Reviewers to trust, or to avoid

When you are looking at cookbooks on Amazon, look for reviews by either "Gramma" or "Lucy Ditty."  I've noticed each lady tends to give fair, unbiased reviews featuring her own honest opinion  Both ladies have apparently been cooking a long time, and review a LOT of cookbooks.  Gramma's profile says she owns something like 600 hardcopy cookbooks, and who knows how many digital.   Even though the vast majority of books I "buy" are free for my Kindle, I have begun to look for a review by either lady before I'll bother getting the cookbook.

On the other hand, "Harriet Klausner" reviews other books, fiction mostly.  She reviews so many every day, I cannot imagine how she has time to read, much less the two books a day her profile states.  Very few of her reviews show less than four-star ratings, and I'd take her opinion with a large grain of salt.  I've noticed that she's started posting reviews as "A Customer" and then signing her name at the bottom of the review.  I see her name and I just don't even bother reading.

Blockbuster DVDs at home for Dummies (well, this one, anyway)

Had a free two-month deal with Blockbuster for DVDs at home, with unlimited exchange in-store.  It ends tomorrow.

The first week, I got DVDs three times - one day turnarounds.  Keep in mind I live in Dallas, where there is most assuredly a Blockbuster warehouse for this service.  Nonetheless, I was impressed by that.  After that first week, I was lucky to get DVDs once a week.  It would take two days to get to them from me, then another day to check in and sometimes another day to mail out whatever was next in my queue, and sometimes two days to get to me after they said it was mailed.  

In addition, after experiencing the selection wonderland that is Netflix (granted, more than four years ago), I was sorely underwhelmed by Blockbuster's DVD selection.  At least half a dozen times, I searched for something that was fairly recent, and they didn't have it.  Online, I'm talking, not in-store.  

There is no Blockbuster anywhere near me, so those unlimited in-store exchanges were worthless to me.  Totally wish I could have taken advantage of that, because that would definitely have added to the value.  

The queue interface is not as intuitive as I remember Netflix being, and it's really easy to get the queue disordered accidentally, and have to spend an hour fixing it back to the right order.  It's a three step process to add TV seasons to the queue, and to make certain that each series comes in order, one series at a time.  How to do that is nowhere in the help information - I had to chat with a customer service rep to learn how to do it, and then only after I'd gotten Season One, DVD 1 and Season Two, DVD 1, of the same series, both at the same time.  The reasoning behind that particular thing is both irritating and ridiculous.

Bottom line for me:  slightly more expensive than Netflix for poorer service and a lackluster selection.  Not worth my money.  Cancelled.  Cancelling took me to ELEVEN screens, wherein Blockbuster asked me three separate times if I was sure I didn't want to pick another plan instead of cancelling.  

Maybe someday, if I live next door to a Blockbuster, this might be worth it.  But by the time that happens, there probably won't be any Blockbuster stores left in the state.

To sleep, to sleep

For about the last two years, I've had a weird sleep schedule.  At first, it was just that I was up late, sometimes not going to bed until three or four in the morning.  It progressed over time until I *couldn't* sleep until five or six in the morning.  By the time Baby Potatohead came along, I couldn't sleep until after the sun came up.  Since all the Potatoheads were night owls, and they lived with me, this was not really an issue, other than sleeping so late in the day that I could not get normal daytime chores, like going to the Post Office or the bank, done during working hours.

Things leveled out some after I moved out of the apartment, and couch-surfed with a friend for three months.  I was still a night owl, with occasional nights where I didn't sleep until five or six in the morning, but mostly, I was going to sleep by two or three.  That may have been because said friend has a school-age daughter and their morning routine would frequently interrupt my sleep long enough that I couldn't go back to sleep, thus making me tired earlier that night.  It may or may not have had something to do with having cable on the TV.  I am used to going to sleep with the TV on the Law and Order channel, and in absence of TV, then a DVD movie.  I cannot count the number of times I've gone to sleep to Speed or Armageddon or Die Hard.  Yes, the movies have to be blow-shit-up for me to sleep to them.  Don't ask me why.

