Jan. 1: I’m busy today

Today I plan to alternate between two activities: reading and beading, even though I hate rhymes.

Victor’s at work (booooo), the kids are still in bed and probably will be for a while, and five minutes ago I decided I’m going to do whatever I want today. I guarantee that a half second after posting this, something will happen that changes my plans. OF COURSE.

Reading

I got this book for Christmas:

Amy Poehler is smart and funny, which is the exact combination I look for in a friend. We’re approximately the same age, and she tries to learn from her past, which is something I like to do too. That’s probably where the similarities of our lives end. But sometimes she says (writes) things that I would totally fist-bump her for, were she standing in front of me. Here’s an example:

“Going from crying to laughing that fast and hard happens maybe five times in your life and that extreme right turn is the reason why we are alive, and I believe it extends our life by many years.”

If you’ve been around here for a while, you know that I one-hundred-percent-believe this is truth.

She wrote some really wonderful words about self-image that I love too:

“I had already made a decision early on that I would be a plain girl with tons of personality, and accepting it made everything a lot easier. If you are lucky, there is a moment in your life when you have some say as to what your currency is going to be … Decide what your currency is early. Let go of what you will never have. People who do this are happier and sexier.”

“Currency.” I like that.

Later she tells a story about a time she should’ve apologized but didn’t, and when she was given a chance years later and finally took it, realized how much the experience had eaten away at her all that time:

“Shame makes people abandon their children and drink themselves to death. It also keeps us from true happiness. An apology is a glorious release … a huge gift.”

Ugh. Shame does hang on when we let it, and it causes so much hurt for those affected when it goes unacknowledged. And… that’s all I’m gonna say about that here.

Right now I’m about halfway through Yes Please, so I’ll probably share more pithy bits and pieces before I’m finished—I’m almost to the chapter titled “Humping Justin Timberlake.” :) This last quote is actually from Hillary Clinton, from a letter she wrote to Amy’s newborn son:

“I know that your arrival brings great joy to your parents and entire family and I am pleased to join with them in welcoming you to New York and our nation. Best wishes for a lifetime that includes lasting friendships, boundless curiosity, a love of learning and a future that is shining and bright.”

Best. Welcome-to-the-world letter. Ever.

Beading

OK, I was gonna show a picture of my current project, but it’s a custom order and a gift, and I don’t think I should be tossing photos around just yet. So use your imagination… I have lots of these:

… and a bunch of these:

… and these are all around me:

There. That’s what’s I’m doing today. Thanks for asking.

Sept. 30: Month in review

Tis the last day of September. That fact does not suck.

special days i celebrated this month and how:

Goodness, and also gracious. There were lots of good days worth celebrating this month.

• It made me ever-so-happy to write “Ladies Liquor Luncheon” on my calendar for Sept. 2. Theresa hosted a first day of school party; after we all shoved our kids out the door, we crazy-relieved moms gathered for good fun. While there’s a rumor that the best parties are the ones no one can remember afterward, this one was an exception—I remember all of it. I remember spending several hours with many of my dearest friends, and I remember thinking I AM SO LUCKY to know these women. I also remember stuffing my face with Cassie’s breakfast frittata and and Jenn K’s delicious salad-y goodness while across the room a bunch of people blathered on about Cross Fit and YES, I felt like a rhinoceros but YES, the bloody Marys and mimosas made it better and NO, I don’t have a problem.
• (I might have a problem.)
• September 6 is always a big birthday day on my calendar—my fave cousin Deanna, Kim F’n-W, Dan K, and Trevor L all got older that day. I celebrated by going to Jack’s first football game and seeing exactly zero of those birthday peoples.
• Our niece and nephew, Julianne and Jacob, each celebrated milestone birthdays this month. Before we ate cake with them, we went to Jack’s football game. Seems going to Jack’s football games is the new way to celebrate birthdays. To me, this is not ideal.
• My own birthday celebration went on for many days, as all the best ones do. Mother Mary was here and treated us to a lovely dinner… Vic worked his magic on the grill another night… Apple released a new iOS (I consider this my personal gift every September)… Val shoved a yummy lit cupcake in my face… and surprise, surprise, we went to a football game. While there was nothing exceptional about the age I turned this year, I appreciate that I did indeed have another birthday.

