book. I tried to stick it out, I really, really did. My main problem? I simply did not give a damn about the characters. When I read a book, watch a movie, see a play, what have you, I am doing it primarily to be entertained. The one thing I insist on is the author MUST engage me. Make me care. Make it worth my time and money. Joe Hill simply doesn't make me care about these horrible wishy washy characters. Sometimes a good author can overcome crappy character development with a top notch plot. Horns does not possess a top notch plot. It's is a sappy YA plot with intentionally crude dialogue done for the edgy shock value (poorly executed, BTW) with so many inept flashbacks, flash forwards and "I think on page six there was a flash sideways!" (250 gps to the first person who correctly guesses that movie reference) that it makes the plot disjointed and difficult to follow. It's an extremely childish approach to horror. Ultimate evil. People telling someone things they wouldn't normally say out loud. I guess I don't get it because a lot of that stuff, I would have said. I don't pull punches. I get that have a mental disorder, but sometimes the white lie is not the easy way. I'd have told the woman in the waiting room to take her squalling kid outside. Maybe a little nicer, but I'd have still said something. I don't let shit pile up like that. I tell people what is on my mind. I guess I don't see the point of his horns making people "confess." I also don't get the good/evil dynamic he is trying to project here. The evil guy wears the cross and everyone thinks he is good? The priest, the nun and all the rest of the "good" people are really not perfect? Uh....so what? The "hero" of the story who has tried to be good all of his life finds he really likes being a dick? Where's the big reveal? What's the big deal? And I guess the $64,000 question....who gives a rat's ass? People are people. Everyone has a good guy and a bad guy at work in them. Newsflash: We all knew this already. So you are wondering....aren't I concerned because I don't know who REALLY killed Marrin? Aren't I concerned because I don't know how the book ends? What if there was some twist? What about Terry and what Lee had on him? Big flippity whoop. Hill couldn't make me care enough to find out. And that is the ultimate damning I can give any book. I give this . |
| Over the weekend Hubby and I drove down to Denver for our boss to pick up some stuff. It's not a bad trip...it's only a ten hour drive one way. We bundled up Sofie and all her paraphernalia and left my friend in charge of kitties and off we went to spend the weekend with Hubby's parents who live just outside Denver. (That's why we both went instead of just Hubby. That and Hubby's arm is still wonky so he can't lift stuff, so he needs a spotter to do stuff.) It was fun, but here were the weekends facepalms:  Even though I explained--several times--that I have a special diet I have to follow, every time I turned around my inlaws were offering me bread. Or breaded foods. Or fried foods. Or breaded, fried foods. I even took a cooler and several bags of food that I could eat, so I'd have food, but it was like they couldn't conceive of a world in which you wouldn't want cheesecake, cookies, chocolate, hushpuppies or fried fish. Oy! It was like a whole weekend of people trying to politely kill me! I haven't been to their house in 9 years for various reasons most of which boil down to....we have always had too damn many pets and no one to watch all four of them at once for the convenience of a weekend trip plus I'm in school or Monilad was in school or I had to work...etc. So over the years I forgot that I'm allergic TO EVERYTHING IN THEIR HOUSE! Holy crap!! Sheets, towels, washcloths, dishcloths, blankets, soap, dishsoap. You name it, I'm allergic to it. I swear to Christmas, my mother in law has a full blown Downy fetish! I took my own soap and shampoo, but by the time I got home, I was like one bit walking hive. Eeesh. All Hubby listens to on the radio is talk radio. Period. You get two choices. Political talk radio or sports talk radio. Twenty solid hours of talk radio. ~zzzzzz~  My father in law is a conspiracy theory nut. Everything is the fault of those "fucking liberals." If a guy cuts him off in traffic; "Stupid fucking liberal! Learn to drive!!" If the waitress brings him tea instead of root beer at dinner; "Stupid fucking liberal waitress, she should learn how to do her job." ~sigh~ He's very negative. It's hard to be around for long stretches of time. Although sometimes just to amuse myself I crank him up on some subject and get him going. "Dad, what do you think about them legalizing all the illegal aliens?" Hubby hates when I do it. My inlaws live on the side of a mountain. There is NO cell coverage. None. They have computer Wi-Fi, but it's sketchy. They live in the boondocks. With bears and mountain lions. It was hard to be "unplugged" for four days. Although it was probably good for me. |
| I guess I need to do a life update entry.... When last we left our heroine: Hubby had to have surgery to reattach his left bicep at the elbow because he detached it moving a washing machine for a coworker/friend. That went well. He was in and out in three hours. They let him walk out of the surgery center. I've been calling him Steve Austin because he got a pin and a screw put in. "We can rebuild him! We have the technology!!" For those of you who don't get that pop culture reference, you are too young to read my blog. Some days I hate Hubby because he's like a tank. He just keeps going no matter what you do to him. I'm like a daisy in a field that wilts during temperature fluctuations. Not the Tank. He just keeps on ticking like a Timex. He went to work the next day even though the doc told him to take a day off. He didn't even take his pain pills; they made him sick to his stomach, so