It's math, isn't it?

So I'm reading a story about Keith Richards, the miraculous survivor, in The New Yorker. Comments are made concerning aging rock stars (these guys are pushing 70) and their paunchy aging fans. Ok mea culpa. I look a lot more like that elephant that Mick rode onto the stage in Memphis than I used to. And yes Keith that did happen, despite your interview averring that the elephant idea had been abandoned. I was there. It wasn't abandoned.

Anyway, back to the point. While talking about aging fans, the writer goes on to say that all the fans "donned apres-office relaxed-size jeans, PAID THE SITTER, parked the mini-van in the lot, and . . . shimmy . . ." Excuse me? Pay the sitter? My baby is 22 years old. Even given that the last tour was 2007, he was still 19. Never mind the egregious verb shift between past and present committed by the writer. Can you not do math?

I am at the lower age range of original Beatles/Stones fans. I was 9 years old when the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan. That means lots of fans have children even older than mine. Someone 19 then could have a youngest child who is 35 now.

Getting older mostly sucks. Just so you know. But a perk of aging and your children aging, which delighted me for years, was leaving the children without having to get a sitter. Just intending to walk out the door without planning two weeks in advance made me so happy. And kids get to be teen agers very quickly. The "middle-aged" fans all at least have children old enough to stay home alone, even taking into account all the oops babies. And delayed pregnancies. By and large middle-aged people don't have 5 year olds.

And I won't belabor it too much longer, but sharpen your math skills when you depict grandparents too. It is possible to become a grandparent at 36 (18+18) or less I suppose. Most people are not the older couple in the Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving picture when they become grandparents. They are mostly in their 40s or early 50s. And able to dance in the kitchen with their granddaughters.

And just so you know, Woodstock was 41 years ago. Do the math.

Bah bye Nascar

I'm breaking up with Nascar. It's been a long and tumultuous relationship. I've finally seen the light and decided to call it quits.

Nascar hasn't been meeting my needs for a long time. Nascar didn't listen when I tried to explain my need for a new champion. It became defensive and hostile when I pointed out its faults. It was a bad boyfriend. I'm moving on.

Back in the day, our relationship was fun. Owner-drivers like Alan Kulwicki could beat the mega-teams. My favorite driver had a shot at the championship and actually got one in the days when one team didn't hog them all. Drivers with finesse and ability won the races. Even that champion hog Dale Earnhardt was colorful. And a good driver. And added something to my enjoyment, even if it was only to boo him.

Mostly, back then, people won who were good at this. Who were good in any car they got in. And they made it enjoyable to watch. I really didn't like the Intimidator, but watching him catch a loose car out of a turn was truly poetry. He was that good.

I even had a relationship with Nascar when the races were on Wide World of Sports. I watched Ned Jarrett before he was an announcer. I loved the Allisons and I still can't watch the reports of Davy's death. I've been faithful and patient.

The current record holder is NOT that good. He wins on strategy and rules interpretation (cheating). It's like watching a computer run. It's boring. He's boring. It's golf.

Other people have tried to tell Nascar that falling ratings would not be helped by having this little twerp win again. I tried, reporters tried, other drivers tried. I expected one of those usual speeding, too long/too short, unapproved parts calls on the current champ to save Nascar's relationships with its fans. Nascar did nothing. They were busy fining the driver most like Earnhardt for flipping someone the bird, inside his car. And keeping Bowyer out for some weird reason. And letting some people go at it boys, but not others. Seriously?!!! This is what you thought would save our relationship?

With regret, I'm moving on. I love racing, but I'll still have Formula One, Indy, drag racing, and rally. I have taken Dr. Phil's advice to heart--you can only be an abused doormat if you let yourself be an abused doormat. You took me for granted too long. We're breaking up.

Happy anniversary to me

No not that one. That's another month away. This marks one year that I decided to begin exercising every day for an hour. And I didn't give up in the middle. And I lost 15 pounds.

I am so pleased with myself. And I'm shouting it from the rooftops because I am usually my own worst critic. I don't write enough. I don't clean enough. I don't garden enough. I haven't finished everything for Christmas yet. You get the idea.

