Love Letter

Even though I consider myself a skilled word-user, I'm not entirely certain I can express just how much you mean to me. Hopefully, I can get some of it across without sounding like some crazed lunatic who believes we are destined to be together or some ridiculous crap. Ugh. It'll probably ramble a bit more than I'd like, but hopefully it'll make sense in the end.

There's a lot of backstory, which may or may not be interesting to you, but perhaps will help set the stage for why exactly you had such an impact on my life.

When you came into my life, in September of 2012, I was forty-seven. Alone. Sad. Searching for meaning.

I'd been a single mom for about fifteen years, and I'd taken my job seriously. I did everything I could conceive of to make my daughter's life a good one. I wanted her to grow up healthy and happy, someone I could be proud of, someone who could be proud of me, someone who would consider me a friend when the time came.

Though I didn't date, or have any other kind of "dating" relationships (read sexual, lol) during that time, it was more because I wanted to model healthy relationships for my daughter than for any other reason. I didn't go out of my way to find a romantic relationship - I considered finding a new partner pretty low on the priority list - and she had a life full of people who loved me and who loved her. Those were good relationships, ones I wanted her to learn from, to emulate.

My daughter and I had our hardships - money was always tight, I was lonely, I struggled constantly with depression, she was stubborn as hell, something she clearly got from my side of the family. We lost loved ones - a beloved dog, a special cat, a favorite cousin, my mother, and my daughter's best friend. That one was especially tough. Twelve year old girls shouldn't die.

I raised my daughter to think, to stand up for herself, to stand up for other people, to be independent. I also sometimes made things too easy. I went too far the wrong way to ensure she didn't have to suffer the same childhood issues I'd had, and she grew up more than a wee bit spoiled.

I was raised an Air Force brat, and I periodically get itchy feet, figuratively speaking. My solution when she was in school was to move from one apartment to another, always staying in the same school zone. I wanted her to have friends from kindergarten all the way through high school, something I'd never had. It didn't work quite the way I wanted, but it worked.

When she was still a teenager, we moved one more time. She'd just finished her freshman year of high school, gotten involved in dance, which she LOVED, had a gay boyfriend who was a marvelous dance partner and friend, and though she'd never loved school, that year was as close as she came to it. She didn't want to move. I didn't, either, this time, but there were mitigating circumstances.

Though we moved into a situation which was much better for us, that next year was the most difficult she and I had ever had - emotionally, behaviorally, financially - and I thought we weren't going to survive it intact, still loving each other. It was the first time I seriously considered giving up, believed I was a bad mom.

Though she hated the new school, and frankly, I did too, she slowly over the course of that year made friends. She got involved in drama, something she'd enjoyed in middle school, and while she was never truly happy that year, she got better. I got her into counseling again, an on and off thing since she was about four, and we worked at being honest with each other, communicating openly, being loving.

During her junior year, she met a boy. Actually, she'd met him during the prior year, but she'd had a mad crush on someone else, and this guy had only been a friend. That changed. He was charming and goofy and smart, loved my daughter, and was respectful to me, didn't ridicule my brand of weird. His life wasn't perfect, either, but he had a good family, a support system of friends, both peers and mentors, and he and my daughter became serious.

My daughter finally used her "sneak-out" rule - she could ask if she could go out after dark, and I could say no. If she felt like it was important enough to override me, she could, but only if she came and told me she was sneaking out of the house, so I could keep my phone on and come get her if I needed to, no questions asked. She didn't use it often, but she did use it.

She also had sex for the first time. I'd always told her that when it was right for her, she would know better than I would, and I only asked that she use condoms, and tell me when it happened, so that we could talk about it afterward if she wanted. She did wake me up one night, and I asked her if it had been enjoyable, and she said yes, and I said good and asked her if she wanted to talk about it and she said no, and I went back to sleep.

I don't know what kind of parent that makes me sound like, but our system worked for us. She knew there was absolutely NOTHING on Earth she couldn't talk to me about. Nothing was going to turn into judgement or a big screaming match.