he just said screw it and took a few Advil and called it good. They gave him REALLY good pain pills, too. One of the morphine based big ones...I forget the name. The kind federal law won't let you get refills for. Anyhoo. He sucks. I am the one with pain pill addictions and he's all super sucky, no thanks, I'll be macho. Whatever. I am The Good Wife, though, because I don't laugh or take pictures every night when it is time for him to take a shower. They did this splint thing for his whole arm with it bent at a 90 degree angle and then sort of Ace bandaged it up. He has to wear it for two weeks. Can't even use the hand. So, every night he has to have a kitchen garbage bag medical taped to his arm at the shoulder so that he can shower. Every night I quietly, without giggling or taking pictures for posterity, tape a white kitchen trash bag onto Hubby's arm, being extra careful ("Are you being careful?!) not to tape his armpit hairs into the bag so that he can shower alone. ("I can do it. I'm fine one handed. I just can't tape the damn bag one handed".) The super funny part is that he only lets me tape it at the shoulder, so every night he stands on our upstairs landing stark nude except for that damn garbage bag flapping full of air (I can't ever get all the air out since he won't let me tape it.) like a big Soccer Bopper that encompasses his whole arm. Then off he goes to shower. When he's done, he can pull the bag off alone because he makes me put a little pull tab on the tape. That's because the first night, I didn't. I put it flush. So then we had to cut the bag off his arm. ("Are you being careful?!") And all I could find were an old pair of kindergarten safety scissors of Monilad's that I keep for garment tags and what not. So there he stood, naked and dripping wet ("Would you like me to help you dry off?" "I'm fine!") while I tried to cut through layers of wet bag and medical tape with kindergarten safety scissors. Whick-a, whick-a, whick-a. ("Why the hell do we own useless scissors?!?!") I was The Good Wife. I never laughed or even cracked a smile. I just kept at it. Whick-a, whick-a. Sometimes The Good Wife thinks the Tank is funny. Also when we last left our heroine: I had been trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with my stomach and why I have had a horrible skin rash since last June. Long, long, unfunny story. I will esplain. No, there is too much. I will sum up. Conventional doctors suck. Western medicine has failed me. Yesterday I went to a Naturopath who gives me hope. Even though he put me on a gluten-free diet and informed me he thinks I'm pre-diabetic and left unchecked would be diabetic within a year or two.  Soooo...new diet. Regroup on hormones. We will see. I am cautiously optimistic at this point. |
| Holy Crap. This is one of the most messed up books I've ever read. Let me start by saying it is not one I would normally have read on my own. I have never read anything by Gillian Flynn before and I'm not sure I would read anything else by Flynn based on this book. That being said, I read it in three sittings. I didn't really care for it, but I needed to figure out what the hell was going on. If I hadn't been reading the book Gone Girl for this contest, I have to admit, I'd have stopped after the first four chapters. Because, honestly, I didn't give a damn where she went or if she was dead (which I never believed). I didn't like her from the beginning of the book. I didn't like Nick from the beginning of the book. I actually didn't like ANY of the characters, except maybe the Clamato drinking lawyer's wife Betsy who whinged jellybeans at Nick when he acted douche-y on camera. Was the book well written? Yes. Flynn is a great author. Just...not my kind of author. The story was gripping in an I-need-to-know-what-happens-next-in-this-trainwreck-of-a-story. You are on the edge of your seat. But, the ending. Jeesh, the ending. Yikes. Just yikes. It felt like Flynn asked the question, "What is the most shocking thing I can do here?" and then wrote the story accordingly. Not letting the characters tell the story themselves. Because Amy just got nuttier and nuttier in a brittle way that seemed unsupported from the front half of the story. It's like the fault lines of her nuttiness were laid too deep. The time alone in the motel doesn't really support the level of nuttiness evident in the end. Those handful of chapters don't point to the super crazy stuff evident later. Or her inability to read that her two "friends" are set on robbing her. That seems like a "clever" plot device to get her penniless so that she has to turn to good ole' smarmy Desi. She swings wildly from Wily Coyote clever to Einstein level brilliance. It's hard to follow the changes. And the interview at the police station. Uh....suspicious much? All the while Amy is doing this, Nick bumbles around being alternately Hail-Fellow Well Met Boy Next Door and Douche-y McDouchbag. His is an emotional bipolarity. The swings are almost as hard to follow. Overall, I found it a difficult read and was not fond of the characters. But aside from the plot difficulties, the prose was good. It flows well. I give it 2 1/2 stars. |