Now, though, my sleep schedule is so messed up that it's actually creating extra stress for me.  I don't sleep every day anymore.  That's right, I don't sleep every day.  I try to.  I get tired.  I go to bed.  I read boring books.  I close my eyes and meditate.  I do any number of things that have worked for me before and no joy. One night last week, I went to bed early because I was tired.  9PM is very early for me.  Six hours later, I realized I had finished three books and was still awake.  I tried sleeping to a favorite TV episode on my Kindle Fire.  I barely dozed for a few minutes.  I meditated, my usual four-four meditation.  All that, and I didn't actually get to sleep until nearly ten the following morning, thirteen hours after I went to bed.  Then, I didn't sleep but about five hours.

So now, I sleep one "night," then am awake for the remainder of that day and all of the following day, finally falling asleep sometime in the late wee hours of the third day.  In other words, let's say I sleep Monday morning, from about six until about two in the afternoon.  Then, I'll be awake the rest of Monday, all of Tuesday, and finally be able to fall asleep sometime around five or six on Wednesday morning, if I'm lucky.  Sometimes, it's actually much later than five or six.  Basically my wake time is at least thirty-six hours.

It's driving me crazy.  Crazier.  It's a serious struggle to drag myself out of bed on the occasions when I DO have something to do that requires me to be somewhere before noon.  Heaven forbid I have to be somewhere at eight or nine in the morning, particularly since that also requires me to build in an extra two hours for the bus ride.  Grrr.

On top of this sleep schedule weirdness, I'm also not sleeping well.  Once I'm asleep, I don't wake up.  That's not the issue.  I just wake up five to eight hours later, and feel like I haven't slept at all.  I think it would be a thousand times worse if I weren't using my CPAP, but frankly, I'm afraid to sleep without that thing.  I dread the idea that the machine might have a mechanical issue, because I haven't had insurance for four years.  I have no means of replacing the little bits, like the mask or the hose, much less a machine that costs in the neighborhood of $800.

My landlord/roommate thinks it's just an oddity about my circadian rhythm that I have to adjust to.  Who knows?  Depression?  Menopause?  Anxiety?  Stress?  My body resetting itself?  Some health issue about which I'm clueless?

While I don't know what's causing it, I do know that it's causing me frustration and irritation.  I'm cranky enough normally.  Me uber-cranky is just not pleasant.  Not for other people and not for me.

Dreams

Had the strangest dream today (yes, I didn't get to sleep until after 0600, so it was today).  This was one of those rare occasions when I was dreaming, then wake up, do something, and go back to sleep and slip right back into the exact same dream.  Brendan Fehr (Michael Guerin, Roswell) represented my brother (worst casting EVAR, brain!) and it was full of the most bizarre and wonderful events.  The dream left me with something important to my waking life, and all I can consciously remember are Brendan as my brother, a vague recollection of having a sister and a welcome and much-needed hug from a real-life friend I haven't actually seen in person in fifteen years.  Oh, and the word "skin," imbued with great importance, though not related to the story-arc of Skins on Roswell.

I have new insight into the importance of hugs in my life, and the strange idea that I've been hugging wrong.

Book: Underground Guardians: Protector by Lisa Renee Jones

I read the first third and it was rough and slow reading.  Then I took a break to read several other books.  I came back to this book, night after night, and would read a few pages and just give up and pick another book to read.  At the end of each book, I would try to read this one again.

Mason is tortured by his belief that he is Arion (and yes, this was purposely styled after the Aryan Brotherhood of Nazi Germany), by his belief that Holly won't love him if she knows (something), by his belief that Holly needs to love him of her own free will without knowing that he has Mated her as an Arion.  There were several times that I was disgusted that this educated and seemingly strong woman would just knuckle under to Mason's orders, particularly when it related to matters of trust - hers for him or his for her.  He would basically say, "No, we're not going to talk about it, we're going to screw instead."  I paraphrased, of course, but it was pretty much the same result every time.  She would want to discuss whatever he was keeping from her, and he would insist on having sex instead.  And she would give in.  Again.

The sex scenes were blah, and it seemed more like some chemical reaction that made them need to rut constantly than a passionate need to touch each other.  I get being in love and this wasn't it for me.

I got to 83% and finally decided in the middle of a paragraph that I really just didn't care what happened to any of the characters or care how the book ended or care that I was leaving a book unfinished.  I just felt relieved to be done. I skimmed through the rest of the book, and what few things caught my eye were more tortured Mason, tell instead of show about the Arions, and Holly being overpowered by Mason yet again to have sex.  She's crying desperately over something and two paragraphs later, she's screaming in ecstasy.  Oooookaaay.

