Nothing else matters ...

jenah and her son are visiting and Cole and Hailey are kinda driving me crazy. Arrgh! Get along, already! The fighting between those two has reached seriously epic proportions!

Whatever! I'm ignoring it for the moment.

I finished two of my five books last night.
Book #12 - Bone Shop by T.A. Pratt - This is the same author who gave us the outstanding The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl. This is a prequel to his Marla Mason series (of which I have read none of) and I really liked it. I like his style of writing, it's crisp and readable. I like Marla, she's can be kinda bitchy and a bit of a hot-head but she has good reason to be. I would not be adverse to reading others in the series.

-and-

Book #13 - Frostbite (Vampire Academy #2) by Richelle Mead - I'm not sure if anyone has realized this yet but I'm not a crier. I rarely cry at movies. I have maybe two books total that make me weepy. That said, this book brought tears to my eyes. There's a scene at the end that felt so damn real to me that I felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest and stomped on. It was AWESOME! This books follows the events of Vampire Academy, pitting Rose and her compatriots against more of the evil Strigoi in their attempts to wipe out the Moroi. Rose has some close calls and Dmitri is hot. As always. I've already started the next book in the series.

Fun things that I witnessed today ... Some girl being led out in handcuffs at Walmart. AWESOME!!!! She looked pissed about it, too. Dude. Don't shoplift. That's all I'm sayin'.

I think I wrote around 1500 words last night on the next chapter of my story. That's good for me. Really good.

Time to get back to my movie.
Later.

As of a few minutes ago, I have officially finished part 2 of the multi-chapter epic. It's typed up and everything. This is a full day before malkovich03's deadline so I'm feeling pretty good about myself. It clocks in at just over 1000 words and I feel like I have the start of a real story here. Death and mayhem, oh MY! However, it won't be posted until tomorrow because my wrist is starting to hurt. Fun.

I've been watching old episodes of Scooby-Doo all day. I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids! I completely love Scooby (everything except the Scrappy movies and episodes. Blech!) so I'm having a good old time with it.

Random Ruby moment:
This morning she found a bug on the floor (a little flying thing like a gnat) and she was putting her nose really close to it. When she'd breathe out the bug would move a couple of inches forward and she'd get all excited and pounce toward it. Then she'd get her nose real close and start it all over again. It was hilarious! It was like watching a little kid entertain himself with his randomly waving fist.

I love my dogs.

I really need to catch up on my comments. I've let them pile up again.
Okay. I have to get the lad off to bed. He's reading. But it's still bed time.
Later!

I was having a thought earlier about blabapalooza and something new I'd like to incorporate there, but then I started really thinking about it and I'm not sure if it's too much overlap with what we already do. Hmm ... maybe I should run it by jenah and see what her feeling are on it.

For those that don't know, Blab is a movie review site run by Jenn and myself. The whole idea is to give people an idea of movies that are worth skipping or those that are must-sees (I tend to focus on the bad SyFy channel movies, while some of our reviewers go for movies that are still in the theater). It doesn't see a huge amount of traffic or anything, but we have fun. In the past I've done reviews on "special edition" movies on DVD that don't have enough extras to warrant shelling out the bucks, especially if you already own the original or theatrical copy. I've been toying with the idea of a "movies to watch even though I don't have time to review them" type of thing. I have a list of over 10 movies that I've been trying to review for a couple of weeks. You'd think that not working would give me the time to do those reviews. Umm. That does not appear to be the case.

I've kinda lost the point I was trying to make here. I guess I'm just wondering if it's worth it to post a list of decent, little-known movies without a detailed review. Would anybody be interested in watching a movie based on a "I think this movie is grand!" recommendation without knowing what it is about the movie that I think makes the movie worth watching?

Does that even make sense? I've thought myself into a tizzy here! I really don't know what I'm trying to say anymore.

Okay. I guess I'll just move on.

Cole spent the day up in San Francisco with his dad at the Academy of Science. It sounds like he had a good time. He took pictures of a giant cockroach just to gross me out. Thanks, Cole!

I do believe I'm done now. I'm seriously tired of having to correct all of my spelling mistakes. I'm not even going to proofread this anymore because I DON'T WANT TO!
Later!

Okay. So I have this friend, malkovich03 and she can be kinda bitchy and pushy and I think I kinda love her right now. She was all "You need to write a story. Have it done by February 5th." And I was all, "Okay." She basically told me to write whatever I wanted to write although she would prefer original over fanfic since she's unfamiliar with a lot of the fandoms I'm involved in. So, I did it. I wrote her an original story. If I had been a bit smarter and had gotten into my groove before the beginning of this week it would have turned into something much different than what I ended up with. I keep thinking of things that I want to add to it (backstory mostly) but I'm rather pleased with what I came up with. It clocks in at 1800+ words which is more than I wrote the entire month of November during NaNoWriMo. Isn't that funny?