And I never stay with things like this. I've started an exercise routine a zillion times. This time it worked. Several things contributed immensely to my success this time.

First, Fittv. Simply knowing an exercise routine was available basically whenever I wanted took the time element out of the equation. Having a DVR to expand the time choices available helped tremendously also. So I could (and have)do a routine from 5 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon. Pick one.

My own schedule being as flexible as it is also made it great. I never lost the only chance I had to exercise by having a bad night's sleep or having to be anywhere. I could do it anytime.

And my own determination improves all the time. I still don't like doing this, but I do it anyway. I even managed to swim most days on vacation.

And in January, David started using the treadmill every morning. It encourages me to keep on keeping on. Having someone else to commiserate with really helps.

So it worked for some reason. And I'm so very glad it did. Both of us look and feel better. It literally improves the quality of life.

Back to Ripley

Last night D and I were discussing book shifting. We are attempting to group unread books from books that we love but have read. It's a constantly changing landscape. I daresay a landscape based on mountains because there are very tall piles of books. Very. I am reluctant to part with books that I might read again, a recurring problem as winter approaches. Boredom for me is almost always solved by re-reading.

Anyway, D wanted to move Patricia Highsmith. We have a Ripley omnibus containing the first 3 Ripley novels. I objected because I re-read old Tom on a fairly regular schedule. Almost as often as I re-read Holden Caulfield. So Ripley stayed on the bedroom bookcase.

Then I read Charlaine Harris' book and blog. Apparently, Jack Reacher was put on trial as a panel discussion at Bouchercon. And found guilty. Murdering and what have you. Bad form you know. This made Charlaine think about all the various protagonists who are seriously flawed. Not in that personal, self-destructive way. No the ones who are a danger to the people around them. As she said, she'd want Reacher around on a desert island to work his magic, but if she had a broken leg and he was hungry, maybe not.

So I started wondering about all the characters we love in spite of ourselves. I really, really want Tom Ripley to get away with murder. I want Dexter to continue to rid Miami of pond scum. And as a nod to Charlaine, I don't want people staking my favorite vampire, Eric, even though he kills other people pretty regularly. Examining this impulse closely makes me feel slightly immoral.

My rooting for the bad boys goes beyond actively wanting these murderers to go free. I detest the goody-two-shoes of literature as well. My first memorable experience involved The Heart of Midlothian by Sir Walter Scott. I wanted to shoot the heroic Jeanie Dean. Her dilemma involved telling a lie to prevent the execution of her sister or going all around the houses to prove her sister's innocence. Seriously, she knew the girl was innocent. Tell the lie and be done with it. The other method required her to walk all over Scotland, importuning people. I still shake my head after reading that. Expediency, girl. The end result was the same and much less exhausting.

I know most of my loving these rascals means that the authors are just that good. I understand the murdererer's motivation and approve of it. Mysteries being little moral dramas allow the reader to see the world in black and white. Bad guys and good guys are easy to recognize in this moral drama. The good guy wears a white hat. He has good intentions, even if he uses unconventional methods. He hunts down the bad people. You know you cheer when the bad guy dies. And really you shouldn't. But isn't it delicious to play god? And after this ghastly election, isn't it refreshing when the good guys win?

Hype and all that jazz

Sooooo got home Halloween night after a weekend with the grandkids. I managed to miss trick or treats twice. Des Moines, being obdurate and hindbound, insists on having trick or treat on All Hallow's Eve Eve--October 30. I wasn't home that night, so I missed the little beggars. We left Chicago Halloween afternoon before the right thinking people of Illinois start to trick or treat. Wow. Couldn't have planned it better.

We left earlier than planned and got home in time for Ghost Hunters live. I enjoy Jay and Grant and the things that go bump in the night. One live outing on Halloween was at the Stanley hotel, the inspiration for Stephen King's The Shining. It really was fun and spooky and featured all the regular TAPS guys. This one was at a train station in Buffalo. I'm not really familiar with it, but they have been there before. The original plan for our weekend would have gotten us home almost as the program was ending. So this was an unexpected bonus.