So, your mileage may vary, and it was definitely not one I enjoyed.

This was a free Kindle download.

Book: Abduction of Mary Rose by Joan Hall Hovey

This is a fairly good mystery, with decent suspense in places.  Hovey's work here verges on very good, but never quite makes it.  I see evidence that she can (maybe will, maybe already is) be a great writer, as the bones of the story are wonderful.

The opening hooked me right in, and the first third of the book kept the momentum going.  As the story progressed, though, the suspense lessened, the dastardly villain was revealed (about halfway through) and the instances of proofreading errors increased greatly.  It became more of a chore to keep going, and just about the time the mistakes made me consider quitting, the book reached its climax.  The 3/4 in place of dashes, starting with the first page and continuing through the entirety of the book, were especially annoying.

I did keep reading to the end, because I had come to care a bit about the main character, Mary Rose's daughter, Naomi.  As far as characterization goes, Naomi was definitely most fleshed out and easiest to understand.  Secondary characters were less consistently well done and in some cases, not well at all for their importance to the continuity.

This book was not a dog, but wasn't great, either.  Solid three stars for keeping me interested in what happened to Naomi long enough to ignore the other stuff.

This was a Kindle edition that I downloaded while it was free.

Book: Second Star by Dana Stabenow

I found this book on one of my searches for free Kindle downloads.  I put off reading it because I just have so many Kindle books on my phone!

One I started, I had a really difficult time stopping for little things like eating, and I did not go to sleep until I finished it.

This is hard science-fiction, no fantasy here.  Wonderful characters about whom it was easy to care - I cried in at least two places, so much did I care about the characters.  Even though much of the book is basically "a day in the life," it was far from mundane.  When the story heated up and the real action got started, it was even more fascinating.

Polished writing and professional editing.  I did not find a single editable error in the entire book.  Considering the state of many of my Kindle reads lately, I'd almost give an extra star just for that, if I could.  :)

My two regrets:  I did not find this book, or its sequels in the 90s, and the two Kindle sequels are completely out of my budget.

Suitable for about 13 and up.  There are a couple of sexual situations alluded to, but not actually put on paper (so to speak).

Book: Ten More Bodies by Connie Triplett

I made myself finish this one, because the last book I tried to read, I had to give up, and I refused to give up on two books in a row. I'm giving it three stars because it was a good story that could have been great. FBI agents, serial killers, small-town law enforcement, southern settings, maybe a touch of romance. All things I love in a book. I took a chance on a book with only two reviews, with one being from the alleged proofreader, and thought I couldn't miss. Boy, was I wrong.

The writing was high school level, with awkward sentence structure, grammar errors and an inexplicable dearth of commas where they really should have been. Gads! Chapters were rife with short sentences, quotation marks around conversations with no idea who was actually speaking, and thought processes that seemed more suited to high school students than trained FBI agents. There were characterization issues and problems with realism: federal agents don't hop on planes on a whim, or visit death row prisoners just because they ask. Nor do they conduct entire investigations without reporting to a supervisor. Trained federal agents who happen to be female and "serial killer specialists" don't scream like ten-year-olds and give up on life just because there is no immediately obvious way to get out of a dangerous situation without a male agent readily to hand.

I'll give Ms. Triplett credit for an intriguing idea that could have kept me immersed, but not for writing a good book. The end leaves room for a sequel. Unfortunately for this author, I won't be looking for it.

If grammar errors don't bother you, feel free to read this book - you may just like it. Otherwise, steer clear.

This was a free Kindle edition.

Book: Killer Temptations, volume 1 by Danity O'Shae

I enjoyed this book, a little bit.  I wanted to enjoy it more, but the plot kept getting interrupted with sex scenes.  Don't get me wrong.  I LOVE sex in my books - the more graphic the better, though I prefer tastefully graphic, rather than prurient.  But in this case, the sex scenes were fairly short, not really very appealing, and were stuck in right when the story itself was starting to get interesting.  Some scenes were necessary, considering the subject and plotline.  Necessary or not, they nearly always felt intrusive rather than important to forwarding the movement of the plot, and the attraction between the two main female characters seemed contrived and was never convincing to me.

There is a really good story lurking here, about the underground S&M club scene, and the women who get into it, for whatever reasons.  It just never lived up to its potential.  The relationships were good, but not really great, not enough to make me really care about following these women into the next book.

