Bookish

As if there were any doubt...

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Dedicated Reader You are always trying to find the time to get back to your book. You are convinced that the world would be a much better place if only everyone read more.
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Arrrgh! Take That!

Doing an end run around the "BlogThis!" function, which keeps messing me up. I have made an album online; link's at the bottom left. Some of them aren't much, but I'm still fiddling with the technical bits. Will get the hang of it shortly. Enjoy!

Distress Call

Dragging myself out of a slough of misery to report that I've had a bad cold for 3 days straight, gone through 2 bottles of DayQuil and 1 giant box of tissues, and there's no end in sight. Can't breathe, can't sleep, can't swallow, can barely move. And to give it that extra drama, The Man is sick, too, but the kids aren't.

Did I mention we're getting MORE snow tomorrow?

OK, back to your regularly scheduled lives.

Bat Boy

OK, this is mostly a test to see if Picasa is goofing me up again. But it's also a really funny picture of my Pirate Boy wearing his daddy's parka. (Yes, it's cold in our house, but not that cold.)

Dang it! It did mess me up!

Repost - Bedtime Boys

OK, this is the photo I tried to post the other night, but had forgotten to save or something. Awful cute, aren't they? Especially at bedtime.

Puppy Love

My friend Maryanne came over today to let me see the latest draft of her musical (which by the way is turning out wonderfully). She brought along her new dog, Lucky, who was delighted to make the acquaintance of my Punkin Boy. The feeling, as you can tell, was mutual. Amid the squeals, Punkin Boy was heard to exclaim, "She's precious!" Oh, the cuteness.

Bedtime Stories

A sleepy ending to a sleepy day. Pirate Boy reads to his little brother. Good night, good night, little dinosaurs.

ZZZzzzzzz....

Huh?

Just now, I was startled from my intense blogging by my punkin, who had been playing quite happily if a bit bizarrely. I looked up and he was standing by the piano in his Superman jammies, cutlass drawn menacingly. I asked him to repeat what he said, and he kindly did.

"Do you want to play Count Dooku's Nutty Fun?" he asked.

I'm not sure I even want to know. Fortunately, he's gone back to shooting droids now, so I'm safe. Well, until he decides I'm a droid.

Wiki Birthday

I dropped by to see Captain Picard recently, and it turned out he was having a birthday. To celebrate, he was playing the Wiki Birthday game with his visitors. I couldn't stay long, but I did find out some interesting things about my birth date. Since it's still a long way off, I decided to celebrate my second blogiversary by passing this along. Enjoy!

First, the instructions:
1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. In the Search box, type your birth month and day (but not year).
3. You will see a list of births, deaths and events. Copy a couple of each.
(Note: the original instructions I saw on Interstellar Lass's blog went like this:
3. List three events that happened on your birthday.
4. List two important birthdays and one interesting death.
5. One holiday or observance (if any).
I kind of liked that one, so I'll probably mix it in a bit.)

Events:
1896 - Skookum Jim Mason, George Carmack and Dawson Charlie discover gold in the Klondike in Canada
1930 - The first color sound cartoon, called Fiddlesticks, is made by Ub Iwerks (I just liked that name)
1960 - Cyprus gains its independence from the United Kingdom.

2 Important Birthdays:
1888 - T. E. Lawrence, English writer and soldier (d. 1935)
1913 - Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1992)
There are quite a few unimportant birthday people, too: Madonna, Lesley Ann Warren, Kathie Lee (and Frank) Gifford, Trevor McDonald, or even Angela Bassett or Julie Newmar

1 Interesting Death:
This one was hard. I had Babe Ruth, Margaret Mitchell, and Bela Lugosi on my list.
Idi Amin and Abu Nidal had the decency to die on my birthday, but I've gotta go with Elvis. You know:
- Elvis Presley, American singer and actor (b. 1935)
He died on my 10th birthday. I heard the news while on the way to my party; it was the only time in my life I got to take my friends out for a special party and I was really excited. The news about Elvis bummed everybody out and we had a lousy time. Thanks a lot, Elvis.

1 Holiday or Observance:
Nothing happens in my birth month, except the Feast of St. Stephen I of Hungary, which is funny because King Wenceslas also died that day. Maybe it's not that funny.

Cake and Pictures

I'm catching up on my photos; finally got the rolls of film developed from the past year. This is, of course, #1 Son and his birthday cake in the shape of Zorbak the "ebil" blue Moglin (just call him a bunny with a bad attitude). I mentioned it here, if you recall. It's not the best picture; compare it to the original here if you want. Enjoy!