And what a disappointment! The entire show was a thinly veiled promotion for every other show on the Syfy channel. So in a half hour time you might get 6 minutes of the ghost hunters and 24 minutes of ads and hype for other shows. I can see promoting the other ghost hunter shows--international and academy. I can even see the other two paranormally kind of shows. But wrestling? On Syfy? Seriously? Unless they wrestle ghosts or on a spaceship, what is up with that?

And by promoting, I would mean that they are the commercials in the show. I do not mean that they are the show as they were last night. And I just have to ask, is Josh Gates some executive's brother-in-law? nephew? son? The man is ubiquitous. And is grating on my last nerve. I think Jay and Grant should get a percentage of his earnings as his agent, since he is the constant third wheel at their events. Wouldn't watch a show starring him if it were the last thing on tv. And so very unhappy to see him as presenter last night.

And frankly, if the people who were on were supposed to encourage me to watch their shows, they failed miserably. The wrestler and whoever the chick was stood around looking disengaged and cold. They might as well have worn sandwich boards that read "My agent told me to show up here. I have no clue whatsoever." Is it that difficult to pretend ghosts scare you?

The end result was that I turned it over to Dirty Jobs that was a repeat because one more commercial for wrestling would have sent me over the edge. Syfy, you did a rotten job with this, so I'm watching something else next year. I used to enjoy these, but this sucked. I apologize to Jay and Grant, knowing these decisions are not made by them. Syfy, get a clue.

On being a writer?

I have always thought of myself as a writer. I wrote stories for my own entertainment from the age of about 9. Dreck by and large. And in my teens I endured the great poetry experiment. Take it from me, as a poet I make a great plumber. Lugubrious and maudlin doesn't begin.

A friend and I one summer each carried a three ring binder. It contained the continuing saga of marrying our favorite rock stars. We read them to each other every day. It passed a whole summer for us. We wrote every day. A new episode. Portrait of the Artist as Virgin.

During confirmation classes, I wrote letters for my friends which were mash notes to the boys they "liked." Everyone wanted one. I hasten to add none of the aforementioned missives ended in the hands of the boys they were addressed to. So my attempts at being Cyrano didn't actually win the heart of anyone. Just a little sexual release for all involved.

But somehow, I didn't actually keep writing the way I might have. As a young girl, I wrote every day. Every day. Nonsense and ephemera, but writing nonetheless. It's an exercise every writer needs. And I stopped sometime around having children.

I began this blog to get myself back to what used to be the most natural thing in the world. I wouldn't have thought of it as discipline. It was just part of me. Who I was. I feel like someone who has suddenly taken a strange disliking toward her favorite food. What gives?

Time constraints are not the answer. I have time. I lack inclination. I used to enjoy creating stories for myself. Now, not so much.

I am about to decide I have morphed into a reader. No day goes by that I don't read. And I don't mean the backs of cereal boxes. I've read 50 books this year and innumerable magazines. And that seems to fill the space that used to only be filled by writing.

It all makes me a bit sad. But I'm resistant to any more improvement projects for me at this point. Nagging myself is getting old.

So hello being a reader.

Mind Games

I've lately been astonished at the mind games I have to play with myself to get myself to exercise every day. I can't believe I have to use reverse psychology on MYSELF. And that it works.

Last week, I had to tell myself that it was fine if I didn't exercise. Ok, let's go on with the day. No exercising. I went to the bedroom to change into gardening clothes. Are you really gonna do this? kept running through my head. Really. Really. I changed into exercise clothes and exercised.

Some days I tell myself that I'll just start with the first 1/2 hour and when I'm tired I'll quit. This one even I recognize as a trick when I'm trying it on myself. Once I start the routine, I'll always finish. There is no stop. It's not finishing that is the problem. It's starting.

Remember the cartoon with the devil and the angel perched on someone's shoulders? My approach reminds me of that. I have to give the devil his due (literally, even as cliched as that may be) before I can motivate myself. The bad has to come out and be acknowledged before the good prevails. How sad is that?