I’ll bet you a gazillion $$ that Dina
doesn’t remember writing this on our calendar :)

• Mack, April, Lafe, Tina, Margaret, and Hawaii Laura had birthdays this month too. September is a good month for a birthday. Pretty sure.
• Somebody planned a farewell dinner for a few of the important people in Jenn K’s life, and we begrudgingly went:

There are so many things I love about this picture that I don’t know where to begin!
But the good-bye part of it super-sucked.

i saw things with my eyes:

Movies:

• Kinky Boots (Amazon Instant Video). I loved this so much more than I expected to. It reminded me of other wonderfully acted but underrated British films like The Full Monty, Waking Ned Devine, and Saving Grace.  
• Say Anything… (Netflix). As a proud child of the 80s, I’m embarrassed to say I had never seen Say Anything start-to-finish until last week.
• A Single Man.  I was slightly disappointed in this one, possibly because I’d heard such raves and my expectations were high. The look of the movie was incredible; the story bummed me out. Colin Firth was all kinds of fab, but Julianne Moore’s portrayal of her character reminded me of Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest—it seemed like it was all a big, over-the-top, pathetic attempt at an Oscar nomination. I don’t especially love or hate her, but her performance here was ridic.
• We watched Iron Man 3 approximately 12 times this past week. I’m not exaggerating.
• Bad Words. Slightly sad, but laugh-out-loud funny.

Television:

• I’m all caught up with Veep (HBO) and can’t wait for season four. I adore this show. Julia Louis-Dreyfus has earned her three Emmys for this show, for sure. The truly unlikeable yet insanely hilarious characters on Veep make Seinfeld’s horrendous four seem like BFF material.
• Transparent. This is a new original series on Amazon and its cast is definitely worth watching. I’m not too far into the series yet, but they just posted the entire season. Here’s how Slate describes the premise of Transparent: “The title is a pun: As the show begins, the patriarch of the Pfeffermans, a close-knit, affluent, Jewish clan of Los Angelinos, begins to come out as transgender to her children.”
• New seasons of lots of good shows are finally starting! Yay!

Books:

I’m getting better about putting books down if I’m not enjoying them. This used to make me feel like a failure or that I didn’t give the book a chance, but I also hate wasting my time reading trash. Although I felt like I was reading a LOT more than usual this month, it turns out that many of the books I read went unfinished.

• Looking for Alaska, by John Green. I read this in honor of Banned Books Week, as lots of concerned parents have tried to get this out of kids’ hands. I loved the book, but I can see why there have been attempts to ban it. I will refrain from going into a long rant about censorship and the (lack of) logic behind banning books, but I will say this: MIND YOUR OWN DAMN BUSINESS, FOLKS. Geez.
• Girl Walks into a Bar...: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle, by Rachel Dratch. This was a fun read. 
• The Group, by Mary McCarthy. Do you ever read the synopsis of a book and feel positive that you’ve read it before but then you start reading just in case and suddenly nothing seems familiar? And then just when you think you were wrong, that the book is new to you, it starts sounding familiar again? That. That’s where I am with this book.

Other stuff:

• So. Much. Football. Our team is 3-1 with four games to go, which is the best record we’ve ever had, but this past weekend’s loss hurt bad. I’m enjoying watching the games more this season than I have in previous years, but my anxiety levels are still sky-high. Jack thinks it’s funny when I say that every injury makes me want to pull him out of the sport. I’m dead serious. It’s hard to see that stuff.
  
  It’s not just Jack’s team that’s playing all the football, though… it’s the high school games both kids want to go to at least once a week, plus all the games on TV, and every bit of it makes me want to throw things and curse loudly.
• Although I don’t mind the weather of this season, I really hate seeing leaves falling off trees. This is partly because I hate raking, partly because our yard is designed for spring and will be ugly for the next six months, and partly because, as mentioned above and in every post I’ve ever written this time of year, fall means there’s football on every single channel every single day. But will I use the cooler temps as a good excuse to prepare crock pot meals and wear boots and cozy sweaters? Of course I will.

this month’s good and bad:

• The kids went back to school. This is a very good thing. I’m still having a hard time believing that Katie is in high school, though—but she absolutely loves it. Jack, on the other hand, acts like every bit of the 12-year-old that he is, and I’m thankful to have a break from his eye-rolling for a few hours every day.
• Jenn K moved to Alaska. Pffftt.
• My orthopedist gave me permission to take off my walking cast! I’m wearing a transition brace for now, but it’s too bulky for most of my shoes, so truthfully, I’m playing risky and going ankle-nekkid most the time. So far, so good. Later this week I start physical therapy.

i likes to share pics I’ve found on the ‘net:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was real, September. Smell ya later.

