Busy!!

There is so much I need to blog about! So I'll make a "need-to-do" list and you'll be learning something! Specifically about books, gardening, blogging and a blog award I was awarded. Even though the blog award seems to be a pass it around type. Someone special to me says my little blog five people read is interesting. So yeah, my friends like me, as they should.

Need to do:

-state of the garden with photos
-photos and blog about my Smoky Mountains/Blue Ridge Mountains vacation
-write an article regarding genre fiction for To Grow On
-perhaps another article about my journey with books (which would take some time). I just read the damn things, for the most part.
-respond to my Oh My Blog award
-save the world?? Might as well throw that impossible task in the mix and see what happens at the end of the week. Anything is possible.

For now I'll be having a one sided chat with someone who disappeared on Google Chat. What is more important that an afternoon chat with me right now?

The Vegetable Garden

Lots of tomatoes. I love tomato sandwiches.

This year's garden is huge. I extended it another 10 feet. I wanted to be able to plant more than tomatoes and a few squash plants. So a pack of green pepper seeds was potted and nearly everything germinated. So I just added them a week ago with a line of Hummingbird attracting flower seeds. That have yet to pop up.

I had this urge to grow pumpkins and all I did was make work for myself. I had to dig more! So I took advantage of the vertical space of a dirt mound from when we built our house 17 years ago! Pumpkin vines can grow to 30 feet long so I needed "out of the way" space for them. One week later and I have seedlings popping up! Hopefully they will be ready just in time for Halloween. I do plan on growing some "prize" sized pumpkins. The packet states they can grow up to six feet in diameter! Now that is a pumpkin!!

Hot Tub Time Machine on DVD 6/29

I'm a funny person. I like to laugh, a lot. I find humor in all sorts of things. A lot of the times I am the only one laughing at stuff you shouldn't be laughing at. So I laugh at everything, stupid or not in movies. A stupid joke is not the same a a bad one. So moving on...

Hot Tub Time Machine (HTTM) is fecking hilarious. I think I saw it three times maybe four. What is that you say? Movies are expensive! Don't worry I'm not rich! I just play one at the theater. See that was stupid but gave me a laugh. I make myself laugh. *Ahem* So I let the ticket seller pry out dollars from my white knuckles at Cinema Cafe. It's the $1 night and $3.50 Wacky Wednesday. So I spent about $6 total.

I don't even know where to start with this movie! I'd start bootlegging it out the back of my car if I were morally corrupt! I could toss around a few quotes from the movie but you won't get it. Out of context it's NOT funny.

I can tell you a couple things. Rob Corddry is a thief! A comedy movie scene stealing thief! None of these trailers do the movie justice. Also a mustachioed Billy Zabka, the bad blonde guy in Karate Kid and Just One of the Guys makes an appearance. BUY IT. Have some drinks.


See The Trailer

Poems in a pocket.

Digging through my tiny storage room of junk I will need later,I found my old high school/early college journals. As one does I read them. This blog isn't about that well-worn subject. I'm talking about long lost poems tucked away in the pockets of notebooks that I could never utilize in school. Pockets in notebooks, I dare say it is frivolous! Excuse me, I've been reading fan-fiction of Pride & Prejudice. I might begin speaking backwards, too! I was pleasantly surprised to find one poem, that now, as I type this I can't find...

Ah, here we are. Yes, apparently I secretly plagiarized an entire song to no one but this scrap of paper. The words far off my style to be my own. Tucked away with my name to it and no date. I do often take stanzas from poems I like and put them somewhere to inspire some particular mood. So all's well and good. Then I see that it has the lines "I need you tonight" and all I can think is INXS. So it's hopeless as far as poems and lyrics go, when everyone is making it all so familiar.

One thing always leads to another. As Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently (holistic detective) would say "the fundamental interconnectedness of all things" has ruined my poetry. It was probably due to some alien five billion years ago wanting to fix a mistake or some other nonsense. *Poof* Here are humans scratching words on bits of manufactured wood pulp that secretly provide instructions on how to reverse the alien's mistake. So with that confusing bit out of the way. There are no infinitesimal poems. One cannot understand the purpose of some of the things we do, so just tuck it away in a notebook pocket.

In a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly...

