yoga, books, movies, tv & too many crime procedurals – not necesarily in that order
I finished Feed (Mira Grant) last night. If it gives you any indication how I liked the book, I stayed up two hours after I went to bed so I could get through it. I get up at 4 am, so I know from lost sleep.
It was spectacular. To be honest, when I first picked it up it was slow for the first few pages and I put it down. I picked it back up the other day and started over and once I got past those first few pages, the grab hit. The narrative digs in and doesn’t let go and builds to – I kid you not – an actual heart-pounding climax. THAT doesn’t happen with every book I read.
One of the ‘twists’ wasn’t much of a twist given the foreshadowing but it didn’t matter a whit to the story or how into it I was. The parallels which can be drawn between the crushing failure of the media in the book and the crushing failure of the media before the current war are, I’m sure, not accidental. It’s a great horror/urban fantasy read with just the right amount of “right now” in it to make you think about the media, politics and the atmosphere of fear you can feel going into the midterm elections.
Read it.
OR… My Phone is Fucking Awesome, part 462.
Yesterday I had a schedule gap before meeting up with the spouse and, for whatever reason, made the boneheaded mistake of leaving my Kindle at home. I’ll spare you the ad nauseum of how much I love the Kindle but I guess I just forgot to put it in my bag. I was looking at about an hour to kill so I decided to finally download the Kindle app for my Droid Eris.
Within about a minute, I was logged in and reading Feed (by Devon Monk). Dude. FUCKING AWESOME. 1. Do I love tinyscreen? No. Changeable fonts help but I don’t really love the backlight. 2. Nope. That pretty much covers it.
I spent the hour soaking up zombie-hunting goodness and then read some more on the Eris at work today during my lunch break. The best part is that when I got home tonight, I turned on my Kindle and syched it and then picked up EXACTLY where I’d left off on my phone.
In short, I love technology. The Kindle is still my favorite reading option but the Droid app is wicked handy in a pinch. Very nice option.
Related, Feed is ENGROSSING. It started a little slow but within a couple of pages I was hooked. I’m about halfway through it now and can’t wait to read the rest. Though there will be a break for a new ep of The Closer.
Watching the Star Trek reboot for at least the 5th time. Sign of good photography? The fight scene on the drill squicks my height issues EVERY single time I see it.
Right now we’re nerding out with ST, I’m enjoying another glass of Big Fire pinot noir, hoping Dave’s dog won’t howl at us some more and LOVING Simon Pegg as Mr. Scott. New True Blood AND Mad Men tonight. w00t!
In about five hours it will have been five years since my dad died.
This is not the anniversary I want to remember, but it’s in there with all of them – my parents’ wedding anniversary (November 4) Dad’s birthday (August 17) my birthday (August 20) my anniversary (May 27) my sister’s birthday (September 27) my mom’s birthday (September 14).
I still miss him every day. When someone dies, people always say “It gets better with time.” It turns out that’s mostly bullshit. Sure, I can have conversations about my dad without bursting into tears – unlike the first year – but my eyes frequently well up. The urge to call him on the phone hasn’t subsided.
I try to keep the memories on top the ones before he got sick but really, you can’t just MAKE that happen. For example, I’m watching 2012 yesterday and while everyone talked about what a shit film it was but how good that one action sequence is, everyone left out the farewell conversation between father and son which pretty much leveled me. It was so much like conversations I had with my dad before he died and suddenly I just couldn’t breathe.
There are parts in books or in films or on TV that get me that way, some small interaction or a glance or a conversation and it just doesn’t ever go away.
Do I want it to? Yes and no. Would it be nice to return to that (comparative) innocence before he died. Yeah. On the other hand, it reminds me every single day to let go of the bullshit, take deep breaths, smile when you don’t feel like it. Every single day you wake up is a GOOD DAY.
I haven’t had a dream about him in a while and that feels okay.
I still want to talk to him.
Whoever wrote this commercial KNOWS ME.
Whenever there’s a number to call for a business I’m super-disappointed and thinking “DUDE, WHY IS THERE NOT A WEBLINK. I don’t want to talk to ANYONE.”
Related: noticing a larger number of commercials on NPR that feature an email address rather than phone number. Awesome.
Not even halfway through the second episode and it’s perfectly clear: Rizzoli & Isles would make a better drinking game than cop show.
1. Drink when Jane sounds hysterical.
2. Drink when Maura can’t relate interpersonally.
3. Drink when Jane disagrees with her mother.
4. Drink when her partner gags.
5. Drink when you hear a Boston accent (actually you should do a shot because it doesn’t happen all that often).
6. Drink when Jane acts hysterical.
7. Drink when Maura uses big scientific words no one will understand. Unless you’ve been a drug rep or taken anat & phys.
8. Drink when Jane disagrees with her boss. I’d be hammered already in this episode.
9. Drink when the whole ‘girls can be cops too’ trope comes up. Ugh. Double shot if “affirmative action” is used.
10. Drink when you hear any of Jane’s “quirky” ringtones. DOUBLE Ugh.
So about a month ago I started having a problem with my phone, where the screen wouldn’t scroll correctly and it would freeze up sometimes. I’m incredibly lazy so since it was functional I didn’t do anything. Then it froze enough that I had to restart it – which took an inordinately long time – and then my theme didn’t come up the right way. While in Glenwood Springs I stopped into the Verizon store and the worker “reset” my phone. At that point it took about 10 minutes to boot and when it DID come up, all the screens were wonky. Thanks for that.
Today I finally called Verizon. They had me do the soft reset and it took about 10 minutes to boot again. This time when it came up, the screens were back to normal. Except because the boot time was way wrong and there’s clearly something bad with the phone, she transferred me to the REAL tech support. We do another kind of reset and discover there’s a force close error that shouldn’t be there. We delete all my personal info and reset it again. Error. Now we’re going to replace my phone. Great.
Except in the meantime, now all my info is on my SD card and whereas my phone was b0rked but totally functional, now I get this GD force close error almost EVERY time I do something. I can’t wait for Wednesday.
Tonight’s dinner experiment was prompted by a Food Network show. We’re making our own deep dish pizza.
We started with a refrigerated thin crust, a layer of sliced provolone, a layer of pepperoni, a layer of shredded mozz, a layer of sliced mushrooms, a layer of Italian sausage, red bell pepper, red onion, diced tomatoes and topped with pizza sauce. We’re cooking it in the oven at 375 for at least 30 minutes. I’m not convinced we’ll need to cook it longer because everything inside is already cooked.
ETA: At 30 minutes I put foil over the pizza to protect the crust and let it cook for another 20 minutes. Motherfucking DELICIOUS.
