Nothing else matters ...

Arrgh! Yesterday got away from me so today I'm making an effort to get this journal done early. Look at me, being all proactive and stuff!

So. Since last I posted an update that didn't involve 9,000 book review links, things have been happening. Not really. I'm just as boring as always but I'm going to make it seem interesting so you'll be all "Dude! Things happen!" Yeah. It'll be awesome.

School's in full swing for Cole. I had to go in and talk to his counselor because he's the only 7th grader in his Algebra 1 class and I wanted to make sure he was where he was supposed to be. It turns out he's exactly where he's supposed to be since he scored ridiculously high on his state test scores. He hated the class the first week (what with being the youngest and the only one who didn't know anyone) but it seems like it's coming together for him. Which is good because I don't want him dreading a class he's going to have all year when he's only in the 2nd week of school.

In the post of 9,000 links, I mentioned that I signed up for a week long Read-A-Thon with some of my book blogging buddies. I set a goal for myself to read 15 books over the week. I picked all the books ahead of time because I work better when I have a plan and all that jazz. I read 13 of the 15 I picked plus another 5 random books that popped up on my radar. EIGHTEEN BOOKS, PEOPLE! I had to push myself for those last few and I think I took a 5 hour nap after the week was over, but... I had FUN!

In more recent news, on Friday when I was taking the dogs on a walk I found a kitten sitting by a tree. The poor thing barely moved when the dogs lunged over to sniff it and I couldn't in good conscience leave it there. So I tromped home, got our cat carrier, did some kitten rescue, brought it home, fed it and let it get its strength up. When Heather and Hailey got home, we went out to make sure there weren't any other kittens tucked away in the same area. Sure enough, we found a second one. We managed to wrangle that one into the cat carrier (after my mom was bit and clawed and dripped blood all over the sidewalk) and brought it home to regain its strength with its sibling. Currently, both kittens are ensconced in our downstairs bathroom with food, water and a nice warm bed. My mom's on industrial sized antibiotics and it looks like we have 2 new cats.

I have MORE to talk about but I'm going to save it for later. Unless I forget.

Meanwhile, books...
Book #352 - The Line (Line #1) by Teri Hall - I didn't love this book. I wanted to but I had some issues with the simplified writing and the fact that there was no resolution AT ALL to the storyline. That said, I now feel a deep, dark urge to read the next book just so I can get some closure.
Book #353 - Soul Survivor by Misty Evans - Time travel, soul mates and one seriously nasty bad guy.
Book #354 - The Iron Daughter (Iron Fey #2) by Julie Kagawa - I love this series. Which is a good thing since I'm going to be zipping through the next book so I can review book 4 before it comes out in October.
In My Mailbox - I know this looks like I scored a lot of books this week but it's only because I forgot to post last week's IMM and had to combine it with this week's. So, you know. I did score a lot but it was over a two week period.

I'm off to shower so I can pretend to be productive today!
Later.

Where did this week go? It can't be Thursday night already. It can't be. I'm sure it's only Monday. Possibly Tuesday.

I came home from work today and took a nap. After I dragged myself out of bed I managed to wander downstairs and collapse in an ungainly heap at the kitchen table while my sister made spaghetti. I told her that I had the weirdest dream while I was napping and she was all "How the hell can you dream during a nap? When I nap I can hear Hailey talking and stuff." Me - "I don't know. I sleep hard."

Don't other people dream when they nap? I mean, I know normal people don't nap for 2 to 3 hours at a time so maybe I'm just freaky like that. Whatever. It was a weird, cool, awesome dream I had during my nap. I was pleased to have had it.

I do this whole book thing. Occasionally. Every once in a while.
Book #303 - A Long, Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan - This book really surprised me. It was sad and sweet and I'm glad to have read it.
Book #304 - Kiss of Midnight (Midnight Breed #1) by Lara Adrian - Decent, but not great. Still, I'll probably continue with the series.
Book #305 - Where Demons Fear to Tread (The Company of Angels #1) by Stephanie Chong - Another one that wasn't great but it was still pretty interesting.
Book Blogger Hop & Follow Friday - Books I want to get my hands on and books that made an impression on me. When I was young. And impressionable.

I have to work tomorrow. Part of me wishes I didn't have to. And part of me is excited because I'll be alone in the office and can listen to obnoxious music and talk to myself while reading. :D
Later.

