Happy Car Day!

Posted by Cyn | Filed under Family, Health, Needlework, Reading, RPGs

Well, that’s what it felt like. Poor Sam had to take time off from work, because it was Pain Doc Day. The pain doc­tor is off in the wilds of Cobb County, because that’s where we lived when I started see­ing a pain doc­tor, and it’s darn near impos­si­ble to get a ref­er­ence to a new one (much less trust that a new one will, in fact, keep writ­ing pre­scrip­tions for the meds that actu­ally work). Then we headed to Big Ware­house Store to get the RXs filled, and also hit the bank and the post office because they’re just so much fun! And then it was time to go see the friendly ther­a­pist lady.

Hap­pily, we were able to game off and on dur­ing the day, which made the whole busi­ness far more pleas­ant than it would have been oth­er­wise. And we picked up a great big bag of fat-​​lady clothes from a nice freecy­cler! Some of them are so cool the girl is eying them cov­etously, so I need to be sure they go to my room and don’t wan­der off to hers.

While we were gone, though, a sweet fairy girl washed our quilt and com­forter! Sam put fresh sheets on the bed, so I’ll be crawl­ing into a nice, clean bed next to a freshly-​​showered, cud­dly man soon. That part of the day, I’m look­ing for­ward to!

I did a lit­tle stitch­ing today, still work­ing on the Fairy Tale Sam­pler by one of my favorite design­ers, Jen­nifer Aikman-​​Smith. Wow, my Works in Progress page is waaayy out­dated! I guess I should work on that sec­tion of the site after I fin­ish the Read­ing section.

Holidays Are HellI also fin­ished read­ing Hol­i­days Are Hell. I’m pretty much burned out on antholo­gies at the moment, so it took me longer to read the book than it should have.

“Two Ghosts for Sis­ter Rachel” by Kim Har­ri­son is a Hol­lows story fea­tur­ing Rachel Mor­gan, is a Win­ter Sol­stice story set before any of the Hol­lows nov­els begins. I’d give it 7/​10, but I know I’m going pretty easy on Har­ri­son because I like her and am a big fan of that char­ac­ter, in particular.

Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby?Lyn­say Sands “Run, Run, Rudolph” only gets 3⁄10. Yes, I gave the author another chance, despite not being impressed with her offer­ing in the last anthol­ogy I read. We all have bad days, right? Unfor­tu­nately, she added insult to injury by keep­ing the same gim­mick as the pre­vi­ous story, and it didn’t work so well the first time. She got more ridicu­lous and clichéd, even!

Mar­jorie M. Liu may have ben­e­fited from hav­ing her story, “Six,” placed right after that one, as I gave it 9/10. To be hon­est, though, I think that I was so grumpy about wast­ing time read­ing “Rudolph” that I was harder on Liu, so the fact that her story did so well is pretty impres­sive. I’m look­ing for­ward to read­ing more by her, and hope she has writ­ten more in this set­ting. Oh! This one takes place dur­ing the Chi­nese New Year celebration.

Mélusine“The Har­vest” by Vicki Pet­ters­son gets 8⁄10. This Thanks­giv­ing tale is in the same uni­verse as her Signs of the Zodiac nov­els, which were good. It’s a pre­quel, and gives the reader her first glimpse of a char­ac­ter who has been extremely influ­en­tial but always off-​​stage in the nov­els. It answered some ques­tions I had about another impor­tant char­ac­ter, too, while rais­ing more in other areas. It def­i­nitely stands alone (vital for a short story in an unre­lated anthol­ogy), but I’d strongly rec­om­mend that any­one who is con­sid­er­ing the series read the story, too.

I’m still read­ing Will the Vam­pire Peo­ple Please Leave the Lobby? It lends itself to being read a bite at a time, which is good, because I’m not inter­ested enough to keep at it for long.

The VirtuI just couldn’t resist start­ing The Mirador, the third novel in Sarah Monette’s Doc­trine of Labyrinths series, from the library books Sam brought home yes­ter­day. I found The Virtu at the library when I was absolutely des­per­ate for some­thing new to read, and it was so good that I kept read­ing it even after real­iz­ing that it was book two of at least three, and I hadn’t read book one (of course Mélusine wasn’t on the shelves), and book three wasn’t out yet. Nor­mally, I would have made a note of the author’s name and put it back on the shelf, wait­ing ’til all three were pub­lished to con­sider read­ing them in proper order. I don’t rec­om­mend read­ing them out of order, as they make far more sense read as the author intended, and I’m sure that there are things in The Virtu that I missed entirely because of not hav­ing the back­ground to twig to their impor­tance. The cover art on all three books is sim­ply gor­geous! I must remem­ber to look up the artist, whose name escapes me at the moment (and the book is across the room).

The MiradorThere’s the dryer buzz, say­ing that the com­forter is dry! I’m off to snug­gle wif mah man. I’m very glad that I don’t need to go any­where at all tomor­row, so I can have time to recover from today.

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Permalink | February 4th, 2008

3 Responses to “Happy Car Day!”

  1. lceel Says:
    February 5th, 2008 at 11:40 am

    I owe you a debt of grat­i­tude. You rec­om­mended (or at least referred to) Mon­ica Fer­ris and her book “A Crewel World”. My 82 year old mother reads a LOT. She also does cro­chet, knit­ting and and occa­sional cross-​​stitch. My wife found a book which turned out to be all three of Monica’s first three, in one. Grannie is halfway through already. And she loves her new ‘friend’ — Monica Fer­ris. Thanks again.

  2. cyn Says:
    February 5th, 2008 at 3:10 pm

    I’m so glad! I “met” Fer­ris on the rec.crafts.textiles.needlework news­group years ago. She par­tic­i­pates there and often gets input for her books (or she did — I don’t do news­groups much these days.)

    I got to meet her in per­son when she vis­ited Atlanta a few years back, and she signed the first three or four books for me. She’s a sweetie.

    All the books in the series are worth read­ing. Your mother has some good stuff ahead of her :-) There’s a related story in an anthol­ogy that’s all about dif­fer­ent kinds of crafts. I’ll look up the name of that one if you like.

  3. Hope Says:
    February 5th, 2008 at 11:14 pm

    I do enjoy your book reviews :)

    I really enjoy going to the post office, but that’s me. Last time I bought Star Wars stamps, which totally rock.