Yesterday, I had a sleep issue. The alarm goes off at 6, and D and I hit the floor to our respective "gyms." I decided I had all day to get done, so I'd go back to sleep. Woke refreshed, looked at the clock, and wow, it was 15 minutes later. I ask you--15 minutes? I might as well have just gotten up and gotten on with it.

My other trick is to promise myself a reward at the end. Usually this takes the form of a bubble bath. It's not like I can offer myself eggs benedict or some other high calorie/high fat reward. The reward needs to be tangible and yet calorie free. And cheap. If I quit liking bubble bath, I'll be in serious trouble.

I'm glad all these little mind games work, but I find it disheartening, too. Why can't I do this because it's good for me and will help me in the end? Why isn't that enough of a reward? Why is it so hard to convince myself to do something in my own self-interest? I'm astonished at the number of ways human beings do not understand what's good for them. How something "in the long run" is a difficult and sometimes impossible concept.

But the mind games worked for another day. Check an hour of exercise off the list.

It's not about you

I've been thinking about raising kids. Mostly because I'm not doing it anymore. My friends are exhausted by their weekend running around. Soccer, baseball, softball, mock trial, etc. etc. It boggles the mind how much time and money children eat. And not just eat.

When I had 3 little boys, all under 6, I was totally overwhelmed. I was changing a diaper, cooking a meal, or driving someone somewhere constantly. I insisted on cooked breakfast, adding to my load. And I washed clothes constantly. And towels. I had some crazy idea that towels and pajamas could only be worn/used once. You do the math. 3 towels, 3 pairs of pajamas every day. Admittedly, one of them wet the bed, so he had to wear clean every day. Looking back, the towels were a self-inflicted burden.

At this time, David worked for the Associated Press. He was never home. In fact one week, he covered an ATF seige in Northern Arkansas that lasted a week. He did not come home the entire time. There was no break from child-raising drudgery. And I mean the janitorial aspects. Having kids around is delightful. Changing diapers, cooking mac and cheese, doing laundry is drudgery.

Anyway, in the midst of this idyllic time, I had an epiphany. I had just settled on to the couch for a few minutes off my feet when Clark asked for a glass of water. I started to bitch him out for waiting until this moment to ask and thought to myself--it's not about you. He'd much rather be able to do this himself. He can't help it he is two and can't reach the sink. And truly, he didn't get thirsty to bug me.

I can't say that I was never short-tempered with them again, but that moment helped me from them on. It crystalized raising children for me. It was my job to be about them. I could be about me another time.

And now I can't see how it wasn't clear to me sooner. Child raising is about well. . . children. From the moment they come home from the hospital, they call the shots. They decide how often they sleep, when they eat, when they are sick. You are along for the ride. And the sooner you throw out that you can decide, the happier you become. Swimming up stream, fighting the inevitable takes more out of you than going with the flow. You can't make them sleep. You can't make them eat the things you want. This is another little person with opinions. Obviously caving to their every demand is not on. But some things are more about them than you.

Pretty soon, they go off to school all day. They leave. Then, it's all about you.

and the new blog is . . .

shereadshereads.blogspot.com. A new blog David and I are doing about, strangely, what I read and what he reads. We should be able to cover a wide range of books, since we so seldom read the same ones.

So all the literary stuff (such as it is) moves over there. I've read 25 books so far this year, which seems a little low to me. I need to kick it. I'll continue to rant and winge on this blog.

If ya got nothin' else to do, check out She read; he reads. David has some cool stuff about Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Steve Hockensmith. I'm on about Patricia Highsmith, David Hewson, and Carolyn Hart. Mark Billingham is up next because I'm reading it really fast.

The blog gives us both a chance to contemplate why we like what we like. I won't comment on any thing I hate because those I won't finish. I can't predict what David might do. It'll have something for everyone.

Imponderable questions

Why does the nicest grass from my lawn only grow in my flower beds?

Why don't cars going by who want to "share" the music on their radios play songs I like?