Supremely annoying was the author's use of the word breast, always referring to both breasts.  She would say nipples or titties, but the word breast was always singular.  The first couple of times, I just thought it was a typo, but it continued to happen.  She used it a lot, and I got so tired of it.

At the time of this review submission, I'm the sole dissenting vote in a small field of five-star ratings, so your mileage probably will vary.

This was a free Kindle edition of the book.

Book: Embers of Hope, Flickers of Passion by Kristen James

Gag me.  With a spoon.

The writing level in this book is someone taking college courses, writing a novella for a class assignment.  Poor sentence structure, mixed up words, bad grammar, and so on.  It needs a solid once-over from an editor/proofreader (the author's blurb claims she is one, but if so.....) to clean up the mess.  I was mentally rewriting the book while I was reading it.

The premise was good - a woman moves to Texas from Oregon, meets a guy, marries him, has a baby with him, then comes home because her best friend's husband died.  The woman has secrets about her time in Texas, things she didn't tell either her best friend, Cassie, or her mother, Margaret.

To the book's detriment, therein lies much of the conflict in the story - Savannah reconciling her secrets within herself, and sharing them with her friend and her mother. In what could have been an interesting twist, turns out that the guy Cassie sends to pick Savannah up at the truck rental place when she hits town is Cassie's dead husband's best friend, and is also the firefighter who rescued Savannah from an apartment fire two years ago.  Unfortunately, Cassie is angry at Jason for killing her husband (not that he actually did), and the chemistry between Savannah and Jason is tepid, at best.  The enmity between Cassie and Jason is the remaining conflict in the story.  There's a small B arc with Savannah's ex-husband suing for custody, but it's not even really interesting.  That B arc did have the most glaring mistake in the book, so wrong that it stuck in my mind.  A woman CANNOT keep a man from seeing his children just because he is not paying child support.  CANNOT.  In the eyes of the law, paying child support and spending time with your children are two completely disparate things.

Jason resists getting sexual with Savannah (with one maddening exception) for over 80% of the book, for reasons that didn't make sense to me at all.  When they did finally consummate, there was a lot of ear-nuzzling and back-rubbing, leading to the least satisfying sexual experience I've read in quite a long time.  I mean, they were talking throughout their encounter!  If the sex is good, conversation with full words is damn near impossible.  The one sexual encounter about halfway through the book happened on the couch with the toddler playing in the kitchen.  Every mom I know lets her kid play in the kitchen unsupervised.  And every mom I know thinks that you can indulge in some heavy petting on the couch and the kid won't even notice the noise.

I would have like to have enjoyed this book, but I really didn't.  Too bad, because it could have been a really good story.  I might give Ms. James another try in five or six years, in the hopes that her writing has matured, or she has a better editor.  But since there are so many books out there to read, probably not.

This was a free Kindle edition.

Book: Jenna's Cowboy by Sharon Gillenwater

Love a man in uniform, especially when he's a cowboy, but...

For the most part, I really enjoyed this story.  It was well-written, a very pleasant change for a Kindle edition, with great characterization and colorfully scenic backdrops.  Laughably accurate as to high school football in Texas, particularly in small towns.  It was a sweet love story, with a sweet ending.  Nonspoilery comments: there is no cursing and no sex, only some very tame kisses, and a scene or two with fairly frank descriptions of a man struggling with battle fatigue.  That's as untame as it gets.

Ms. Gillenwater set this book (and future books, I presume) in West Texas (not to be confused with West, TX, lol) on a working ranch outside of a small town.  The small town is named after the heroine's family.

Descriptions of work done on the ranch, and on the neighboring cotton farm, were accurate, to the best of my knowledge, but glossed over a few things, maybe because such descriptions of spring roundup activities, for example, would have been inappropriate for the christian audience.

PTSD is a serious issue, not just for many of today's returning Armed Services veterans, but for those who have been back for years, or even decades.  Good work on that front, too, Ms. G.  Great foundation for further information in the upcoming books, since PTSD is not a "curable" thing, but an ongoing struggle.

A minor quibble is that the two-year-old in the story, the heroine's son, was asking questions of his uncle at the wedding.  They were cute questions, but I found it difficult to believe that two such conscientious parents (and yes, I'm including the hero) would have gotten to the wedding stage of the game without having a talk with the toddler about the changes they were making to his life.  Talk about just asking for a temper tantrum!

