rissatoo... a work in progress

I've blacked out my user pic in support of New Zealand's Creative Freedom Foundation's Internet Blackout (Feb 16 -23). This is a movement by Artists Against Guilt Upon Accusation Laws in NZ (Not In My Name).

It just makes sense.

http://creativefreedom.org.nz/index.html

There's a little contest being held over at BittenByBooks.com... go check it out!! I've entered it myself, 'cuz I likes Caitlin Kittredge's books! :)

http://bittenbybooks.com/?p=4469

I've been down for a while and this last month things came to a head. I'm just barely getting by, and a blog just ain't in the picture.

I do a LOT of reading, 'cuz it's an escape, but truly I need to find a way to get my self a bit motivated.

Anyway, just like the last 4 months, this LJ is in holding mode...

It's unbelievable, but true. MTV is planning to remake The Rocky Horror Picture Show - with NEW songs!! The repugnance I feel at that thought just won't end. (Read more about it on Wil Wheaton's blog: http://tinyurl.com/6fbxas

But better yet, go to http://www.stoptheremake.com and sign the petition!

A 5.8 earthquake centered less than 10 miles from my house, about 30 minutes ago. Scary! A big jerk, then it just rumbled and rolled... it felt like a loooonnnngggg time, but probably only 5 to 10 seconds. Something fell in the garage, but the house seems OK.

Checked on my elderly neighbor, then tried to call family & friends, near & far, to check on them. All is well. *whew*

Huggles!

I don't think I should be allowed in a bookstore if I have a credit or debit card on me. If all I have is cash or a gift card, I have a limit I can see/feel/KNOW. But set me loose with plastic, and I can do a little harm to the bank account.

For example: The other day I stopped at Barnes and Noble to pick up a book. Just one, for my husband. He wanted a certain book, I was out, I could drop by the shop, no problem.

Ummm... WRONG! As I wandered around the store 'looking for his book', I had actually picked up 12 books in about as many minutes (only a slight exaggeration, truly). I could barely juggle them. And then I spotted another I just had to have. Disaster! 

Yes, I managed to drop them. Not only that, but I made a bit of a scene when I tried to catch a couple, but instead batted them at a guy standing a few feet away from me. Nice, huh? I apologized, picked them up, and realized I simply could not justify spending so much on books. Not all in a single trip, anyway! :)

So I sorted through them, picked out the ones I had to have right now and made my escape. I only bought 7 books... :)

My new books are:

Dead to Me by Anton Strout
Hotter than Hell by Keri Arthur, L.A. Banks, Heidi Betts, Kim Harrison, Tanya Huff, Susan Krinard, Marjorie M Liu, Cheyenne McCray, Lilith Saintcrow, Susan Sizemore & Denise Little, Carrie Vaughn and Linda Winstead Jones.
Undead and Unworthy by MaryJanice Davidson
Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich
Playing with Fire by Katie MacAlister
The Host by Stephenie Meyer
A Match Made in Hell by Terri Garey

I am trying to feel virtuous, in that only 3 of the 7 books are hardcover. So I saved money, right? Yeah.

One the positive side, after I read the books, they go to my sister & mom, so I feel justified that I'm buying books for 3 people, not just me. Of course, sometimes they've already bought their own copy.

Now, I have to ignore LJ for a few days while I get some reading done... :)

Found via irysangel :

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE. (Wasn't sure about this... since the books I LOVE are ones I've read, I did BOLD and Underline.)
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

 

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

my answer:  Yes!

Laurell K Hamilton's newest Anita Blake novel Blood Noir was released yesterday. I had pre-ordered it from Amazon and got it just after noon; started reading and couldn't pull my nose out of it until I was done... I think it was almost 5pm. Thank goodness we had other plans for food, since Anita & I weren't cooking dinner. LOL!

I'm not a book reviewer. I like almost all the books I read, and can't/don't want to go into all the why's and wherefor's that make a book a great read to me. That said, I really enjoyed this latest book in the series. I have only a couple complaints... no, that's too harsh... regrets, maybe?

I wish the book was longer. I had to wait a year for it, and I got less than a page-a-day! *pout*  All right, the length wasn't bad. I just want HUGE novels that take even me a week to read, that's what I want! But that's more my problem, since I read too fast. And now that I've been reading more author blogs, I understand better about how much work & time & effort goes into bringing even a short story to press, much less a full-length novel. And one in a series has to be even more work, since you have to stay consistent, or the fans of the world you've created will be much unhappy. But hey, this is my blog, and I can wish for the stars if I want, right? And it does lead to my next bit of discontentment:

The story. While I don't mind the sex (did I say 'don't mind'? I meant 'enjoy'! LOL) in the Anita Blake novels, I wish there was a bit more story to the story. It seems to me that the earlier books did have a bit more story & a bit less sex, and over time that has flip-flopped. The sex in both the Anita Blake & Merry Gentry novels is HOT, don't get me wrong. I even think I envy LKH a bit. [While some of it has to be complete fiction, you know that there has to be a basis in reality to build on. She must have much fun building. :)] I just wish we had more depth to the story.