Anyway, she and this young man continued to get more serious. He spent a lot of time at our house, and she spent a lot of time with his family, and they got pregnant. On purpose. And I have to tell you, I was livid. Not because she was too young to have a baby, which was true, but because she'd done this when I was already stretching our food stamps to feed one adult and two teenagers, because yes, I was feeding him too. I expressed my anger, and got it all out of the way, then I decided if I was going to be a gramma, I was going to buckle down and be happy about it. Carpe diem, because grandbabies!

My grandson is a wonderful boy - charming and supersmart and caring and strong and a handful and a half. I wouldn't trade him for anything. I absolutely adore babies of all kinds, but the love I have for him is something fiercer, deeper.

So, a year into their relationship, they had my grandson. My son-in-law's family were moving back to Florida from Texas, and he wanted to stay here in Texas for his senior year, after which he planned to go into the Air Force, to do something with his life, to provide for his new family, for many reasons. Mr. Potatohead (son-in-law) stayed behind, with one of his family's close friends, and due to financial circumstances beyond my control, we moved one more time.

Before Mr. Potatohead could enlist, he had to either sign away his parental rights or marry my daughter (AF rules). They got married. It was a beautiful day in a local park, and the story of how it happened is boring and entailed a lot of intense discussions with the man who provided it for them. Suffice it to say I did not get to plan any part of my only daughter's wedding, with the exception of her godmother walking her across the bridge aka down the aisle. I might still be a little miffed about that.

This time when we moved, my parents were footing the bill for a year. We moved into an apartment they chose, and we got the bare minimum - no cable, no phone, no extras of any kind. I even had to stop my meds because I could no longer pay for quarterly visits to the doctor. Things got really tight. But worse, Mr and Mrs Potatohead were separated by more than just a couple of miles of walking. It was difficult for all of us, but especially for them - being newly married and not able to live together and experience the pregnancy together sucked.

In the new school system, there was a separate special school for pregnant girls (and other high-dropout-risk kids), where they could work at their own pace and complete their education in a more relaxed environment. This was the first time my daughter actually surprised me in a good way. She finished her entire senior year by the end of October. This woman, my daughter who had always all but hated school, applied herself and managed to finish everything so that when she walked down the halls of that school with their every Friday graduation, in her purple cap and gown, she was accompanied by her newborn son, in his own purple cap and gown. It was an amazing moment for her, and I couldn't have been prouder if she'd been strolling the stage at MIT.

Mr Potatohead got through Basic Training. We went to his graduation at Lackland AFB. He finished Tech School and got his first duty station, in Italy. I didn't know the Air Force sent people OCONUS on their first duty station. Mr Potatohead went first, when Baby Potatohead was ten months old, and several months later, my daughter followed him to Italy, her first move as an Air Force wife.

Once Mr Potatohead had finished high school, he'd moved to our apartment, and after Baby Potatohead was born, he was there, too. So when they all left, I was alone, for the first time in nearly fifteen years, missing my daughter, missing my grandson, missing my son-in-love.

I had no idea what to do with myself. What I'd always considered my life's purpose, raising Mrs Potatohead to happy, healthy adulthood, was accomplished, and I was completely undone by the hole she'd left behind.

I have always struggled with severe depression, and that first year without my daughter left me lower than I could remember ever being. At the same time, I was dealing with packing up that apartment, finding a new place to live, reaching out to people when I could, and hibernating the rest of the time - I'm not good at asking for help. Things got bad; I knew they were bad, though I didn't really understand the extent of my emotional state until I was climbing out of it.

Fast forward (too late, I know) about two years, and I was watching Dollhouse, with Eliza Dushku and Tahmoh Penikett. I adored Tahmoh's character in Dollhouse and wanted more of whatever he'd been in. When I looked him up, there was Battlestar Galactica, and I had vague memories of more than one friend telling me I would enjoy it. I think I'd resisted because what I remembered of the original series was pretty campy and cheesy, and not really to my taste.