Aug. 18: I can read.

I’ve been making my way through a huge stack of books this summer, thanks to not being especially mobile. While I do enjoy reading, I also enjoy walking around, and this has not been the most adventurous summer for me personally/physically. It’s been VERY adventurous if you count living vicariously through stories other people write.

And I totally do count that.

This summer I not only visited spots around the world, I traveled back in time to do it. Here are my most recent reads in the category of historical fiction.

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I was on the Titanic for The Girl Who Came Home, by Hazel Gaynor. Here’s the review I left on Goodreads:

I've been a bit of a Titanic geek for as long as I can remember--my dad was fascinated by the story, and I was too after the wreckage was found when I was in high school. I'm still intrigued by new and different spins on the disaster, so when I saw this book I knew I had to read it. You don't hear much about the *families* of Titanic victims--what it was like to say goodbye or prepare for arrivals, hearing the first reports of the sinking, waiting for the final list of survivors, etc. I enjoyed that part of this fictional account of the event. I appreciated the glossary of Irish terms/expressions, and that it was necessary--dialogue seemed genuine. As for the rest, I say "meh." The book reads like a first draft in some ways; there is a lot of repetition that a good editor would have cut. With little exception, the characters were not very interesting, but they could've been with a bit more development and better details about the immigrant culture of that era. Readers unfamiliar with Titanic facts will be left wanting more, as this book is pretty much "the ship shook, people panicked, first class was full of dumb jerks, lots of people didn't make it to a lifeboat, sad sad sad." I certainly wouldn't expect a minute-by-minute account of the sinking, which has obviously been written about extensively elsewhere, but it was definitely not given the pages it deserved. Overall, the fictional parts all seemed a bit too tidy in an effort to give the book a happy ending.

I was in Guernsey to read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. I didn’t review it on Goodreads because I couldn’t think of anything to say about the book that hadn’t already been said. However, it is an absolute delight, and I recommend it highly.

I was in Afghanistan for And The Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini. I truly enjoy Hosseini’s writing style—it has an Amy Tan/Anne Tyler quality to it—but I did not love this book as much as his others. Here’s my Goodreads review:

I give this four stars because although the book was fascinating and beautifully written, ultimately all its separate parts felt disjointed to me. The stories of Parwana, Markos, Adel, and Idris seemed unnecessary. It was jarring to have the narrator's voice change because it sometimes took several pages to figure out who the voice belonged to and what the connection was to the story at the beginning of the book. It's quite possible I thought the book should've been about Abdullah and Pari (and their ancestors/descendants), but Hosseini's intention was to tell a broader story, in which case I just didn't "get" it.

Right now I’m in China. It’s taking a very long time to get through Imperial Woman: The Story of the Last Empress of China, by Pearl S. Buck, because it’s approximately eleventy billion pages long. The story is mostly fascinating. I’ll keep at it.

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My to-read list is very long, but I don’t mind adding to it. What do you recommend?

Mar. 15: I read it: Notes to Boys

I haven’t been very good about reviewing books here at Stuff Jen Says, other than a sentence here and there in one of my month-end summaries. I tell people about books I read. I even recommend them to friends. Somehow I don’t get around to actually writing out my thoughts after I finish reading a book. But-cept sometimes I do.

This is one of those times. You remember Pamela Ribon, my BFF, right? She is toooootes my BFF. Here’s my review of her latest book, which I posted to Goodreads.

What I love about Pamela Ribon’s books is how they are simultaneously hysterical and heartbreaking. They’re like two, two, two books in one! Except they aren’t, because she manages to move between the two extremes—giving more time to the hilarious, thank goodness—in a way that feels completely normal.

