Ten Alternate Realities

Time once more for Mama Kat's Writer's Challenge. (Which I wouldn't miss in spite of my scarcity earlier in the week.)

This weeks topics:

1.) List of 10 things blogging has taught you.

2.) “Oh please make this a topic for Writer’s Workshop. Pick your favorite song and record your own personal bathroom concert series. I’ll totally do a concert series, I bet I could get my hubby or brother to join in. Now I just need a song… (inspired by Kerri from I’m Just Sayin)

3.) “Sometimes when it’s hard to see with the eyes I’ve been given, I strap on my camera and pray for new ones. I did that yesterday. It helped.” (inspired by Emily from Chatting At The Sky)

4.) “let he who hath no sin cast the first stone…” Is there anything you have judged prematurely, only to find yourself walking in the same shoes later? (inspired by Stephanie from This Blessed Life)

5.) List your top 10 “Spring Trends”. (inspired by Tricia from Desperately Seeking Silence)

#1 - Ten Things Blogging Has Taught Me

• Bloggers come and go; rare is the 3+year blogger.

• Newbies are always welcome.

• A touch of graphical panache helps the words go down.

• There is no predicting what will be popular with readers.

• Taste is a individual thing.

• Subject matter can compensate a lack of writing skill, at least temporarily.

• Interesting blogs (to me) feature lives and interests disjunct from my own.

• Blogging takes a back seat to life and work for most of us from time to time.

• Blogging is addictive in the sense of feeling guilty when you haven't written for a few days.

• Powerful blogs are emotionally raw and uncensored. The rest of us have to be amusing or erudite to make up for lack of raw.

#2 - Bathroom Concert

Given that I am not even allowed to sing in the shower here by myself, there is no chance of me singing and exposing the world. I want at least some people to remain amidst the living to read this blog. {*grin*}

#3 - Camera Eyes

My approach is a bit different. When I can't see with the eyes I have, I put on a new pair of eyes in my imagination and look at the world in a new light. I find that is usually very helpful. With a camera, you can only look at what is really there in a different way; with your imagination you can look at what isn't really there in a way that illuminates what is really there in a different way. One might say that they are two different means to reaching the same end - a different way of seeing reality.

#4 - Getting Stoned

I don't know if I have ever cast the first stone and then been stoned myself, but I have certainly had moments of utter non-understanding and cluelessness towards others. There is one judgment that lingers powerfully; friends and I have discussed it several times over the years.

When we were young, we often thought of some of our classmates/friends as weird, wild, flighty, or just plain out there. This judgment was often made without much deep thought or attempts at understanding. Now more than 40 years later and with additional information in hand, we realize that many times they had home and life situations that made them the way they were.

Somehow you always assume that everyone has a life like yours, free of abuse and exploitation. Unfortunately, that isn't always true. I doubt that it would have changed anything, but I rue making those judgments and not being able to spot the underlying problem. Even one understanding friend could have made all the difference in dealing with the problem they faced. It might have kept those who took their own lives amidst the living.

At least there is hope that it *is* getting better.

#5 - Spring Trends

Fashion advice? From me? I don't think so.

Two Completely Unrelated Topics

This evening was interesting. The county Republican caucus is Saturday, so it was time to finish calling all the delegates to see if they had any questions for me. That is one of the things you get to do when you are running for a partisan office. L joined me in calling the ~150 delegates over the last two evenings. The hard part for me is not to talk too long: most people enjoy talking. I suspect a lot of that is because we all know each other out here in the rural west. That makes it just neighborly to ask how the wife and kids are doing and if the fields are looking good and ...

On a completely different topic, I saw an article on the skinput system today and cannot decide whether the idea is brilliant or just plain spooky. For those too lazy to read the article (and/or too spooked to watch the video therein), the basic idea is to use a body mounted projector and the sounds produced by tapping on your skin to turn your body into the latest version of the touch screen. As a physicist I was intrigued by the applied science of using longitudinal and transverse propagation of waves in and on the surface of the body to deduce the point of tap. Amazing.

So what is your opinion? I still much prefer the direct skull electrode readers, but then I am a closet fan of Frankenstein too.

My idol!

Failure To Be Asked and Compromise - What a Mix

Time once more for Mama Kat's Writer's Challenge.

