Happy Friday!

I woke up this morning from the strangest dream. I was at a beach house with a bunch of friends, and I spent the whole time flirting with Christian Kane and playing Patty Cake with my best friend's baby. (But not, unfortunately, playing Patty Cake with Christian Kane!)

I'm not sure what my subconscious is trying to tell me, but I think it might be "have more fun!" I suppose "you haven't talked to Keli in too long" and "Leverage starts on Sunday" are a possibility, too, but adding more fun to your life is never a bad thing.

My fun weekend plans all revolve around the television. Tonight is Popcorn Dialogues night (http://popcorndialogues.com/). We're watching Ninotchka, which I have to say I have no interest in. But I wasn't particularly interested in It Happened One Night and that turned out to be a terrific movie, so I'm giving it a shot. Saturday is Doctor Who, and then Sunday is True Blood, Leverage, and a new ABC show called The Gates.

My other project for the weekend, which is necessary but certainly not fun, is to finish filling out my Disability Report for Social Security for the third time. It's the same damn paperwork over and over. I tell you what, if the government ever decides to get serious about cutting the fat out of Social Security, the first thing they need to do is stop dicking around and approve people with legitimate claims on the first try. The amount of paper and number of man hours wasted on making us jump through hoops (we who are least able to jump) is disgusting. This is my second appeal, and sometime in the next several months I'll be going in front of a judge. Talk about intimidating. Being sick, constantly, chronically ill, is soul sucking enough. Add in a year or more trying to convince a bunch of faceless bureaucrats that yes, I really am this sick, and no, I am not faking- it's a wonder I haven't stuck my head in an oven.

But enough about that. Here's a picture of my hair after my first all night plop.

Not bad, huh? (Although this picture does a nice job of accentuating my double chin.) I wish the curls were a little rounder and bouncier, but I'll trade that for the ridiculously low-maintenance styling. And even with gel (I used Herbal Essences Totally Twisted Curl Scrunching Gel), it's nice and soft, not crunchy or sticky at all.

Oh, and I thought of one more fun thing in my weekend! I had my water arthritis class this morning. It's still exercise, but the water feels so good in this heat. And it's the one time being fat works in my favor- I'm nice and buoyant.

I like all three of the instructors for this class, but I particularly like the Friday instructor. She's about my age (I'm guessing- I'm not very good at judging ages) and always has something crazy going on in her life. This week it was an escaped crawfish. Apparently her mother bought crawfish this week, and the guy behind the counter gave her daughter one that was too small to sell, I guess as a pet. And of course, the crawfish got loose somewhere in the house. They've all been looking for it, but so far no luck. According to my instructor, crawfish live about 2 years. She's hoping they find it soon, because she doesn't want to live the next year to year and a half with an escaped crawfish roaming the house.

So, there you go. Funny story, even if it wasn't mine. Have a great weekend!

My First Plop

I've discovered a new hobby in the last few days- my hair. As with most of my new interests, it was sparked by an off-topic discussion on Ravelry, this time about curly hair.

For the first 32 years of my life I had smooth, straight hair with just a bit of wave. And then all this health crap came along, which I won't get into (again) except to say that in fall of 2007 I started losing hair. Eventually quite a bit of hair. When it grew back it was... weird. Not smooth. Frizzy. Snarly. It looked bad enough when I tried to wash and go, but it's true, horrible form came out whenever I tried to spend a little extra time on it to make it look nice. Horrible. I spent a good 6 months or so wandering around looking like Don King.

Finally, a friend took pity on me and directed me to her hairstylist. Imagine my shock when she looked over the disaster on my head and said, "You know you have curly hair, right?" Er, no actually. When did that happen? Apparently it's not unusual for hair that has fallen out due to medical treatments to come back a different color or texture. (I also got a liberal salting of gray hair at the same time. Yay.) So she cut and colored and styled and basically messed with my mess for about 4 hours. And when she was done... crap, she was right! I had curly hair!

That's all me, no curling iron required. And it only got curlier as my hair adjusted to being allowed to do it's own thing. I don't know how I could have missed it. More evidence that we don't ever really see ourselves until someone or something makes us see.