I watched it anyway, and before the mini-series was over, I was in love. Absolutely head over heels in love with Kara Thrace. I love Karl Agathon, too, don't get me wrong, but Kara Thrace is a once in a lifetime character, and I can never thank you enough for taking that part.

I was on a serious downward spiral, flailing about without the least notion why the hell I was still here on this planet, and not really caring much if I left, so when you came into my life, I was broken and hurting and aimless and lost.

Thanks to BSG, I got out of my head, cared about something so much I went to the internet to find other people who liked BSG, to find fanfiction, to commune with other BSG lovers. I started writing. I've never written fiction in my entire life, unless it was related to school, and had in fact always felt a little envious that everyone else in my family wrote, and my thing was polishing words instead of producing them. Suddenly I was writing stories, sad and funny and sexy and heartbreaking and wonderful stories. And not only were they helping me cope, people sometimes told me they'd needed that reminder at that precise moment. People liked my stories. My mind was blown.

I am never going to ask you to read any of my stuff (oh my fucking gods, no, Katee), though if you ever accidentally do, I hope you find a deep love and respect for Kara Thrace in it.

Like I said, I started writing. It was my shiny new boyfriend, and writing got me through another really rough year without my kid, and I was still alive at the other end. I met some fantastic women, made friends, learned I had something to offer others, something they needed, got better at writing, and in among all that, I finally figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up. Took me long enough.

I'm an editor, aka a beta reader. I take people's words and make them better. I especially help writers whose first language isn't English to become more comfortable with their words. I seem to have created a niche for German writers. That's fandom, anyway.

I'm also an editor in real life - YA fiction, murder mysteries, LBGT works. I have a small but growing stable of writers who have trusted me with their work, and I'm slowly getting my name out there. I'm not with a big name publishing house. I'm the girl the indie authors can come to, the one they can afford. I LOVE my work, so much that if I could afford to do it for nothing, I truly would.

My first word-love is still writing, though, and Kara Thrace plays a huge part in that. Through her, I've explored birth and death and loss and depression and love and hate and so many other facets of human emotion. She's a fascinating and complex woman, and exploring her, I explore myself. Loving her, I love myself. All those ugly bits from my past found a mirror in Kara Thrace, and if she's lovable despite those "flaws," then so am I. Those old tapes have lost their power over me. I like myself, and that's something I haven't always been able to say.

Kara Thrace had a hard life, and she was one messed up woman, but no matter what, she never stopped loving. Sure, she hid behind sarcasm and cigars and sex and alcohol, but she loved, deeply, even if she pretended she didn't.

I've heard you say in interviews that if you played Kara now, you probably wouldn't be so fearless, that you were young and didn't know any better.

All I can say is, thank you for being fearless, for going ninety to nothing, for putting so much work into Kara Thrace. Because the bottom line is, Kara Thrace saved my life. You saved my life. And I am so fucking grateful for it.

I fell in love with Kara Thrace. And through Kara, I fell in love with you.

Even if you never impacted anyone else's life (which isn't true, anyway), you crashed into mine and pulled me out of some dark place that had almost succeeded in swallowing me whole. I can't truly put into words what you did for me.

But you weren't done.

Last year, my dad and his wife split up. They'd been married nearly forty-two years, since I was eight. They were doing the divorce dance of dividing assets and selling houses and keeping lawyers in expensive cars. My dad and I had been estranged, but he called me, invited me to meet him for lunch, and we had a good talk. He talked about how things had been for him, about falling in love with someone new, about the hold my stepmother had had on all our lives, and we continued to get close again.

He asked me to be his emergency contact at his apartment, asked me to manage the movers, asked me to come take care of him after he had his eye surgery, asked me to be his next-of-kin for medical stuff. We connected again, and had some quality clear-the-air conversations, learned new and surprising things about each other.