This weeks topics:

1.) Ask someone who loves you what one of your weaknesses is.
(inspired by Summer from Le Musings Of Moi)

2.) “I need all the help I can get and if repeating something healthy and inspiring to myself several times a day helps, then I’m going to do it!” -What affirmation makes you feel better? WELL THINK OF ONE.
(inspired by Shanna from Smiles, Miles, and Trials)

3.) I Wanna Be MADE! You remember the MTV series where nerdy high school kids are made to be popular and what not? If you could be MADE into anything…what you be made into?

4.) I’m reading a book about dogs and kids…it says you may need to compromise some of your dog standards when choosing a dog that will fit every family member’s needs. I think that’s like marriage. What did you compromise when you married?

5.) Why didn’t they ask you? Write a list of 5 or 10 sentences that begin with the words ‘No one ever asked me’; then, write about one of them in detail, or use them all in a poem, or use several in a personal description of yourself.
(writingfix.com)

I'm going to go with #4 and #5 this week.


#4 - What did you compromise when you married?

I like to listen to music, preferably loud, as I drift off to sleep. L on the other hand is one of those people who requires near absolute silence to fall asleep. (Once asleep, she is impervious to most noises). You can see where this is going. It was one of the bigger compromises of married life for me to accept the no-noise-of-any-sort-at-bedtime rule.

Even now, more than 34 years later, I still miss listening to music at bedtime. There is something so soothing about listening to Led Zeppelin or Pure Prairie League as you drift off to the land of nod. Any Jackson Browne ballad acts as a soporific for me. Just about any tune to stop the continuous running of the brain is a great sleep aid for me. Call it the primitive power of music if you will.

Now it is an entirely different battle for silence at night. The combination of L, Molly (the dog), and me snoring is enough to wake the dead. There is nothing worse than waking up in annoyance at someone snoring only to realize that the snorer is you. Add into it the occasional bursts of night time flatulence from Molly and you can truly enjoy a premier sleeping experience at our house.

Maybe I can convince L to let me listen to music just to drown out the snores at night? It's worth a try! (Of course, it won't do anything to the olfactory effects from the dog, but as they say: half a loaf is better than none. Maybe Bizarro got it right in reverse.)

#5 - No one ever asked me

No one ever asked me ...

... to be the centerfold in their magazine.
... to be the cap-person on their human pyramid.
... to join their ballet company.
... to serve as their fashion consultant.
... to run the anchor leg of the race.
... what I wash first in the shower.
... if I have ever crawled through a window.
... to retrieve something fallen into a narrow crevice.
... to sing for them.

We can eliminate the interest of some of these right off the bat. Regular readers already know why no one asks me to sing. (The curious might want to read this entry.)

Retrieving things from a small area is out for the simple reason that my hands are large. "How large?", I hear you ask. Well ...

I have never been asked if I have crawled through a window because unless it is a patio door, it isn't going to happen. I have been asked numerous times to hoist someone up to the window - does that count?

I wash my head first in the shower, then the body, and then finally shampoo the hair (what there is left of it). Just seems like the logical way to go. I almost always shower rather than use a bathtub. Might have been too much exposure to the humor of my dad's railroad work colleagues when young. They were fond of asking the semi-rhetorical question "Why would I want to wash my head in the same water as my @**?"

The rest of the failures can be traced to one simple fact: I am a really big klutz. When you are 6'5" and 300lbs, you get asked to play football and rugby, not dance on stage or pose for the centerfold. {*grin*} And when you wear size 16 shoes, your ballet career is over before it even began. Likewise, unless it is a strongman competition, you are not going to be asked to tread and kneel atop anyone.

Finally, I am noted more for my sense of anti-fashion rather than fashion. After all, I have been seen in public wearing these:

I think that explains it all!



P.S. If you have ever wondered how those review blurbs for new books come about, venture on over to Eos Books - The Next Chapter and see how my review of BRAINS yesterday was blurb-a-tized. I have never seen so many ellipses in my life. {*grin*}

And Now For Something Completely Different

A while back I won a pre-press proof copy of Robin Becker's "Brains - a zombie memoir". The coveted copy arrived and I sat down ready for a good read. Now that I have read, you get to listen to my meandering review. {*grin*}

I wasn't quite sure what to expect since this is Ms. Becker's first novel, not to mention one of the few zombie novels I've read. After all, it is difficult to picture a moldering decaying zombie fixated on eating brains as a sympathetic protagonist. I did indeed find the first few chapters an unenthusiastic read. But then I began to care about the trials and tribulations of Jack, the lead zombie. That was all it took to have me hooked.

