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 Wow, my Works in Progress page is waaayy outdated!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.