Why does it make more sense to fire, excuse me, lay off 5 people who make $50,000 instead of one making $250,00?

Why do weeds blend in except when someone else is looking at the garden?

Why are the beautiful days for being outside so windy?

Why do I always have free time for things I really don't want to do, but a scheduling conflict occurs during things I want to do?

Why do my roses fight back when I try to weed them?

And most importantly, why does no good deed go unpunished?

dieting and why it will drive you spare

Without making a huge deal about it, my darling husband and I have been trying to lose weight this year. I started a long while ago, but he has more than caught up and passed me. Men!

So I'm cranky, starving, and self-critical a lot these days. I'm totally overwhelmed that as I've gotten older, I'm hungry all the time. I mean ALL THE TIME. I even eat breakfast now and again. My younger self could go for days without eating. Literally. I used to diet by fasting for two or three days. It was a little difficult, but nothing like this. It frustrates me to have to adapt to something I didn't think would be an issue.

The positive surprise is that I'm exercising every day, monday-friday for an hour. And I never give myself permission to skip. Ever. I missed last Monday because I was in the car, but I had been swimming for exercise the day before. This astonishes me almost as much as being hungry all the time. I've never ever stuck with exercising for longer than 2 months before. I started this on November 4. Still going strong.

But the most frustrating aspect of dieting is the scales. It's like the number comes randomly out of the air. It can be one you've seen before, one you haven't seen for some time, one you see day after day after day after day. This morning I was particularly disgusted with myself for my eating this weekend. I've been incredibly cavalier about making food and drink choices. I'd lost a pound this morning. I don't get it. When I really feel I've been on top of everything, I gain pounds. When I don't, I lose.

I have lost the weight I intended to when I started. But 10 more looks really good. I am consoled by not weighing what I weighed when I was pregnant with Brendan. I still weigh about what I weighed pregnant with Aaron. Boo hiss.

And so it goes. I know I'll do better this week. Or not.

Poetry

I had the oddest literary moment today. I am now in awe of my memory which works in most peculiar ways.

I was sitting at this computer this morning, waking up. I had my coffee, my iphone, my solitaire game. This constitutes waking up for probably a half hour every morning. Usually I'm planning my day and having other mundane thoughts. I am not ever quoting poetry or thinking of anything one could call literary. If anything echoes in my mind, it's some top 40 song or since I've just been with my grandchildren, the songs from Blue's Clues. That's all my mind is usually up to before caffeine.

Suddenly, the line "Lay your sleeping head, my love" came floating into my brain. Immediately I grasped, half asleep, that this was not Blue's Clues. But it eluded me who had written this. I was awake enough to know I'd heard it before and didn't think I'd come up with it on my own.

Well, Google was my friend today and told me this indeed was Auden. Strange I thought since I'm not that fond of Auden because he's not a 19th century poet or Shakespeare. I would have sworn that I only had bits of memorized verse running about in my head from the 19th century and Shakespeare. It's not something I usually memorize. But wait it gets stranger.

So my brain did know the title and first line since of course they are one and the same. Ok, not that unusual. Basically that means I've heard of the poem. But what made this come into my head at all, first thing in the morning? This is odd for me. I needed to find this poem and read it to figure out where my brain was going with this.

Luckily my Modern British Poetry was right beside the desk. Here comes the weird part. I read the poem and noticed the third and fourth lines "Time and fevers burn away/ Individual beauty from/. This had been a quote in the book I was reading yesterday. My brain stored it away and kept working at figuring out where it came from. I would have told you that I didn't know this poem enough for the third and fourth lines to be imprinted on my memory. I don't think I could have quoted the poem through the first four lines. But somewhere in my head, they are there.

So a weird but nice beginning to the day. Nothing like a search for a poem to set you up for a day of racing and basketball. And to affirm that not everything from graduate school has leaked out.

Erin Go Brach

It's my favorite holiday--St. Patrick's Day. I'm gonna celebrate with some corned beef and cabbage. No Guinness, however. I only like Guinness on tap. And I'm not going out.

