Have read (or stopped reading):

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse
Grail mythology, 510 pages
Good writing, fast pace, interesting setup, grabbed me in the bookstore and that's not easy! However, once I realized what was going on and how things would play out, I lost interest. *sigh* May try again later.

Reading now:

Emperor: The Gates of Rome by Conn Iggulden - finishing today! SO good!
Emperor: The Death of Kings by Conn Iggulden - starting next! Ahhhh....
When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris

Re-reading now:

Third and Indiana by Steve Lopez

Scheduled:

Shadowplay by Tad Williams
Genghis: Lords of the Bow by Conn Iggulden

To get, to finish the series:

Emperor: The Field of Swords by Conn Iggulden
Emperor: The Gods of War by Conn Iggulden

I must keep my eyes open - how could I have missed Conn Iggulden? While his story is following the standard hero scenario (hero was shown to be weak in the beginning, at some point departs homeland to prove himself, overcomes major obstacles, becomes 'fuerte,' eventually returns in triumph, etc.) in this case there is truth to the fable. His Gengas book was recommended to me, so I've put it on my list.

There's a lot to keep me busy! ^_____^

Ah, such a good weekend. We should have weeks like this all during the year. Really, I'd appreciate them all the same.


First:

Eli's home! Not only that, he has over 900 photos for us to look at. Incredible!

Then:

I had a wonderful day with a friend, visiting and playing WiiFit, and then went to the Mann Center and heard Allison Krause and Robert Plant together. Who would think of that combination? Robert Plant from Led Zepplin, and Allison Krause the singer/fiddler. SO GOOD!!!

And lastly:

We're going to the movies tomorrow. Yay!

Summertime is sooooo good. ^________^

Oh, my, my, so tasty and true!

Here's a little gem I didn't realize I saved - wow! Some of these are bad enough to make your eyes bleed and they even made ME groan - but the worst part is that I hear our elected 'officials,' the people I work with, and even anonymous people at Starbucks use these phrases everyday. AAACKKK!

( 24-7 With the Cliche' Expert )

Didja love it, or what? Word.

I'm decompressing after what was a fairly good end-of-the-year period with both my schools - frenetic as always, but without any of the nasty parental shouting that has happened in past years. I was SO pleased.

Eli's in Europe with his choir, having a great time. If you'd like to read about how he and 27 members of his grad choir sang in front of Prince Albert of Monaco in their boxers and PJs, go here. It's a real hoot! If you page back (with that blog, it's actually "Next Page" - it's weird) you can see pictures of the choir singing, on the paddleboats, etc. Probably only interesting to Dave and me, but that one blog is funny. ^_^

Dave's working as the Director of CITs at the JCC camp this summer (!), and he loves it. Again, a better thing couldn't have happened for us. He has a great group of students to work with, and so far they've received high marks from their counselors. He comes home each day feeling good, full of energy (well, as full of energy as you can with this heat).

We're really fortunate that we don't live in a flood zone or a fire zone in the US, but we do live in the 'humidity' zone. I can't stand humidity anymore, if I ever could stand it. Certain incidents stand out in my mind:

I remember not being able to sleep when I was a teenager because my parent's home wasn't air conditioned

I recall buying our first air conditioner for this house - we invited friends over and we all huddled in that room, loathe to leave it because the rest of the house felt like an oven!

I remember buying the first large air conditioner for the downstairs - it felt luxurious, needed and wasteful at the same time.

I also recall buying a unit for my mother and putting it into her downstairs window

And, we're looking forward to adding a little Schnauzer to our happy family sometime in August! We'll all have to make adjustments, including BooBoo. But thanks to a little guy named Akage, BooBoo's learning all about little Schnauzers.

Back from a wonderful, three day vacation in Vegas! Along with everything else, we saw Cirque du Soleil's resident show KA, a fabulous, gravity-defying show. I have never seen anything like it in my life @_@. There are pieces on YouTube, showing how some of the fight scenes were choreographed, and I'm still flabbergasted.

I'm now seriously hooked on Cirque. There's a traveling Cirque show coming to our area in about 2 months, and we are certainly going to see it - I can't wait!!

I live! and for my quarterly report, I give you ... these!

You Belong in Paris

You enjoy all that life has to offer, and you can appreciate the fine tastes and sites of Paris. You're the perfect person to wander the streets of Paris aimlessly, enjoying architecture and a crepe.

