Happy Car Day!

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.

I 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, 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.

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.

“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. 

I 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).

There’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.