There is a little section titled: Lauren Conrad's Literary Life. She has a three book deal basically writing about herself but it's all fictionalized in as much as a reality star's life can be. So she was asked about her taste in literature and hey, since she is writing all these books and wants to write for a living, one would think she would have some real books under her literary belt. Typically, some nice "meat and potatoes" tomes that have survived the ages and not just forced upon you in English class. I really haven't had to read too many of those myself but I've read all sorts and some good stuff, too. I highly recommend Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways. Marquez's work has been translated from Spanish but ay dios mio! those first two pages were...amazing! I would have to get a thesaurus to find a word I have never used before to describe it. There is no analogy to give you that isn't trite.

So I am digressing, let's get on with the books she said she has finished. As a teen Conrad read "a lot of Chicken Soup for the Soul" and instead of reading the required reading in school, she read a lot of SparkNotes. She has repeatedly read The Great Gatsby because she is obsessed with the 1920s and faked reading The Lord of the Flies. But wait! She did see the movie The Notebook and immediately purchased the book! There is more, she did read Chelsea Handler's books, two of them, because Handler doesn't have a "filter". She did download, for her Kindle, The Contortionist's Handbook"and is just a few pages in, recommended by her boyfriend, who is on a show I love.

So, yes my opinion is what a fecking idiot and my second opinion is maybe I should be an idiot, too. I do not have the ability to get on a reality show nor the wherewith to do so. It seems a person's 15 minutes is easy to come by if you a)urinate on someone, b)have sex with someone, c)show your underwear, or lack of, d)do any of the above on TV or e)be a sibling to anyone of the above.

Sadly, I was interrupted while ranting and lost my steam. Still, the point is made.

A Book Review...100 pages in

I think I might lobotomize and blind myself if I read anymore of Christine Feehan's Dark Prince. Torture. If I was into romance and needed some one handed reading it would be fine, it goes on for pages. I can't read this book fast. Three days I have been reading it and I think I am 100 pages in. I could have finished at least three books in that time.

I am mad at the book, it's kill me already pacing and far too much sex. I cannot read a book that refers to vaginas as "centers" while being moist, expanding, ready, sheaths, and other countless euphemisms! Can't they use something that doesn't lower my IQ and make me laugh. Not to mention a man's penis. It's always his hardness! She could feel his hardness or bulging hardness. Blah! No imagination. Boring. If I ever read romance again I need it smutty and quick. Not laughable. I can't finish it. I gave it plenty of time. I'd rather read my college economics course book.

The vampires sucked, too, and not the way I like them to suck.

Next up...Generation Dead. Teens and the dead won't stay dead. No vampires.

Then and Now

There isn't much to write about. I've locked myself in my room so I won't catch the stomach bug going around. Seems to have worked so far. It's made me feel a little uneasy though.

I've been having dreams of a lost friend that I let go. The guilt is manifesting.

I even might let go of another, at least in my heart. I'm still reconciling that. It could be a vacation. Although I feel a little relieved. Mind you I haven't put thought into anything, it's something that is just happening. I am surprised about my feelings though. I imagined it would be more difficult but it seems organic. It scared me a little the other night. I was in bed ready to sleep telling my subconscious to not let me dream of my lost friend again when I thought of the other friend. I imagined a brief conversation saying "I've moved on" and it was okay. So maybe some daytime thinking is required. Not late night, tired from reading vampire fiction thinking. For now I'll go with what's happening naturally. Seems to be working.

However do I find these books?

I've been reading vampire books with a few months off between binges. Teenage vampire books. Who knew I'd be on the slippery slope of vampire fiction. My book preferences tend to be more cerebral.

I read at least 25 books, 16 in two weeks. I was devouring them. Quite a few were just quick 2 hours reads so I wasn't spending days with them. Now I've read a book a day. More are waiting for me. I had run out of books and then somehow I discovered teen vamps. I don't know where they were hiding! How they didn't show up on searches, I'll never know, I think is a conspiracy.

I call it a secret pleasure and it makes me feel like I'm renting porn. Completely weird, I know. Constant trips to the library, unending hold requests, secret hand offs in dark alleyways!! I don't know when I'll read a normal book again. As soon as I read all the vampire ones.

I am reading the House of Night Series and Vampire Academy Series and nearly done with all.

Now another discovered series Blue Bloods...

Hopeful Knitting

I'd like to knit some scarves like these. I love cables, it's the best knitting.

