I want…Friday 2007 #5

I want to not be quite so needed at work. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to have the job security, and it’s nice to be important, but I wish I wasn’t quite so integral to everything. (Not that I necessarily am, but everyone seems to at least think I am.) Everyone acts as if they couldn’t quite accomplish what they want if I’m involved. It’s flattering, but it also means I’m stuck. And it means that if stuff hits the fan over the weekend, they’re going to want me involved to get my opinion. Eventually, I would like to move on to something else…

A Day Ahead

For some reason this week, I’ve been a day off. And unfortunately, a day ahead of reality. Yesterday, I was all excited thinking today was going to be Friday, but, yeah, not quite right there. And I woke up this morning going “Yea! Frid…wait. Crap!” I don’t mind being a day off, but I prefer to be a day behind reality so I can be pleasantly surprised when Friday arrives early. This being a day ahead thing – not so nice. It’s taking forever for the weekend to get here. I guess this week has been crazy enough it feels like it should be over. Kinda wish it already was…

One day to go…one day to go…one day to go…

On the Bookshelf #3 and #4

The Laughing Corpse and Circus of the Damned, by Laurell K. Hamilton

The second and third books in the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series. OK, so I said I’d be brief. I may have to be for a while here, cause I am now completely hooked. It took me just over a day to blaze through the third book. Granted, Sunday I wasn’t feeling well, so all I did was read anyway. But yeah – I’m zipping through and upset that I don’t have the next one. I think a trip to the bookstore is in order. Forget the other books I was going to read…I have to know what happens next. It’s not like it’s a cliffhanger. Each book is a separate storyline, but there’s an overarching story that I’m wanting to see what happens.

I’m guessing the R-rated comment was because of the violence and the fact that they refer to some of the women being topless. It’s definitely not a book for children, but, knowing that romance novels are quite descriptive, I have a hard time considering something like this R-rated.

The Laughing Corpse focused on Anita helping the police track down a murdering rogue zombie and a rich client attempting to force Anita to perform a human sacrifice in order to raise a 300-year old corpse. Circus of the Damned involved a feud between master vampires for control of St. Louis, with Anita caught in the middle. Throughout the series, a romance storyline is developing between Anita and a master vampire. He wants her to be with him, and, of course, she’s attracted to him. What kind of a story would it be if she wasn’t? However, she has a thing against vampires and won’t admit her feelings.

There’s a detective story, there’s romance, and it’s all about vampires. What’s not to like?

A Neighborly Encounter

We occasionally hear one of the neighbors behind my house calling for a cat or dog. It’s a rather annoying sound to hear “Tweeters! Tweeters!” in a voice I can’t even begin to describe, but it cuts over the sound of the TV and is not pleasant. Anyway, we’ve been trying to figure out if it’s the neighbor right behind us or the one kitty-corner behind, but it’s always been dark out when we’ve heard it, so we couldn’t see who it was.

We thought it was the lady in the house behind mine cause she’s a little, um…odd…anyway. She apparently owns the house, but doesn’t live there. She uses it for the yard and basement to have “greenhouse” room for her seed business or something like that. There are never any lights on and usually no one outside, which is kind of nice cause it’s like not having neighbors. When she is out in the yard, she wants to talk and is just generally a bit annoying. At one point when David was helping me with something in my yard, she asked if he was my dad, which I’m sure he was thrilled about. She also at one point asked if my mom, aunt and I were “three generations of family”. My aunt was not pleased.

The first summer there was a guy there taking care of the yard, but they don’t really take care of the yard anymore, so weeds and vines are starting to overgrow into my yard. There’s also a pile of garbage that they won’t get rid of. But for quite a while now, there hasn’t seemed to be anyone around, though the cars are always in the driveway. Needless to say, I don’t really care for this particular neighbor, so it fit that she’d be annoyingly calling a little cat that we’ve seen wandering around her yard. But since she’s never there, we weren’t sure it was her, and of course we had to know.

Last Friday, the annoying “Tweeters!” started up about 6 pm, so it was still light enough to figure out who it was. Mr B. walked to the back door to look out, and came quickly back saying, “AHH!! I need a scotch bright pad and rubbing alcohol. AHH! I gotta get that sight out of my eyes! AAHHH!” Once he calmed down slightly, he continued, “It’s the lady right behind, and she wasn’t wearing a top and they were down to here.” He motioned around his waist area. “She just had on a skirt and then nothing. AHH! I can’t get that image out of my head. AHH!”

I thought it was rather amusing. He apparently didn’t think so.

I want…Friday 2007 #4

I want to know what I want today. I know, that’s a bit of a cop-out, but what can you do? I’m struggling between saying a nap, a new job, some me-time, to be in better shape without all the work of exercise (doesn’t everyone), and so on. I’m not really good at making decisions, and these are all right up there in my mind, that I’m having trouble deciding. I’m also very tired (hence, the nap portion) so my mind isn’t quite processing like it should, so it’s hard to formulate anything really coherent right now. Oh well, hopefully it’ll be a bit better next week.

On the Bookshelf #2

Guilty Pleasures, by Laurell K. Hamilton

The first book in the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series. Anita Blake is an animator, a person who raises the dead as zombies, in St. Louis. She also consults with the police and, as the series title suggests, is a vampire hunter. (Yes, I know this is sounding surprisingly like the previous book I read.) This book starts out with a bit different premise. Vampires and other fantasy creatures are known by the general population, to the point where at least the vampires are considered people under the law, though Anita doesn’t really consider them equals. However, she’s convinced by the master vampire of the city to investigate a series of vampire murders.