Halloween Ahoy!

Arrrgh! Prepare to be boarded, matey! Here's our young pirates on their All Hallows Eve rounds-- looking good!

(Yes, I'm having fun with Picasa's collage function, what of it?)

Holiday Wrap-Up

This is our Christmas in a nutshell. Well, the kids' presents part. I don't want to bore you with the details, so here is a collage of the highlights. Enjoy!

Technical Failure

When I sat down with this laptop and pulled up a browser, I had a post idea firmly in my mind. It had been there since last night, when Blogger and Picasa were fighting and could not reach a compromise that would let me post what I wanted to. But by the time I got the Blogger dashboard up (not long at all, I have to say), it was gone. Totally. Just like those golblasted things I tried to post last night. So you get nothing-- or rather, you get me telling you that you get nothing. Lucky you.

It's gone daddy gone,
My brain is gone...


Stupid narcotics.

New Year's Resolution, Anyone?

Thanks to Renee for this silliness...

In the year 2007 I resolve to: Sleep my way to the top. Get your resolution here.

And I do mean "sleep."

Spice Cupboard of my Mind

So I was buzzing around my kitchen tonight (baking more banana bread, if you must know) when I found my mental radio station tuned to the Butthole Surfers' song "Pepper"-- you know the one, "They were all in love with dyin', they were doing it in Texas." The lyrics of songs sometimes get stuck at a certain point when they're running through my head, as if my subconcious is trying to send me a message. But strangely enough, I wasn't stuck on the "cinnamon and sugary" part.
No, it was this part:

Some will die in hot pursuit
In fiery auto crashes
Some will die in hot pursuit
While sifting through my ashes
Some will fall in love with life
And drink it from a fountain
That is [what, boys and girls?]

...pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain

Yep. Some days I'm so sick of this place I'd even move to Texas-- or Alabama.

The Study of Pirates

Pirate Boy studies Pirateology. What a happy pirate he was!

Ta-Dah!

I figured out how to hook up my new digital camera, took a picture of the (halfway melted) snow out my back window, used Picasa's "Blog This" function, and... POOF! There you have it. Expect more of this silliness in the future.

Scone, entering the photography age
(What, only 150 years late? Meh.)

And now for something completely the same...

It's snowing. Again. I'm just sayin'.

White Christmas and Other Fairy Tales

Well, we had a good one. Everything worked out, the kids loved their presents (hey, who doesn't love seeing their favorite Star Wars characters fly into tiny Lego bits?), and we managed to keep them happy with just the "Santa" stuff until my folks arrived Christmas afternoon. They got here safely, we had a good hour or two of unwrapping fun presents, and we ate lots of good food.

Some really fun stuff made its appearance during this time. Punkin Boy, who is diligently learning to read, now owns Volume 2 of The Electric Company ("Hey, you guys!"), which was a favorite TV show of mine ages ago. And Pirate Boy is now the captain of no less than two new pirate ships (complete with cannon and harpoon gun) and dresses every day in his official Jack Sparrow pirate gear. Among the presents The Man (TM) and I received were a fluffy warm featherbed (must locate a duvet cover!) and... a digital camera! (Holy crud, such a nice one, too!) Our families are awesome.

The folks had to leave again Wednesday afternoon, which at the time was a bit of a bummer for us, but... by now you've heard about the second blizzard that hit us-- yes, it was Thursday. So very exciting. This time, we were prepared. In fact, we ended up with more food than we had room for and had to ask our wonderful neighbors if they wouldn't mind keeping some extra milk and veggies for us. (And if they happened to need some, well, all the better.)

Friday somebody in a bulldozer came through our neighborhood pushing snow off the streets, which was very nice. Now we all have these 4-foot walls of jagged ice around our property. Handy in case of invasion. The mailbox has one, too, but fortunately, the mail hasn't really been running lately. (Case in point, we just this weekend received our mortgage statement for the payment due today. I hope they're not holding their breath.)

Fortunately, TM was able to get the car out today to make the long drive to pick up #1 Son from "Mommy's" house. He's full of excitement about all his relatives he was able to meet on his trip to the South. And of course all the money they gave him. Well, who wouldn't be? I'm still a bit suspicious that That Woman will take us to court and sue for custody in, oh, 6 weeks or so, because we're too poor to support her baby and all. OK, more than a bit suspicious.