The main thing is: I really liked Blood Noir, and am certainly looking forward to next year's Anita. (And to the next Merry Gentry, Swallowing Darkness, which comes out in November.) :)

I also got the newest Vicki Pettersson, The Touch of Twilight yesterday, but I've barely gotten started. So far, I'm enjoying it, too.

Buy both books & read 'em... you won't be unhappy!

Toodles!

This past week has been more stressful than usual. Sis & her family needed to move NOW. So our Sunday plans (and Monday, too) got canceled so that we could pack & schlep stuff for them. At least the weather was cool (even misty on Monday).

Then Tuesday I got stuff done around the house (sort of), and was planning to be back in schlep mode on Wednesday.

I got a phone call just after 4 in the morning. Mom (who is staying with sis right now) had a heart attack. She was on the way to the hospital and we didn't know anything more than that. Roommate drove me out so that Hubby could use the car (he had a little accident and the Pathfinder is no more). We spent the morning in waiting rooms, and Mom is OK now. She had a stent put in, and other than being weak, tired and a bit breathless, she's recovering well. Actually better than just well. They sent her home yesterday.

Thursday was another day spent partially in the hospital, when they moved Mom from CCU to a regular room, and then to sis's for more moving action.

Yesterday I decided to stay home & get laundry and other stuff done. It was hotter than Hades (OK, only about 100°, but still...) I got 4 loads of laundry washed, hung out, dried & put away. I made homemade Carnitas. I wilted and sweated and refused to turn on the a/c (can't get in the habit too early in the season, you know!)

Today, we had planned to go the the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, but the temps are going to be around 100° again, and there's just not enough shade and too much dust. So... another load of laundry (why can't it do itself, darn it?!?) and we're going to go to the movies this afternoon. 3 of the 4 of us want to go see "Harold and Kumar..." I think I'll just go TO the theatre with them and see another movie. Perhaps "Ironman", if it's starting at a compatible time. Or just about anything else. Yes, I'd rather sit alone at the theatre than to see H&K. Just not my kind of humor.

Maybe I'll head to Ontario Mills and do some power window-shopping in it's a/c goodness. And I'll try to influence Hubby to take us out to dinner so I don't have to heat the kitchen to 'unbearable' again.

Tomorrow... I dunno. It's supposed to be just a teensy bit hotter. Maybe we can go to the beach. Hmmm... but everyone else will be there, not too much fun with crowds. Maybe I'll go to the library. I'm just so exciting, right?

Well, hope your week was a bit less stressful than mine. :)

Toodles!

So, what's that saying about real friends help you move? Guess that goes double for family. *sigh*

Today (and probably several more days this week) I'm going to be helping my baby sister move. She put it off until the last minute, and I don't think she's even all packed. I shudder to think of the uproar at her house.

She's married, pregnant and has two kids. Also 2 indoor cats. And the one positive I know about the new place is that it has an extra 1/2 bath, compared to where she is now. I sure hope it's larger, especially with the new one to come. But I haven't seen it yet.

What is it about being the oldest that makes me want to do so much for her, even though she's an adult with her own family that she takes care of? Why do I worry that she makes the wrong choices? Why do I think it's my job to make it all better? How can I stop feeling guilty that I don't/can't do enough for her?

Oh well. I guess it's me. I'm gonna go work my butt off, slogging boxes & stuff hither and yon. Some of my responsibilities are on hold for a while. Other than laundry and some groceries, nothing I have to do has a hard-and-fast completion date, so they'll come first.

Wish me luck!

Toodles!

As promised, some blathering...

Yesterday was yard sale day.

This had been planned for a long time. A lady down the street organizes the homes on our 2 block-long stretch of street, encouraging everyone to participate, putting up signage & listing it on the internet in various places. We had over 24 houses (from my quick head-count when I ran to the store for ice.) This encourages a LOT more traffic than a single house yard sale.

So, I knew it was coming up, but I didn't really start gathering my old crap together until Friday. I didn't even go through any of the boxes/piles in the garage, or sift through our clothes for things we no longer fit/like to wear. Pretty much I just went through stuff inside the house. And since I waited until the last minute, I didn't clean stuff up properly. And I wasn't the only one... a couple friends brought over some of their stuff to sell, too, and it was in pretty much the same condition.

I'm an idiot. While we made around $200 from the most pitiful piles of junk. If I'd spent the time to go through more stuff, cleaned it up and organized it, I can't imagine what I would have made. On the other hand, we did give a nice donation to the SBCLP, and I no longer have that stuff cluttering up the house! SCORE!