The storyline is simple. An experimental vaccine developed by a scientist (Dr. Stein) for the military is somehow released into the wild before the "bugs" have been worked out and spreads a viral wave of zombie-ism throughout the world. We are introduced to the chaos via the narrative of Jack, a former college professor turned zombie (who just so happens to have eaten his wife early in the saga). Jack is a rarity for a zombie - he retains the ability to think. He also has a really sarcastic and snarky world view that only gets more pronounced once he turns zombie. Since he retains the ability to think, he keeps a written diary of his journey through zombieland - the very story we are reading.

As Jack navigates the battle between human and zombie and his insatiable need to eat brains, he collects a raggedy crew of exceptional zombies that have retained various skills not found in the garden variety zombie. Ros has retained the ability to speak, Guts has retained the ability to move at something other than the zombie shuffle in spite of the fact that his guts are duct taped in, Joan who has retained a deep sense of compassion for her fellow zombies and skill with a mending kit to keep them put together, Annie who has retained the ability to shoot a gun with accuraccy, and others. Along the way, Jack adopts a lady that had been pregnant when she was turned into a zombie, thus introducing the first zombie pregnancy and birth to the zombie clan. (The new born Issac serves as the symbol of hope to the gang.)

The story then becomes one of survival as the remaining humans work hard at eradicating the zombie hordes. (It seems that being shot in the head is fatal to zombies.) Along the way, the Jack's goal mutates from simple survival to a quest for equality as the human and zombie populations shrink in the post-apocalyptic world.

Surprisingly, the story becomes more compelling as we become familiar with the band and all their foibles. The twist of allowing some zombies to retain various abilities like speech and normal ambulation serves well as a metaphor for the stuggles of the the differently abled amidst us. I was sucked into caring about the developing characters - a mark of good writing. The denouement is a blood bath, both of the zombie crew and Dr. Stein and humans. As the survivors sail off to a brave new world, I was tempted to throw the book across the room. It left so many questions unanswered.

Beyond the plot and character development, I loved all the literary allusions. The mad scientist named Dr. Stein? The alpha leader named Jack? The sharp shooter named Annie? Ms. Becker's roots as a professor of English and writing have served her well. I also liked the rather cynical view of academia presented by Jack in his reminisces about his life in the pre-zombie state. They ring true to a reprobate like me.

This is an amusing and gripping read, especially the latter half. What keeps me from calling it a great read is the inconsistency of the zombie-ism presented. Zombies are driven to eat (brains), but they do not self repair and continue to fall apart. Thus we have a logical contradiction between the denouement of the novel and the fact that given enough time, zombies as presented here will simply rot and fall apart. It also made the birth of Issac a real contradiction in terms. How does a baby that does not grow older and is rotting grow up to be a symbol of hope?

Fair warning - like most zombie tales, this one is full of blood and gore luridly described. If that bothers you, you may not want to read this book.

A Popourri Of Random Thoughts

The wacky weather continued here. Remember that it was snowing and we had blizzard like conditions on Friday? Well, today it was in the lower 70s and blowing. Tomorrow? The forecast is for rain turning into snow. Let's hear it for spring time weather in the land of the Rockies! Not as bad as the below, but close!

Speaking of the Rockies, the Son and L ventured down to Arizona to watch a couple of Rockies' spring training games (and get some sun burn going). Sounds  like they had a great time and also enjoyed a real nice photo day. Both L and the Son are somewhat rabid baseball fanatics. Me, not so much. I much prefer football, but even I can get wound up in a pennant race at the end of the season. Here's hoping I get a chance to get wound up this year.

The downside of the lark is that they arrived back in the mountains at about 4am this morning and both had to work today. When I talked to L about noon, she was really happy that her first meeting of the day had been in a coffee shop so she could go for the 16oz latte. She needed the buzz.

Back to getting some real work done. It seems that the days are way to short to get everything done I need to. Especially when the day is warm and sunny like today so Molly and I can get some sun as we walk.

I'll leave you with these nuggets of folk wisdom:

Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician.


Never be afraid to try something new.
Remember, amateurs built the ark,
professionals built the Titanic.


Even if you are on the right track,
you'll get run over if you just sit there.


In just two days, tomorrow will be yesterday.

Let Sleeping Dogs ...