But (aside from some sniffles in the little punkins) we are doing fine, we really are. Snowbound, a little. But well fed, decidedly. A little too much so. In fact, anyone want to come over for some egg nog and pecan pie? Pumpkin bread and cocoa? I have those cute holiday marshmallows... Anybody?

Rewriting the Story

I just want to say up front, I am not whining. But it is interesting the way things happen. Fortunately, I'm a writer and I just file away the stories for future use. I'm not alone in this behavior, either. One of the local novelists had his car window smashed and his briefcase stolen during NaNoWriMo (and a nasty cold snap). After all the sympathy and good wishes from others in our area forum, someone piped up, "You are going to put this in your novel, right?" His instant response ("Of course!") made me laugh out loud.

Anyway, here's what's been happening to us lately. It's got the makings of a good story. (By the way, some of the back story is here. More of it is here.)

In this story, the villain is the blizzard. Tuesday evening, we had no idea what was coming. The Man (TM) had gotten a two-night temp job for Wed. and Thur., and my folks would be arriving Friday. The kids had one more day of school, and they were pretty excited about it. Then our neighbor (wonderful woman) called and warned us that we were supposed to get "a foot or two" of snow the next day, not just the small flurries we'd heard about. But she would still try to watch the Punkin while TM and I went shopping. No problem, probably.

Usually, it's pretty dry around here, but every few years we get a huge storm and can't get out of the house for a day or two. After that, things start melting and everything goes back to normal, so even now, we didn't sweat it much. Wednesday morning, the snow started by 7 a.m., but it hadn't started really piling up, so TM took the kids to school as usual.

By noon, the snow was definitely piling up and the visibility was getting low. I checked the school's Web site, which said something like "We will be open as usual today, but we recommend that you come get your kids NOW." TM was out the door in no time. Two and a half hours later, he and the kids arrived home again, shaking. "We survived!" was all TM had to say. The roads were completely covered, in many cases gone without a trace.

The snow kept falling all day. We didn't get to the store, needless to say. Our neighbor's husband totalled their car in a town 30 miles away and didn't know when he'd be able to get home. She was panicking about being alone with their two little kids, snowed in, indefinitely. I don't think it helped her when we pointed out that not even burglars would be out in that weather. TM didn't have to go to work that night, either, which was fine with me.

I was still pretty optimistic about the chances of our Christmas plans working out. Thursday was sunny, and by noon, the snow was melting off our roof. We spent the day cleaning the house and didn't pay much attention to the situation. That afternoon, the roads were clear, and our neighbors were reunited. By that evening, every driveway in the neighborhood (except ours) was clear, and people were driving around. I checked online and discovered that the airport would be open at noon today. I thought that was good news.

My mom called last night at 11 and said their flight was cancelled because it had been scheduled to land just minutes before the airport opened. All other flights were booked, of course, until The Day itself. So instead of them arriving this afternoon and getting to spend holiday leadup time playing, reading, baking, singing, and generally enjoying the time with us and our boys, they will be arriving Monday afternoon, missing #1 Son by a couple days and present-opening time by who knows how many hours.

Did you ever see Rocketship X-M (the MST3K version, especially)? You know the part where they discover the ship is nearly out of fuel and they won't be able to land? (Oh, now I've blown it all for you; sorry.) With the phone up to my ear last night, hearing my mom tell me the news, I heard Crow T. Robot say cynically, "This ought to test Lloyd's sunny disposition..." And it did.

So now the challenge is to keep ourselves occupied until then. They'll only be able to stay a couple of days now; that's the price of being working grandparents of kids in 3 states. (Oh yeah, and having a life, too.) There aren't enough vacation days to go around. I think we'll be able to amuse the little guys for a few hours with just their "Santa" presents, I told my mom. We'll wait to open other stuff when you arrive.

That's what I said. But you know how things haven't been getting to the stores, post offices, etc., for a few days? Because of this blizzard, you know. Well, yeah. We took all the kids shopping tonight; thought they could buy each other presents and we could pick up some things, too. TM went out later to get the Santa gifts, or so we thought. Turns out there's not much in the stores. Especially the one by our house-- apparently a couple of their delivery trucks slid off the roads and were completely destroyed, so there will be no more toys for Christmas. We (i.e., TM) could try again tomorrow, except his job got rescheduled for all day tomorrow, and that's all the time we have left. We keep the Sabbath in part by not shopping (making other people work) on Sundays. The clock is ticking...

All righty then. Now, if this were a story, how would I work out these plot complications? How would you do it?