Then he started having heart attacks. I was cadging rides in the middle of the night to get to a hospital forty minutes away, terrified every time that he'd die before I could get there, and spending weeks at a time at his place to take care of him when he got out, and even though it was scary as hell, we kept talking. We kept saying the words. We made sure we didn't waste a moment on impatience or negativity.

His final heart attack was on August fifth, a year ago, when he was seventy-two, and though I miss him desperately, I'm beyond thrilled that I got seven fantastic months with him before he went.

Kara Thrace stayed in my head, helping me heal by sharing her many lives with me, and Victoria Moretti showed up, and reminded me family appears in the strangest places, and through those two magnificent women, you helped me through the loss of someone I had just found again, and gave me strength not to break this time.

I have absolutely adored watching you over the last three years. Battlestar Galactica, Longmire, Oculus, even The Last Sentinel (which we will mostly pretend never happened), Haunting in Connecticut, Riddick, cons and interviews and Ask Katee and motorcycle rides with Tricia. Your zest for life, and your unflinchingly raunchy sense of humor, and the obvious love you shower on your friends and family, both two- and four-legged, are not just encouraging, they're life-affirming.

I won't say never change, because hell, we all change. But keep being you, Katee, keep being the woman who makes lives better without really thinking about it. Keep. Being. You. Keep loving hard and living out loud and making the world a better place with your sparkle and shine and your infectious laugh (I LOVE your laugh).

And know, deep inside, there is at least one person on this planet, someone you've never met, who is grateful beyond words for all of who you are, one person who would pick up the phone, day or night, if you ever needed a listening ear yourself. One person who might be the reason you got out of swimming and into acting. The universe works in mysterious ways, right?

Because of my dad falling in love in his sixties, I know that fifty is not too late to find the kind of love I've wanted all of my life.

Because of Victoria Moretti, I'm open to possibilities. My image of who might be out there for me is much more flexible now.

Because of Kara Thrace, I'm ready to fall in love again. Really ready.

Because of you, I have friends I would never have met any other way than through fandom, women who helped keep me afloat during those long months at the hospital and the agonizing weeks after my dad's death.

I don't know what's in store for my next fifty years, but I'm ready for whatever it is, and I have you to thank for it.

I love you.

Thank you.

Change is...change

Sometimes bad things happen for no reason. Sometimes, though...

Seven years ago, I had a decent job and a great boss, and then my life fell apart in a pretty spectacular way. I made a mistake, a big one (not job-related), and I've spent the last seven years paying for it. I'm not quite finished yet, legally speaking.

And here's the thing: I can't regret what I did. It served a greater purpose. My life was drifting along. I knew that my work was something I did because I was good at it, not because I enjoyed it. I longed for the satisfaction of doing work I loved, but didn't know what that might be. I wanted my life to mean something, to me and to the people with whom I might come into contact.

I had glimpses of this better life from time to time, and I wanted what I saw, but I was cozy, unwilling to step outside the safety of my comfort zone for long. What I was doing kept a roof over my kid's head, and food on the table, and responsible adults sometimes do work they don't like in order to fulfill their obligations. That's what I'd been taught as a kid, what I'd always believed. The universe knew that in order for me to find that extra something I was looking for, I needed to be shoved forcibly out of my cocoon.

The change has been painful and humiliating and the personal shame of making that choice has estranged me from both family and friends. My kid stuck by me. She was adult enough to tell me that she didn't like what I did, but understood why I did it. I withdrew and isolated myself from people I cared about out of the fear that if they knew what I'd done, they wouldn't like me anymore. Some of them have surprised me.  I've had friends who learn the whole story, from me or from someone else, and still welcome me into their lives and their homes. I'm grateful for those people, people who see me as a person who made a mistake, rather than a person who is that mistake.

Was it a bad thing I did? Sure. Did anybody besides me and my daughter get hurt? For the most part, that answer's no.

Did it need to happen?

I believe it did. The emotional, spiritual, and financial struggles of the past seven years have been critical to my growth as a human being.

