Fast Women

2014, Books in Bed, Chick Lit, Favorites, Women /

I just plain like Jennifer Crusie and I don’t read nearly enough of her books because my TBR list is generally PACKED. When I ran out of books I wanted/needed to read, I figured this was a good time to grab one of her paperbacks and have some fun.

Fast Women was fun. I loved ALL of the “fast women”. Every single one of them. And, I stayed up way too late, two nights in a row, reading this one. I’m tempted to start one more Jennifer Crusie novel while I’m waiting to go to the library and pick up some holds that are on my TBR list… though I really should read something from my stacks of unread books…

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Low Budget Tricks for Small Spaces

2014, Books in Bed, Non-Fiction /

Well. It was pretty. That’s just about the only good thing I can say about Low Budget Tricks for Small Spaces.

I picked this one up at the library because, well, it was pretty. Unfortunately there’s almost no text in the book and the “low budget tricks” didn’t appear to be very low budget, as far as I could tell. I also couldn’t always figure out what the “trick” was.

I’m not going to say it was a waste of time because it was very pretty and there were some super interesting rooms. It just wasn’t a very helpful book if you wanted, umm, low budget tricks for small rooms.

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I’m An Ant Killer

1 Comment / Animal Issues, Daily Dose, Day to Day, Family Funk /

TW gave me an ant farm for Christmas because I have always wanted one and never had one.

I was very excited. It’s one of those weird blue gel glowing ant farm thingies. I was so excited that I sent away for my ants the first weekend after Christmas.

TW suggested that was not a good idea because it is winter and the ants probably can’t be shipped in the winter.

Oh. Yea.

Weeks passed and the only response I had from the people I ordered the ants from was “thank you for your order…” so I thought maybe they knew that ants couldn’t be shipped to the frozen bowels of hell (which some people call Chicagoland) in January and they’d just wait to send them in the spring.

It’s been so long since I ordered them that I really almost forgot about them. If it wasn’t for the empty ant farm sitting on my desk, I really would have forgotten about them — but every now and then Buster butt jumps up on the edge of the desk and knocks the ant farm over and I wonder about my ants.

I went out to the mailbox this morning while I was warming up the car. There were three tiny little envelope packages in there. One was some jewelry I ordered as Christmas presents way back last November. (sigh) One was a new iPhone case for TW (because Buster butt ate her other new one last week.) One was… my ants. My very frozen ants.

The outside of the envelope says “Keep away from extreme heat or cold.” Sigh. I think the high between the time the mail arrived and the time I retrieved the mail was about – 9F and the poor things were in that box for a good 16 hours. I’d say that’s extreme cold and from the shape of the poor things in their little tube, I’m guessing they’d agree if ant ghosts could talk.

I’m feeling all sad and guilty about that tube of ants. *sniff* May they RIP.

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The House of Impossible Loves

2014, Books in Bed, Fiction, Women /

You never really know what you’re going to get with a book that’s been translated to English… a bad translation can turn a good book into something not great. Luckily, The House of Impossible Loves was a pretty darn good book.

If you like fairy tales or good storytelling, in general. If you like extra-quirky storytelling, then you’re probably going to really like this one. It’s not a quick, easy read (which is why it took me so long to get through it. I read like a chapter a day for the first three days, because I was too sick to really focus and it does take a lot of focus to follow) but well worth sticking with it.

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I’m Still Craving Roast Chicken

4 Comments / Animal Issues, Daily Dose, Day to Day, Foodie /

At some point last weekend? Or maybe it was last Friday? Whatever, I don’t remember exactly when… I started to smell … something … every time I was in the office. Something familiar. Something almost… comforting? What was that odor?

It finally occurred to me that it was something like roast chicken or maybe turkey. Huh. Weird. Was TW roasting a chicken for dinner? That would be nice but why was she roasting a chicken so early? Was something going on that meant she needed to cook early? Or we needed to eat early? Or … oh well. Whatever.

I assumed that’s what it was and went on about my day only to discover much later that TW had not really planned anything for dinner and she was most definitely not roasting a turkey.

Huh. What was that odor?

We ended up having pork chops and dressing and some other vegetables that I don’t really remember now and I kind of half decided that the odor in the office might have been dressing. It kind of smells like that and maybe RJ had found the bag of vegan dressing and made herself a pot earlier in the day? Weird but it could happen. RJ likes dressing.

I went about my business trying very hard to forget that the office STILL smelled like… roast chicken? stuffing/dressing? SOMETHING… but after two days, it was getting harder to forget that the office smelled that way.

