Book: The Fetish Box, Parts One and Two by Nicole Camden

Formatting kinda sucks, and that matters to me.

Part One and Part Two are both pretty short, so I'm unclear on why this series is being published as separate parts.  I imagine Part Three is also fairly short.

Part One ends right when Mary gets in the house with John, the same day she arrives.

Writing is a bit uneven, with places where words are overused and there’s extraneous detail.  Point of view jumps a bit, even within chapters, though it got less confusing the further I read.

Part Two starts out at the exact moment that Part One ends, with the sexual encounter between John and Mary, and gets right to business.

It also ends at a critical point in the story, the day after she arrives.

The plot is different - young girl inherits a couple of businesses from a mom she never knew, and moves lock, stock and barrel across the country to run them.  They are not really what she expects, though the surprise is a pleasant one, and she is up for the challenge.  The secondary and tertiary characters are interesting enough that I'd like to get to know some of them better, though the two parts I read focus on Mary, John and Max.

Much as I might like to get to know these characters better, I don’t enjoy waiting for bits and pieces to roll out, divided at unnatural stopping places.

Book: Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren

Received a digital copy of the book via NetGalley for the purposes of review.  The book is available for purchase 02/12/2013.

Fun. Well-written. Only caught two errors. Reworked fanfiction (don't know what fandom), but in a completely different class than Fifty Shades. Aside from the lack of kinky fuckery, this is what Fifty Shades wished it was, and I liked FS, too. There’s kink here, it’s just less obvious, and frankly, somewhat hotter.

The relationship between Bennett and Chloe reminds me of Battlestar Galactica's Lee and Kara, my all-time favorite fictional couple; they fight like cats and dogs, but underneath they actually care about each other, and take far too long to figure it out and admit to it, then once they do, the relationship is still not all sunshine and roses and puppies.

There's another book expected out late spring, and I look forward to reading that one as soon as possible. This author duo has my attention.

Book: The Moon Stealers and the Quest for the Silver Bough

I received a digital copy of this book, to review for Addicted to Books.

I think this is a YA book, and it’s a pretty good example of why I don’t read much in this genre: it’s by turns simplistic and overly expositional, written for younger teens and tweens, without much appeal to an older audience.  There is some attempt to counteract that with a B story about an MI-6 agent and aliens, and those chapters are markedly different in writing style and tone than the ones that focus on the main plot.  I'm not sure how the disparate stories are intended to connect with each other.

I had trouble making myself read this one - there are too many “main” characters and the story itself wasn’t very compelling to me.  I found myself skimming paragraphs, trying to find a more interesting piece of the puzzle.

In addition, it ends at a very odd place, not right in the middle of a scene, but close to it.  Obviously, the author plans to release a sequel or sequels; I am not interested enough to read more.

Book: Already Home by Susan Mallery

Got a print copy of this book from the author, in exchange for a review. This is more stream of consciousness than review, so not up to my usual standards. Sorry.

Jenna is a complex character, a woman with a real flair for cooking and a serious inferiority complex in the kitchen, thanks to her ex-husband. She packs up her life post-divorce and moves back to her hometown, where she decides on a whim to open a kitchen/cooking store. Running said store is not all she thought it would be, and the trials and tribulations can be funny.

She has a great relationship with her adoptive mom and dad, and has never had any interest in searching for or getting to know her birth parents. Guess who shows up right in the big middle of her remaking her life? I figured out what her birth mother's agenda was pretty quickly - it seemed logical to me, though I don't think it was telegraphed much - maybe not at all. I have to confess to not really liking her birth mother, even by the end of the book. Maybe because I had a mother like that, and it pushed too many buttons for me.

The B story of her getting back into dating was not as satisfying for me for some reason. I didn't really connect with Ellington - he seemed too good to be true, and even at the end of the story, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop and for him to turn out to be some jackass.

The other B story of her store manager Violet's relationship woes is actually pretty compelling, and I'd like to read more about her. She's got a convoluted backstory, and I look forward to learning more about that. I adore Jenna's dad's solution to her big problem.

Jenna's birth brother Dragon is very interesting, and I definitely want to read more about him. He sounds like just my kind of not-quite-bad boy.

Book: Sebastian Cupid by JJ Martin

Completely no frills review:

Writing, characterization, grammar were all inconsistent, though grammar was mostly good.  Some incorrect word usage - maybe three or four in the whole book, but distracting nonetheless.  Promising variation on Greek gods and cupid.  Though this was billed as a romance, romance was not really a part of the story until nearly the end.  World building was average, not great.  A lot of characters to keep track of, though the majority of the book was from Sebastian's POV.  Sex was either wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am or fade-to-black.  There was never really a good explanation of how the cupid/golden arrows work in this universe.  Ending was extremely rushed and resolution was entirely too easy - made it pretty obvious that there is more to the story.  I doubt I'll bother reading more in the series.

