Night is my companion

Books recently

2008-07-02T14:59:36Z

I've been a major slacker about what I've read. I might have even missed a couple but I'll try.

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse - An anthology featuring Stephen King, Cory Doctorow, Octavia Butler, and many more. This book features 22 apocalyptic stories. I read them all, but didn't really care for some of them. I wish I could remember whose I liked the best but it's been a while since I finished this.

Belly Laughs by Jenny McCarthy - This was absolutely hysterical! I finished this off in a couple of hours. I loved where Jenny wanted to eat an entire jar of mustard.

The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations by Brian Fagan - I saw the author on the Daily Show one night and this sounded like an interesting book. Of course, I didn't understand everything discussed in the book but it was very interesting.

Index to Murder by Jo Dereske - This was the latest in the Miss Zukas Mysteries. I've stopped buying these in the store and get them from the library. I found the MC less annoying in this book than the last. The reason behind a couple of deaths was sort of weak, but overall it was okay.

A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane - theemmer and I watched Gone Baby Gone a while back and it made me want to read the other books in this series. This is the first book in the Kenzie/Gennaro series. It was an EXCELLENT book and I can't wait to read the rest.

Panic Free Pregnancy by Michael Broder - I was expecting more from this book and in a lot of places he contradicted everything I had read in several other sources about things you can/can't do during pregnancy. It was a quick read and I finished it in one sitting. Not very helpful overall.

What I'm reading now... well I've started and stopped several books lately, so I have 4-5 where I'm 1/4-1/3 of the way through. But yesterday I picked up Eve Kenin's Hidden (the latest Shomi book and the follow up to Driven - which was one of my favorite books last year) and I can not wait to dive into it.

Snurched from around my flist

2008-06-25T22:01:54Z

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 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 (I'm bolding this because I'm pretty sure I've read just about all of them)
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 (never seen the movie either)
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
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - 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 (I tried reading this after seeing the movie and threw it across the room after a couple of pages)
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 (I've had a copy for YEARS and never read it)
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 (loved the movie)
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 - Enid Blyton
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
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

tvaddictgurl @ 2008-06-23T08:47:00

2008-06-23T15:48:24Z

FYI... Pregnant women should not watch Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

Unless of course you want to be reduced to a sobbing mess just by the application video.

tvaddictgurl @ 2008-06-19T09:02:00

2008-06-19T16:02:33Z

I had one of those mornings where I was dreaming that I was already up. Typically in the morning I hear theemmer get up and close her bedroom door and that's what wakes me up (much nicer than an alarm clock blaring in my ear). Then I lay in bed for a couple of minutes before I get up to jump in the shower. So this morning, I heard the door close and promptly dropped back to sleep, but I was dreaming that I was up and that it was snowing. C came in after her shower to see if I was awake and going to work (I'm usually in the shower by that point). I was completely out of it.

I also had a dream where I was in a church with two guys (I believe it was the Winchester boys) and we were trying to locate some hidden artifact or something in the church. There was a whole involved sequence involving trying to crack some secret code that involved numbers and letters so we could access the area where the artifact was supposed to be. Finally, Dean got irritated and frustrated and grabbed a sledgehammer and starting hitting the stone floor in the area we thought the artifact was located. I woke up so I have no idea if we found it or not.

tvaddictgurl @ 2008-06-18T12:03:00

2008-06-18T19:04:41Z

My mom just sent me an email that said as of noon today she was being laid off. She works for a title company and they've been super super slow so she said she wasn't terribly surprised, but damn. I had plans to go see her this weekend, so now I'm especially glad that I'm going.

Mash Game: Predict Your Future at eSPIN-the-Bottle

2008-06-11T22:55:37Z



		I will marry Dean Winchester.
		After a wild honeymoon, We will settle down in South of France in our fabulous House.
		We will have 2 kid(s) together.
		Our family will zoom around in a Blue VW Bug.
		I will spend my days as a SAHM, and live happily ever after.

7 places in one night...

2008-06-11T05:12:53Z

UGH!

Never let a real estate agent take you to 7 different properties in one night. Too much! But we ended up not liking 5 of the 7. We only liked the first two and one of those was one we had looked at before. And the second stop, we actually looked at three properties in the same development.

I have to talk numbers with a couple mortgage people tomorrow and then we might be ready to make an offer on one of the two we liked.

