Sorry

Sorry these pictures in my last post are all fracked up. Blogger is seriously lacking in some features such as - your blog preview actually matching what your published blog looks like. I should be used to this, it's a lot like working with a Microsoft product.

Christmas and Things of That Nature.

Happy Holidays people! I have been very busy reading and knitting - AND in addition to writing this blog post for you, I actually have pictures of my knitted gifts for you all to peruse. Merry Christmas! It's like two gifts in one. Getting two birds stoned at once and all that. Here goes:

4 Hats:











One Headband Thing:












One set of Leg Warmers.







Four sets of Mittens ( I know there are only 3 here, but I knit another set tiny and pink - like the gray ones.)
I've also finished 3 audio books: The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell - Double Woot. Blink by Malcom Gladwell - Double Woot. And Blaze by Richard Bachman - Woot (but just barely).

I have a pair of socks for my dad half way done - which means one sock down - which I will be giving him for Christmas with an IOU for the other sock.

I'm totally in good shape to complete these two goals by Jan. 6th - go me. Also I have been thinking a lot about the list for next year, it's going to be quite a bit different. All will be revealed in Jan. I know you can't wait to find out since you don't have anything better to do than sit around pondering what I will be adding to my blog next year. Admit it.

Peace.

Ugh. and Yay!

Quick Update: Finished another knitting proj. last night. Woot! Most of what I am knitting, well ALL of what I am knitting right now is for XMAS presents, and so, won't be posting the descriptions etc. until later. But I am making progress, so woot for me!

Minor setback on the books. I started listening to "The Last Fish Tale" by Mark Kurlansky last night while I was working. Dudes. So fracking boring. I seriously can't bear to listen to any more. I don't know if it's the reader or what. I thought it was going to be an interesting book about the decline of the fishing industry with some cool stories about Gloucester MA thrown in for color. Yeah, not really. It's just basically a history of facts about the area. Also it is rife with inconsistencies. For example: at first he says how the whole island is made up of people from many different cultures who have always welcomed/needed new comers because so many people die off from fishing accidents. Then a half hour or so later he talks about how mean the "locals" were to new comers from other countries. Ugh. Anyway it's a fracking snoozefest.

I will add one weird thing though, he was talking about this storm that killed a bunch of fishermen, I think about 115 of them. Anyway, it was on an unseasonably warm December 15th. The wind came up and smashed all the boats. Anyway it was super weird because the weather was exactly the same yesterday as it was on that day in ye olde times.

Sorry, this is just a really long way to tell you that The Last Fish Tale is out. And I can't even finish it, even in this late hour and 2 hours into the audiobook. It rates a double poopsandwich with a side of boogers. I will be starting The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell later today. Now there's a woman who knows how to take boring history and make it intersting. If you've never read/listened to Ms. Vowell I highly recommend her.

That's all.

Getting Two Birds Stoned at Once.

Yeah, I wish I could take credit for the title, but no. It's from the Trailer Park Boys, which if you haven't seen yet, consider this my Xmas present - go watch it. Seriously, it will be the funniest thing you watch all year.

In going through this list for the past year, I have noticed that many of my activities allow me to get two birds stoned at once as far as the list is concerned. For example, reduce spending $30 per week and reduce household spending 30% definitely go together and were both achieved.

A number of "things I've been meaning to do" - which I don't think the numbers on the side accurately depict the amount I have completed, I'm going to have to make a list - have items that fall into other categories. Two major instances were the purchase of a clothesline for outside which reduced our electricity bill in the summertime, and the purchase of 6 chickens this spring. The chickens not only produce eggs and thereby save us money on our food budget, but they also eat all of our leftover scraps which would have gone into a compost pile. The thing is about that last statement, my compost pile is pretty sad and is way out at the end of my lawn, I often neglected to put things in it just because it's a pain to hike to in the winter. Also my dog used to eat stuff out of it. Gross. So you see, the chickens also take care of another thing I had been meaning to do: start compost pile. Now I don't need to. Another multiple category item was the purchase of 1/2 a pig and 1/4 of a cow from local farmers. Something I've been meaning to do, decreases household spending, AND supports local agriculture - BooYa!