Movie: Conan the Barbarian

I knew if I waited long enough, Amazon would put Conan on Prime's watch-for-free list.  It wasn't terrible, either.

So, I watched it, basically for Jason Momoa.  I loved him in Stargate: Atlantis, and though his part in Game of Thrones was very small, I liked him fine there, too.  The actress playing Tamara has the most amazingly pale blue eyes I've ever seen.  In one scene, they almost look white, they're so pale.  Stunning.

Pros: Conan, at both ages, is pretty.  Tamara is pretty.  There are many naked breasts in one scene that are pretty.  The fights, however unrealistic, are pretty.  His friend, the thief King, is pretty.  In the love scene and aftermath, both Conan and Tamara are very pretty (though the actress has a body double, so presumably it's the double's body that's pretty).  As you can tell, this was all about the pretty.  lol

Cons:  The movie as a whole was mediocre, at best.  The script maybe had good bones, but whoever didn't make any inspired choices in translating that script into film.  I had no idea it was possible to make Rose McGowan unattractive, but they managed.  The end was kind of non-endy.

Also, lest people continue to think that watching TV is not educational, while I was watching the credits, I was able to tell the gender of many of the film's Slavic workers.  If the name ended with ev, ov, av (not too many of those), then I knew that person was male.  If it ended eva, ova, ava, then that person was female.  Where did I learn that?  Babylon 5, maybe?  JAG?  I don't even remember, just that it stuck in my head.  Another useless bit of trivia for that trip to Eastern Europe that will never happen.  :)

Was that barbarian/King played by the same guy who was the head dude on Terra Nova?  I'll have to look that up, if I remember long enough. 

Anyway, it wasn't a waste of my time, but I doubt I'll be watching it again.  If they got a different director, I might even watch a sequel, though I would not pay to watch at a movie house.  I hear tell they're making another Conan movie with Arnold back as Conan.  I can guarantee I won't be watching that one.

Review: Pantene ProV Silky Moisture Whip

After receiving this sample in the mail from VocalPoint a week or so ago, I tried it in place of my usual Biolage mousse.

I have not noticed a difference in the texture of my hair, nor in the frizzy/not frizzy ratio.  It also does not hold my style, what little style there is, as well as the Biolage.

It's easy to apply - I mean how hard is it to put mousse in my hair - but since it does neither what it is advertised to do, nor what I use mousse to do, I'm definitely not impressed.

I don't recommend you waste time or money on this one.

Three stars out of five, just because it comes out of the can right, smells good, and washes off my hands easily.

Moms and other mysterious creatures, part two

Now for my stepmother.  Again a woman I did and do love.  I don't like her much most of the time.

When she got me and my sister, I had been the head of our little family unit.  Even at eight.  I was the one who went to the store for food and milk.  I was the one who bought cigarettes for my mother.  Obviously this was before there were age restrictions on buying cigarettes and alcohol.  I sometimes picked up my little sister from daycare, and sometimes made dinner for the two of us.

Immediately upon integrating us into her household, CC made it known that that behavior was not welcome. I was an eight-year-old girl and she didn't want me parenting or protecting my three-year-old sister.  I think of all the changes she made to my life during that first year, I hated that the most.  I wasn't needed anymore.  I felt superfluous and useless.

I was allowed to call her by her given name for a couple of weeks, until my sister and CC's own daughter began doing it, too, and then she made me call her Mom.  Oh, did I rebel against that, but being the eldest-perfect-child-hero stereotype, that rebellion came out sideways, never head-on.

I was nasty to her.  I disliked her intensely - hated that she had married my father, and hated that she was trying to be my mother when I already had a perfectly good one (not so much from an adult perspective, but it was what it was), hated that because of her, I had been taken from my mother and was no longer allowed to see her.

On the other hand, she had five brothers and five sisters, so I had aunts and uncles galore.  My youngest uncle was twelve, and the next youngest was sixteen.  I simply adored the two of them, to the point of hero-worship, and they put up with me and my sudden constant presence at family gatherings.  In those days, nearly all of the original eleven were still located in and around Denver, so a family dinner on Sunday was a mammoth affair to my previously one-aunt, two cousins mind.  Though CC resented my place in her life, her family accepted me immediately and with open arms.  I am no longer close to many of them (I mean, it's nearly forty years later, after all), but I love them all, without exception.