My life is different now. I've learned and unlearned things about myself. I've forgiven myself for ancient transgressions that weren't even mine to begin with. I've fallen in like with new parts of myself, acquired and refined new skills, and have work I love to do. It's not enough work yet, but it's something that had I the means, I would happily do without pay. I do in fact do it regularly for nothing but the sheer joy of it.

Good things are happening now, small things here and there. It started slowly and is gaining momentum. I've been taking the shattered puzzle pieces of a boring, uninspired life and putting them back together into a new picture, somebody who can do what I've always wanted to do - help people. In as many ways as possible.

Book: The Champagne Sisterhood by Chris Keniston

I've always wished I had friends like these four women are. They're tighter than tight, even with years and distance and marriage wearing on the relationships.

Champagne Sisterhood starts off with Anna getting a scary phone call, and despite the danger of losing her job, she jets across the country when one of her "sisters" is hurt.

The connection between the four women is almost tangible, and the way they rally around each other and are willing to rearrange their lives to help one another is remarkable.

I completely enjoyed reading this book. Why not five stars then? There were more errors than I consider acceptable in a published work, and I have to count off for that, even if she's my friend.

I have to be honest and say that I always read a friend's work with trepidation. Is it going to suck? If it does, how do I tell her (or him)? How do I write an honest review? In this case, I can be completely honest and say that I was pulled in, laughing and crying with these women before I'd even gone a hundred pages. I am definitely looking forward to reading more of Chris' work in the future.

The Champagne Sisterhood is available for Kindle here:

and on bn.com. It's also available as a paperback on both sites, if you prefer that.

What a wonderful world this would be...

I went to the CVS this evening to return my redbox and take the landlord to get his McDeath for dinner.  As I was driving away from the CVS, my car started acting funny.  Thanks be to my misadventurous youth, I know what a car feels like when it's running out of gas, so I maneuvered to a blank spot in the parking lot and had myself a little think.

We ended up walking over to McD to get his food, since he's insulin-dependent, and I don't want to deal with blood sugar issues.  He did not have the dog or the cane, so he couldn't walk home.

We get back to the car, and we're trying to brainstorm who to call.  His father, the obvious choice because he lives five minutes away, has already turned his phone off for the night.  His brother, on a rare in-town weekend, is actually camping with his kid.   I could walk to the gas station, but I have no gas can and no money to buy one.  He's willing to spring for gas, but doesn't have enough to buy a gas can, too.  What happened to the days when gas stations would have a gas can on hand and let you borrow it?

I'm scrolling through my phone and it's all Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, DC, New York, Texas!  Oh, wait, he lives two hours away.  Oklahoma, Oklahoma, Oklahoma, damn I know a lot of people in OK.   I finally found someone and managed to get hold of her after three unanswered calls, and so a ten-minute trip to get food turned into a three-hour sit in the car.  She got there, had already procured a gas can and had filled it, and a random guy that she just happened to know was there and offered to come help.

Anyway, car started right up, I got a tank full of gas (I asked for it last week, but this is not the way I anticipated it happening, lol), and I even got my Fossil Felix the Cat watch back, because my friend had found it a week or so ago, and remembered it was mine.

While we were sitting there, I commented that the one time I leave the house without my Kindle is the one time I needed something to occupy my time.  After I declared that I was never leaving the house again without my entire purse, including my Kindle, we had a good ten minutes riffing on what would be in the magical backpack in the trunk from now on (included a tent, a camp stove, chainsaw (wtf) and various other goodies).

We also talked about energy exchanges and how he'd come to understand them.  

I've never been comfortable asking for help.  The last five years have been an exercise in curing myself of that in a big way.  Anyway, I've reframed the help thing in my head, because someone once explained to me that everyone likes to feel useful or needed or just have the warm fuzzies, so when I refuse to ask for help, I am depriving other people of an opportunity to do something that makes them feel good.  I have to tell myself this a lot sometimes, but it works.  Sometimes.