Unfortunately, I haven't liked any of her cuts as much as that first one, and at $200 a pop for cut and color, I'm just can't afford to keep going. So what to do? Well, there's a solution for everything else on Rav, I should have trusted that Rav would have a solution for this, too. Did you know there's a whole world of information and techniques to make curly hair behave better? It's amazing.

This blog post is a great starting point for the Curly Girl method, or going "CG": http://dormroomcurly.blogspot.com/2008/12/style-definitions-table.html. I've already cut the sulfate and silicone out of my hair care routine, and now I'm starting to experiment with styling. I have no energy for a big styling regime. Just the cowash takes more time than my old shampoo and condition routine, which means sore arms and back by the time I'm finished. So anything that requires a lot of blow drying, rollers or a curling iron, or much in the way of general fussing is right out. Fortunately, air drying appears to be the preferred method, along with something charmingly called "plopping". This is a good video on plopping: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K_E_JN5dkw&feature=player_embedded

And here I am, plopped on the couch, plopping for the first time. Wish me luck!

Sloppy Writing is Sloppy

So, I'm reading Black Hills by Nora Roberts. I wouldn't call myself a NR fan- what I've read of hers was enjoyable, but I don't go looking for her books, either. This one was coming along pretty well until this morning.

The heroine, Lil Chance, is a wildlife biologist specializing in cats. She trapped an animal to tag and take samples, but before she could get to it, someone shot it in the head and killed it. The police come, and she starts talking about doing an autopsy. Blew me right out of the story. An animal autopsy is called a necropsy, and there's no way a wildlife biologist wouldn't know that. Then a few pages after that, a farm hand refers to the new gelding she bought as a her. At this point I'm so far out of the story that I don't know if I want to continue.

I know these are details, not anything important to the plot of the story. But geeze louise. Isn't anyone paying attention?

Top Five Crusies

After holding it in reserve for months I'm finally reading The Cinderella Deal by Jennifer Crusie. I'm loving it! I'm not finished yet, but assuming she doesn't pancake on the dismount (which I doubt- it's Crusie) it just might be one of my five favorite of her books. The others are What the Lady Wants, Charlie All Night, Crazy For You, Getting Rid of Bradley, Anyone But You, Fast Women, and Agnes and the Hitman.

Yes, I know there are more than five books on that list. What of it?

One of the reoccurring symbols in her books are the houses. Daisy has spent a good chunk of the book so far painting and decorating and generally making a beautiful home. This fictional house has more color and style than the real apartment I'm sitting in as I type this. Her books always make me want to jump up and create some funky work of art, bring some color into my life. And then after about five minutes I remember that I have zero artistic ability. Also, I have no money to buy supplies with. But it's a nice little fantasy while it lasts.

The heroes are good too, but strangely enough, I have no desire to rush out and find one of those. I already know they're more effort than I can spare.

Book Binge

A couple weeks ago I broke down and bought my second ebook reader, a Sony Pocket. I love my Kindle, don't get me wrong. But there was this ebook sale, and, well.... If I wanted to read any of the books that I really, really wanted, it was either use the lap top (which has it's uses, but generally isn't a practical reading device for me), grow magical hacking skillz and strip and convert all these lovely new books into a format that would work with my existing ereader, or break down and buy something that would accept the formats the books were already in. And there was the Pocket. It was CHEAP (as these things go), and it was PINK (not usually a big draw for me, but I just loved that bright fuchsia from the first moment I saw it). So I gave in to my baser instincts and spent the money.

I am LOVING this thing. Not so much the unit itself, although it is adequate. It's not terribly difficult to use. I'm not loving the button placement (spoiled by convenient page turns on both the left and right sides of the Kindle), and the screen is a bit smaller than I'd prefer. But it's quite a bit lighter than the Kindle, so big points in it's favor there. (I always feel it when the Kindle is in my purse. It makes the damn thing so much heavier.)

What I really, really love about the Pocket is that my local library has expanded their service, and now I can access ebooks through Overdrive! Before all they had were scholarly works, and I am so not the scholarly type. I'm working diligently to rot what's left of my brain with works of pure entertainment. And now I can, for free! I was just using my city library, which has a kind of small subscription to Overdrive. Certainly enough to keep me happily reading for quite some time. I even have one not-completely-brain-rotting book on my wishlist- it's about Egyptian history, which is one of the few topics that could tempt me to read non-fiction.