I just need to find the perfect yarn.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

What more could and Austen and zombie fan ask for (besides a movie)? All of our other favorites zombified, of course!

I am eagerly awaiting my advance copy. Get your own when it's released in June, I believe.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.” So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Can she vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you’d actually want to read.

JANE AUSTEN is the author of Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and other masterpieces of English literature.

SETH GRAHAME-SMITH once took a class in English literature. He lives in Los Angeles.

Lost in Austen

I must tell you about this series from the UK, Lost in Austen.

A woman discovers Elizabeth Bennett in her bathroom then she leaves just as quickly. The next day is when they switch places, rather accidentally on Amanda's part but Elizabeth knew what she was doing. So Amanda finds herself in the middle of Pride & Prejudice her favorite story...ever. As they say in the UK it all goes tits up but surely it is made right in the end...

Mr. Darcy is fantastic he isn't crossing any fields like in the 2005 movie but he is a little over developed for a gentleman of the time. Not that I minded seeing him come out of the fountain all smoldering and wet looking like he was having his way with me with only his eyes.

Not that I find that attractive, men standing around being muscular and wet, some how, and staring me down. It doesn't hurt when the time is right for staring which is pretty much every time I sit down for a movie. So don't get me started on 300 and all those thighs running around in leather underpants. Which should be edited to my own personal liking with only thighs and butts for the most part. I'll take stomachs and whatever else as long as it's not all talking and fighting.

But yes if you are a devote Austen fan or even Jemima Rooper fan, make haste!! If you want to know where to find it, free and safely, ask me.

Such a liar.

I said I was going to do this and that but I haven't. Even with the computer I haven't done anything.

I will admit to too much British TV.

Do not be surprised if I develop an accent and have at least one of the following abilities:

-solving crimes only a genius can figure out
-a sharp-tongued comedienne from Ireland. "I'm a happy drunk!"
-super hero
-character from any of Jane Austen's novels...a TV series as well!
-a lonely janitor in space (with robots, I made) forced there by crazy scientists and made to watch horrible movies all while making you laugh hysterically at my jokes (not British)
-taking a holiday in Benidorm, Spain. It's all inclusive!
-one of two gardeners who happen to work where a murder always happens and I solve it!
-70's era Mr. wizard who explains it all without the Mr.wizard but stupid, wrong and fun all at once
-in space (again!) but in charge of a lackluster crew of hapless idiots trying to stay out of trouble but then again I am Simon Pegg's best friends, in real life.
-an attractive teacher with a great voice...oh I turn myself on
-psychic working at a Scottish University solving paranormal phenomenon. Yeah for finally being a Scot!
-a witch who gives birth to some devil child or whatever, he's so hot I'd fuck my own kid but too bad I die.

Let's not start with American TV. Nor my love affair at living at the top of the world. I know I would be miserable for the 9 months of unimaginable temperatures but it's irresistible for now and I like thinking of living there for a year. Driving on rivers and seas and for 4-6 weeks you can only come in by plane. The Dempster Highway into town during the summer is dusty, which is an understatement and there is just one gas station on it's 375 mile journey. They manage to have more than my own county has...go figure. I should mention it's Inuvik, Northwest Territories, Canada. If you have heard of Yellowknife and thought it was really far, Inuvik is further north.

I'm A, Inuvik is B...Canada is too big.


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Halloween 2008

Brooke





Logan



Both of them



The War Will Never End

Proposition 8 Protest 11/15/2008

We all must live equally in this world, allowed the same freedoms and rights. To remove or deny those rights to anyone removes your rights, as well.

I attended the protest in Raleigh, NC on November 15, 2008. I will continue to fight for the rights of all at future protests.

Find your local information at Join The Impact

Just a warning

I am going to post very, very soon.

I've become a reading machine and nothing seems interesting after entering the great worlds of the books I have been reading. Two series. I finished them both. So that means I read 8 books in a week. Then about 5 before that. I had to wait for them to come in. It sounds like a lot but one series was a quick read like 2.5 hours per book. Mass market author. So I want to talk about them.

Having to share a computer is annoying. I can't wait to get mine fixed. Then I can do all the things I love and I can focus. Focus being an important part. With TVs, PlayStations, kids (hey not mine!) and an adult in the background I can't tap anything other than annoyance.