Two of my cousins and their respective husbands and girlfriends are in town. This means that the family gathered at Amb and Phil's house for dinner. There were drinks. I consumed a few. there was food. I ate well. There were many desserts. I did not share mine. My boy-cousin brought his new girlfriend. I imagine that meeting the entire family in one fell swoop is a frightening experience. We're loud. We tend to tell bawdy jokes. The jokes degenerate into downright dirty as the alcohol begins to flow.

Yeah. Scary.

I was going to make tonight an all night writing night but I don't think it's going to happen. As much as I want to, I'm exhausted at the moment. BECAUSE I MISSED MY NAP NOT BECAUSE I HAD A DELICIOUS BEVERAGE OR TWO. The good news is that I can bump my all-nighter over to Thursday night.

Speaking of writing, my girl-cousin had offered to do a read through for me on my Epic Werewolf Masterpiece. Due to the massive rewrite I'm subjecting it to it isn't quite ready for human consumption. In fact, it's something of a hot mess at the moment. I have faith that I'll whip it into something readable at some point but I wouldn't want to unnecessarily scar anyone by making them read an incoherent story. So, she's still planning on looking it over and I'm going to work my ass off to get it to a point where I don't mind someone reading it.

Yay!

Okay. Books.
Book #287 - Damian's Oracle (War of Gods #1) by Lizzy Ford - I'm so pleased I found this author. She gives some good story, if you know what I mean.
Book #288 - Blameless (The Parasol Protectorate #3) by Gail Carriger - Alexia travels to Italy to find out answers and discovers the wonders of pesto along the way. Hilarious!
Teaser Tuesday (07/19/11) - Lots and lots of steampunk! With warriors! And pertness! It might sound weird, but it's true.

I'm skating the edge of tired now. The very thin edge. I'm off to kick my kid out of my bed so I can collapse.
Later.

I wasn't going to post this evening since I posted a couple of times early early this morning but I wrote after those posts and I'm excited that I have word countage to report. Yay!

Although I'm editing, I'm adding so much new narrative that it's changing the entire complexion of the story. In a good way, I hope. The original time line, from beginning to end, took place over the course of a month. I had to squeeze in way too much stuff and when I went back and reread it it wasn't believable that everything that was happening would happen over such a sort range of time. So I'm taking my girl out of the hero's bedroom (TEMPORARILY!) and giving her time to settle into her new life with a pack of werewolves. She's a mess. I couldn't justify her character changing from a girl who had been repeatedly abused to trusting those around her without reservation so quickly. Now she's getting the time to learn that not everyone she meets wants to hurt her. That said, I do get to throw a jealous female tiff that I had originally plotted back into the mix because now that my girl is not directly under the protection of the big, bad werewolf she's a little more vulnerable to petty hatred.

This excites me, guys!

I ended up adding 916 words today, putting my total at 109,118.

This is especially thrilling because I was doing some crazy sleeping today. I went to bed at 5:30 after dropping Heather and Hailey off at the airport, slept until 10-ish, got up and did some stuff (including a bit of writing) and took a nap from 2:30 to 5. I think I got more sleep staying up all night last night than I normally get. That amuses me.

I also read a book.
Book #278 - Katie's Hellion (Rhyn Trilogy #1) by Lizzy Ford - I was honestly surprised by how much I liked this book. I went into with no expectations and thought it was oodles of fun. OODLES!

I decided that I am going to the book signing tomorrow. After rereading the synopsis for book 1 of The Parasol Protectorate I really wanted to read the book. So, I'm going. I won't even mention how shitty I think it is to tell someone what type of books that can or can't buy.

Okay. I'm done.
later.

This morning on the way to Target, we (my mom, sis, Hailey and myself) came across a car that had crashed the wrong way into some bushes. The way the car was situated you couldn't see it from the road, we only saw it because we were at the cross street and had an unobstructed view through the bushes. Anyway. My mom called 911 to report it and the dispatcher asked her if she could see the license plate. My mom, being my mom, made me pull over so she could get out of the car and walk through the field to give it to her. As she's walking up to the car she's telling the dispatcher that she really hoped their wasn't a dead body in it. There wasn't, for the record.

So. After she tells us this I'm all, "Well, if there had been a dead body that's one thing you can mark off your bucket list."

Dead silence in the car.

Me, "What? Seeing a dead body isn't on your list of things you want to experience before you die?"

Everyone else, "NO!"

Me, "Huh. I guess that's just me then."

Sometimes I wonder how I ended up so awesome with such a mundane family.