It's posted over at bay12_fic (which is one of my sadly neglected sites).
Here's the link to the story itself ...
The Places Between

Just for the record, I've done very little today except work on this. I haven't even watched half my shows from yesterday. Go, me!

Now I'm going to lose my mind for a bit in something that doesn't require much thought.
Later!

I finished another book!
Book #5 - Wings to the Kingdom (An Eden Moore Story) by Cherie Priest - I'm a lot in love with this series. Cherie Priest writes so incredibly that everything becomes a vibrant picture in my head. *love* This book picks up some time after the events in Four and Twenty Blackbirds. Eden is trying her best to keep a low profile and keep her sometimes homicidal half brother off everyone's radar (you know, since they think he's dead). Unfortunately she's not doing so great at either endeavor. First off, Malachi pops up unexpectedly in town and keeps hounding her to help him find out about his mother. Secondly, a series of ghostly sightings on a local battlefield has the entire town buzzing. Reluctantly, Eden uses her gift for communicating with ghosts to see what has disturbed the formerly peaceful sleep of the dead soldiers. All in all, a very good read. I already have the next (which is, sadly, the last) book in the series sitting by my bed and will be starting it shortly.

Other than reading, I've been working feverishly on the story that malkovich03 has told me to write. The deadline is Friday and I think I'll have it written, but I'm not sure if it will be edited to my satisfaction. I also watched Lost which was OMG! SO GOOD! AND WTF IS GOING ON??? AND WHY DO I HAVE TO WAIT A WHOLE WEEK TO WATCH THE NEXT EPISODE?!?!?!?!?!?!?! *whines* Yeah. I liked it. I don't care how many questions it did or didn't answer, I liked it. That show kinda makes my head explode.

Oh, and I've been making new pages and editing old ones over at Squidoo. My newest is my Zombie books page. I had to take a small break from it, though, because my brain can only retain so much info before bits start falling out. It's either the info or the brains that are falling out. After reading about all that Zombie stuff, I really don't know which it is. Braaaaaiiiins. It's what's for dinner.
Zombie books for the Zombie lover
I haven't even added my favorite Zombie book of last year yet (Do you remember that INSANE review I did for Boneshaker??) because of the brouhaha between the publisher of that book (Macmillan/Tor) and Amazon over electronic book prices which has caused the publisher (or maybe it's Amazon, I'm none too clear on that part) to discontinue using Amazon's services (or Amazon has declined to carry Macmillan's titles, if it's Amazon's decision) until everything's been settled. To make a long story short, none of Cherie Priest's awesome books are currently available to purchase new through Amazon (although you can still get them through 3rd party sellers). Since I mainly link through Amazon on my Squidoo pages ... well, do you see where this is going?

So. That was my day. Oh, except that I forgot to mention that I got my hair done. Why does my stylist always try to do weird flippy things to my hair after I get it cut? I don't normally do anything besides wash it and comb it, so why go through all the blow-drying, product-using shenanigans? Why? Also, I don't really like the blow-dryer. It's a thing.

And now I'm really done. Back to the salt mines. I have a deadline to meet.

I just watched the final episode of Dollhouse and I'm really very sad to leave that world behind. I'll be buying both season 1 and season 2 now. I'd buy them just to watch Epitaph 1 and 2 (although there are plenty other episdoes that I'm jonesing to watch again!). You all know how I love those broken cities/societies/worlds. Damn Joss for being Joss and yanking parts of my heart out through my chest and damn Fox for not letting Joss do his thing from the beginning and deliver a consistently amazing show from day 1. Damn you, Fox! DAMN YOU, YOU CANCELING JACKALS!

A certain someone *cough*iron_knife*cough* has been bugging me to watch Paranormal Activity. I think I'll go do that now.

*is still sad about Dollhouse*
Later.

It was suggested to me that I should watch Epitaph One from Dollhouse season 1 before the season finale on Friday. Holy crud! That was AWESOME! Now I'm going to have to buy both season 1 and season 2 because it was so freaking amazing and I don't understand why this show is ending and whhhhyyyyyyy!

Anyway. As you can probably tell, I really liked the episode. It amazes me that there were things in that ep that were just in the last aired ep of season 2. Great continuity. That's the sort of stuff I live for.

I wrote today. malkovich03 is proud on the inside. I can tell.

