The only problem with The Coffee Trader is that I felt like I needed to drink coffee through the whole thing. Not a big problem, since I drink a lot of coffee anyway but my cup warmer is not next to my bed so the coffee kept getting cold. That part was annoying.
Other than that, I really enjoyed it. Loved the ending. Happily ever after except…. I love that.
Darn it. There are no dragons in Here Be Dragons. That ended up being ok but for a few moments, I was disappointed. And now that I think about it again, I think a book about Kings Richard and John and Llewelyn the Great that had dragons in it would have been pretty cool. But no, no dragons.
Historical fiction, really long Welsh/English/Norman/French historical fiction. Surprisingly interesting except when it was really slow and dull – luckily that slow dull stuff was easily skimmed so once I got past the first 50 pages, it was pretty smooth sailing. I even stayed up until midnight a couple of nights ago because I couldn’t put the book down.
My life is crazy. A new Ferrick cd came out (sort of) on Tuesday and I’m just now blogging about it. Crazy I tell ya. Heck, I didn’t even download it til mid-day PT due to the fact that I was on a damn plane in the morning. There was a time when I would have scheduled biz travel around a Ferrick cd release. (Not really, well, maybe.) And then, after I downloaded it from iTunes, I didn’t even LISTEN to it until the next day on the trip back from California. What has happened to my priorities?
Let’s get the basics out of the way first – the cd, Goodbye Youth, has been available only at Ferrick shows since the 10th. On the 16th it was released on iTunes ONLY. Weird but I think I like that a heck of a lot better than trying to pre-order from Goldenrod. That never worked out for me.
So how is it? Well… Mid-life Clarity says it is her best album – ever. I’m not willing to go that far. In fact, I don’t think I can put it in the top three. A few of the songs on it are excellent but the whole album – her best ever? Nah. That’s still Valentine Heartache, I think. (Leaving out Skinnier, Faster, Live which is REALLY the best because Melissa live can’t be beat.)
In no particular order – just as songs pop into my head:
Glycerine – love Melissa’s version.
House on Fire – LOVE.
Hypocrite – makes me laugh my ass off because that is so Melissa.
John’s Field – really nice work with this one Melissa, I wasn’t sure I’d like it on an album that wasn’t live. I do.
Bad Habit – I don’t love this version. I’ve heard her do it live several times and like it better in the old “still a work in progress” version.
Real – I’m surprisingly happy that this “old” song is on this “new” album. I think it works well with this mix.
The other songs on the CD, I’ve got thoughts about them but they aren’t the songs that pop into my head quickly when I think about Goodbye Youth – ok fine, except Goodbye Youth – this one had a lot of potential but something is missing. I don’t know what that something IS, but it’s something. I’m betting I’ll like it better live, I’ll let you know in a few weeks. And something tells me I’ll like it better in the live versions she performs a year from now. She’ll twist it just enough to find that “whatever it is” that’s missing. That’s what she does and part of why I love her.
I spent 8+ hours on planes to spend 36 hours in California. I used to like to fly, now not so much. Every flight is overbooked. Everyone on every flight seems to have some horrible disease and I’m sure some pandemic will be spread via air travel any second now.
My inbox is… well the word pandemonium comes to mind every time I open it.
Jenn left voice mail for me this morning at 7 freaking am and between her tone of voice and the “call me back, I really want to talk to you” I knew she was either pregnant and happy about it or capitulating to the patriarchy (again) – it’s the later. Whoopee. Geez.
The good daughter, I actually called her that several times today, just called to tell me she’s headed to Body Tech to get pierced – her cheeks this time. “And don’t be surprised if I have another tattoo when I see you in a couple of weeks.” Joy.
The letter “P” pretty much sucks ass, just sayin’.
Blogging brought to you by the letter “P” Read More »
Finally! The only problem with Willig is that I never get to read her books immediately after they come out. First, my library never had them and I had to wait months before I could request them via ILL. Then, when I bought one, I had to get through some of my “challenge books” before I could pick it up.
But finally, I finished Seduction of the Crimson Rose this morning. Excellent, as expected.
One interesting thing to note, when TW read it she complained that she didn’t remember what had happened in the other books or who the characters were. I assumed this was just a TW thing but I struggled to remember who was who and where we were in the storyline for the first 50 or so pages of the book. Why is that? This is not usually a problem for me, particularly in a series I really like.
The Seduction of the Crimson Rose Read More »
I finally had time to call my father. Yes I’m a bad daughter. Yes he’d been calling my old phone number. Yes I feel guilty. We had a nice chat about the weather. He got to tease me about the cold so that eased the guilt from not calling him with my new phone number.
That led to a discussion about hurricanes. He drove through Hannah, from Charleston to DC and cackled about the dummies who stay home, leaving the roads open for him and the semis. Yes, my father is nuts. No I don’t take after him.
Of course I asked him about his gas mileage. Hah. Turns out he didn’t drive the Hybrid Honda to DC because a couple of weeks ago some woman hit him in Summerville and his car has been in the shop. Oops. Ya gotta hate that.
He did, however, admit that he wasn’t getting good gas mileage – 40ish (which leads me to believe maybe it’s less than 40.) He was pretty fascinated by my story of the 62.9 mpg drive home from GLNS, (today’s trip, I pulled into the driveway with 62.8!)