Tonight, though, he talked about it in physics terms - you know, the universe is energy and everything is energy and it flows around and through everything.  When I try to be self-sufficient, I'm frakking up the energy flow - I can't put energy out if I'm not taking any in.  I'm not explaining it very well, but it hit me that by trying to be all I need no one and can do everything myself, I'm mucking up the flow and that makes things worse for everyone, including the people around me.  So I've got some thinking to do and more reframing of the crap in my head.

And on that note, what stopped me from calling any of a dozen people was the idea behind saying, "Hey, I ran out of gas, will you come rescue me?" which is, "Hey, I'm a loser who doesn't even have enough money to put gas in my own car, and I ran out of gas five minutes from my own house, and won't your Saturday night suck if you come help me."  Gah!  I complain that no one ever calls me for help, even though I would, gladly, even at my own inconvenience.  So what makes me think that others don't want the same opportunity?  My head is a frakked up place.  I'm blaming the 60s.

But.  Full tank of gas.  Felix the Cat. I bow to the universe.

Random, some more...

Got another request for a book review.  This one's not just some no-name author trying to perk up his or her review count.  This one's from Brenda Novak.  Technically, it's from her assistant, who said she enjoyed reading my reviews, and could I please review the latest book if she sent me a copy. 

:eek!:

Also, in the seriously amusing category:  Landlord's dad was over Sunday to hang the curtains they got him for christmas.  Since Landlord is blind, I was the eyes, and made sure things were level and even and whatnot.  Later, dad's gone and we're hanging pictures in the game room, and out of the blue I say to Rick, "Your dad's a sub.  Maybe not in his work, but with home-related stuff."  Silence for a moment.  "You know, that explains a whole lot about a lot of things."   Conversation passes to other things, and another friend comes up in the conversation about getting on Medicare versus paying COBRA premiums. They're talking about the best way to get K to go through the information and get signed up (he'll be 66 in March), and again, apropos of nothing, I say, "Kent's definitely a sub.  If you want him to do something, you have to tell him what he needs to do and just keep telling him until it's all done."

So Landlord decides that we should find a way to start a dating service, where part of the inflow process is to sit and have a conversation or several with me, so that I can determine where in the spectrum someone lies, thus matching them up with their proper complement.  I got to imagining the ads for such a service and just giggled madly for a few minutes.  Me, who hasn't dated in well over two decades, matching people up based on a BDSM profile I make up in my head.  :snicker:

Sooo, Die Hard...

I saw it twice on Saturday, once the first show of the day and once late in the evening.  Two different theaters/locations, two different friends, two different experiences.

I liked it, but didn't love it.  I did absolutely love the interactions between John and Jack.  It was all quintessential McClane snark going both ways and it was funny as hell.  It will not surpass One and Four as a favorite, but it edges out Three, despite Sam L Jackson, barely.  MEW has gained or lost some weight.  It made me completely unsure it was actually her until I saw her name in the credits.  She doesn't look bad, just different.

Jai Courtney did a great job as Jack McClane.  He's gone on record as saying that when casting was going on, the implications were that when Bruce was tired of making the movies, he would be ready to pass it on to whoever got cast as his son.  I think Jai's a good choice, physically and in his mannerisms.  He's also on record as saying that despite knowing that the possibility of taking over the franchise exists, he definitely wants at least one more with Bruce, and would prefer more, as many as Bruce is willing to make.

Much as I hate to, I noticed that Bruce is showing his age.  That most assuredly will not stop me loving the Die Hard franchise as a whole, and as long as he wants to keep making DH movies, I'll want to keep seeing them.

There's a lot of the movie in Russian, with subtitles, so be prepared for that.  Listening to so much of it renewed my fickle interest in learning the language.  I'll never have occasion to use it, so I have no idea why I'd want to learn it, but I have for years now.  There were about half a dozen moments that I noticed held some parallel to the first movie.