I've been tied up with construction and permitting and planning and ... for the new humane society facility, so I have missed a few bloggy sessions. In the course of some of the meetings, my collegues and enemies couldn't resist sharing a few funnies, so now I get to return the favor to you.

First up is this classic exercise of dog naming:

Of course I thought the cartoon was hilarious - don't you?

Then as we got down to nuts and bolts and the contest to name the facility once we finish construction, this funny made an appearance:

It explained so many things. How could I have missed it?

On the weather front, morning looks to be interesting and sloppily wet. After hitting the upper 60s the last few days, the wind is blowing from the north and it is not supposed to get above freezing tomorrow (today) and snow between 7" and a foot.

Time to meander off to bed.

In Answer To ...

In answer to the question about yesterdays post - I am a Republican. It is in some senses a requirement here.  28.4% of the registered voters are Democrats, 70.4% are Republican and the remainder are split amidst the various other groups. Most rural agrarian communities like this county are strongly Republican with a smattering of Democrats. Most of the voters are like me and do not vote along party lines, but for the best candidate for the job. The office I am running for is currently held by a Democrat who is term limited. In many respects, running for county commissioner is like running for a non-partisan office. The process of getting on the ballot is different, but the party ideologies are not the focus, local issues are.

Tonight's precinct caucus was interesting if for no other reason than the fact most offices have at least two or more candidates on the Republican side. The national and state senatorial and representative races seem to have  pulled a full scale onslaught of ideologues of all bents. The real problem is that many of them have forgotten the true test of reality - facts. Makes for interesting political speeches, but really inane debates. Likewise, there is an active pursuit of the governorship with a bit less of a loss of sight of facts.

All told, the caucus for the precinct I live in took slightly more than an hour. It would have taken less than an hour, but some of the standard speeches had to be made by party loyalists not running for office. We started by electing the precinct officers for the coming year. Then there was a straw poll for the gubernatorial candidates and the senatorial candidates, and after that it was all in selecting who the representatives to county assembly would be. Our precinct was apportioned 14 seats and we had 16 attendees, it could have been a race. Fortunately, one pair of attendees planned to be out of town, so the remainder were named as delegates to the county assembly. We then spent a little time drafting those not in attendance to be our 14 alternates. We also had to choose our dedicated delegate to the state assembly. Only three people were interested, so we elected one and named the other two as candidates for the at-large representation from the county. That was it for the official business.

In the tradition of all good precinct meetings, a couple of jokes had to be told at the start of the meeting. Although a bit stale, this warhorse was the winner:

Remember back when Ronald Reagan was President? We also had Bob Hope and Johnny Cash with us.

Now we have Obama as President and no hope and no cash!!

Time to get back to reality. I'll leave with this to appease all the Democrats that read this blog:

Manic Monday

A dreary day today, especially as L departed back to the mountains this morning. Not only is Molly dog laying around looking like the world has ended, it was drear and overcast until this afternoon when the sun peaked out. I love the oddity of the weather at this time of year. Saturday was warm (60's) and sunny, Sunday was overcast and cool (30's). Forecast is for Thursday to hit 70 followed by snow and cold on Friday. Must be March in Colorado.

Tomorrow is precinct caucus day here. That assures entertainment for the evening as I attend my local precinct caucus meeting. The caucii (which sounds better that caucuses even if wrong) don't have a huge impact on local office seekers like me. The caucuses feed into the county caucus which does little beyond determining ballot listing order for the primary ballot for local offices. So all the effort and dirty work and fund raising and ... come up in June and July. Looks to be fun.

(For those who don't remember, I threw my hat into the ring for the office of county commissioner a while back. It is my first foray into partisan politics. Non-partisan political offices like mayor just require the signature of 50 voters and then waiting for the election. It's a bit different once the donkey and elephant get involved.)


Back to preparing documents for a Thursday meeting related to construction of our new facility (for my day job as executive director of the humane society). I'll leave you with a quip I heard on during a conference call today:

Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings.

Can you tell I've been talking to construction contractors?

Variegated Topics

It seems that whenever I do haiku on this blog, I get more comments than any other time. Maybe I should become a total comment hog and specialize entirely in bad haiku?

In any case, many of you commented on the pictures with yesterday's haikus. To assuage your inner child as to whence they came, let me explain. I wrote the haikus first and then turned to Google Images to find pictures that illustrated what was in my mind's eye as I wrote. I took none of the pictures. To give credit where credit is due, here they are with the information I have on their origins.