What strained my credulity, almost to the breaking point, is the idea of a town where every character described is a devout christian, even random people just visiting the town.  Seriously?  Not real, not even in a small Texas town.  Then, to be even more unbelievable, the hero of the story was a grown man, nearing thirty, as far as I could gather from the descriptions of his life both before and after his military service.  I have never met a grown man, however plain, however devoutly christian, nearing thirty, who had not only never kissed a girl/woman (at all), but had never even dated.  Not once.  Uh-huh.  And from all accounts, he was far from plain.  Sorry, Ms. G.  Ya totally lost me there.

I finished the book, and if christian fiction were my bag (how I wish I had known what this was before I "bought" it!), I probably would have loved this story.  I did recommend it to several christian friends of mine, who I imagine will think it eminently readable.  For me, though, the praying and talking to the Lord and God will provides and all that was overkill and, along with the above issues, took two stars away from an otherwise wonderful story.

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Freebie: A Cold Creek Christmas

In my capacity as a Harlequin Ambassador, I received five copies of A Cold Creek Christmas by RaeAnne Thayne.  Just got the package today, so I can't review it yet.

Here's the back cover.

Just back from a tour of duty, all Major Brant Western wanted was a hot meal and a warm bed.  What he didn't need was the stunning socialite in disguise who'd just shown up at his family's Cold Creek ranch.  Scandal trailed bad girl Mimi Van Hoyt - aka Maura - everywhere she went.  But once Brant discovered her secret, how could he turn her away?

Being stranded in the middle of nowhere in a blizzard was not Mimi's idea of a fun time in the Tetons.  Then why was she starting to think this sexy soldier could be more than her shelter from the storm?  And the more determined Brant was to protect her and her unborn child, the more she believed that this honorable, irresistible military man was the only man for her.

OK, so a man in uniform, mountains, snow, and a baby.  What more could you ask for in a book?  lol

It looks like there are actually several books by Ms. Thayne that are set in Cold Creek, so if you like this one, there are others in the series, possibly with some of the same supporting characters.

Let me know if you think you'd like to read it.

BzzCampaign: Kroger Private Selection - dessert

I am part of the Kroger Private Selection BzzCampaign on BzzAgent, and got coupons to try several Private Selection products for free, and to purchase others at $2 off.  (I could share the coupons, too.  Anybody want one?)

In addition to the ice cream bars I've already reviewed, I picked up Northern Spy Apple Crisp, using one of the $2 off coupons.  It sounded interesting, and I wanted to try something else that wasn't ice cream.

These mini-dessert bowls come two per package, and I guess I misread the package, because I thought there were four, and was disappointed when I opened it.  At the shelf price of $4.59, these are fairly expensive desserts, and I would not ordinarily pay that much - particularly when I can get an entire apple pie for about a dollar more.  Or, you know, make one.  lol

That said, the apple crisp was really good!  The spiced apple pie filling was perfectly seasoned and the crispy topping was just the right amount of crunchy.  With a small bowl of vanilla ice cream, I think this would make a really great dessert for a single or couple who want a tasty dessert without much effort.  And if your food budget is bigger than mine, then the price is probably reasonable.

This dessert gets a thumbs up from me!

BzzCampaign: Kroger Private Selection - appetizer

I am part of the Kroger Private Selection BzzCampaign on BzzAgent, and got coupons to try several Private Selection products for free.

When I was at the grocery store the other day, one of my selections was the mini-quiche appetizer.  There are nine per package, and the shelf price was $6.79.  Under normal circumstances, I would not pay that much for an appetizer, and consider that price to be much too high for a package of nine.

My package, when I opened it today, contained only eight.  Lucky me.  lol  Had I paid for this purchase, I would complain.

I prepared the quiches as instructed on the box, and let them cool a couple of minutes.  The crusts were pretty good - flaky but not crumbly, and didn't taste floury.  A good-tasting crust is hard to make.  So, thumbs up on the crust, Kroger chefs.

As for taste, they were good, but not great, and I wasn't really impressed.  The mushroom quiches were a bit overpowering.  I think they would have tasted better had the mushroom bits been distributed into the egg mixture, rather than all sitting at the bottom.  The spinach quiches had more spinach than egg, and though I like spinach, I didn't particularly like this flavor at all.  The florentine quiche was the best of the three, with a good balance of ingredients, spiced well (as in neither bland nor heavily seasoned) and was actually the most attractive visually.

