Cold

It is very cold here. *Shake, shake, shiver* Brrrrr. Anyway, I'm trying to keep my hands warm typing. News in my world - went to visit the sisters, a concert and Powell's bookstore. Work is fantastically absurd. I'm still trying to find other jobs. Not that it's easy right now. I'm going to surf the net for job postings now. Wish me luck!

And Again

Work - it is strange. Now we are all good and friends. People are schizo.

Fat princess is in the background right now and Wire In the Blood is also. It's a good game and a good series. I've got all the Halloween cards and candy for the family ready to mail. The hubs need to sign stuff but mom's got her bag ready to go....except I want to put something in for the stepdaddy but he doesn't like chocolate and I can't find any halloween stuff he would like.

Meh, if I mention him in the card maybe that will be enough. (Crosses fingers.)

Ghost Hunters

Been watching all the Ghost Hunter episodes and Ghost Hunters International. Fascinating for the most part.

I've also been reading a lot. Since I don't really have anything else to do, or anyone to talk to, I've been doing space fillers. I'll post the books at a later date.

The season premiere of Criminal Minds was awesome and full of "eep" moments. And the new CSI was most excellent.

And the start of the new Amazing Race was tonight. Excellent.


I am so friggin' lonely.

That Voodoo That You Do

Take the Role-Playing Stereotype quiz.

Whole Lotta Nothin'

Well, almost. I've picked up about 9 hours a month (I think.) We'll see if that pans out. So, I'll keep looking. I'm going to try to get over to Home Depot some time this week and see if I can pick up an application. If I can't get a paper app., I'll get online and fill out one there.

In other news, the cat has been out on his lead and has been (pretty much) behaving. I'd like him to be more comfortable but he hasn't reached that level yet. Oh, and I've been watching a ton of Ghost Hunters. It's been fun, even if I have to have the lights on.

Anyway, reading Lev Grossman's "The Magicians" and so far so good. AND IN EXCITING NEWS - my first Subterranean Press book that my man bought for me showed up. w00t!

Books 30+

30. Lord of the Silent - Amelia Peabody series

31. The Golden One - Amelia Peabody series

32. He Shall Thunder In the Sky - Amelia Peabody series

33. Children Of The Storm - Amelia Peabody series. And I've got three more to get and I'm current. I like this series a lot. Good, strong characters both male and female. Good history, and not using the time period as a reason to be bigoted.

34. Digital Barbarism by Mark Helprin. I tried to read it. Multiple times. He's got important things to say and I caught several of his points but I'd have to say it was a pretty dry read.

35. Un Lun Dun by China Mieville. This I enjoyed quite a bit and it's going on my "recommend to others" list. To me, this had the same sort of flavor as some of Neil Gaiman's works but still something all it's own. I wish I had a rebrella.

36. The Shamer's Daughter by Lene Kaaberbol. I think this lost a little something in the translation. The story is solid, sound and rather boring. It isn't a long book but it took much longer than I expected to get through it.

So far, so good. The list is by no means everything I've read this year but is the ones I've remembered to write down (and not lose.)

Job Search

Still job searching. I've put in five applications in 3 weeks - no one hiring at the moment. If I don't hear from someone by the end of the week, I'll put in three more. I'm trying to space them out a bit.

I love my current job, actually. Books are my life. I love dealing with books and helping with questions and all that good stuff.

I hate my coworkers. With a passion. With the hot fiery passion of ten thousand suns. If that were the only thing required to utterly annihilate various people.

*poof*

Oh, yes.

Unnatural Castastrophes

It seems I'm plagued with bizarre home repair issues in my rental history. The water heater that rusted out and sent a slow puddle across the kitchen floor (yes, the water heater had pride of place in that kitchen right next to the sink), the gas heater that would never stay lit, the bathtub with no shower/faucet, bats in the shed attic, and our latest - some moron who cut thru the tile in the shower to insert a ceramic soap holder that fell out the other day because of improper workmanship.

And nearly took out the husband's foot, who was in the shower at the time. (Ladies, you all know how things like that go over.)

And can we find a replacement? Oh no. Have we come to the realization that the tiles are also shoddily glued on? Oh yes. Do we want to call the property manager? Definitely not. Her fix-it guy has to be seventy and as frail as a toothpick. And I have the sneaking suspicion he's of the class of gents that uses duct tape and superglue and calls it good. Not quality repair, in other words.