I was the eldest of the grandchildren.  CC was only 22 at the time, and most of the other originals were not yet married, and none of those who were had children older than two or three.

As fractious as our relationship was, we came to some kind of detente, because she was the only mother I had for seven years.  She fed me, clothed me, taught me how to set a table regardless of who was coming to dinner, enforced manners and proper behavior, let it slide when I'd rather read than go outside, and put up with my bad attitude with questionable grace.

She also regularly beat me, slapped me, berated me verbally and emotionally, and took all her resentments out on my physical and emotional person.  From this distant perspective, I know that she did the best she could with what coping tools she had, but my inner child says it wasn't good enough.

There were moments, though.  When I came home devastated in the sixth grade because I'd gotten my first B, she put her arms around me and let me cry, and made sure I understood that a B was plenty good enough.  Perfectionist me didn't believe her, but not through lack of trying.  When she caught me sneak-reading the Playboys, she didn't berate me, but sat me down at the dinner table, made me look at them from cover to cover and asked me if I had any questions, reassured me that those women in the pictures didn't look that good in real life, that real women had hair on their legs and didn't have to wear makeup to look pretty enough.  When my sixth grade teacher (ah, Mr. McCormack!) spanked me for some transgression, she stormed to the school and made sure he knew that it was NOT acceptable for the school to spank me for any reason whatsoever.  After that, I had to run laps.  I'd rather have been spanked, frankly.  When I got my first period, she was matter-of-fact about showing me how to use the sanitary belt and how to attach the pads to it (yes, I am that old), and calmed me down when I was sure that everybody could smell that I was on my period.

We functioned on an uneven keel until the year my dad had a solitary tour in Korea, and was gone for an entire year.  Our little family had to learn how to function without daddy around, and my relationship with CC changed and was sometimes less antagonistic.  When he came back, we all had to learn to deal with that again.  Anybody who says it's only the active duty member who really sacrifices is full of shit.

Anyway, during what we now call the tween years, particularly while my dad was gone, beatings and threats to send me back to my mother (for some reason, I was terrified of this) were the norm.  Anything that went wrong, I got punished for it.  Any chore that needed to be done, I was assigned to do it.  Basically, anything that made her life easier was my responsibility.

Things happened when I was fourteen, outside the immediate family, and things came to a head with CC the summer I was fifteen, when I was walking from the bathroom to my bedroom, and CC randomly reached up and slapped me as I was walking past her.  I got completely still and silent (people who know me well tend to disappear on the exceedingly rare occasion this happens now), then shoved her into the sliding glass door and very calmly told her, "Don't. Ever. Touch. Me. Again."  She didn't ever beat me again, though she still yelled at me plenty.

I got through high school, nearly always on restriction or grounded from something (or everything), moved out as soon as I turned 18 in the middle of my senior year, and graduated.  Fiddled around, continuing to live a directionless life for a few years, then moved completely away, to another state, and got into therapy as a result of my aunt's inpatient treatment for something.  Learned a lot about myself during those five years, grew up a lot.  Came back to Texas and stayed in Dallas.  Since I left for Missouri in 1987, I've never lived full-time in San Antonio, though I have always considered it home and hope to return there in the very near future.

When I came to Dallas, I met and married my ex-husband, had Mrs. Potatohead ten months later (on our ten monthiversary, as a matter of fact) and CC all of a sudden got nice.  She bought the wedding announcements when we told her we'd gotten married, invited us to visit for the holidays and was generally a much nicer person to be around.  This lasted a while, I guess, but eventually she reverted to form.  She'd badmouth me to my daughter, talked about me to my sisters behind my back.  Again, I was the scapegoat for pretty much everything wrong in her life, though she was nice as pie to my face.  All kinds of lovey-dovey.

When Mrs. Potatohead  was old enough to spend time with my family on her own, CC was always happy to have her visit, creative with activities to keep her occupied, and generous with her time and material things.  We lived in an uneasy peace for years, with her being supportive on the surface, and ugly when I wasn't there to hear it.

CC kept up the surface support, even during some of my most trying emotional times, and I continued to accept this dichotomous behavior from her.  I've made my peace with it, and kinda figure she's given me what she's capable of giving, all things considered.  It's not good enough, but it never will be, and yet, it has to be.  It's all there ever will be.

Three and a half years ago, we had to move out of the house we'd been living in, and she offered to pay for an apartment for a year, if we'd move into the apartment she chose for us (that is, Miss Not-Yet-Potatohead and myself).  We made the move, Miss became Mrs, Mr and Mrs had Baby Potatohead, and Mrs graduated from high school in spite of everything.  My kid is something special.  Anyway, the year of financial support became six months, and with a fifteen-month lease, we struggled to stay in that place and pay all the bills, until Mr Potatohead went into the USAF.  He got out of basic training, started getting paid, and Mrs Potatohead started paying all the bills.  The child had become the parent to some degree, and I'm willing to bet part of her resented it.