On the third day, I was pretty much going nuts and had decided that my subconscious was telling me that I needed to roast a chicken or the scent was NOT going to go away. So I made a note to myself to take a chicken out of the freezer.

Later that evening, the dogs were causing a ruckus at the prairie dog cage. Skeeter and Lola barking, Betty banging on the bars, Buster butt banging on the bars. Total mayhem. I went over to shoo the dogs away only to find Buster trying very hard to remove some stalks of celery from the cage and the odor, the one that I thought was roast chicken or stuffing … it was oh so very strong.

Celery. It was celery. Not a chicken roasting. Not dressing/stuffing. Celery.

I cursed and removed all of the celery from the cage because the girls were certainly not eating it. I removed the celery from the mouths of all three dogs (because by that time Buster had successfully removed several stalks) and threw it all away.

I also forbid TW from ever putting celery in the girls’ cages again. It was bad enough that the office smelled like squash for three days the last time she put a half of a butternut squash in their cage but this was worse. The not knowing what the smell was or WHY it was there was so much worse than that. I really had begun to think I was nuts.

It’s been several days since I solved the mystery and cleared out the celery. The office hasn’t smelled like roast chicken in ages.

But, every time I sit down at my desk I think, “Gosh, roast chicken would be really awesome for dinner.”

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The Mapping of Love and Death

2014, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Favorites, Feminism, Fiction /

The Mapping of Love and Death was another great Maisie Dobbs book. Sad, so sad. But, interesting to see where Maisie goes now that the world is her oyster, so to speak. I’m not sure how I feel about the whole James Compton thing. It’s probably going to be fine and certainly better than Dr Dean for goodness sakes.

I really enjoyed the whole cartographer/diaries/letters thing. Well done. Very well done.

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The Good Neighbors: Kind

2014, Books in Bed, Comics & Graphic Novels, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

I’m doing a great job of catching up on series I’d started and let slide. Holly Black’s The Good Neighbors series, for instance. I read #3, Kind last night.

It was good but who didn’t see that coming? Apparently all of Rue’s human friends? This is a good graphic novel series. Very Holly Black-like. I sometimes find the illustrations a little confusing. Sometimes the guys seem drawn a little too similarly and I have to do a double take when I realize this is not the guy who I thought it was? Otherwise, a perfectly enjoyable faerie graphic novel.

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WTF WWF?

2 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day, Pet Peeves /

Words With Friends is pissing me the hell off.

They updated the app again and that always means things are a little wonky at first but this time, it’s so bad I can barely manage to play.

For the first few days, every time I opened the app, I’d have to pull the screen down three times before I could get it to even show me any of my in progress games.

Then, when I’d open a board, I’d get 55 popups telling me “You won” or “You lost” and I’d have to dismiss them before I could access the board.

Then when I accessed the board, it often looked like this…

Worse yet, none of the actual words on this board are even ON the game I’ve just tried to open. STUPID, WWF.

Yesterday, Karenlynn messaged me with something like “are you too busy filofaxing to play two games at once?” I thought she asked that because I hadn’t played in hours and hours so I replied that I’d just been busy with work and then the 5 hour prairie dog rescue ordeal kept me away from my phone.

But no, I think the problem is that a game I know we started is just gone from the list. There’s another one that says it’s her move, and it has no tiles placed — but that board also says that the chat has been closed because the game is over.

WTF?

Then, on another board, I played a word — the screen reloaded and it was there, so I closed it to go to another game and… that first board, it’s showing that it’s still my turn and my word didn’t actually play after all. But when I try to play a word, it won’t let me.

It’s gotten to the point that I don’t even want to open the damn app — it’s so bad. (And yes, I’ve rebooted my iPhone and yes, I’ve looked to see if there’s another update to fix these problems.)

Get your act together, WWF. This is just stupid.

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The Boy Who Sees Demons

2014, Books in Bed, Fiction /

Books about schizophrenia are always freaky and odd and twisty turny and The Boy Who Sees Demons was all of those things. I was pretty sure this wasn’t quite as straight forward as it seemed to be in the beginning and once Anya started considering the whole demon thing, I knew what was going to happen.

And sure enough — that’s what happened.

The end felt rushed, to me. We go all that way and then the twist comes and it’s over just like that. Seems like we could have had another chapter or two in there? I dunno.

It was a pretty good book, if you like that sort of psychological confusing schizophrenia story.

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