How do we get this weird stuff? Why can't it be something I can fix ON MY OWN? You know, door hinges, clogged drains, that kind of thing.

*sigh*

Time to surf the net for a soap holder.

Nagging Me

Myself is nagging me to sit down and write something. Anything. Just write. Take an idea and run. And instead?

I'm Cat Waxing.

And everything else but actually opening the word processor. I think I'm a bit intimidated by it all but the compulsion is getting harder and harder to ignore.

And That's the Last of It

No more moving stuff. That's the last of it. Thank the Gods. I don't think I could handle anything else. Anyway, even the boy has decided that we need to do a garage sale. Ya think?

Anyway, the shed's full, the small shed is full, the house is full. Good grief.

And I've been having a hilarious time watching the original Iron Chef. The subs are so funny. The husband is also eating up the bandwidth watching the Office.

Mmmm...rice. Gotta go now. Nom, nom, nom.

Hermes, Fair, Birthday

It's all good. This month I'm studying up on Hermes, making a moving trip to and from the mothership's, while I'm there I'll be hitting the fair and my birthday is also that week.

It is going to be interesting if nothing else. :) Unpaid vacation during inventory= I don't even mind I'm not getting paid because I've heard...stories. I'm glad to be gone.

Big Move, Round 2, FIGHT!

OMG. Another "you haul it yourself" truck with money I don't have to pick up stuff I have no room for. Oh god, what was I thinking? And it's bugger-all kinds of hot here, how's your weather?

Bunch of Books

24. The Snake, The Crocodile, and the Dog - Elizabeth Peters

25. The Last Camel Died at Noon - Elizabeth Peters

26. The Ape Who Guards the Balance - Elizabeth Peters

27. Seeing A Large Cat - Elizabeth Peters. The Amelia Peabody mysteries. Obviously, I'm really enjoying this series. I'll be picking up some more of them as soon as the next trip to the library comes up.

28. This Child Will Be Great - Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Quite a good biography of Liberia's first female president. Even more appropriate considering the news the past couple of days. After reading her book I fail to understand why they are asking her to step down. She seemed to be quite open about her past, but I guess they felt it wasn't enough.

29. Drood - Dan Simmons. Interesting. Huge, but interesting.

Bump...a bunch of Books

Since I'm never really working much anymore, I've been taking advantage of the local library system.

12. The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King

13. The Clan Corporate - Charlie Stross

14. White Witch, Black Curse - Kim Harrison

15. Tangled Webs: a Black Jewels Novel - Anne Bishop. I love the Black Jewels books. They are high on my reread list. :)

16. The Hidden Family - Charlie Stross.

17. Death of a Bore : A Hamish Macbeth Mystery - M. C. Beaton. I'm enjoying the Hamish series on audiobook. These are definitely fun.

18. The Family Trade - Charlie Stross. Now I have to wait for the library to get the next one in the series.

19. Across the Face of the World - Russell Kirkpatrick. They only had the first one in the library. Waiting on that one too.

20. Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street: A Life of the World's First Consulting Detective - Baring-Gould. Fascinating "biography" of Mr. Holmes. Actually shelved in biography, too. :)

21. Bridge of Birds: a novel of an Ancient China that Never Was - Barry Hughart. Master Li and Number Ten Ox. I can't recommend this one enough. Awesome.

22. The Years of Rice and Salt - Kim Stanley Robinson. Would recommend this to anyone with an interest in Buddhism and what might happen in the bardo.

23. Death of a Witch: A Hamish Macbeth mystery - M. C. Beaton. Yet another audiobook, and I'm liking this author more and more. The reader for these books, Graeme Malcolm, is very good. I guess he's done hundreds of audio books but since I'm new to the genre, I'd never heard him before.

And that's all the books I've read since last time (that I remember).

In other news, the house is slowly coming together. Boxes being unloaded and keeping up on the rest of the house. Including giving the cat a bath. I can't say he enjoyed it, I certainly didn't and I know the fleas didn't either. But less fleas = happier cat.

Downside is that he's so fuzzy that it takes forever to dry him out. And I haven't unpacked my hair dryer yet.