You Are 83% Creative

You are an incredibly creative person. For you, there are no bounds or limits to your creativity. Your next creation could be something very great... Or at least very cool!

You Belong in Fall

Intelligent, introspective, and quite expressive at times... You appreciate the changes in color, climate, and mood that fall brings Whether you're carving wacky pumpkins or taking long drives, autumn is a favorite time of year for you

And for those of you not watching CNN or BBC Worldwide -

Mom charged with buying Pa. teen weapons

NORRISTOWN, Pa. - A troubled teenager accused of plotting a school attack built up a stash of weapons with the help of his mother, authorities said Friday. Michele Cossey, 46, was arrested Friday on charges of illegally buying her home-schooled son, Dillon, a .22-caliber handgun, a .22-caliber rifle and a 9 mm semiautomatic rifle with a laser scope....

...Dillon, who was arrested Wednesday, felt bullied and tried to recruit another boy for a possible attack at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School, authorities said. The teen previously attended middle school in the district but had been taught at home for more than a year after voluntarily leaving school.

Acting on a tip from a high school student and his father, police searched the boy's bedroom and found the 9 mm rifle, about 30 air-powered guns modeled to look like higher-powered weapons, swords, knives, a bomb-making book, videos of the 1999 Columbine attack in Colorado and violence-filled notebooks, Castor said.....

(click the link for the full article)

What can I say, except that my school was closed two weeks ago today because of a bomb threat.

What kind of a freaking world are we LIVING in? That woman actually thought it was OKAY to go buy weapons for her son who was already having problems?? And SHE's not hinged too tightly, either, hmm? So, our society says it's just FINE to sell her guns and make a profit - and maybe have my son killed in the process?

No, no, NONONONONO. Again, just NO.

So, last week? I ordered a laptop, shiny and new, from Lenovo. They had a sale, I had my eye on them, doortoriver's hubby looked at it and said it was a good deal - and THEN I found this cool thing called FatWallets that had a link and a code that saved me even MORE money!

I was jazzed, life was good. Soon, I'd have my new SHINY laptop and my OLD laptop (which has been overheating and such, but still was serviceable). Right?

*sigh* Sadly, no. Today, that old Toshiba Satellite decided to rebel and zapped its own video card. Damn its ESP, it knew it was being replaced!

Machines have FAR too much knowledge for their own good. >_

I'm tired and I'm hurting. My icon shows my favorite occupation. Ugh. I want/need a long massage.

A meme, yoinked from mrsbnickel:

That sleep study was something else @_@. I had enough wires on my head - glued in my hair(ick, ick, ick), all across my forehead, on the side of my eyes (to measure my REM movement), stuff IN my nose and next to my mouth, at least four things taped all across my throat - that I literally had a ponytail of wires across my shoulder.

Frankly, I don't see how anyone could sleep well with that hardware all over them! The room was nice but the bed was small, and I couldn't roll on my side (as I like to ~_^). Wires, wires everywhere, plus, the mattress was lumpy, says the sensitive Princess. At any rate, I did wake up a lot that night, especially because I was incredibly thirsty.

And now it's the last 'free' weekend, the last weekend before I go back to work. Saaaa.....

I fell asleep, waiting to go to the sleep study. How lame is that? *dies*

Everyone's home! Hooray!

Dave's back from Seattle, after seeing baseball and Mt. Rainer ..

E's back from Australia, after seeing kangaroos, tasmanian devils and other wildlife and such ...

... and now I'm going to have a sleep study tomorrow night. Basically, I go to the local hospital (and I take my pillow!), they hook me up with all sorts of stuff and they monitor me sleeping. Then I go and talk to someone about it. It's all the rage! ^_^ *but only if you have FM like I do, or like being 'wired' ^_^

That's my excitement!

'scuse me while I go to bed and try to nap a little, now ~_^

Doing not much of anything today. Built a computer with MiniMe last night, which is inexplicably buggy (as in, all the parts are in, power supply apparently works but nothing's working). Can't do much testing without any other equipment, so it's him asking friends 'which part do you think's bad?'