All in all, this product did not make the cut, and I am not likely to repurchase them, nor can I recommend this specific appetizer to friends or family.

Review: Aveeno Hand Cream

I have got the driest hands on the planet I think.  Not just regular dry skin, but creepy, rustling snakeskin husks on the ends of my arms.  I have found a hand lotion that is just about perfect: Aveeno Intense Relief Hand Cream.  If I use it, even just once a day, my skin doesn't get all dry and flaky and just plain gross (in my mind, anyway).  It soaks in quickly and holds up to my obsessive hand-washing habits.  It is really good stuff.  And no, I'm not getting a farthing for this, just turning you on to some fantastic hand lotion.  I wish they had it in bigger sizes so I could use it on my legs.  Yes, if a white girl's legs can be ashy, mine are.  :D

BzzCampaign: Kroger Private Selection

I got into the Kroger Private Selection BzzCampaign and got my BzzKit last week.  I was finally able to get to the store yesterday.  This not having a car thing really sucks!  My BzzKit included coupons for three free items as well as several coupons for $2 off those same items.  With the $2 off coupons at my local store, this leaves these items under $2 each.  Great deal!

Anyway, I had never been to this Kroger before, since I've only been here in the house a couple of weeks.  It was a very unfamiliar layout. 

I did manage to find the PS frozen appetizers and the frozen desserts, but this store doesn't carry the PS frozen pizza.  The manager who helped me said that this was a small store and didn't carry everything.  (I thought it was a normal sized store, so I'm afraid to see a regular store by her standards.)  I picked out my few groceries and my Private Selection items - Northern Spy Apple Crisp, ice cream bars (look at lot like Dove bars), and little tiny quiches, plus a couple of other items.  

When I got to the register, the girl had trouble ringing the coupons, and it turns out that I could not use all my PS coupons in one trip.  Talk about annoying.  The same lady manager came to the register to help and she's the one who translated the couponspeak for me, and took back the items I had chosen for which I could not use coupons on this trip.

So, Kroger wants me to try their items and review them, but won't let me buy them all in on trip.  Not very useful, guys.  And grrrr.  We can't all just bop on down to the grocery store three times a week.

I got home with the quiches, the ice cream bars and the apple crisp.  The ice cream bars are wonderful!  The chocolate coating is the right thickness and very crunchy.  I love those, and plan to use another coupon next time I'm able to get to the store, though I might have to find another Kroger.

I have tried the PS ice cream before, the actual ice cream that comes in cartons, and found it tasty.  Not as good as my favorite, but a good alternative and much less expensive, particularly at Kroger.

The Private Selection items are packaged differently, in black, and look more elegant than the traditional Kroger store brand items.  I'd like to see the PS selection include some spices, maybe, the more unique ones, and maybe things like special dips or spreads, maybe even hummus.

I'll report more after I've had a chance to try the other items!

<img src="http://img.bzzagent.com/image/privateSelection.jpg?Type=activity&Activity=3221553847&Campaign=4752798868&Uid=143335&token=932a9633509ed2cd2457c6342aaced01" alt=""/>

Strange Dreams

Lately, I've been having trouble getting to sleep before 4AM, which makes it even more difficult to actually drag my ass out of bed (or technically, recliner) when my alarm goes off at 11AM.  This morning, just before my alarm went off, I was dreaming that I was sleeping on a couch in my room, and I heard some guy talking.  This guy (his name is Andrew) pushes open my bedroom door, thinking it was someone else's bedroom.  He notices that it's not the room he thinks it is and just stands there for a moment, I guess dumbfounded.  I smile at him and tell him he can turn on the overhead light, which he tries to do, but I had turned it off at the fan when I went to bed.    Mind you, in real life, I rarely tell anyone it's OK to turn on the overhead light, and most definitely not when I am still half-asleep.  I really don't much like overhead lights, particularly the ones they put in ceiling fans.  Anyway, he comes into the room and sits on the couch in front of my legs and picks up my hands and starts playing with them absentmindedly.  And then...the alarm went off.   In my dream, I was interested in this guy almost as soon as I saw him standing in the doorway with that goofy look on his face.

