What was your favourite part about returning to school?

The NaBloPoMo prompt for today:
What was your favourite part about return­ing to school?

Back to School by Lel4nd (Leland Francisco)

That’s not an easy ques­tion. It wasn’t cool to acknowl­edge being happy to return to school each year, of course, so while I was glad, I didn’t really acknowl­edge it to myself. As a result, it is more dif­fi­cult to access those memories.

Even though I knew there would be end­less amounts of review each year, I was always excited about the pos­si­bil­ity of learn­ing some­thing new. After we left Gads­den, I was able to look for­ward to school library access, too. (The ele­men­tary school I attended in Alabama didn’t even have a library, and back then, the Gwin­nett County Pub­lic Library wasn’t the award win­ning facil­ity that it is now.)

I also had a secret hope that maybe this would be the year when I would meet some­one like me. Some­one else who didn’t fit in. Some­one who pre­ferred books to most peo­ple, who either didn’t go to church or was only there because his or her par­ents forced the issue, who would be will­ing to dis­cuss the ques­tions brought up by all the con­tra­dic­tions in the Bible and var­i­ous church’s teach­ings (and how preach­ers and other church lead­ers actu­ally lived). Some­one who didn’t think it was bad to be intel­li­gent, maybe even some­one who would admit to day­dream­ing and mak­ing up new sto­ries about peo­ple they’d read about, or com­pletely new sto­ries of their own. The kind of peo­ple you didn’t run into just because your par­ents bought houses in the same neigh­bor­hood, or went to the same church, or worked for the same company.

I did meet some­one who became a dear friend in the first week of my Junior year, on the bus, in fact. She even lived in my neigh­bor­hood! I con­tinue to be amazed by the fact that I said some­thing to her first, as she’s far more extro­verted than I have ever been. Dorothea is a trea­sure, and I will always be thank­ful for meet­ing her.

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Book Review: Night’s Edge

Night's Edge Night’s Edge by Mag­gie Shayne

My rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars
“Dancers in the Dark” by Char­laine Har­ris is set in the same uni­verse as the South­ern Vampire/​Sookie Stack­house sto­ries, but with none of the incred­i­bly annoy­ing char­ac­ters. How refresh­ing! Read the rest of this entry »

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Maybe It Isn’t the Flu

Katie seems to be feel­ing a bit bet­ter. She slept through most of the day, and just got up a few min­utes ago (right at the end of my and Sam’s date) feel­ing like she could eat some­thing. Solid food, even! That’s progress. Since she didn’t have any antivi­rals, I don’t think this was really the flu. She should still be much sicker if it was. I’m not at all unhappy about that. Read the rest of this entry »

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An Update Instead of a Book Review!

Cur­rent Mood:Surprised emoticon Surprised

I looked back at my recent entries and real­ized that it’s been a really long time since I posted much of any­thing sub­stan­tive. I’m com­ing out of a long period of being nearly zom­biefied thanks to one of my med­ica­tions. I didn’t real­ize that was hap­pen­ing, as I’d been on that drug for years with­out that prob­lem. Appar­ently, the prob­lem was a com­bi­na­tion of my dosage being increased last fall and inter­ac­tion with other meds. Unfor­tu­nately, I found this out because of an irre­spon­si­ble doc­tor who refused to see me as sched­uled when I was due for refills, and wouldn’t give me refills with­out see­ing me. Crash­ing off the max­i­mum dose caused insom­nia and seizures.

Yes, seizures. Some­thing I have never expe­ri­enced before, and I really didn’t need to add yet another square to my per­sonal Symp­toms Bingo Card. I fell right out of the bed dur­ing one bad seizure last week. We have a captain’s bed designed for a water mat­tress, but have a reg­u­lar mat­tress and box springs on top, so the whole thing is much higher than most beds. I have to use a step­stool to get in and out of bed. So falling out was much more painful than falling out of most beds. Hit­ting my fore­heard on the wheel­chair and whacked my chin but good on the lapdesk didn’t help. I have no idea what I hit with my right fore­arm, but it still looks like a per­son bit me. My left arm has funky bruis­ing and a cut, both knees are bruised and car­pet burned, and my torso is also bruised and sore. Lots of fun! Now my chin is actu­ally black, mak­ing me want to wash my face every time I see a mir­ror. I’ve never been able to feel the swelling in a bruise as dis­tinctly as this one, either.

I’ve seen a new doc­tor, who switched me to a bet­ter med­ica­tion. It’s help­ing to slow down the seizures, but I’m still hav­ing some. I’m still sleep­ing a lot less than I was, which is good. What isn’t good is that I’m hav­ing trou­ble sleep­ing well, period. Hope­fully that will go away soon.

Social Secu­rity is still mess­ing around with my case and hasn’t paid out a dime yet, or sent me a Medicare card. If you ever have trou­ble with the SSA, don’t even bother try­ing to find any­one to take respon­si­bil­ity for straight­en­ing any­thing out. Just go straight to your Sen­a­tor or Representative’s office. I’d been try­ing to get a straight answer from some­body, any­body, in the whole orga­ni­za­tion for about a month with­out luck. Less than 48 hours after con­tact­ing a Senator’s office, I got a mes­sage that my file is at the Bal­ti­more pay­ment office, that they have all the infor­ma­tion they need to pay out the claim, and that we should see money very soon now.

I was really hop­ing to get the Medicare thing started in time to maybe have a pow­ered mobil­ity device before Dragon Con, which would let me go and enjoy the con for the first time in years. The last time I went, we rented a scooter, so if the money comes through before the con I sup­pose we might try that again.

In more fun news, we fin­ished watch­ing Torch­wood: Chil­dren of Earth last night. Talk about depress­ing! Gwen and Rhys were the only ones who came out of that as heroes. And now I read that there’s going to be a fourth sea­son? Who the heck will be in it?

I’ve slowed down on read­ing books, par­tially because I can actu­ally do some other things for a change. The house is slowly improv­ing! I’m hop­ing we can even enter­tain again before long.

I haven’t been keep­ing up with most people’s Live­Jour­nals or any­thing else, so if there’s some­thing I should have seen, I’d appre­ci­ate a poke in the com­ments here.

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Review: The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance, edited by Trisha Telep

The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance The Mam­moth Book of Para­nor­mal Romance by Trisha Telep


My review


rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars
I’m extremely sur­prised by how much I enjoyed this anthol­ogy! I picked it up intend­ing to just read the sto­ries by authors I know I like—Kelley Arm­strong, Ilona Andrews, Car­rie Vaughn, Holly Lisle, Jeaniene Frost, Maria V. Sny­der. I had never heard of some of the other authors. A few names I remem­bered see­ing in other antholo­gies and not enjoy­ing their work.

I did, how­ever, delib­er­ately put myself in a tol­er­ant mind­set: this is a book of romance sto­ries. It wouldn’t be fair to judge them as any­thing else.

That worked rather bet­ter than it has in the past. I still got a lit­tle annoyed at hav­ing so much of each story ded­i­cated to cou­ples (and all het/​mono cou­ples, at that!) rather than some intrigu­ing world ideas, but man­aged to stay on track.

In the end, I only skipped one story—I just don’t like the Weather War­dens stuff at all. I found a cou­ple of oth­ers sub­stan­dard, but all in all, Telep chose very well. I def­i­nitely rec­om­mend this book to any­one who enjoys para­nor­mal romance (maybe even those who usu­ally stick to just romance), and most urban fan­tasy fans.

View all my reviews.

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