Also, I had gotten up at 4am and baked cookies - chocolate chip & peanut butter. Boy, if I'd only baked more! I was sold out of cookies by 11am. (The sale started officially at 8).

Our city permits are for 2 consecutive weekends, so I'll probably be hosting a one-yard yard sale next Saturday, for friends/family that didn't have the chance to bring their stuff over this time. This will also give me a chance to go through the closets & garage. And bake many, many more cookies. I betcha I don't make near as much money, though.

And then there's that miser-ly part of me that cringes when I sell something I'd paid $20 for, for 50¢. Or less. <cries> Oh well. Keeping looking at that bright side, girl... Now you have room to buy/collect/acquire more stuff!! :)

Toodles!


Oh yeah... and maybe next week I'll remember to put on sunscreen, so that my face and neck and arms don't have this nice lobster-red look. That'd be great.

I just received Jeaniene Frost's ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE in the mail from Amazon! Hooray!

Now I'm gonna go read it.

Ciao!

Today is FREE CONE DAY at Ben & Jerry's, and since the weather in So Cal has been warm, warm, WARM the last several days, I am definitely in the mood for some yummy B&J's.

You can go to www.benjerry.com to find out if there is a scoop shop near you that is participating. I guess not every shop does. Silly them! They may lose a little moolah today, but I know the ice cream is severely addicting, and will bring people back again and again and again!

How do I know this, you ask?? Ummm...My name is rissatoo, and I'm an addict. I had my first Ben and Jerry's ice cream while living in New York ...(but I think the shop was in Greenwich, Ct) about 20 years ago.' And I'm pretty sure it was a Free Scoop Day, too. I'll have to ask my sis if she remembers.

So, go enjoy Free Scoop Day. And then go back. And buy a cone and another cone and a t-shirt and a mousepad and a pen and a.... you get the idea. :) You'll thank me later.

Toodles!

...and rissatoo toddles off to enjoy her free cone, knowing she has done well today.

Hope you have a great day and an even more fabulous year!

Toodles!

SMALL FAVOR, by Jim Butcher

I quite enjoyed this book. I like Harry Dresden a lot. He's not perfect, and so he's interesting. I also like the world that Butcher has created. I'll admit I miss the SciFi Channel show, even if Murphy wasn't "right".

I just wish (as usual) that I didn't have to wait so long until the next book comes out. But c'est la vie.

In the same Amazon package, I also received 2 Ilona Andrews' books, MAGIC BITES and MAGIC BURNS. I read the first this morning, and I liked it - a LOT! If I didn't have things that must be done today, I'd be reading the second one right now! Kate Daniels is an interesting character, and I can hardly wait to learn more about her and her world.

Sometimes I hate that I read so fast. On the other hand, I don't have a lot of long-term retention, so that means I'll be able to re-read these and enjoy them later. I'll do a quick read through of all the Dresden Filess before the 11th book comes out. And since it's probably a year until the next Magic book, I'll re-read them next year, too.

I have a bunch of new books pre-ordered through Amazon, and I can hardly wait. I just wish I had more money so that I could explore more new authors. I have to mostly stick to the tried-and-true, but when I hear about a new writer from several sources, I'll try. Thankfully the Ilona Andrews Magic books lived up to the hype! :)

Have a fabulous day - read something!

Toodles!

I'm just finishing up my copy, and I'm loving it as much as the first in the series.

Which book? Rachel Vincent's "Rogue". This is her follow-up to "Stray", which came out last year. (The next one is "Pride" and won't come out for another year. *sigh*)

This series is about Faythe, a werecat, and... well, no. I'm not going to tell you any more than that. Go get the books and find out for yourself!

They're GRRRRRR-EAT! (hee hee hee hee hee)

Toodles,

I thought it might be interesting to blog. Not that I have anything much happen to me on a day-to-day basis. And while I am a very prolific reader, I am not a writer (though when I was younger I did dream of being one). So I find myself avoiding the computer, even to check email, because I feel badly that I haven't posted in my blog.

What am I worried about?? It's not like I'm getting graded on this. I didn't sign a contract, or anything, saying I would post X times a week. I doubt many (any?) are reading what I've written so far. No one is waiting with baited breath to read what happened next, or what happened at all. So what's up?

If I am going to be honest with myself (and why not, for the same reasons posted above), I think I'm scared.

Scared that I will let too much personal information out into the internets. Scared that someone will read what I've written and scoff. (At me, at my temerity to write where the public might see?) Scared that I might be good? Scared to enjoy actually writing.