And here's a strange little meme I found as I was looking around today ( My Imaginary World )

This is SO interesting. I'm not going to describe how I found it, but I've been reading about health and well being lately:

The Key To Good Health That No One Is Talking About: Money

Here's a short excerpt from the article:

Over time, research linking health and wealth became more nuanced. It turns out that "what matters in determining mortality and health in a society is less the overall wealth of that society and more how evenly wealth is distributed. The more equally wealth is distributed, the better the health of that society," according to the editors of the April 20, 1996 issue of the British Medical Journal. In that issue, American epidemiologist George Kaplan and his colleagues showed that the disparity of income in each of the individual U.S. states, rather than the average income per state, predicted the death rate.

Therefore, if you live in Mississippi, your predicted life span will probably be lower than someone who lives in Massachusettes, all due to the average income per state. No, this doesn't take individual cases into consideration, like Aunt Zelda who lived to be 108 or Uncle Zolie who just had his 112th birthday. But as the beginning of the article says, that dead-end job you're in could just be bad for your health.

Did NOT get the book at Midnight Borders Insanity Bracelet Bazaar. DID get the book the next day in the Humongous Pile 'O' Books at the local BJ's Wholesale. IMHO, no one will run out of HP7 books. Ever.

Then I read the book in my own way. This is important, because I've found that I read books differenly from most of the reading public.

My opinion? It was okay. It wasn't teriffic, it wasn't terrible - it was okay. It kept me entertained for several hours, and that's saying a lot. Although Reno 911: Miami! and Snow Cake (which, btw, stars Alan Rickman and Sigorney Weaver and I would HEARTILY recommend people rent/view ASAP) kept me entertained for about the same amount of time.

Would I recommend it? Not if you didn't want to plow through the rest of the series. >_< Meaning, of course, that it won't stand on its own. Other books in the series DO stand on their own, and rather well. This one, however, demands that the reader read most of them, if not each and every frigging one.

Do you like the way it's written? I much prefer Jane Smiley's writing (reference Horse Heaven or A Thousand Acres). It is not a 'great piece of literature' and it never was, nor is it something that will revolutionize reading in the schools. If you're going to point to Harry Potter as the *gasp* REASON! that Johnny decided to START! READING! AGAIN!, then I think everyone who knows Johnny probably couldn't read past Cereal Box Labels One, either. My son happens to like Ender's Game and all its permutations.

It was a fast read. The pacing was okay, action sequences kept moving.

JKR has made, and will make, zillions of dollars from this franchise. There is the potential for at least another seven books here, if not more. Look what Frank Herbert and his progeny did to the Dune series, or what happened to Asimov's Foundation series. Or, for something more along the lines of HP, how about all the Star Wars novels and novellas? That should keep fanficcers in fodder (if not actually employed writing the books) for years.

Now for the spoiler part, so ( here's the cut )

And ... gads. There's more, but I can't think of it. @_@

I saw this at puns, posted by skreidle:


*beams* It's the best!

Here's an interesting piece that showed up in bookshare today. Click on it, and you'll find three good reviews on books regarding the HP-universe; very detailed and nicely entertaining. One of the books is called "The Great Snape Debate," and includes an essay by Orson Scott Card. If I was into buying HP books like this, I might consider it ...

And then, perusing the Washington Post today, I found this - a live discussion with Post critic Michael Dirda - that I couldn't resist putting here:

"...Alexandria, Va.: In an interview with the late Douglas Adams, his advice to a novice author was to "buy a big desk that won't collapse when you beat your head against it." He also defined writing fiction as "putting down 100,000 words in a startling order."

Do you have any writing advice to share? Have you ever considered fiction?

Michael Dirda: This is terrific advice from Adams, who died lamentably young. RIght up there with Red Smith's "Writing is easy. You just sit down at a desk and open a vein." I've also liked Valery's, "A poem is never finished, it is only abandoned."

As for writing advice: To the young, I say read a lot, read everything. To the middle aged, I say: It's not writing unless it's published (a mot borrowed from Robert A. Heinlein). And to the older yet, I say: Hurry.

As it happens, I'm about to start work on a short story in a day or two. In the past I've published one short story and have a box full of fiction in draft. Most of it isn't any good.

*DIES* He's so right! ...and fortunately, I'm not "older yet"....

*beams* HEY! Guess what??

It's been 26 YEARS - yes, that's right, 26 YEARS - since my hubby and I tied the knot, in our friend's backyard in Mission Viejo, California. A non-traditional ceremony for non-traditional people; we had readings from seven different holy books, and someone donated 700 red, pink and white carnations to us. It was soooooooo beautiful that day, so sunny and bright. All newlyweds should be so blessed!