I tried to go right back to sleep so I could get back into the dream and see what happens next.  Sometimes that works for me.  Definitely didn't this morning.  Ah, well.

Home-schooling

Something I wrote as part of an application process for some online work.  If you happen to swing by and have thoughts, I'd love to hear them.  I did write this off the top of my head, with what little I know from friends and family on both sides of this fence.

Education is a hot topic for parents, today more than ever.  Public school systems come under fire for poor retention or "adjusting" test scores to garner more state and federal education money.  State and federal governments are at a loss how to fix an ailing system.

Aside from public education and charter schools, schooling at home, or home-schooling, is an option more and more parents are choosing for at least a portion of their children's education.

Home-schooling gives parents the freedom to choose classroom topics, to a great extent.  As long as the basics are covered (with quarterly to annual testing, depending on local requirements) to the state's satisfaction, home-schooling parents have the opportunity to increase the breadth of the student's learning to include religion, astronomy, philosophy, and so much more.  Such simple things as trips to the zoo can now become lessons in science or biology.  Committed parents and students can complete comparable lesson plans in half or a quarter of the time required in attending public school, leaving the remainder of the days free for other family activities.

A great deal of material is available on the internet, about home-schooling in general and including lesson plans for various subjects.  Parents on a budget can find free material, and other parents with larger budgets can buy comprehensive lesson plans for subjects with which they are unfamiliar.  Most school districts choose to offer home-schoolers inclusion in physical education activities or extracurriculars, and many areas have home-school cooperatives, where student may learn a subject or engage in sport activities together.

On the other hand, being a home-schooling parent nearly always requires that the teaching parent remain at home, so as to be available to the students during the day.  Even if the home-schooling parent works from home, rarely is the income as high as if that same parent were working a full-time job.  This lack of income can sometimes adversely affect home life, and to raise a family with only one income requires a great deal of commitment on the part of the entire family.

Public schools offer students a different socialization level, experienced teachers and a strict schedule.  Many parents prefer this for their children, and many children need the regimen to learn effectively.  It's easy to see, on a six-week schedule, how well or poorly the student is progressing, and where he or she needs help.  Students make life-long friends in public schools, and are able to participate in things like school dances and graduation events.  Many parents do not have the option to remain at home, particularly with more and more single parent families in this country.  In this case, public school or a charter school would the parent's most viable choice.

How to educate a child is one of any parent's most important priorities.  Each family must consider the options and make the choice that satisfies that family's needs in the best way possible.

Book: Effected Intent by Alan Ross

The premise of this book is a pretty good one:  bioterrorism coming from a disenfranchised segment of our own population.

Unfortunately, that's as good as it gets.  The books randomly wanders backward in time.  The "hero" of the book is primarily stuck emotionally as a teenager.  He calls the prison office manager mom, and he talks and thinks about girls like a chaste fifteen-year-old (except during the flashbacks).

The point of view changes from person to person, and without notice.  Everyone's thoughts, including a chemist and high-level alphabet agency personnel, are immature and remarkably random.  There's gratuitous sex, and by that I mean that a main character picks up a girl in a strip joint and abuses her, badly.  It's not too graphic, but it has nothing to do with the story, except to make it more obvious that the character's a bad guy.  I like sex in my books, but this was just totally unnecessary to the plot, and the scenes felt like afterthoughts.  Next time, author?  Just leave them out unless they serve a purpose.

The chemist is a Vietnam veteran, and his first experience with The Wall is poignant and touching and probably the best part of the entire book.

The case is solved, singlehandedly, by the "hero," who happens upon boxes full of current network information for a major chemical company.  Yeah, because some major American corporation is going to just print out usernames and passwords, toss the papers into boxes and send them to the recycler.  Said recycler just happens to be a prisoner who mines all that information to snoop on the company's network and outfox everybody, including a CIA agent.  I suspended my disbelief for the duration of the book, because many things were implausible, even to my non-secret-agent knowledge.

Once the case is solved and the bad guys are caught in the act, the book ends.  Fffffft!  No loose ends tied up, no resolution for any of the characters, just done.  Buh-bye.

Bottom line is, I could have enjoyed this book, and have enjoyed others which presented similar theorems.  Instead, I was relieved to get to the end of the book, so I could move on to something else.

This review was based on the Kindle edition of the book, for which I paid $0.00.