First up, this beautiful picture

came from Mr McLellan's Sci and Bio page associated with the Nayland School in New Zealand. Photographer uncredited.

Next,

is a picture of Donner Pass, looking back towards Truckee Lake taken from Serene Musings, no photographer given.

Lastly,

is a photograph of a stream (near Death Valley, I believe) by Chris VenHaus.

Time to get some real work done. L is coming home from the mountains tomorrow early. Yippee! In honor of the even, yet another haiku:

L coming from on high

Joyous melding into one

Reunion is sweet

Haiku To You Too

Time once more for Mama Kat's Writer's Challenge.

Being short of time and long of tooth, I choose to persue

3.) Write a Haiku that describes what you love about an ordinary day.
(inspired by Jade from Now that I’m no longer 25…)

as my topic of choice.

The Ordinary Day Haikus

Morning comes upon us

Life renews again

A gift from the sun

Snow atop

Rain below

The mountain reigns

Hot dry itchy wind

Cold wet soothing stream

Balance is inherent

Ringing in the Night

Last night was one of those nights that can be panic inducing. At about 2:30 am I heard my cell phone ringing down the hall in my office. I figured it must be a wrong number or someone who would leave a message. But, a few seconds later, it rang again. So I got out of bed and trudged down the hall to my office, well prepared to take the head off any idiot calling at that time of night without a good reason.

When I looked, the calls were from L. The worry ticker started up right away. It is not usual for L to call at that time of night, let alone be up and about then. I immediately called back to see what was going on, picturing some really disastrous event of happenstance, maybe even a death of someone we knew. So can you guess what brought on these multiple calls in the wee hours of the morning?

L had called to tell me that at least one of the scenes with L and the Son as extras in a movie (that was shot here several years ago and just released) survived the editors knife. L and the Son had downloaded the movie and just finished watching it and noted that the scene was preserved and I was thanked (in the rather anonymous form of "Thanks to the Mayor of XYZ").

That was indeed interesting news, but it clearly didn't warrant the heart attack side-effects of calling me repeatedly at that time of the night. At least not from my point of view. Needless to say, my response fell a bit below the level of excitement desired by L. It was the kind of news that I would have dropped an email about and called it good - especially in the middle of the night.

As any married man knows, failing to display the desired amount of enthusiasm when called by your wife any time of the day or night is punishable by freezing to death. It makes no difference that you had been in bed for hours and had to be up in several more. It even makes no difference if you are in the middle of a meeting deciding the fate of the universe as we know it. You should always be prepared to exhibit the precise amount of excitement desired. Otherwise, the icicles coming out the phone may very well cause brain damage or even death.

Took me hours to warm back up.

Jealous?

Bet you thought I fell off the face of the earth. Go ahead, admit it.

And I wasn't even staying here!

My question for the day is: Do you ever feel jealous of people with certain talents? I do.

I cannot listen to anyone who can sing with feeling a sense of jealousy, no matter how moving the music might be. I suspect that the jealousy comes from the fact that I am and have always been a poor singer. Bad enough that the Son and L banned me from singing in the house, even in the shower. It could be because I have an absolutely atrocious sense of pitch, it could be because I am tone deaf, it might even be because I never can remember lyrics. (Which is strange since I can remember whole books close to word for word.) In any case, I feel envy and jealousy when i hear a great singer or choral group.

Another group that I envy and feel jealous of are proto-gymnasts. You know, those absolutely flexible and lithe little people who always look graceful, even if they are tripping down a flight of stairs. Given that I was 6'4" and 250 lbs. by seventh grade, it is safe to say that I never went through a stage of being tiny, nor lithe, nor graceful. The phrase big-galoot comes to mind. So whenever I see a proto-gymnast, I envy them and am jealous. Primarily because I wonder what it would be like to go through life not tripping over things and never running into door ways and walls, not having to consciously maneuver through a crowd so as not to crush someone. The world must seem like a very different place to those lithe little people.

So who or what skills do you feel jealous of?

The Vain Blindsided Ego

Time once more for Mama Kat's Writer's Challenge.

This week the prompts are:

1.) You’re so vain. You probably think this post is about you…don’t you?
2.) Tell us about your trip!
3.) A difficult conversation.
4.) Can you almost stop time with your words? Write about the fastest ride you ever had, but describe only a few seconds of it…as though it was happening to slow motion.
(writingfix.com)
5.) Who blind-sided you? Write about a time someone caught you totally off guard.
(writingfix.com)

I will cogitate and then scribe, scribble, set forth, type, etc. on #1 and #5 for the nonce.