I read this book at the suggestion of friends. As I said, I enjoy vampire stories. I also loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so when one of the critic quotes on the back of the book called it an R-rated Buffy, I figured I had to at least try it. I think most of the R rating in this particular book came from them comparing vampirism to a sexual act, not unlike many stories, but I’ve heard that some of the other books getting pretty heavy into some of the sex scenes, so we’ll see if it starts overpowering the stories. I also decided to try it because they’ve created a comic of it that I’ve picked up so far and really enjoyed.

This was a pretty short story, so I actually read the whole thing in just the past couple of days. Now that I’ve read the book, I have to say the comic follows it almost exactly, and actually doesn’t leave much out, which surprised me. I was expecting to get a lot more out of the book than the comic, but I didn’t really. Granted the comic only has a few issues out, so maybe that will change, but I actually enjoyed the comics better. Maybe that caused me to expect too much from it, but regardless, the book just didn’t draw me in. Don’t get me wrong. It was a really good story that I wanted to keep reading to find out what was going to happen. I just didn’t really come to care about the characters like I normally do with the books I read. I’m going to give another one a try, so the next book I blog about will probably be the 2nd book in the series, but I probably won’t go into a ton of detail.

On the Bookshelf #1

I’m shamelessly stealing this idea from Reflecting. I read enough that I’m not setting a goal to read a certain number of books, but I started to get curious as to how much I read in a year. So, I’m going to keep track, and you all get to come along for the ride. I happened to have started a new book right when I started this blog, so I’m going to go from March to February instead of a normal calendar year. Now, if you read Reflecting, don’t expect quite what you get from Debra, because I’m not sure I’ll be nearly so insightful or thought-provoking. But hopefully you’ll be able to at least judge if you want to check out the book. Anyway, onwards…

Proven Guilty, by Jim Butcher

This book is the 8th in The Dresden Files series about Harry Dresden, a wizard/private investigator living in Chicago who also consults for the Special Investigations unit of the police department on their stranger cases. I originally heard of this series in an odd way, at least for me. While waiting for Brian to finish perusing the magazines at Borders, I flipped through a Buffy magazine. One of the articles is “What are they doing now?” which said that James Marsters, who played Spike, narrated the audiobook for the 6th book in series, Blood Rites, which dealt heavily with vampires. Since I was already in the bookstore, I went in search of the books. I love a good vampire story, and, of course, I like wizards, fairies, dragons and other fantasy creatures too. So, after reading the synopsis of a couple books, I figured the story was right up my alley. I got the first book to see if the writing was any good before investing in the entire series, and that first book hooked me. I sped through all of them and now wait not so patiently as each successive book comes out.

This book constituted my first real wait. I got lucky last time and finished the rest of the series shortly before the 7th book came out in paperback. Let me tell you, waiting was torture, this series is that good to me. It’s got the fantasy angle, but it’s also got a pretty decent detective story in each. I’ve even got my dad hooked on them. He was looking for something to read and doesn’t really enjoy fantasy, but does like detective stories, so I suggested he try the first one and see what he thought. He zipped through them just about as quickly as I did.

This is the first book to sport a “As Seen on Sci-Fi” emblem. In January, the Sci-Fi channel started a series based upon the book. If you’ve watched the show at all, let me just say, the book blows it away. They’ve changed enough from the book that it’s not quite there for me. I just haven’t been drawn into the show like I have the books. They also pulled one of the mistakes that is becoming more common these days – they played the initial episodes out of order. I’m not sure you’d really understand all that was going on in the first episode if you hadn’t read the book, but they’re slowly explaining things and have even had a couple episodes based upon the books.

One of those days

Start with a completely clogged shower drain. Mix in an unplanned cleaning of the tub after the plumbers got the drain cleared. Add a couple dashes of random stupidity in the form of asking a really, horribly idiotic question at work and trying to wrap up the vacuum cord without unplugging it. Top it off with a new bill saying last month’s was never paid, causing the realization that a couple bills were accidentally put in the paid pile and were now a little late. That’s a sure-fire recipe for a bad day.

I knew I shouldn’t have gotten out of bed this morning. *sigh*

I want…Friday 2007 #3

Well, that went well. As you can probably tell, I missed Friday. I’m still posting this, though a bit late. And I’m trying to remember a bit of my state yesterday when it would have been appropriate. See, I was thinking about this post throughout the day, and how it wouldn’t be a problem to post it since I was on my own last night, but then I ran some errands after work. Suddenly today, I realized that I never posted it. Well, OK, let’s think back to what I was thinking last night. And since I was struggling with the right one at that time, and I’m late, I’m giving you two.

I would love to get a good night’s sleep every night. I haven’t been able to sleep well since this year started. Daylight Savings Time has not helped that fact. It’s even harder to get to sleep at night because, even though I’m getting up an hour earlier, but body isn’t tired until when it used to be tired, which is now an hour later at night. So going to be based upon the clock time isn’t working so well. Combine with that the fact that I tend to wake up at around 4:30 for no apparent reason and toss and turn the rest of the morning, and I don’t end up with much sleep at night. I’ve been so tired and dragging this week. *sigh* I just want to be one of those people who fall asleep right away and stay asleep.

I want to be a better blogger. I want to be able to come up with things to say and say them in a witty manner. I don’t want to have a blog that sits and has no content. I don’t want a blog that bores its readers, or doesn’t get any readers because its so boring. I just don’t know how to go about doing that…

I want…Friday 2007 #2

(Author’s Note:  There’s not going to be a picture right now.  I may update this later to add one, but at the moment I don’t have time to go searching – if I could even find one for this particular topic.)

I really just want a break.  From all the stuff going on, the craziness of work, the messy house, etc. and so forth.  I want a day where I don’t have to do anything, but I’m also not avoiding doing a bunch of stuff that I don’t have to do, but really should be doing.  I don’t know if that makes any sense to you, but it does to me.