During the last part of this, my truck started needing more repairs than it was worth, and I sold it.  We went without a car for quite a while, dependent on others to get us around for anything.  Nearly two years ago now, CC told me that if I could find a car I liked, she would pay for it, with one stipulation.  She was done with me.  I was to stay out of her life for good.

At last, after almost forty years, the gloves came off and she was honest about what she wanted.  I have to recognize the powerful moment for what it was, and I admire her for finally saying what she actually felt instead of catering to the party line that family is family and we should all be happyhappy together.  What a crock that is.

Last year, CC let me know via email that if I wanted to come over, I'd have to find a way to get there (remember I didn't have my car for a year because of that horrid mechanic).  My sister insisted this would be considered an invitation, but I found it less than gracious, and insincere, so I didn't bother making any effort to find a way over there.  I live half an hour away.  If she really wanted me there to any degree whatsoever, someone could have come and got me.

On the other hand, she sent bits and pieces of xmas dinner with said sister when she drove to see me on her way out of town.  I did enjoy the traditional family fare, even a day late and cold.  lol

I'm OK with not seeing her.  However, staying out of her life means that I don't get to see my dad, and I miss him something awful.  He last spoke to me at xmas, the month before she bought me the car I have now.  He sent me an email for my birthday that year, but didn't actually speak to me, and last year, I got nothing at all from him, not even a text message.  I'm trying to get to my happy place with that, but man it is difficult to do.  I'll admit that I had myself a little pity party over my birthday last year.  Staying out of her life also means that I don't get to see the rest of the family at Thanksgiving and Christmas, though Thanksgiving is usually spent with my girlfriend in SA.

As painful as it is to have my dad be out of my life, I prefer this honest-to-herself CC over the previous two-faced one.  If she doesn't like me, she shouldn't have to pretend that she does.  Much as I love her, I don't have to pretend to like her anymore, either.  I can live with that.

None of this should be construed as meaning that I am blameless and perfect.  I so am not.  I, too, am doing the best I can with the coping tools I have.  It's a wonder I'm still sane after all I've been through, as a great man once said.  :D  Actually, I don't think I am sane, but don't tell anybody.

Moms and other mysterious creatures, part one

I loved my mother always.  Sometimes I didn't like her much, though.

My mother and I had a strange relationship.  I lived with her for the first eight years of my life, and from all accounts, I was a happy child, content to be left to my own devices.  Then my dad got custody of us, he was PCSed to Thailand with the USAF, and I didn't see her for another seven years.  By that time, I was deep into the teenage years, and did not feel the need for nor enjoy having another mother figure, particularly not one with strange ideas about how I should behave toward her or in general.  I had things going on in my personal life that were traumatic and that summer was probably not the best timing to rekindle our relationship.

She tried to be a mother to me at first, and that just really didn't gel, so we eventually created a friendship that mostly worked for us.  She shared things with me that she might discuss with another peer, and I talked to her about things, even private things, comfortably, because that mother/daughter vibe just wasn't there for me.  I think she missed that, since I never stopped being her elder daughter in her mind, but I just couldn't make the transition back to being her daughter.

One of the things about her though, was that she talked about me a lot.  She'd praise me to the mountains, to anybody who'd listen, when other people were around.  However, she never made a point to say any of those things privately, and I kind of felt that she was proud of the idea of me, but not necessarily proud of the me that existed right in front of her.  I resented that she only seemed proud of me when there was someone to listen to her saying it.

By the summer I started seeing her again, she was fairly well-known in the local and regional pagan and Wiccan community and many, many people called her Mom.  I have to admit that I also resented the time she seemed to have for everyone but me.  I'll stipulate that it was my perception as a selfish teenager, and probably not the reality, though there were certainly times that I wanted to do something with her and she couldn't because she'd already committed the time elsewhere.  I guess I just thought that if I was going to go to all the trouble to come see her in the summer, she'd be available for me to see.

At some point, I got into therapy and started to grow up, intellectually and emotionally, and began to see my mother's behaviors from a more detached perspective.  This both helped and hurt our relationship, as I was able to see and accept her for what she was as a mother, and at the same time, I saw that she was stuck in a victim mentality.