On an entirely unrelated note, Hailey and I started watching Firefly today. This is all because one of the authors I follow on Twitter has just fallen into the wonders of space cowboys and she's been talking about it. Oh, Nathan Fillion. You are so wonderful as my beloved Captain Malcolm Reynolds.

In bookish news:
Book #233 - Dark Desires After Dusk (Immortals After Dark #6) by Kresley Cole - I likened this series to a light-hearted version of Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunters. So.Damn.Much.Fun.
In My Mailbox - Those advance copies of books killed me this week. And I was doing so well on getting my TBR pile down.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to take the dogs to the dog park and wash my car. I might even try my hand at making some cake balls. (Haha. Cake balls. Yes, I'm 12.) The ones my sister made today were DELICIOUS. They were chocolate cake with chocolate coating. It was like biting into a decadent chocolate truffle. Yum, yum, yum.

I am done.
Later.

I've had a crazy insane bizarre night and early morning.

My computer picked up a virus last night which led to me freaking out, doing something stupid and spending hours afterward working on fixing it. Seriously, being without a computer is just about the weirdest thing ever. Normally I'd Google the crap out of the pop-ups I was getting to figure out what's going on. Without a computer and internet access I CAN'T GOOGLE ANYTHING. It was terrible, horrible, awful. I almost cried. Not really. But I was reaching maximum entropy by the time I got everything straightened out.

I do wish I was a little more computer savvy. I can do all the basic stuff and I can usually figure out what I need to do to fix the little things but when it comes to major troubleshooting I start worrying that I'm going to shut down something critical and be stuck with a dead carcass of a computer and no way to resurrect it from the great beyond.

Anyway. I ended up running 3 different anti-virus/anti-spyware programs over the course of my "fixing" and one of them looks like it caught the problem and blasted that motherfucker into oblivion. I hope. Of course, I might be totally wrong and I'm going to get home tonight to a fried computer and a lot of weeping.

In other much happier news: Today Ryan turns ONE! Yay for the little booger! I'm missing his party due to work but I've been assured that the family will make sure some of the delicious food is put aside for me. THEY BETTER BE TELLING ME THE TRUTH! It won't be pretty if they're lying.

Now onto the bookish stuff:
Book #170 - Past Midnight (Past Midnight #1) by Mara Purnhagen - It's amazing how much more sense a series makes when you start with book #1. Seriously.
Book #171 - Laid Bare (Brown Siblings 31) by Lauren Dane - This book is smoking hot. SMOKING! Plus, I got a really nice twitter message form Lauren Dane thanking me for my review. AWESOME!

It's been so busy at work today that I haven't had time to even pull my book out of my bag. Can you believe that? I bitch about it when it's slow but I think I much prefer that lazy pace to people coming in to talk to me. Arrgh!

My one goal today is to write up the review on the book I finished on Monday. I can't believe I've let it sit so long without writing it yet. I feel like I'm failing at something here. Something huge and epic and other really big stuff. But not really. Because, you know, as much as I love writing up reviews and being all recommendation-y with books I love, I can't take myself too seriously or my brain will hurt. So yeah. I have this book sitting here waiting for me to review it. It's cool.

Okay. Time to get back to work.
Later.

I had a perfectly uneventful day. Just about all I did was go to Trader Joe's with my mom to get some food. You know, right after I went crazy and quit my job I used to buy so so so so much stuff from them. Then I stopped. Now that I'm gainfully employed again I've found myself dropping in every so often for fun and exciting things like grapefruit. Do you think the two are somehow related?

That paragraph is painful to read but I'm not going to change it. I like being painful sometimes. Painfully FUNNY, that is. Which that paragraph isn't. So. Yeah. Sorry about that.

I did get all caught up on my reviews. At least until tomorrow. Because tomorrow's a work day and we all know how I like to lounge around reading at work.
Book #138 - Flash Gold by Lindsay Buroker - This was a fun little story that I'd love to see expanded.
Book #139 - A Highlander of Her Own (Daughters of the Glen #4) by Melissa Mayhue - A Highlander time travel romance that was just FUN to read.
Book #140 - A Savage Lust (Pride Brothers #3) by H.C. Brown - Umm, yeah. I wasn't really enamoured of this one. It can be so hard coming into a series mid stream and this one didn't work for me.

I think I'm going to hit my reading goal for the year. Yeah? Only 10 books to go! What do you think? By next week. I'll give it a try!

Okay. I'm done. I'm going to hang with the kid and watch The Paranormal Files.
Later.