Looking at the brown in my yard makes me miss the Emerald Isle. It really is emerald. It's green everywhere. It positively shimmers. Could be all the rain. On them it looks good.

I am casting about for a new home page. I know that I'm a throwback, keeping my home page up all the time, but somehow that helps me maneuver the internet better. Don't ask.

Anyway, I'm open for suggestions. I don't want my blog. I don't like to re-read my writing except to edit it. I hate to hear my voice on something that is recorded. So Me is out.

I also need a page with less busy-ness than most pages have. My computer is no spring chicken anymore, so I don't want to wait for flash to load and ads. Tempus definitely fugit when waiting for these to load.

No other news from me. Still having withdrawal from a weekend with my grandchildren. Now that's what I need for a home page--Boo and Mouse all the time. Erin go brach.

awards from the recent trip

I have a few awards to hand out from our recent slog to and from Florida. 11 states in 8 days. It was er um interesting.

Most irritatingly ineffectual: the airlines. We drove because neither of us could face the prospect of being herded like cattle, missing connections, and starving. I'm not afraid of the airplane falling out of the sky. I'm afraid of it not getting there to begin with.

Worst traffic: St. Louis. Hands down. We drove through many urban areas on our quest to see the earth instead of snow, but this was the worst traffic we encountered. And it was Saturday morning. God knows what it is like during rush hour.

Best hotel staff: Fairfield Inn, Olive Branch, MS. Wow. From the recommendation for dinner to the new pot of coffee at breakfast, they never missed a trick. Very nice.

Worst weather: Iowa and Illinois--a dead heat. Hazy, snowy, rainy, icy. Yuk.

Best weather: Nashville and Tallahassee. Eating outside. Outside! I'm still not quite clear why we came back.

Most changed location: Jackson, MS We used to live there, but I saw not one thing I recognized. Nothing.

Least changed location: Eastern Arkansas. All of it.

Best food find: Dimitris in Columbus, IN. Huge platter of gyros. It made our tummies happy.

Biggest disappointment: Not seeing Art. He was on assignment. It was too bad.

Most interesting new acquaintances: Abby and Jasmine, the lab and German shepherd. Those girls are nuts, but they kept us company all day.

It was a lovely trip. Now let's have us some spring.

Food, glorious food

It struck me the other day that I read food blogs quite often and watch Food Network constantly, but I never write about food. And I love food. I like making it and eating it. I enjoy shopping for it. And I like reading about it. I read cookbooks from cover to cover. Let's see if I like writing about it.

I realized during a conversation with David the other day that my favorite foods are berries. I really love strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and even huckleberries. But I adore raspberries. My grandparents grew them when I was growing up, and I ate them fresh off the canes with cream. I love them in custard pie. Raspberry sauce on ice cream or pudding improves any pudding or ice cream.

Sadly, I rarely have them. They cost the earth in the grocery store, especially enough of them to make into pie or sauce. I order almost any item on a menu that features them to get a taste of the berry goodness. Unfortunately, they are often paired with chocolate, which I don't like at all. It pains me to see them ruined in chocolate sauce. Or adorning chocolate cake. Yuck.

My other favorite fruit is figs. At Farallon in San Francisco, I ordered panna cotta. It came with fresh figs and was the best panna cotta I have ever had. Mostly here in the tundra, I can only get dried figs. I like those too, but fresh figs are the best.

I've made myself hungry now. Snacks please.

Twenty ten

Maybe it's the snow. I'm sure it's cabin fever. At any rate my only reaction to anything right now is to rant about it. Sorry but I seethe at the sight of the snow at the end of the driveway. And I'm not even driving in it.

Anyway it's twenty ten now. Not two thousand ten. Twenty ten. Tell me what you call this year: 1610. One thousand, six hundred, ten? Of course not. Sixteen ten.

And the other zero year is the same. When did the Battle of Hastings occur? One thousand sixty-six? No. Ten sixty-six.

Help me out here. Start spreading the word. Twenty ten. Simple.