Rumor has it that we're going to have a few dry days coming up. I'm not holding my breath on this. We've had so much rain that the puddles can't dry out. They just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. It's amazing. Wet, damp, and soggy but amazing.

I'm thirsty. Clearly that's my cue to go.
Later!

You know what? I like Facebook. It will never replace journal writing in my heart because I just love to write and write and write and FB doesn't give me enough room for what I have on my mind, but the little snippets of info that one gets throughout the day are just fun. And the games? Oh, the games. I have a bad ass farm over on Farmville and I'm not afraid to admit it.

However. There is one thing that bugs the crap out of me. I'm have reached a place of deep LOATHING for those copy and paste "97% of people will never do this, will you be one of the 3%?" quotes that go around. You know what? I'm not going to do it. I don't want to. I admire that fact that you're all for finding a cure for fungal melanoma or you know someone who once gave birth to a 7 toed baby sloth, but I'm still not planning on reposting it! And that doesn't make me a bad person. Even though that's exactly what you're implying if I don't copy and paste it.

So, take that, copy and paste-ers. I'm taking a stand here and now. And I'm refusing to become a copy and paste whore.

Anyway. It barely rained today. *gasp* But we have another two storms coming in tomorrow and Tuesday. I can't adequately explain how uber squelchy it is when I walk on the grass. It's possible I moved to the Everglades and forgot to tell myself.

Cole and I had some quality mom/son time today and we watched Star Trek. Well, I napped through it. But then we watched a really weird movie that I had to keep pausing to explain to Cole what was going on. Half the time I didn't know what was going on so it was a pretty interesting movie watching experience.

Yes, I realized that I napped through our quality time together. I'm awesome like that.

I'm out. I have a book that I feel like I should get back to. (Just because oddmonster is kicking my butt on book reading this year already!)
Later!

Today I offer up to all who care to read it Journal Number 1900. Wow. That's a lot of writing.

Since I watched all of White Collar yesterday and it got me in the mood for that type of show, I started in on season 1 of Castle. Yeah. I pretty much think it's great. It's totally hitting the spot right now. I love love love how Castle can turn almost any part of the police investigation into a "if this were the book, we'd have (motive/money/sex)" and it somehow turns out to be right. Also, his daughter's little insights into life that always come at the perfect moments crack me up. Would Castle be totally humped if his daughter stopped helping him unknowingly solve the cases with her one-offs?

Anyway. Since stuff occasionally happens in real life and not just on my TV, Cole invited a bunch of boys over tomorrow after school to play video games. He told me this today. O_o Okay. I don't think I have any food in the house. And and and ... no, that's it. I keep trying to impress upon him to let me know ahead of time so I can plan for these things. I guess he thinks one day is enough ahead. Oh, well. The joys of having kids.

I need to get my puppy house trained. I'm afraid it's starting to smell like a urinal in my room. Gross and gross. I think I'll do some carpet cleaning tomorrow.

I'm also going to start outlining a story since malkovich03 has decided that I must present her with some new writings by February 5th. I have no idea what it's going to be on or about or who the characters are yet, but when Lacey asks I must listen.

I'm done now. I think I have a few more eps of Castle I can watch. Awesome.

I changed my layout back to one of the default LJ ones. I just couldn't handle the teeny tiny journal area. The wordsmith in me rebelled on all levels. Now I'm on the lookout for something that all areas of my personality (or whatever) can be happy with.

Okay. I watched Jennifer's Body last night. I think I wasn't as impressed as I would have been if I was a guy who fantasized daily about Megan Fox liplocking with another girl. Seriously, this movie felt like an ode to Megan Fox's beauty. Sure, she's pretty and all that but I think you need more than a pretty face to make an engaging movie. Which brings me to my next point ... Diablo Cody is not all that in my book. Juno was... fun. I guess. I've seen it three times but it's almost too quirky for me. I guess I'm not as enamoured of it as most of the rest of the world seemed to be. And now this movie. It felt very disjointed. I had no idea why some of the things were happening. Maybe I should have been paying better attention. But I wasn't. Whatever.

After Jennifer's Body, I threw District 9 on. I'm going to have to watch that one again. I liked it and I feel like I missed things. That might have been because I was distracted by the internet during the beginning. Oops. In conclusion, D9 was far better than JB even though I paid more attention to JB. Go figure.

Yes, that was my evening. Movies. With my dogs. Cole had a friend spending the night and they were downstairs playing the 360. I snuck down at 11:55 to see if they were still awake and they weren't. Although Cole's friend did sleepily mumble "Happy New Years, Cole's Mom". That made me laugh.

Now I'm waiting for jenah and her son to get here and Cole's other friend to be picked up.
Have a nice first day of 2010.