This week I have been knitting and reading like crazy because I really want to complete those two goals. I am relying solely on my Amazon list/widget and much to my dismay discovered a couple of books missing from the list just now when I added Lisey's story. WTF. Thanks Amazon. I'm sure it's missing a couple of my books. I'm going to have to make an actual list with ye olde pen and paper some time this week. Anyway, as I was saying, I have been listening to audio books WHILE knitting. I finished Lisey's Story by Stephen King which I highly recommend. It was fanatstic. And I finished knitting 2 hats, and a weird ear warmer thing that I don't really like, but I'm not ripping it out. Tonight I will start on a pair of mittens, since they are the only knit Xmas gift that was actually requested. I don't have pictures of this stuff becuse since the Tea-Saster Mike has taken control of uploading things to his computer. Oh also, I'm lazy. Don't worry, I will have a knit pic. extravaganza one of these days.

Disregard my last reading list - I think I'm in Audio only territory from here on out:

The Last Fish Tale
Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas
Duma Key
Microthrills

and something else, I dunno yet. .

Cyas

Twilight is lame.

Morning. I'll get to the list break down tomorrow. Right now I'd like to review the two Twilight books I read and try to regain any respect you once had for me which you lost immediately upon learning that I read not one but two of these horrific teen girl lollipop novels.

First off, you should know that one of the things I have learned in the past couple years or so is that popular doesn't necessarily mean bad. I am by nature kind of a snob when it comes to popular things, as in "if it's popular it probably sucks." As of late I have been proven wrong by: No Country For Old Men, Juno, Amy Winehouse, Cold Play, Harry Potter, and Anne Rice novels (her pre born-again Christian ones that is). Side note - I really hope Ms. Winehouse gets her shit together and doesn't die, she really is a great talent. However I hesitate buying any of her music because I don't want to directly contribute funds to a young woman's death by drug overdose.

Upon reading and throughly enjoying Harry Potter and The Interview With the Vampire series after avoiding them like a plague for years - even though people told me I would really enjoy them, I figured hey I like vampires even though these are super popular books, why the hell not. Dudes. Horrible does not begin to describe these books. When I was reading the first one - Twiglight I was actually embarrassed to be reading it. You know how you feel when your significant other catches you watching some truly horrible TV show, like a Lifetime movie or The Girls Next Door? Yeah, it felt like that. If Mike could see what I was reading, he would have teased me unmercifully for days. And here's why:

1. Writing is very simplistic and cheezy.
2. Has a very lame romance novel tone and feel, yet no sex at all.
3. Soooooo sloooow. Could have been about half as long.
4. Plot holes you can drive a truck through.
5. Worst dialog I have ever read.

Wow. That's really shitty right? Yeah. It was. So shitty in fact when I finished the first one I sat right down and wrote my own vampire novel, because if this shit can sell....But wait- you are thinking to yourself - didn't you say you read TWO of these shitbombs? Yeah I did. I have used the following metaphor to explain my lack of judgment to a couple of my people "These books are like Easter Peeps, they are sickly sweet, mostly air, and leave a nasty taste in your mouth. You know how horrible and gross they are when you start eating them, but you just keep going and don't stop until your tummy really hurts. You then swear them off forever, only to come back and do it again next year." Yes, these are the Easter Peeps of books. Also, in my defense, they are really super easy and fast to read and I have to boogey to get meet my goal. But just indulge me for one minute more about the other two majorly annoying things about these books.

First, they are romance novels with no sex, and hardly any kissing. The dude is a vampire and the chick is a human and allegedly if they do it, he will kill her because he won't be able to control himself and he will suck all of her blood out. As one of my friends put it "If I'm going to read a shitty romance novel, there at least better be some sex". There isn't any in this book because it's written for teenage girls by a Mormon author. I have no doubt that moms are pushing these books on their daughters like crazy. I get why young girls might read these, but grown women reading them and getting all gaga is just weird. And kind of sad.

Secondly, these books are supposed to be about vampires right? And later werewolves too. She does NOT follow the rules at all. This really pisses me off. As a huge fan of the horror genre, there are rules goddammit. You can bend them a little, but she throws out every single vampire rule there is. These guys can go out in the sun, see their reflections, are immune to crosses and garlic, can live off of non-human blood - the blood of animals and whatnot, and can only be killed by other vampires OR werewolves. Laaaaaaaaaaaame. OMG so lame. IF you want to write about vamps, at least try to write about vampires - know what I mean?