A little dueling hybrids update Read More »
I did a pretty good job of avoiding spoilers for Breaking Dawn so I really did not know exactly what Meyer was going to do to resolve the problems with Bella (and the guys) leftover from Eclipse. I don’t think she really did resolve them but she did give Bella more strength and less wishy washyness than before. Too bad it took X to make Bella strong. (X = spoiler and while most people have already read spoilers or already read the book, I don’t want to risk it for those who haven’t.)
I wanted to throw the book about a hundred times. The patriarchy runs rampant! Geez.
And then, the Jacob storyline – how predictable. I figured the whole thing out before the first night on Esme Island. I think the only surprise for me was how the issue with the Volturi was handled – there at the end. I knew Alice was up to something but I didn’t quite know what or how.
When it all comes down to it, I liked Breaking Dawn a heck of a lot more than I liked Eclipse and I look forward to reading about errr the character named Nessie.
Oh, before I go… that racism thing? Just another reminder of why I have no respect for Alisa Valdez Rodriguez. Call out racism if it exists, I’m all for that and I’ll do it with you. But link baiting by falsely attacking someone else who has the spotlight is just wrong. (spoilers contained in the link.)
I have a love hate with Biiblical fiction. Nothing is as a good as The Red Tent, which is to be expected, but they all sound like they’re trying to be The Red Tent. Weird. I don’t compare vampire fiction to Anne Rice, how come I do that with Biblical fiction? Whatever.
Queenmaker wasn’t great but it wasn’t bad, either. King David = jerk. Queen Michal = awesome, mostly. No surprises.
Taking a break from the “FtS” Challenge – Breaking Dawn and The Seduction of the Crimson Rose are up next. Yay!
Years ago, when I lived in the Upstate and TW lived in Florida, she brought the little kids up for her birthday. I searched the internet for some place fun and interesting to go and celebrate her birthday and I found the Hendersonville Apple Festival. So we jumped in the car and we drove up. It was fun but more importantly it started a birthday tradition – that’s what happens around here… you do something once and suddenly some people consider it a new tradition. So, every year I’ve struggled to come up with “apple festival” ideas for TW’s birthday.
It hasn’t been easy. Florida doesn’t really have a helluva lot of apple festivals! One year the kids painted still life apple paintings and we had our own apple festival with bobbing for apples in a bucket and stuff like that. Another year I took her to St Pete, to a quilt shop, and we looked for “apple” fabric (as well as other fabric.)
This year, I again turned to the internet and found Apple River Canyon State Park, Illinois and discovered they were in fact having an old fashioned family festival. I sent the driving directions to my iPhone and sent secondary driving instructions to my phone for another possibility just in case that festival was a dud…
We started the morning with breakfast at Hamilton’s which is right across the street from us, and a restaurant we had not visited. We all enjoyed it, RJ in particular. While paying the bill, I got a work related emergency phone call and had to run back home to resolve a problem – then we started our drive (about an hour later than I’d originally planned.)
We drove. And drove. And drove. And never thought we’d find it – but then, we did. Except there was no festival! It was just a park with very few people in it. WTF??? How frustrating to drive that far and then … nothing.
So we drove out of the park and proceeded to get lost. Driving around the “mounds” while amusing was really not anyone’s idea of a fun birthday and we were all pretty grouchy about being locked up in the car with no payoff when suddenly we stumbled into Elizabeth Illinois. Since we have an Elizabeth, that perked us all up. We perked up even more when we discovered Apple Valley Fort… which was apparently where the festival had been held.
Who knew there was an Apple River State Park and an Apple River Fort? We didn’t but we know it now, damn it.
We arrived at the fort about 15 minutes after the festival ended but the reenactors were nice and showed us around, one of them shot his gun for us (hah.) and we watched the special little Apple Valley Fort movie. And then it was back in the car for us.
Not quite the apple festival birthday I’d envisioned but whatever, we went with it and it was amusing. We also stopped at Beefaroo on the way home, for dinner. Interesting. Worst food ordering experience we’ve ever had, but interesting and everyone was happy enough with their food.
The next day, I decided we’d take a chance on the other apple birthday festival I’d considered before settling for Apple River…. we headed to Long Grove for their Irish fest.
Long Grove is a little like Helen, Georgia (not the Bavarian part but the theme touristy town idea) so I thought everyone would be both amused and entertained, even if they weren’t really interested in the Irish fest part of it. (though we did enjoy the Irish dancers.)
Long Grove has a shop called The Apple Haus and we all had apple donuty type things, apple cider, apple smoothies and we bought a couple of cookbooks (ask TW to blog about those, on Retro Food – they’re very amusing and very retro…)
They have a yarn store that we all enjoyed and an interesting craft store. There was a gift shop where we found a ton of great gift ideas for just about everyone and another gift shop that had some gourds that Liz and I really liked. I think Liz would like to try her hand at some gourd design.
Even with the confusion between Apple River Canyon and Apple River Fort, it was a pretty successful apple festival birthday weekend.
And TW, this year… you are 39:
TW’s Apple Festival Birthday Read More »
I should have known what I was getting into with a book called Rosemary and Juliet but I didn’t pay enough attention. Ah well, I’m a fan of YA and I don’t mind a YA problem book from time to time, either.
Regardless of what the title might lead you to believe this book is about – it isn’t that at all. It’s a basic YA lesbian problem book with more problems than most YA straight problem books.
Two kids die and neither were our star crossed lovers. (oops I guess that’s a spoiler, sorry.)
Electric shock therapy was tossed in there for good measure.
And of course, the predictable unhappy ending because in the end teens are required to do what their parents tell them to do – even if their parents are idiots.
Rosemary and Juliet Read More »