Twilight, Not-dead Chicks, and Punch Therapy

It looks mostly the same and some minor tweaks may still need to be made but I think it looks spankin' and hope you will all update your feeds with the new url and I promise never to move any of my blogs again.  Because I'm pretty sure either Angela or Skye will kill me in the process.  Mostly Angela. 

Angela is doing web design and building and also marketing professionally so go to her blog and email her if you need any blog work done.  As soon as she has her business website up and running I'll post a link to that.

Mo has made a "full" recovery.  By "full" I mean to say that she's still standing but I confess that I'm not sure she made it through with a full capacity bird brain.  I find her pecking incessantly at the brown box wall in the same spot.  She's so much smaller than the other chicks!  I have to work really hard not to pull a "Flowers For Algernon" moment with her.

Speaking of books, I am finally starting to read "Twilight".  My blog friend Mary from Confessions of a Craft Addict lent me her entire set of the series.  I had to mentally gear myself up for it.  I don't know why.  So I started it last night and couldn't put it down.  I'm really enjoying it!  I am not in agreement with a lot of criticism I've heard expressed about the story.  I do agree that it's not a particularly richly written or layered story* but the characters are good and the dialog moves and the story has a great deal of charm.  I hope to write a more detailed post once I've finished reading the first book.  Or maybe tomorrow.  Whichever comes first.

In case anyone hasn't figured it out yet, I have very eclectic tastes in books.  I read almost everything except westerns and epic war novels.  My main emphasis has been on the classics, murder mysteries, and modest forays into sci-fi/fantasy.  But what most people don't know is that when I was a pre-teen, while devouring all the "good" stuff like the Madeline L'Engles and Raul Dal's I was also devouring romance novels.  I learned to be ashamed of it as an older teen, the same way I learned to be ashamed of my preference for folk music and classical over Tones on Tail and other cooler more contemporary choices.  I have had to unlearn being ashamed of enjoying being simply entertained by anything.  Like television sit-coms, which I LOVE.

In more recent years my reading choices have almost exclusively involved creative non-fiction writers like David Sedaris and Anne Lamott and mysteries.  I like the creative non-fiction because it's often really funny and I like the mysteries because rarely am I left with an ambiguous or tragic ending.  Yes, people die in murder mysteries, but the bad guys are almost always caught which is balm to me after dealing with reality for several decades.

I still love classics but I often re-read ones I already know because I'm not sure I could take accidentally reading another story like Madame Bovary. 

My laptop definitely didn't make it so I have to buy another used one.  It really sucks.  It was truly flukish how I managed to kill it with a tablespoon of tonic and lime.  In the same horrible way I flukishly broke my hip.  These are most certainly some unexplored talents of mine. 

I have been antsy all week not having my laptop.  I haven't been able to hole up in my office to work on Cricket and Grey. 

I tried to refund my ticket to New York but it turns out I didn't buy a refundable one and the cancellation fee is 25% of the actual ticket.  I can get a credit for the remaining amount and use it within the year, but where would I go?  There may be some cheaper trips to take than NY but at least I can write off some of the expenses for the NY trip from my taxes next year. 

So I'm going to New York.  Somehow we'll manage in spite of having had to just replace my used laptop with another used laptop.  I haven't spent my Etsy money made last month so that's some of the trip right there. 

I guess I'm just playing life by ear.  It seems that with regards to everything I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't.  Doing is often a lot more fun than Don'ting.

So if I'm going to hell either way I may as well meet the people I work with and get some precious rare time alone, walking the streets of New York looking like a bad-ass Kung Fu Panda person. 

It's time to get ready to take Max to Kung Fu.  That reminds me that I've been thinking all day about how my favorite thing we do in Kung Fu is the punching and the kicking.  It pleases me to think that while my skill in Kung Fu is still quite modest, my punch has improved a lot.  What am I saying?  I didn't use to have a punch at all and now I wouldn't want to be on the other end of my first.

Punch therapy.**

Could be the new religion.








*As the Anne Rice books were.

**Naturally the minute that came out on the screen I thought about how unfortunately that's essentially what abusers do, get therapy for themselves by punching it out on the people they're supposed to love.  This thought quelled my original enjoyment of the thought of punch therapy.  So now I've made this whole footnote to explain myself.  "Punch Bag Therapy" doesn't have the same succinct ring.  Neither does "Punch Pad Therapy".  I believe that abuse in familial relationships is the worst offense in the world.  In case anyone isn't sure about that any more what with all my talk of liking to punch and kick and be generally pretty violent.