Anyway, that's enough about these books. I give them both a poop sandwich, even though I originally rated them a meh. On another note - I almost knit an entire hat last night AND started the second Interview with a Vampire novel - The Vampire Lestat. Rice knows her shit and is a good writer. Oh, and in case you're wondering my reading schedule is as follows;

Vampire Lestat - Anne Rice
Skinny Legs and All - Tom Robbins
Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer
Lisey's Story - Stephen King (audio)
Microthrils - Wendy Spero (audio)

Peace.

And for my final trick...

It's that time of year! That's right, time for the end of the year 30list wrap up and analysis extravaganza! My birthday is in one month, so I have about 4 weeks to try and wrap up the list and achieve the goals I have set forth. I'm gonna tell you right now *and this is a spoiler* some of them just ain't gonna happen. Some of them I have completed far over the goal, but since I'm lazy I just quit counting once I got to 100. If you remember, this is not what I had originally planned to do since those over-shot goals can help pick up the slack of my little tiny achievements via the magic of averages. But it's my list, and I can change the rules if I want to.

Anyhow, here's the plan - I'm gonna break it down, starting with completed goals first. Some of them I'm not gonna have a lot to say about because, well, they aren't that interesting. They are what they are. So, here goes. Oh, I'm not going to do them all right now in case you were worried. I'll do a couple at a time. *Ahem*

1. 30 Blog Entries - Shizza - look at all the blog entries! 41 Total so far. Rad. That one was kind of a ringer. I knew it when I added it. It's good to have ringers sometimes.

2. 30 Mins. Less watching TV. Ok, this one was easy since we disconnected our dish this spring after BSG was over. I don't really miss it. As you can see, I have lots of other stuff going on; movie watching, book reading, novel writing, etc. Disconnecting the TV helped achieve another goal as well - reduce household expenses, which we will get to later. I have no idea the actual figure of how much less TV I ended up watching, but it's significant. Because it went from at least an hour a day to 0. Do I think we will ever hook it back up? Doubt it. TV shows on DVD are wayyyy better. You just have to be a bit more patient.

3. 30 Mins. Per Day Cleaning. Sadly, I completed this one fairly quickly as well. I spend at least 30 minutes a day cleaning, and when I'm really going nuts a couple hours at a time easy. In case you are wondering 30 mins a day of cleaning = 10950 minutes OR 182.5 hours. That's a lot of fracking cleaning. But that's ok, cause my house is clean and that's a good thing.

That's it for today. As you can see I still have some stuff to do. I really want to finish 30 books - which means 5 to go by Jan. 6. I also want to complete my knitted things goal - which is even crazier because it's like 15 things in that amount of time. I am restarting the great debate - if I knit a pair of things aka socks - is that one knitted thing or two? Mike says one. But he's not the one knitting his fingers to the nubs.

Peace out.

Sharing

On Thanksgiving my brother and sister in-law informed me that items I share with comments via the Google reader are public. To which I immediately responded "Oh Crap!" but then about a second later was more like "Eh, fuck it." Since then I have been thinking a lot about my initial reaction and the following one. And have decided to break it down for you.


The reason for caring at all about comments, writing, etc. posted on-line being viewable by the public are :

1. You are a private person and don't want to share your views with the world.
2. You are worried about what people will think.
3. You are concerned that your views will be on the Internet forever and ever (and they probably will) and that your kids/grand-kids/great-grandkids will read them.
4. You will get fired and/or not get a job because of stuff you have written.


While I am not disputing the validity of any of these concerns, I realize that they do not pertain to me whatsoever. I have chosen to be a writer and in doing so have learned through years of agony, that I have no hope of ever being successful at it if I chose to care at all who reads what I write, and subsequently what their opinion of it or me is after having read it.

Writing takes great courage. One of the reasons that I was able to complete a novel this past month (and yes, I am going to bring that up for a long time. Get over it)was that I finally embraced the genre and style that I enjoy reading and writing. If I ever edit it down enough so that others can read it and perhaps even get it published, I have to accept that some people, probably even people I know aren't going to like it. They may even hate it. But really, who cares? I probably don't like those ugly pants they have in their closet. Should they care? Nope.

So for me, the fact that my daughter may read a comment that says "George Bush is a total douchebag" regarding an article I shared, really doesn't bother me. If she asked me about it I would probably respond by saying "Yes, it's true, back in the day he fucked things up a lot and he is probably still a douchebag." I am what I am. I say what I think and I really don't care who else reads it.