I grew to hate that she couldn't take responsibility for anything in her life.  In her mind, everything happened TO her.  If something bad happened, she could (and did) always lay the blame on someone else.  Most of us know someone like this, I think.  I sometimes thought myself better than her, because she couldn't or wouldn't rise above this mental place and be her own person, and I had struggled through years of talk therapy to become a better, more emotionally mature me.

In the end, she was pretty determined that she was going to die relatively early, like her mother did, though my grandmother died from breast cancer.  My mother accomplished this through heavy wine consumption and chain-smoking and basically not eating much at all.  At the very end, when she was being taken to the hospital in an ambulance, she sent someone back inside the house for her cigarettes.  I always kind of laugh at that.

All of us kids saw her a couple of months before she died, and I was stunned to see how emaciated she looked, though in the pictures of that day, it doesn't show much.  By the time she died, my 5' 10" mother weighed less than eighty pounds, and she looked horrible.

During the last year or two, I struggled mightily with letting go of her and detaching myself from her negativity, because I could just get sucked down into that morass and never climb out, so I didn't spend a whole lot of time with her.  That was what I needed at the time, to keep my sanity, and I don't regret the decision I made to spend as little time with her as humanly possible.

I do miss her, though, these ten years later.  She always had good stories, from her own childhood and from mine.  She loved people and people loved her.  One of the things I tried to do in the wake of her death was to compliment random strangers, as my own strange way of honoring her memory (This was something she did that I always admired and wanted to do).  For an introvert like myself, it was difficult, sometimes to the point of tears, but it made me feel a little more connected to the woman I had adored when she was at her best.

Book: Balance of Terror by Kaz Agustin

Balance of Terror has a very good blend of fairly traditional scifi elements with bits of medicine, mercenaries, friendship, love, and sex.  I was a little confused at first about the motives of the two main characters, and the synopsis helped, but mostly, the book just jumped into the action, and things became clear pretty quickly.

The sex was politely written and not gratuitous, though not really necessary to the storyline.

I have to say that the best part of this book was the formatting.  Seriously.  I have read some relatively decent books on the Kindle, and the formatting is about 50/50 on whether or not it's going to be good.  Balance of Terror made it very clear where section breaks were, where chapters began and those things made the book so much more enjoyable.  While it was a good book all on its own, the formatting made it even better.

I received this book through Sandal Press Online, for the purposes of review.

Little bit of self-promotion

This is as good a time as any to remind you that if you're going to shop Amazon, I would deeply appreciate you going through one of my links, so that I make a wee bit of money from it.  (really wee, like 4%)

Thank you ever so much.

My contribution to yourholidaymom.com

Dear Adopted Holiday Child,

It can be hard to know what to say to someone who doesn't have support from their family over the holidays. My own daughter has been pretty lucky for the most part.  She always knew, because I told her repeatedly, that I didn't care who she loved, as long as they loved her back.  I used to tell her, "Boy, girl, purple alien, whoever," and though it came to be a sort of family in-joke, she knew deep inside that I meant it.  Others of her peer group weren't so lucky, and I saw the negative results of family or friend rejection firsthand more than once.

Maybe you've experienced some of that yourself. I can't erase that memory from your brain, though I wish I could.  Maybe you're feeling some of that rejection from your family or coworkers or people you thought were friends right now. So let me tell you this: You really do have people out here who love you just exactly as you are. You matter, especially to me.  I know what it means to be lonely in a room full of laughing people, and right now, at this very moment, while you're reading this, I am thinking about you and wishing I could make hugs into something tangible I could send through the internet.

One of my favorite childhood traditions, which I continue as often as I can as an adult, is hosting single Airmen at our family dinners at Thanksgiving and Christmas. The guys were usually young, sometimes away from home for the first time, unable to be with their own families. While it's not exactly the same situation, they shared a feeling of loneliness at a time of year when every single thing we hear is about families and sharing and happiness and love and joy, whether we like it or not.

In my own home, as an adult, everyone is welcome as long as you come hungry.  Can you chop celery or fry up some bacon?  Can you sit on the couch and watch TV?  Can you improve on my family's cornbread dressing recipe?  Can you drink soda or set the table or help with the dishes?  Can you debate the relative merits of Battlestar Galactica or Babylon 5?  All of those things matter more to me than what you look like or whether you're loving an "acceptable" person. You'd be welcome in my home, as would anyone you'd choose to bring, and if you wanted one, you'd be entitled to a hug when you came in the door.

So remember that.  The inner me sees the you that's inside, with all your trippy little quirks and your hopes for the future, and I love you. I hope that helps make your holidays be merry in a whole new way.

Love, Mom Lucy

Definitely worth checking out, particularly if you are not sappy and prone to random weepiness like I am.  :|
YourHolidayMom

The Dark Side of the Moon

Well, not really.  But, yeah, kind of.