No house for us...

2008-06-10T22:08:51Z

Well at least not the house that we fell in love with over the weekend. They refused to come down in price. There was absolutely no negotiating to be done. Evidently they felt like rather than selling for a slightly reduced price, that they'd rather just rent it out for a year or so until the market is better.

Whatever.

So tonight Scott and I are off to look at another 5 properties. But we've been pre-approved so at least we know when we find a place that we'll be ready to make an offer.

tvaddictgurl @ 2008-06-09T12:45:00

2008-06-09T19:45:32Z

Oh what a weekend...

Friday night Scott and I looked at a house. Our realtor knew of an For Sale by Owner place in Auburn that is in our price range. We checked it out and LOVED IT! Then there was an open house at the house on Sunday, so we looked at it again and STILL LOVE IT! We might be making an offer tonight.

Saturday, theemmer and I headed out for our local RWA chapter meeting. This was the last one till September. Then we went shopping. I needed to try and find shoes for the wedding. I found some cute pearl-white sandals that I think will go nicely with the dress. After our shopping adventure, it was time for girls night. Some of the gals from the chapter were getting together for a girls night at a hotel in Bellevue and had invited us to join them. There was lots of alcohol (lots and lots) and we can all tell you how long it's been since our chapter president had sex ;) It was a riot and I'm so glad that we went.

Today Scott and I are picking up our marriage license and talking to a lender about a mortgage.

Overheard on the bus...

2008-06-05T19:54:27Z

Two elderly women are discussing rising gas prices when a younger man nearby interjects...

Lady 1: It's all Bush's fault that prices are rising. He owns those oil companies and is just looking to make money.
Man: The concept of the gas prices rising is just a myth. What's actually happening is the dollar is shrinking.
Lady 1: Shrinking? How can it be shrinking? I watched a show on PBS the other night and they're still printing it the same way they always have.

tvaddictgurl @ 2008-06-04T07:52:00

2008-06-04T14:56:29Z

Before I do anything else today, I have to wish my bestest friend, theemmer a giant

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Five years ago today, we rolled into town in her Saturn pulling a U-Haul after three long days of driving her stuff across the country. It's been an awesome ride kiddo.

tvaddictgurl @ 2008-05-29T09:02:00

2008-05-29T16:04:19Z

My strange dreams continued last night. In one of my dreams last night I was in a house with a couple of friends. Then this group of four people came in through an open window and wouldn't leave. The room morphed and became a van. We were driving down the road really fast and I started throwing those four people out the side door of the van.

Then there was a second dream where I had someone coming to be at work and asking me to make labels for his file (he couldn't do it himself). I didn't want to do it, because it was my day was officially over and plus I didn't really think it was my job. So I called my boss and she told me to absolutely not do it. I told him that and it sent him over the edge. Then write_out showed up and we were hanging out in my cubicle when this bright ball of light started hovering outside the cubicle and then pushed its way in. I have no idea what it was supposed to be, but it was very pretty.

tvaddictgurl @ 2008-05-27T14:18:00

2008-05-27T21:19:59Z

Tonight theemmer and I are off to a baseball game. It's our first game of the season.

Mariners vs. Red Sox

Let's see if the Ms can manage not to lose their 8th straight game (UGH!)

Weird dreams...

2008-05-27T17:08:20Z

I've been having a lot of strange vivid dreams lately. Last week I had one night where I had 4 distinct dreams (one fighting zombies, one with Whitney Houston, one where my desk at work had disappeared, and the other involved a shooting at a school).

Last night I dreamt I was the bodyguard for some girl who was in the witness protection program. I saw someone that was coming to kill her, sent her off to a safehouse, and then proceeded to get in this long car chase (it was really awesome) with the killer.

Hee hee

2008-05-22T15:40:24Z

Well I teased about exciting news earlier in the week... here's part of it...

Scott and I are getting married!

We've set October 18th as the date. So I have 5 months to plan my wedding...

EEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

tvaddictgurl @ 2008-05-20T14:39:00

2008-05-20T21:40:52Z

Big exciting things are happening. Not quite ready to share them with the entire world, but soon...

Books... books... books

2008-05-14T04:36:59Z

It's been a long time since I updated on what I've read this year.