Oh, hey! It's Thursday. This doesn't mean much of anything normally, but this week I'm taking off Saturday for my cousin's wedding so I have a nice, long 4 day weekend. Sweet! I'm not particularly looking forward to driving up to Sacramento in the rain, but I'm sure I'll get over it.

Speaking of work, I officially have a (mostly) working computer. I haven't been networked in with the other computer so I can't do everything yet, but I can access the internet (OH, Twitter! How I've missed the way you keep me entertained as I while away the hours!) and print up lease agreements again. Yay! I'm not a total waste of skin anymore. But don't worry, guys. Even though I can now access the internet, I still managed to get my copies done. I have mad copying skills, yo!

For the record, I really do like this job. My boss lady puts up with my inane chatter, she's pretty cool and she listens almost exclusively to 80s music. I mean, how can you go wrong with Duran, Duran, Cyndi Lauper, the Eurythmics and Siouxsie and the Banshees playing all day? YOU CAN'T! As a plus, I totally know the words to most of the songs and can bust out singing whenever I want because there's never anybody in the office! Yay, for impromptu singing!

Time for his bookish stuff:
First off, I have 2 book reviews to write (I had a looooong stretch of time today with nothing to do but read) but I put my Book Blogger Hop post up before I wrote the reviews and now I feel like waiting until tomorrow to post them. It makes sense in my head.
So, yeah.
Book Blogger Hop, Follow Friday & Tagalong Friday - Answering those burning questions about how many books I read at a time, how I came up with the name for my book blog and what my favorite book was in the last month.
Burning questions! With smoldering answers!

And I think I'm done.
Later.

Most random story ever. Are you ready?

The Borders in San Jose, the one that is closest to my house, is one of the stores that closing. Since everything is running 20%-40% off and Heather had to drop Hailey off at the movies yesterday in SJ (leaving her with a few hours to kill) we decided to stop by and see if there was anything that caught our fancy.

OMG! I kid you not, there were at least 100 people waiting in line to pay. ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE! I'm not even joking about this. It was worse than shopping on Black Friday. It was worse than the year I thought it would be a good idea to go to WalMart on Black Friday. I'm still scarred by that, btw.

Anyway. It was just awful. There were tons and tons of people, the shelves looked like they'd been nearly looted, there were books on the floor and the line was monstrous. I didn't even know that many people were allowed in the store at one time. Honestly, the prices weren't all that fabulous either. Let's see, in the romance section a $8 book was running at 30% off putting the price around $5.60. That's not terrible and it's still better than full price but it wasn't worth the hour plus long wait to pay. Not for me.

So, H and I took an abbreviated turn around the store, got freaked out by the sheer press of humanity and fled. We ended up going to a Japanese restaurant for dinner instead. The food was good but the waiter kinda forgot about us, which sucked. Especially when we were ready to pay so we could leave.

You know, both shopping and eating yesterday left a lot to be desired.

Okay. The kids are on vacation this week. Cole's visiting his grandparents in Carmel and Hailey and I are watching Disney movies. Pretty sweet, huh?

I have some posts I want to get ready at the book blog. I must go.
Later.

I don't want anyone to be horribly shocked by this but I'm not a big football fan. In fact, I', not much of a big Any-type-of-sports fan. I enjoy hockey upon occasion, but I rarely watch an entire game and I sure as hell don't drop everything whenever a game is on. the point in this is that although I wandered over to Amb's house today while the Superbowl was on, I neither knew who was playing nor cared all that much who won. I went. I played with Baby R. I ate. I read. I came home.

Speaking of Baby R, here's a totally adorkable picture of him:
Hahaha. He looks drunk. I swear he's not, but he totally looks like he's been tossing a few back. He's so freaking cute with his two little teeth and his crazy hair and his chipmunk cheeks. Awwwwwww!

Okay. Now to the books!
Book #60 - Review: Going All In (Three of a Kind #1) by Jess Dee - Sexy threesome story with poker. God, there are so many jokes I could choose from that I don't know where to start.
Book #61 - Bloodlust by Larissa Ione - A short erotic horror story with blood and guts and death!
Book #62 - Lone Star Trouble by Autumn Piper - Unfortunately, I disliked the main character so much that I couldn't enjoy this book. Boo.
In My Mailbox (02/06/11) - All free this week. I got some decent ones, too. Sometimes the free ones are real stinkers so this is a good thing.

I am done now.
Later.