This is the time of year that what's left of my emotional stability takes a good, long look into the abyss and decides whether or not to take a flying leap for the rest of the year.

Some Decembers are really, really difficult.

Ramblings and stuff

Since the death last month of one of my daughter's classmates, and his memorial service, I've been in a heightened (deepened?) state of nostalgic melancholy.  I saw the classmate she'd been closest to at her freshman year, and that was almost as hard as being at Trey's memorial service, in some strange way.  G was a wonderful boy and he loved my daughter practically from the moment they met.  They became dance partners and oh, my kid was happy when she was dancing!

Then we moved, had to, leaving all her friends, including G, behind, and she really disliked me for a while.  I didn't have the money to drive back to C-Town very often, even if it was only twenty minutes away.  What?  I was unemployed.  I managed to keep the stupid cell phones turned on most of the time, and we had a place to live, so I kinda figured we were ahead of the game.  Driving back and forth so she could see her friends in person didn't seem like a necessity.

Anyway, I guess seeing G and remembering that one happy year of high school settled in and made some part of me wish that she could have stayed as happy as she was her freshman year, and that we could have continued to function as well together as we always had (with a few exceptions - no parent/child relationship is without tension).

Maybe it  mixed in with some belated empty-nest syndrome.  It's been a little over a year since she moved out completely, and all but stopped talking to me for a while.  Those first couple of months, while I was still packing and moving, weren't too bad, but I missed my grandson and talking to my girl every day something awful.  Then I couch-surfed for a few months, and being on my best behavior sort of meant not moping around about my kid or my dysfunctional family.

November was harder, because I was unable to make my annual trip to San Antonio to see my friend from high school and do Thanksgiving with her and host our Airmen and just in general be "home" with antiquing and breakfast tacos and Sonic drinks every day and all the Mexican food I could manage to eat.  I look forward to that recharge all year long, and though I understand her situation, I selfishly hated that it got in the way of my needs and wants.  I did my damnedest to sleep through Thanksgiving, since I had nowhere to go.

Having nowhere else to go was stupid, considering that my parents live half an hour away.  Last January, after my stepmother bought me a car (one cannot really effectively job search or work without a car in DFW), she came out and said that she wanted me out of her life and except for sending her birthday cards I've completely respected that.  Last Thanksgiving, it wasn't a big deal, because of my annual trip to SA.  But I was not invited to their house at Christmas, not even for dinner.  Unfortunately, her need to see me gone means that I don't see or speak to my dad, either, and it hurts that he's made no effort to contact me.  This year was the first time in my entire life that I didn't get even an email or text message from my dad on my birthday.  I cried about that, you can believe it.  Yes, I'm 47, but I don't think a girl ever grows out of needing her dad to call her on her birthday.

I wished pointlessly that I had my own place, so that I could put a Thanksgiving dinner together and make it an open house or something, so that I could see other people and not be stuck in my own dark and dreary head/heartspace.  Don't get me wrong, I am grateful to have a place to live that is not a box under a bridge, but it is just a roof over my head, and though he says I'm welcome to invite people over, I rarely do because this place has never felt like home to me.  I also hate the kitchen.  I mean, I don't like to cook anyway, but this kitchen in particular is definitely a relic from a bygone era.

I think I had a point to make, but if I did, I don't recall what it was, and I think I've rambled depressingly for quite long enough.  Gah!

On a more positive note, I am still madly in love with Battlestar Galactica 2003 and Katee Sackhoff's Starbuck.  I managed to get my hands on the first two seasons of DVDs and am really looking forward to seeing all those deleted scenes and other extras.  I'm trying to ration myself, though.  The distraction's gotta last through Christmas, because I just don't wanna think about another one without my family.

And on another bright note, my grandson, he is adorable!

My grandson

Ryan is not afraid to rock those stilletos and "help."  lol

I love that he's starting to say actual words now.  The other day, I got a video where he was yelling, "Honey!" at the computer.  Guess we know the favored term of endearment in my daughter's household.  :)

Book Review: Sold (The Auction) by Cheyenne McCray

Though I enjoyed reading it enough, it wasn't really anything special. There were about half a dozen grammar errors, mostly relating to tense, and in such a short work, those errors stood out more than they otherwise would have.

The auction to which the title refers was over fairly quickly, and the weekend at a resort which couples won was never referred to again. Too bad. It could have made for some intriguing situations.