I Am America (and so can you)! by Stephen Colbert -- I'd been waiting for this one from the library for a while. It's very funny and just like The Colbert Report. Eventually I'll probably have to find a copy to go with America, The Book.

The Revenant by Carolyn Haines -- A small town Mississippi reporter (alcoholic, self-destructive, major issues from her past) helps solve the crime that has shocked the town. A grave has been discovered with five bodies from twenty years earlier. It's no doubt a serial killer, but then suddenly new bodies start showing up. I really enjoyed this book. The main character was damaged and destructive, but still managed to keep her crap together to do her job. I believe this novel was a stand-alone, but I would love to see this character again.

Black Magic Woman by Justin Gustainis -- Okay, I kept hearing about this book online and had it on my TBB list. But when I picked up a copy in the store I was thrilled with the couple pages I read so it moved to my library TBR pile. Quincey Morris (descendant of THE Quincey Morris) and Libby Chastain (bi-sexual, white witch) are on the case of solving a Hatfield-McCoy feud that's lasted since the Salem witch trials. I ended up loving this book and can not wait for the next one in the series.

The Next Thing on My List by Jill Smolinski -- After her passenger, Marissa, dies in a car accident, June Parker finds a list Marissa had written: 20 Things to Do by My 25th Birthday. The items on the list range 'go braless one day' to 'change someone's life'. June ends up learning about Marissa's life and her own in her quest to complete the list. Again, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I bought it as a whim in the store and it ended up being a very delightful read.

What Happens in Vegas... by Jodi Lynn Copeland, Anya Bast, Lauren Dane, and Kit Tunstall -- Okay, I can really only give my opinion of two of the stories in this anthology, because I only read two of them. The other two I tried to read, but for different reasons, I couldn't finish either one. Stripped by Lauren Dane and The Deal by Anya Bast are both hot, sexy reads.. which if you know their work already, you won't be surprised by that. I loved the characters and stories in both. It's one reason they're both on my auto-by list.

The new me....

2008-05-13T04:00:10Z

... courtesy of James Dean (seriously, that was the name of the stylist).

tvaddictgurl @ 2008-05-11T11:06:00

2008-05-11T18:09:47Z

theemmer and I were on the way to Fred Meyer yesterday to pick up a couple of things before we headed to Pugmania. We were waiting in a turn lane and someone was selling flowers in this corner lot (yes, what every mother wants, flowers that smell like exhaust fumes). They had signs going around the corner advertising their deals on flowers. These were the two signs sitting next to each other --

Sign 1: 12 Flowers 9.99

Sign 2: 1 Dozen 10.00

We both sat there in the car for a full minute just staring at the signs and then looked at each other and completely bust out laughing. I thought I must have been having a stroke or something because I knew I had to be reading them wrong. I don't think we stopped laughing for a good 15-20 minutes.

Coming up later... Pics from Pugmania...

tvaddictgurl @ 2008-05-09T14:58:00

2008-05-09T21:58:56Z

I'm so glad it's Friday. Work has been crazy busy this week. I cancelled my 'date night' with Scott (dinner and BSG) so that I could just basically go to bed as soon as I got home. I'm going to put on my pjs and crawl into bed and veg in front of the tv and hit the sack early. He's Tivoing BSG, so we can watch it in HD tomorrow together. Speaking of tomorrow, he, theemmer and I will be hitting Pugmania! This is the yearly gala/fundraiser for the pug rescue group in Seattle. There's a pug parade, costume contest, kissing contest (which Scott wants me to enter with Sota), and raffles. Then tomorrow night, Scott and I are going to the KT Tunstall concert. And Sunday, C and I are going to the Seattle Symphony for Hollywood and the Age of Romance. It's going to be a busy weekend.

Last night's Supernatural... meh... First off, I think the writers and or director should issue an apology to nurses everywhere for how they had that nurse react when the guy walked in to the hospital in the opening bit. I know nurses and I'm insulted on their behalf (but I've been insulted by a couple of episodes this season so it's par for the course). My second big issue with the episode was Bela and the revelation about her past. Oh, like we didn't see that one coming. Gee, the writers couldn't have gone a more cliche way with that one? That was sorely disappointing (as has most of this season). I'll watch next week's finale and then give them a couple of episodes at the beginning of next season. But as it stands right now, it'd be pretty easy to walk away from the show.