#1 - I don't think the post is about me, I know it is! After all, there could be no more interesting subject for a post than the illustrious trio of me, myself, and I.

Your post is about women's feminine products - it is still about me. I just know it. Even if your post is about some horrible TV show I have never seen such as American Idol or Lost or The Bachelor or ... I still know it is about me, if for no other reason than to annoy me.

Every since the moment of my birth, I've known that it is all about me. There was never the slightest doubt in my mind. But I am glad that you are finally catching on, it is tiring to keep reminding everyone to stay on topic -ME!!!

Now if you don't mind, I have to get back to checking out what everyone is saying about me.

#5 - Blindside

Verb	1.	blindside - catch unawares, especially with harmful consequences;
	2.	blindside - attack or hit on or from the side where the attacked person's view is obstructed

So let's go with a combination of definitions 1 and 2.

Way back in the time of the dinosaurs, I played football. It was so long ago that it was in the first years of allowing freshman to play on the varsity teams. I was one of the fortunate (or unfortunate) persons selected to play on the varsity during my freshman year. Given that it was the first year that frosh were allowed to play varsity, there was a certain amount of animosity from the upperclassmen about the intrusion onto their turf.

One fine day we were practicing kickoff coverage. You know, where you run like mad at each other from great distances with the goal of killing each other and then tackling the guy with the ball. The whistle blew signaling the end of the drill and I started to relax when I heard my name shouted from behind me. I turned just in time to be blindsided by the person whose place I had taken. He had a 30 yard run to get up to speed and imparted all of his momentum to me. I must have flown 20 feet through the air to land on my butt. Of course, the perpetrator was laughing his rear end off. He thought it was pretty funny.

I filed his poor behavior away under the revenge area of my mind and continued on. The chance for revenge came the very next day during practice, but I didn't even get a chance to do anything. Seems that his behavior wasn't well accepted by his classmates (and my teammates) and they took turns blindsiding him in every drill we did that day. He wasn't real bright and didn't catch on until near the end of practice and so suffered a number of trips through the air. I actually felt a bit sorry for him.

I never had another bit of trouble with him. It was a great lesson to me about the power of teammates.

Now I come prepared for all blindsides, for in politics and fund raising, everything is allowed. {*grin*}

Marriage Omen

Do you think this marriage will last long? Or is it a shining example of a marriage made in heaven?

HYANNIS, Mass. (AP)

A newlywed Massachusetts couple spent their wedding night in separate jail cells after police said the bride tried to run over an old flame of the groom.

Police say 22-year-old Hyannis resident Marissa Ann Putignano-Keene tried Monday to run over the other woman and the woman's son in a parking lot. The intended victim later told police that she had previously been in an intimate relationship with the groom.

Police say the couple got married at Barnstable Town Hall and split a bottle of Champagne afterward.

The bride was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. Her
husband, 37-year-old Timothy Keene, was riding in the car with her and was charged with disorderly conduct.

Both were released Tuesday. It was unclear if either had hired an attorney.

Is this what comes next?

Remember, the family that attempts drunken vehicular homicide together stays together. Or maybe that should just be homicide?

In any case, at least it isn't a case of TMI like a lot of blogs and TV.

Luck Prevails

Do you ever feel like you are just too lucky at times?

I follow a couple of sci-fi and fantasy publishing house blogs. From that simple act  follows the corollary that there are book giveaways from time to time. I would normally assume that the chances were slim-to-none of me winning any given contest. But ... in the last several months I have been fortunate enough to win Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb (In hard copy along with a really cute pocket dragon broach that I gave to L.), Royal Exile and Tyrant's Blood by Fiona McIntosh, and Wilderness by Dennis Danvers.

Then this morning I saw a chance to get a galley copy to review of BRAINS by Robin Becker. So I fired off an email and by this evening found out that the galley copy will be here soon. It feels a bit like a visit to Disneyland when you are a kid - all your wishes coming true. This is especially a living dream for a Science Fiction and Fantasy aficionado like me. Given that I already have a library of hundreds of volumes of the genre, there is nothing better than getting new books from authors old and new to read. I keep waiting for someone to come along and pinch me so I wake up.

Now if only I could find a few detective fiction publishing house blogs to follow and have similar luck with them. My reading worries would be over!