Once the couple hooked up, there was too much time spent describing the toys and paraphernalia and his dungeon, and a lot of time on the female lead's intellectual responses, but hardly any time spent on how he was reacting, and very little time spent on actual sex. If I recall correctly, there are in reality only two sex scenes in the entire book, and most of both of them is spent talking about the toys and how gladly she is submitting to his will. I like to read about kink as much as anyone else, but this wasn't really very well done. I like to know that both people are enjoying the foreplay and the sex.

There's not really much buildup to the relationship, and the end of the story feels kind of tacked on, as if she'd run out of toys to describe and needed to end the book gracefully.

Someone else mentioned that this story was only good for eliciting a physical reaction. I didn't even get that much out of it. It really was an interesting concept/premise, one I wish the author had taken more time to explore.

This one was an Amazon freebie at the time I got it.

Book Review: Love Unscripted

I received a free copy of this book through NetGalley, for the purposes of reviewing.

Wow.  I haven't read a book in a long time that had so much extraneous information included.  I kept getting bogged down and outright bored with the play-by-play of where people were sitting or what they were wearing or the relationship state of someone unimportant to the overall plot.  The formatting sucked.  Quotation marks were used in place of apostrophes throughout, and that made this slow read even more torturous.  There were lines missing, or inserted two pages later, and lines breaks between chapters were frequently missing.  I'm hopeful that these issues are fixed in the actual published copies.

This book is written in first-person.  It's unusual, and not every author can make it work.  Though Taryn is theoretically 27 or 28, the book, particularly the beginning, reads as though she's just out of high school.  She's fixated on stuff that an older adult just wouldn't think too much about anymore, with totally juvenile thought processes about men and their relative hotness factors.

I really liked Ryan and Taryn at first.  They seemed to genuinely like each other and watching an actor fall in love with a "nobody" and vice versa was interesting.  Then, when Ryan left Taryn's city once filming was done, their relationship wasn't so easy and they each had issues with the other.  Ryan turned into an overbearing uber-jealous prick with anger control issues, and Taryn became a super-gullible untrusting brat, and it just went downhill from there.

The denouement was way over the top, though well-written, and then the end was just too treacly for words.  "I'm sorry."  "No, I'm sorry."  "I love you."  "I love you more."  "Let's live happily ever after."  Gag me with a spoon.  Yeah, I know.  The eighties called and they want their colloquialism back.

For me, this book was just too long, stuffed with too much unnecessary information, and the way the relationship played out was unbelievable.  Taryn's physical attraction to Kyle was given far too much emphasis, considering she's in love with Ryan, and whether or not she was attracted to Kyle had no meaning to the plot.

On the plus side, there were parts of the book that were extremely nicely done and touching.  The early days of the relationship had many adorable and funny moments, and though packed with a lot of tell rather than show, were enjoyable to read.

Hot and Cold

Sorry.  I suck at subject lines, and I was listening to Katy Perry. 

Good - Voted.
Bad - no bad there, except for the 40-minute line.

Good - smoothie from Smoothie King
Better - next one's free

Good - dinner at Cheesecake Factory
Better - half of it was free thanks to a gift card I earned through MyPoints
Extra Super Good Bonus - even though my favorite item is no longer on the menu, my fantastic waiter asked the kitchen if they could make it anyway, and they did.  Also, I got a survey on my receipt, and by filling it out, I got a $10 gift card for next time.

Good - saw Taken 2
Better - free thanks to a movie ticket voucher from MyCokeRewards
Bad - though it was still good, I didn't enjoy it as much as I did the first one
Good again - saw another trailer for Die Hard 5 and for Skyfall.  I am an unabashed John McClane and Daniel Craig 007 fangirl, and I cannot wait to see these two.

Best - CF and the movie house are in the same "mall," so I only had to park once

Good - Movie Trading Company is having a Buy Two, Get One Free sale through Sunday, and it applies to almost everything.
Better - Season 1, 2 and 2.5 of Battlestar Galactica were available at MTC, so I scored big!  Obviously, this means I'll have to start again at the beginning, so I can watch all those deleted scenes and whatever extras tickle my fancy.  Damn the bad luck.  lol

So, I pretty much got to show myself a good time tonight for practically nothing.  The only way it would have been better is if I had company.  On the other hand, when I'm alone, I can read my book without having to make conversation.  lol

Book: Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire

When I first started reading Beautiful Disaster, I loved it. Big Man on Campus finds the one girl who seems immune to his charm and since he can't shag her, befriends her. Abby and Travis develop a lovely camaraderie, with hints of attraction and unresolved sexual tension, a friendship that serves them both well. The descriptions of campus life were fun and made me a little nostalgic for something I never actually experienced. The author dropped hints that Abby's life before was quite different from the life she is leading on campus, said prior life being pretty much her sole reason for resisting Travis' advances in the first place. Travis is in a fraternity, but is most assuredly not your typical frat boy, by far.