Answers

2008-04-30T18:29:43Z

First set of questions from this entry, this set from write_out

1. What do you think of blue cheese?

2. When did you last feel really good about yourself?

3. Wine or chocolate and why? (I know, a hard one)

4. What did you wear to bed last night?

5. What's your favorite mixed drink?

6. How would you spend $100 if someone handed it to you right now?

7. Who would you most like to be stuck in an elevator with?

1.I love blue cheese. Unfortunately, blue cheese does not love me. At one time it was the only kind of salad dressing I would use, but then one day it decided to wage war against my insides. Now, I look at it longingly. On rare, rare, rare occasions I'll have a salad which is greens, candied nuts, pears, and blue cheese crumbles.

2. Last night when swimming at the gym. I was doing a backstroke through the water and it felt so good. Yes, my upper arms are flabby and my thighs are huge, but that's me. But I'm also going to the gym, not because I think I have to get to a size 6 but because I want to be healthier.

3. Dude, you're right that is a hard one. Of course, ideally I'd say the two together. But I'm going to go with wine on this one. You thought I'd say chocolate, didn't you???? I can OD on chocolate pretty easily. But give me a bottle of a nice wine, particularly a sweet Riesling and I'm ready to go.

4. Purple plaid pajama pants and a green top. They both are part of different sets but I didn't feel like digging out either of their matching counterparts.

5. Cosmopolitan - Though I had my first mojito when I was in Denver and dang that was good!

6. BOOKS! Considering the current economic situation, I should be responsible and throw it in the bank for bills or gas money, but truly I'd want to just go spend it on books.

7. How long are we stuck in the elevator and are there cameras in there? hee hee.. Okay, seriously, I think I'd want to be stuck with someone I could discuss writing with, like Margaret Atwood, Stephen King, Nora Roberts, Kim Harrison...

snurched from various peeps

2008-04-30T14:59:47Z

Ask me seven questions. Not just any seven questions though. No, to keep it interesting, use the seven questions as per below - just copy and paste the following, replace the blanks with something you want to know/ask (e.g. 3. Donkeys or sandcastles and why?), anything you want, personal, silly, surreal or deep, comment away and I'll answer honestly as I can! Then post this in your own LJ and see what kind of things people want to ask you!

1. What do you think of _____________ ?

2. When did you last ____________?

3. __________ or ___________ and why?

4. What did you ______________?

5. What's your favorite ______________?

6. How would you ______________?

7. Who would you most like to ________ ?

We hate Comcast right now

2008-04-28T21:54:23Z

The roomie and I have Comcast as our cable provider. We've had them for close to 5 years and I had them as my cable provider before that. A couple of years ago we decided to get digital cable for the living room. One of the perks of digital cable is OnDemand. I love OnDemand. But for the last month or so, it hasn't worked half the time.

Now, it seems more often than not when we try to try on OnDemand we get an error message on the screen. We have to wait 15-20-30 or more before it will actually work. And then heaven forbid you want to pause whatever you're watching on there. Either it won't pause or if you get it to pause, you'll try to start it again and get the damn error message again! (that happened to the roomie while she was watching Eastern Promises a couple weeks ago and the movie wouldn't restart)

Sometimes I'm not sure the price for digital cable is worth all the aggravation.

Comparing bruises

2008-04-24T05:13:44Z

write_out and I were joking today that we should send each other pictures of our bruises to compare injuries. If anyone can empathize with falling down it's her :) The pics aren't great because I took them myself.

This is my right knee. This doesn't really show how there's a big knot there too.

This is the back of my left ankle, which also has a knot.

tvaddictgurl @ 2008-04-23T15:38:00

2008-04-23T22:42:40Z

I've had blood taken or given blood many times in my life and never had any problems. In fact the last time I gave blood, the tech even told me that I'm a good bleeder (what do you even say to that 'thank you?'). Well, I'd received a letter from my HMO saying that my doctor wanted me to have some blood tests. So today at lunch I walked up to the clinic to get it over with.

I plopped down in the chair, stuck out my arm and expected to be done in a second. She took the needle in and nothing happened. Hmmmmm... She pushed it in further and sort of swiveled it around. No blood in the tube. Evidently the vein had rolled on her. Never in my entire life has this happened before! So she pulled it out and decided to go for a vein in my forearm instead. That one was easy and I was out of there in a second. But it was just another notch in the reason why this was a week to just stay in bed.