First show was in a TINY theater, and it was pretty packed.  That was unexpected for 10:25 in the morning, and we had trouble finding seats.  I saw it with my friend B, and we laughed like schoolgirls throughout.  Of course, we both adore DH & BW, so it was fun for both of us.  Interestingly, that audience was almost entirely made up of (I don't even want to say this because it just isn't true, dammit!) middle-aged women, including me (the youngest at 48), B, her older sister, and their mother.  lol

She shared with me that her girlfriend had asked her to marry her, and instead of a ring, she'd gotten a ring on a charm bracelet.  Much more in keeping with B's work, since she'd be unable to wear a diamond ring a lot of the time.  I snarked, correctly, that since she was wearing said charm bracelet complete with engagement ring charm, that she must've said yes.  

Second viewing was less fun, since my companion to that one didn't seem to be enjoying it as much.  I made sure he liked the other DH movies before I asked him to go with me, but I'm not entirely certain he liked this one.  AMC apparently has something called ETX, which is their version of IMAX, and the only difference I was able to ascertain is that it costs three dollars more, and we both got DH t-shirts.  Video, sound, theater set-up, everything seemed the same.  It was very loud, though.  I could have done with the sound turned down about 20%. 

So, while I liked it, and it's a good enough addition to the franchise, I probably won't buy it on DVD unless there are compelling extras.  That said, I have the 1-3 trilogy pack, and rarely, if ever, watch Three unless I do a marathon of all of them, but I did buy it, nonetheless.

Trailers:
Bates Motel on A&E looks like it might be interesting.  I only ever saw Freddie Highmore in August Rush, and he has grown up!  He's much taller, and not 11 any more.  lol  Vera Farmiga is the lead.  I've not seen everything she's made, but I loved her in Roar, and try to keep up with her at least in movies.  Yes, I will go see Fast & Furious.  I don't even care how bad it is, because it'll be so damn much fun!  Olympus Has Fallen - it looked intriguing, and I do like Gerard Butler, but then I saw Morgan Freeman.  I'll see anything that man makes.  Anything.  A Sandra Bullock film that looks truly horrible - Fed/cop thing with Melissa (?) McCarthy (The Heat).  Some Vince Vaughn/Owen Wilson thing that might be funny but will not be getting my dollars at the box office to find out.  Also, AfterEarth - Will and Jada make some really frakking pretty kids.  Jaden looks more like Will every day, but with softer, less coarse facial features.  As for the movie, interesting concept.  I'll probably wait for the dollar movie to see it, though.  Now that I know that the first show of the day is only $6, I'll probably try to see Olympus at the regular theater - it's so much more comfortable than my LaZBoy - though getting out of 'bed' that early on a Saturday is hellish.

Huzzah!

(original post on livejournal 01/02/2013)

Or something.  lol

Got a wild hair last night and decided to hook up the landlord's A/V setup in the living room.  He'd been making noises about paying someone to come in and do it, because it was pretty complicated, and I just figured that I've hooked up some fairly complicated setups working for a previous employer, so I might as well see if I could do this one.  Turned out it wasn't so complicated.  I mean, everything was labelled and it was just a matter of connecting wires to the right IN or OUT from the right OUT or IN.  Besides, he only has a receiver, a combo DVD/VHS unit and a laserdisc player.  Two things to connect to a receiver then connect that to the TV.  Easy.  Speakers were already done, so Ta Da!  He still wants to get the whole thing connected to a computer, but he's lacking some pieces for that, so it's not on me that it's not done.  Having this all connected does give me the option of watching more things on a TV screen that's bigger than my laptop screen, and in surround sound.  Could make rewatching BSG better.   Or not.  When I watch on my laptop, I wear headphones, so I don't really miss any dialogue.  I might miss dialogue if I watch without my headphones.

Wrote some more stuff.  Posted it over at lucywritesfic.

I'm not making resolutions; I never do.  However, I do have mental sticky notes to myself all over the place, and one is to keep exploring this writing thing.  My pieces so far are short, mostly smut, and I'm unreliably stricken by the muse.  But it kinda feels good to finish something and be satisfied with it, even if no one ever reads it.  Not that I don't grin when I notice something has gotten hits over at AO3.  Heehee.