That love for this book lasted until Abby and Travis finally give in after a fraternity party and sleep with each other. You know it's just a matter of time, that it is going to happen, because this is a romance, right? Big Man on Campus Travis, the guy that all the girls are hot for, the guy that girls line up to go home with, doesn't even last five minutes, and makes no effort to satisfy Abby, sexually speaking. I can blame this on the author, because the entire episode lasted about a paragraph, but I still lost a little bit of the hero-love and respect I'd been lavishing on Travis. After that, I just couldn't see him the same way. By the way, the descriptions of the sex, while extremely mild and unsatisfying, were nevertheless graphic enough that I probably wouldn't suggest this for someone under fifteen to eighteen, depending on your personal line in the sand.

Even once they were sleeping together, things went pretty well for the couple, and they were happy for a little while. The big obstacle happens when Abby, her friend America, America's boyfriend Shep and Abby's Travis go to Las Vegas. It all goes downhill from there. Travis' reaction to the obstacle is just exactly wrong, and his inability or unwillingness to read Abby's body language about how important this is to her takes him even further down in my eyes. I also don't think much of Abby's unwillingness to tell Travis why this is so critical to her.

The resolution of this issue takes up pretty much the rest of the book, with Abby standing firm the vast majority of the time, and Travis spiraling down into what amounts to stalker territory. I was deeply disappointed by the change in Travis from the beginning of the book to the end, and felt like he was not even the same character. The book ends on a high note, but it was an unrealistic ending for me, too happy too soon with not enough effort on either of the characters' parts.

I did love the characterization, particularly of Travis' family when we meet them. Their immediate acceptance of Abby as one of them is really sweet, and the brotherly love and protectiveness is something she needs, I think, from men who aren't her boyfriend. America and Shep stand up on their own, and even the tertiary characters aren't cookie-cutter background characters for the most part.

I'm trying so hard here to review this book without saying what happens, because it's a big deal to the characters. I hope I've managed that. The first half to two-thirds of the book is really good, so I still recommend reading it. Your mileage may vary with the big deal and the group's reaction to it, so don't let me keep you from reading the book.

Though I did love more than half the book, my lack of connection to Travis as the book went forward colored my like enough to take it down a notch. I'd give it a 3.5, but it definitely lost more than a point in my view. There were mistakes which could have been either typos or formatting errors, and there were many places where capital letters should have been and weren't.

Random McRandyPants

And that is actually a pretty apt nickname for me today.  Well, this whole year.  In fact, I think I shall change my internet nickname everywhere to Random McRandyPants.  :)

Not only am I finally reading a good book, but also it gets bonus points for the proper use of the word "alumnus" to refer to one male former student. More bonus points because it's a favorite trope and I'm enjoying it. Yay! The last three books have been just not right.  OK, two of them outright sucked and the third was just vaguely pleasant.  And then...we get to the sex.  I guess I have been spoiled reading good fanfic, because I was like, what?  He kisses her and then they're having sex?  Where's the foreplay?  Where's the making sure she gets hers?  This guy has a reputation and the girls line up to do him and he's all five minutes in the sack the first time he makes love to the love of his life?  Apollo he is not, for sure.  I mean, he at least apologizes for not lasting five minutes.

Tonight, at OTB, this girl sat at a table near me, and her jean skirt was so short, I was sure she was gonna flash the whole restaurant.  Then, when she and her date were walking away from the table, he puts his hand out, right behind her ass, but then decided not to, I guess. I thought it was funny because his hand immediately went to her ass area instead of the small of her back.  Then, "Oooooops.  We're at On the Border, not the local biker bar."  lol

Sold two things today, one on Amazon and one on eBay.  Yay!  Two more things out the door to new homes.  I wish I could figure out what days the mailman actually comes to our house.  This is the no-mail-gettingest place I've ever lived in in my life.  At least three days a week there is nothing in the mail.  He doesn't even slow down as he walks past our house.

Still haven't been able to get hold of my girlfriend to see if she and her husband are doing Thanksgiving this year.  When he's deployed, I don't even bother asking, I just show up, but since he's home again this year (and I'm happy he's out of Iraq, really!), I have to confirm, just to attempt courtesy.  I do hope they are, though, because I look forward to seeing those Basic Training Airmen every year and hearing their stories about their hometowns and why they enlisted.  And since I'm a dirty old lady, I look forward to checking them out.  I'll be honest.  :)  A girl's gotta have *some* fun.