The Wii Fit is also being used on a regular basis. Not that I'm seeing progress but whatever. -2 lbs. In a month. *sigh*

Books #4-11

So I'm way behind on this but considering 8 of these books is a series re-read, it's all good.

Books 4-11 were a reread of Laurie R. King's Mary Russell series. I can't quite recall how I wandered across this series for the first time but when I read the cover blurb, "A Novel of Suspense Featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes" it intrigued me. I am a Sherlock Holmes fan, I read the Holmes canon about once a year. I've tried many Holmes stories but very few have lived up to the original and I wondered if this one would.

How was she going to keep Holmes his sharp, acerbic self and include a young woman into the mix without having the story fall down flat?

Mrs. King gave Holmes a true partner. Ms. Russell definitely has her own interests, like Theology, that Holmes has no interest in and Holmes has interests, like beekeeping, that Russell doesn't share. But Holmes trains her genius into becoming a detective. And not just any detective, but one that can work on the same level as himself. They are both brilliant minds and challenge each other's stereotypes and preconceptions of men and women. Russell doesn't outshine Holmes but neither does Holmes leave her behind in the investigation business.

I think that is what makes these books work. Mrs. King treats Sherlock Holmes as he was shown in his own canon, not changing his previous actions/emotions but brings someone in who can live on the same intellectual level as the Great Detective.

I really enjoyed this series and like to recommend it to friends who enjoy mysteries and/or Sherlock Holmes. My personal favorites are O Jerusalem and the next one in line, Justice Hall. Ali and Mahmoud Hazr are my favorite new characters that Laurie R. King has introduced me to.

Go! Get to the bookstore! Buy!

This reread brought to you because the newest in the series "The Language of Bees" is out in hardcover right now and I had to refresh my Mary Russell history to read the new one.

Enjoy!

Book #2 and #3

Blueberry Muffin Murder and Strawberry Shortcake Murder by Joanne Fluke.

Nice little murder mysteries. (It seems I'm on a bit of a food kick with my recent reading.) Anyway, they have recipes included since the main character is the owner of a cookie bakery. They are fast paced and have decent character development and if I get the opportunity, I'll definitely pick up another in the series.

The premise of this little exercise is that the National Endowment for the Arts believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below.

Here’s how it works:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE
4) Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 or less and force books upon them.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Ripped off from Blue Soup. Anything in italics either I mean to read this year or I started but didn't finish, therefore I need to go back and read.

Friends never made

Just spent some time catching up on someone's blog that I knew for a time. I can't even say that we were friends. The potential was there but either I wasn't breaking through or they didn't want to. I know this is extremely vague and it is meant to be. I don't want any offense to be given or guilt trips to be handed out. Not the way to make friends and influence peeps.

I've tried to stay in contact but I've never been very good at that so maybe its my bad. Could be that association with me reminds them of the hellhole of a job they had. I know I started this blog because they inspired me to. I enjoyed our conversations and they had a pretty good sense of humor too. I received advice from them and I gave some. But we never moved to the "sending emails, inviting over" sort of relationship. I regret I that I didn't make that opportunity.

All I can do at this point is wish them well. I hope they succeed (which is what looks to be happening) and I have fond thoughts of someone who I should have tried to be a friend to a little better.

Book #1

The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry - By Kathleen Flinn

Interesting story of a lady struggling to achieve her dream of a degree, deciding to attend Le Cordon Bleu and what she went through to do it.

Now I'm hungry.

Yay!

Home just in time to watch my CSI. I'm enjoying Mr. Fishburne's performance, although I miss Grissom. 11th hour is a hoot more for being strange and laugh worthy than accurate.

I traveled to see the husband. Now I'm home. And packing. There's a house waiting for me, hopefully a job to work at, and a husband who wants me with him. Yet again, yay!

Life is good. Mostly.

Late Late Nights

It's pitiful. I'm watching late night t.v. All the time.

Partly because my mind won't let me rest and I'm all wound up from trying to get make sure all my loose ends are tied up for this move. And not making any sense in the process.

Arm hair. Yup, it's late.

Packing, Part Deux

And here we go again. Packing, moving, setting up house (hopefully).

Actually, I have a shit load of stuff in storage. It's been there for a year or more now. What that tells me? Some of it I can definitely live without. So there will be some sorting and chucking.

I am the woman for the job and it's gonna happen next week. Get 'er done.