| Back in December I made some non Resolutions for the New Year in "Invalid Entry" . Since then I've been doing some good things. I've made some good changes in my life. I've taken up yoga (it was Yoga Wednesdays but that was too crowded so we've moved it to Yoga Mondays) and taken up snowshoeing. Unfortunately for the last two weeks life has been kicking my ass. For example: Last week Hubby got injured moving a washing machine for a friend of ours. It was falling and he recklessly tried to catch it with just his left hand. He severed the tendon on his left bicep at the elbow doing it. Ouch. So Wednesday he has to go have surgery to reattach his left bicep followed by three months of recovery and then about a year of rehabilitation. This is killing bodybuilder Hubby. I told him he was dumb. He should have let the damn thing fall. Oh, well....caserasera. Also, for reasons we can figure out, I have been getting steadily sicker and sicker. I have had a rash that they can't figure out for six months now and for the last two weeks I have been having stomach pains that they also can't figure out. The kind of stomach pain that leaves me in a cold sweat in a fetal position on the bathroom floor when I'm not vomiting. I don't have the flu or anything, but I might have celiacs. We will find out today. I almost don't care if I can't have bread any more. I just want to stop hurting. It's bad. School is going ok. But with the pain, I am having trouble keeping up with all the reading I am supposed to do. I took today off so I could go to the doctor. I had to go have an MRI yesterday morning at the buttcrack of dawn. I hate the testing phase of figuring out what is wrong. It's intrusive and annoying. Back during the middle ages when something was wrong, they would bleed you. Now they take blood. I'm failing to see where the medical advancement here is except that they aren't using actual leeches. I'm going to drink more Coca Cola. It's the only thing that I can eat or drink that doesn't make me sick as a dog. I feel like a steady diet of Coca Cola can't be good for me. I hope they figure this out before I run out of either blood or stomach lining. |
| For my regular readers: I am currently participating in "Invalid Item" so for the next few months, every two weeks-ish you will see an entry titled" FtL:'insert book title here.'" Feel free to just ignore those entries unless you are interested in reading about my take on whatever the book on deck is. I can pretty much assure you, however, that those entries will assume you have read the book and will contain spoilers. Lots and lots of spoilers. This is a book club, after all, and these entries will be my discussion portion of that. So....preemptive spoiler alert! (for the next 5 months!) Ahem...now on to the actual entry, or essay or what ever this is supposed to be. But I think in homage to Jenny Lawson, it will be something of a rambling blog entry. Because that's how large portions of this book read...as a long, funny as hell, rambling blog entry. And I'm grateful to her editor that they left it the hell alone and let it read that way. There was so much of her book that I could relate to. As someone from a small town in Texas, (I grew up only a few hours from Wall), I was completely following the chapters about cow vaginas, roadkill, dressing deer in the yard, "pets" that chase you and other things that for years I thought were just a normal part of childhood. I got that the stories were funny in a "Omigod, I've totally been there, done that," kind of way. The dead deer sweater? I was nine and it was my grandfather who was cleaning it. The scorpion infestation in the house? My brother and his wife's house was so infested that she once trapped one under a laundry basket. A LAUNDRY BASKET. Do you understand how big those holes are?! The local university sent someone out to take it away because it was the largest the biology department had ever seen. (The exterminator called the college because he'd never seen one that big either.) It was the size of a teacup chihuahua! The geese? Yes. Just yes. Also, although she doesn't mention it. Sheep are mean as well and will chase you and trap you on the hood of the car. I was five, Mom was huge pregnant and she and all three of us older kids were trapped on the hood of the car in the blazing Texas summer sun for four hours until Daddy came home from work and rescued us. The next day we didn't own sheep any more. I'm not sure why we owned the sheep in the first place. To this day I have a sheep aversion. My first babysitter? She and her husband were taxidermists. I spent my formative years around the assembly of furry dead things. IT WAS AWESOME!! But as much as I loved most of the book and laughed loud, hard and long at some parts of it, there were parts of it that I didn't really care for as much. I think the dysfunction of her marriage is a disturbing trend in the book. I don't like to judge other people's relationships, especially when I'm pretty sure most of the dysfunction was filtered through Jenny's anxiety disorder. I think that her husband is probably a really patient person to deal with that level of abnormality, and isn't quite the douche-canoe that he comes across as during much of the book. Something else that I found off-putting was what felt like her random tendency to bring politics into the mix for no real added value. I didn't think it brought anything to the book and actually detracted and distracted from what could have been a really funny pleasure read. I have friends who absolutely won't read/buy this based solely on one or two chapters. With the Halloween party scene, I get that she was trying to "paint a picture" of how conservative her husband's co-workers were. But she just sounded judgmental and assholish. Like going to a party with conservatives was so stressful that she had a panic attack over it because conservatives are such bad people. But then she never said anything in the rest of the story to back any of that up. Except that she was an idiot. Not my favorite chapter. Would I recommend this book? Probably, to a select audience because there is an FEARSOME amount of cursing in it. Even enough that I noticed it. Also, not everyone would get the macabre humor that runs rampant through the book. Because you have to be just about a half bubble off plumb to really appreciate this book and, I think, this author. I enjoyed the book well enough to want to go find her blog online, though. Overall, I give this book a solid four stars out of five. |
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