Word puzzles

I adore word puzzles. I'll work almost any sort. D and I used to get the Sunday New York Times and work the Sunday crossword by passing it back and forth. A great way to spend a free Sunday. I miss doing that.

But I am particularly fond of crostics. You've seen them. A quotation is in a grid. There are a number of word clues that fill the grid by assigning each letter in the clue a number and each clue itself a letter. So each open box in the grid contains a letter and a number which correspond to the clues. The cool thing is that the first letters of the clues read together comprise the author and title of whatever the quote is from. This gives you so much more to work with than an ordinary crossword. So I find them easier to complete since there are a multitude of ways to approach them.

So obviously there are constraints on the people who make up a crostic. Like knowing that each clue word is already assigned a first letter. That narrows your choices a bit. And my hat is off to them for being able to construct the thing at all.

Here is the rub, however. There are two things that irritate me no end and make me feel the crostic builder isn't playing fair. These sins amount to giving a clue that cannot be solved. And to me this is like asking who was president of the USA in 1961 and having the answer be Calvin Coolidge.

The first one that really annoys me is being obtuse about a relatively common word and assigning it a meaning it doesn't have. Today the clue was "chew the fat", slang, 4 letters. The answer was "chin". That is wrong on sooooo many levels. First no one says let's go outside and chin about the Packers. I'm going to load Facebook and chin with my friends. I'll give you chin wag as a noun, but chin is not a slang verb for chatting. I don't care that it fit. It's wrong. And obviously, there are many definitions of chin which a solver might recognize as meaning "chin". Pick one.

"Variant Spelling" also raises my blood pressure. I know how words are spelled. I'm pretty good at that, in fact. I do not, however, have a clue about misspelled words. If a word is spelled correctly, there is only one way to spell it. Misspellings, by their very nature, take a myriad of forms. And most of the time these aren't really variants. They are words which almost fit the puzzle. Again pick something that really works.

Come on, play fair. Oh and you Jeopardy contestants out there, quit picking the categories backwards. Or in the middle. Thanks.

writers

So I've spent the morning reading other people's blogs. I know that is really productive. But someone who shall remain nameless (David) sent me one post and like magic I couldn't read just one. Until I got to a boring one. Then I moved on to my own boring blog.

But it gave me pause. Twice today in this blogomania, I've been stopped by how dreadful or boring the post was. And I resolved in my mind not to read the books by these authors because their blog posts are awful. But then I thought--wait a minute.

I have also enjoyed a number of blog posts and can't read the books by these people to save my life. What gives here?

Maybe some people can sweat and claw their way through a novel and come out with great writing. But can't write an essay to save their souls. And others blithely toss off fun little blog posts and mess up novels.

Ok, that part is obvious if you think about it. But writers are urged to do this as a way to reach readers. What if some are doing themselves more harm than good? What if this isn't actually a good marketing technique because you put people off doing it? I haven't even touched on the fact that one writer pissed me off royally with subject matter. And I haven't read him before and now don't intend to. Maybe I'm not the be all and end all of mystery readers, but I try almost everyone once. That one won't make my list.

Have writers A. opened mouth, B. inserted foot in trying to win your attention? This seems worse to me than just reading a book you don't like. This is shooting yourself in the foot.

A new year, the same old thing

I've decided to keep track of every book I read this year. I've been asked a number of times how many books I read in a year. I'm really not sure, so I'm keeping track. My guess is that I read about 150 books. Much of the count will depend on whether we take a real vacation and sit on our butts. I read a book a day that way.

Right now I'm reading the Inspector Wexford series by Ruth Rendell. The jury is still out on how much I like them. I like her twists, but I have guessed all of them so far. Which is not a bad thing, but we'll see. I'm not desperate to finish them, but I haven't thrown them down in disgust. A lot of books fall into this category for me. It's like I don't mind reading them.

Many people are trying to choose the best thing they read in 2009. I think without a list to remind me what I read that I forget basically every book before May. I know I read a bunch in February and April because of surgery for me and the birth of Mouse. I read 3 whole series I hadn't read before this year.

Happy reading. Here's to the list to come.