Two reasons I can think of why I might be scared of actually writing:

1. When I was a teenager, several times I bought diaries. I would write in the new one every night, telling it my secrets. And then my little sister would find it - wherever it was hidden (she was a much better finder than I was a hider), and not only read it, but share the contents with her friends. Of course I was teased. So I would throw out the diary (like it was the diary's fault it was found!) and buy a new one... this one with a lock! (or a box - with a lock!) After 4 or 5 times of this happening, I stopped buying & keeping them. I didn't want to be teased about the boys I liked, or the girls that snubbed me (I wasn't popular), or how angst-y my teenage life was. So a blog kinda pushes the same buttons the diaries did. Only this time *I* am the one sharing the contents, leaving myself open to teasing.
2. In school, I loved to write stories. Not papers or reports, stories. I was invited to join the newspaper staff in high school because of my writing. That was cool. I enjoyed it so much that I declared a Journalism major in college. But I didn't stay in college (no money! Oh, but if I could do it again, I'd get myself in hock up to my eyeballs in loans, if I had to, to finish & graduate.) And while I tried to write after leaving college, I didn't have anything to write for, even when I had the time. And I certainly didn't have the self-confidence to submit anything to a publisher. So I stopped writing at all. And not only have the stories in my head atrophied from not being brought to light, and my writing skills deteriorated (commas, anyone??), but that self-confidence-thing has gotten even worse.
   

How do I remove the scariness of a blog and writing, so that I can maybe exercise my story-making muscles?

Well, first thing is this: I have now told myself that I don't have to blog every day - or even every week. Just when I feel like I have something I want or need to say. This is actually a big step, because I was feeling a bit diary-ish and pressured to say something daily.

And next, I have to convince myself that it's a good thing to have this outlet. That even if lots of people read this (or none!), it's better to be writing than not, because I did have joy in the creative process and I need that outlet and joy in my life again. Something to be proud of.

This step may take a bit longer.

But I have no time constraints. No one is grading this. And teasing? I think I don't need to worry. 'cuz even if someone decided to read and mock my writing here, I won't know them and it won't matter. (That was NOT a gauntlet thrown, by the way!)

Wish me luck.

Toodles!

Not very political, but some. I'm heading over to the Libertarian Party of California office to help out today. I wonder how much I'll really get accomplished?

Now... if only the traffic will behave (both directions!)

Wish me luck!

Toodles

I've been following a couple people on Twitter, so I thought I'd sign up for it myself, see if I like it. Then I realized that I don't actually text that much, and I am pretty boring, so why would I want Twitter? But, hey, at least I cornered the name "rissatoo"!

See, I've been rissatoo online for at least a dozen years. First with A-O-helL, but all over the place - yahoo, gmail, myspace, etc. I'd be rissatoo on facebook, too, but they make you use your real name. :p

I'm always surprised when I can't sign up as rissatoo somewhere because the name is already taken. Maybe even a little offended, as if that other rissatoo has stolen my name. I know, I know, it's silly. Especially since my real name is nothing like rissatoo, or any form of it. But rissatoo is mine! I chose it for me, and I don't wanna share! (I once signed up for something as "therealrissatoo", but I hated that and deleted that account after a short time. Yeah, "thereal..." What was I, 13? What in the world was I thinking?)

rissatoo is actually the only true nickname I've ever had. My first name (Kelly) never lent itself to anything cute (Kel? ha!), although it does rhyme with words that are very hurtful when sing-songed at a chunky 9-old with glasses (smelly, jelly-belly, etc.) My hubby gave me a nickname back when we first met and he was showing me how to use BBSs. (Yep, THAT long ago, way before the world wide web & internet were everywhere.) He based it on a Laurie Anderson song that I love, "Babydoll". But I am not now, nor have I ever been, even remotely a "babydoll". (Although I guess I should be glad he picked that song, not "Birdhouse in Your Soul", which was another favorite back then. LOL)

When we signed up on A-O-helL, they suggested a nickname be used, rather than a first/last name combo. I tried to think of one, but everything I thought of was really lame or already taken. Finally, I was trying names of female protagonists from some of my favorite authors. Still no go. I typed in "rissa" (Rissa Kerguelen from F.M. Busby) and got told that "rissa" was already taken, but I could be something like "rissa543487". I groaned out loud and whined to my husband, "Why can't I be rissa, too?" He grabbed the keyboard, typed it in, and voila! I am now rissatoo (no capital 'R', please!)

Every now and again, I wonder. What if I'd stopped and whined at another name along the list? "menollytoo" and "honortoo"? They just don't have the same 'something' that "rissatoo" does to me. Whew. :)

Well, that's enough blathering for today...

Toodles!

P.S. Are you on Twitter? Let me know so I can follow you, too!

P.S. In case you don't recognize the names. "Menolly" is from Anne McCaffrey's Pern stories, first found in "Dragonsong". "Honor" is from the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. I think the first book is "On Basilisk Station", but the first one I read was "The Short Victorious War". If you haven't read them (the series and the books) I highly recommend them.