The person I've been bouncing stories off of has been in the midst of a brand-new love affair and her happiness over that has pretty much taken over her life.  I'm thrilled for her, and I'm also waiting for some of the shine to wear off so that there's room in her life for other things again.  Friendship can be so complicated.  :sigh:

Another mental sticky note is to write in my blog more often.  I use to have so many things to say and wanted to share them.  Maybe it's just December that sucked the energy out of everything fun.  For me, anyway.

Last year, in January, I won a Kindle Fire.  It took me a day or two to fall completely in love with the thing.  I never imagined I would find digital words as compelling as actual books in my hands, but truth is, in my efforts to downsize my possessions as much as possible, ebooks fit my new lifestyle so much better.  I still have thousands of print books, and I'm still reluctant to give up my old favorites, or the ones I haven't read yet.  No idea how long it would take me to get through my TBR pile.  There are dozens of books there.  Anyway, in the process of learning to love ebooks, I made much use of the local libraries' catalogs of works, and found a few that I could not access on my Kindle.  So I bought a Nook I found at a fantastic price.  It's the first-generation Nook with WiFi and 3G internet.  It does some things that my Kindle doesn't do, and BN lets people lend books to each other, which is pretty dang nifty.  Still, I don't love it like I love my Kindle.  Maybe I never will, but I wonder if some of it is that I just don't know all the things my Nook can do.  Does anyone have a Nook that they adore?  Can you teach me to love my Nook better?

Another of the weird things that happened in 2012 (how strange to type that instead of 'this year') was people finding my reviews on Amazon and emailing me asking me to review their stuff.  I thought I would love it.  I love reading more than almost anything.  Maybe not more than my grandson.  I also love sharing what I think about a book, or at least writing it on my blog where someone might or might not someday read it (lol).  When I first started getting these requests, I was really flattered and tried superhard to turn the review around within a week, and I did pretty well with that for a while.  I realized, though, that the request obligated me to read the book, even if it sucked, and I'm not really comfortable telling an author directly, "I can't finish reading your book and then reviewing it because it's just not readable."  Whether it's grammar or plot or characterization or spelling or whatever else, I don't mind detailing what I didn't enjoy about a book, and also sharing what I did enjoy, if anything, but I don't like telling the creator directly that I can't even finish it.  No matter what reason I give, the subtext for them is that the book sucks, in my opinion, particularly if I can't even finish reading it.  I also got bogged down because I read four or five books in a row that were just short of awful, but since I had committed myself, I had to slog through.  Avoiding going back to a terrible story made me read less, making it take much longer to finish each one.  The last review I did, a week or so ago, is from a request I got in October.  That's just too frakking long.  And I look at my list (yes, I had to make a list) and see three dozen books on there, and just don't even want to read anything on there, even though some of it's got to be good.

I made myself go to a Meetup last Friday.  I joined a social Meetup a couple of months ago, just ladies looking to make new friends.  I need to socialize more, keep myself from isolating so much.  I didn't know what to expect from a group of strange women, but I had a lot of fun.  Their Bunco rules are different from the rules by which my church ladies play, but not so different that I couldn't adapt fairly quickly.  Several of them were just as irreverent and raunchy-humored as I am, and I doubt a single one is under 40.  The only negative about it is that this group of ladies always plays in a back room at the local La Madeleine.  I may be the only person in the State of Texas who does not adore La Madeleine, but I just don't like the food.  On the way home, though, I decided that from now on, I can eat before I go and just get iced tea there.  That way, I don't have to eat something I don't enjoy, and LM still gets their toll for me passing through the doors.  On another note, their pumpkin pie was good.  They had a flaky yet moist crust that I've never experienced before.  Even my mother never made a crust like that!  The pie crust tasted good, not floury, and I need to know how they did it.

Enough rambling.