And then, I hit the jackpot. In several places lately I've seen people talking about maintaining non-resident library cards, usually by paying a fee for the card. So I started checking around to see what it would cost me to get a library card in some of the other major cities in Texas and if it would be worth it to pay the fee to have access to their online ebook services. Which is when I discovered that not only do we have a major city library with dozens of branches around town, we also have a county library with many fewer branches but a much larger ebook collection. Much. Like, literally 10x the size of the city library's collection. Ka ching!


I spent the last two evenings working my way through the fiction list on the county library's website. (It takes a long time to go through a list of over 2000 ebook titles and pick what looks interesting.) I now have 9 new titles waiting patiently on my pretty pink Pocket, a half dozen books on hold, and 149 books on my wishlist. Between what I bought in those last two sales, what I've grabbed for free off Amazon, and all the ebooks available to me now through my county library, I probably won't have to buy another book for two years, maybe more! (Of course, there are a few favorite authors whose books I'll be buying anyway, just because I Must Have Them Now.) Even if you assume used book prices, the Pocket will pay for itself three times over, just with the books on my list now. And that list will only grow as new titles are added to the database.

I love my little Pocket!

It's a Pickle

I have a code for a free ebook that expires later this week, and I can't decide how to spend it! The options so far are:

The Cinderella Deal by Jennifer Crusie
Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Fallen by Lauren Kate
These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer
Instant Attraction by Jill Shalvis

All of these books have points in their favor, and reasons why they aren't my #1 choice. My reading preference goes like this: ebook, print book, audiobook. Paperback vs hardback is a toss up. Hardbacks are heavier, but paperbacks are harder for me to hold open. Hardbacks are easier because they're logged in the library's computer by title, so I can reserve those titles and have them waiting together for me in one spot. Paperbacks aren't tracked by title, so I have to search the stacks and hope for the best. Either way, I have to actually go to the library to pick them up and return them. Digital books and audiobooks, whether I purchase them or download them from the library, are available from the comfort of home.

Crusie pros: I'll probably want to read it over and over again; it's available from the library but only in audio- I'd rather read it than listen to it; it's a paperback, so if the library does have it, I'll have to find it myself in the stacks

Crusie cons: less expensive than other options- shouldn't I pick the book that's going to save me the most money?; I'm pretty sure I've read it before, and I hate buying books I've already read

Beautiful Creatures pros: I want it BAD; it would cost me $9 for the Kindle version

Beautiful Creatures cons: the library has the hardback version, so I don't really have to buy it; I'm not sure if it's a book that I'll want to read over and over

Fallen pros: it looks like a good read- I like the sample I've read so far; the Kindle version is $9.99

Fallen cons: I don't want to read it as much as I want to read Beautiful Creatures; it's available in hardback from the library; not sure I'll want to re-read it

These Old Shades pros: it's not available through the library; the Kindle version is $9.59; I like Georgette Heyer and I've heard good things about this one

These Old Shades cons: I'm not dying to read it right this second- there are other books I'd like to read more

Instant Attraction pros: I've been wanting to read this author, and this book in particular; it's $8.96 on Kindle

Instant Attraction cons: it's available in trade paperback from the library

So what do you think? Any genius ideas on which book I should pick? And perhaps a better question, why am I stressing so much over which book to get for free? It's not like it's the last book I'll ever be allowed to read or something.

Cheap Trick, Part 2

Well, I was right. The Twist I predicted on page 55 came to pass. Maybe it was because it was so clear to me what was really going on, but I found this book very blah. There was no conflict, no spark. I'm glad the book was only 190 pages. There just wasn't enough story there to make it a typical single title book. In fact, I think this one would have been more successful as a story if it had been pared down a bit and put into an anthology.

Either that, or she needed to drop the idea of the Twist and let the reader in on the secret from the beginning. Then she could have brought in more secondary characters, more complications, more conflict, and expand the story to one that really deserves to stand on its own as a hardback. Because this book, as written, really isn't worth the hardback price, in my opinion.