In “Notes to Boys,” Ribon adult-narrates her teen dorkiness. Her notes to boys are exactly that: uncensored bits from her journals and first drafts of notes—some 200+ pages!—detailing her ascent into madness. And isn’t that how must of us entered our teens, mostly sane until the hormones hit? What she shares will make most readers cringe and nod and laugh along with her... and dig around in their parents’ attic for their old journals.

(That’s what I did anyway, and was disappointed to find that my teenage journals were far less interesting than Little Pam’s, though they were equally embarrassing.)

“Notes to Boys” is another Pamela Ribon hit. She has woven these excerpts from her journals into a story that, like her earlier books, is both realistic, relatable, and an absolute joy to read.

Inspired by Little Pam, I quoted bits from my 1985 journal a few days ago. Unfortunately, they’re amusing only to the people involved—“amusing” might be generous—and when I write up 1986’s blurbs it’ll probably be more of the same. Clearly, Little Pam was vastly superior to Little Jen—LP was writing for large audiences from the very beginning!

While I can’t eagerly recommend my walks down memory lane as entertaining reading for all, I can recommend Notes to Boys. Read it. So says I.

Jan. 31: Month in review

January 2014 is almost over. I’m kinda glad.

I’m also glad that today is Friday, because we all need a little Ponch now and then, right?

You’re welcome, Fancy Lori™. I know you like the Ponch pic. ;)

Special days I celebrated this month and how:

• New Year’s Day was celebrated in high style here at the House of Manullang. Three of the four of us were sick and napped throughout the entire day. Wheeeee. We’re the funnest.
• Jenn K’s birthday! We went to a wine bar, where I tasted a wine I actually like. I took a picture of the label so I can look for it in stores—so far, no luck. Figures. Time to place a special order, and I don’t even know how or where to do that because I’m so wine-stupid. After the wine bar we checked out a new local place, Valley Growlers. Big thumbs up for their fab selections! I think Jenn K had a good birthday, but none of us really remembers for sure, including her.
• I went to a baby shower for Erin, my niece. So fun to celebrate a new baby, even though he made me a great-aunt and that makes me old. More on Baby below.
• There was a celebration in our family when the Seahawks won the NFC championship, and there will be more celebration this weekend when they compete in the Super Bowl. As I am neither a Seahawks fan nor a Seahawks hater, I was not a celebrator nor a throw-things-at-the-wall-er (Loveliest Lori, I’m looking at you…). It sure is nice to have such happy boys in the house though. I also like seeing happy Seahawks-adjacent Facebook posts from happy Kim F’n, happy Melodie, happy Jordan family, happy every Manullang/Nienhuis, and happy neighbors. Happy is good.

I saw things with my eyes:

• Downton Abbey and Sherlock have started up again on PBS, and that makes for some happy Sunday nights here. The If-Downton-Abbey-Took-Place-Entirely-On-Facebook summaries that appear the next day at this site are priceless.
• I watched, for the first time, Mommie Dearest. Wow, I say, both for Joan Crawford’s awfulness and Faye Dunaway’s ridiculous over-acting. Still, it was oddly entertaining. One of the best things about Amazon Instant Video is having access to lots of movies (mostly trash) that I’ve never gotten around to watching.
• Last year I watched (and kinda loved) the documentary Grey Gardens, and this month I finally saw the Jessica Lange-Drew Barrymore movie version of it. Both were fascinating in that train-wreck/I-can’t-look-away way.
• Who needs to wait for the DVD release of Frozen, like a sucka? It’s online! Bootleg video, anyone?
• Armistead Maupin’s final tale from his Tales of the City series was published last week, and he was at Powell’s the other night for a reading and signing. He was as entertaining as always—I love that man. I’m thinking about re-reading the first eight books before I start the new one, just to experience the whole series in one great big delicious bite.
• I read Amy Tan’s latest novel, The Valley of Amazement. It contained a bit more detail about life as a courtesan than I really needed to know, but was beautifully written, as her books always are.
• I’m not entirely sold on e-books; I like holding actual books in my hands, turning pages, the eyestrain, all that. However, if a book is interesting enough, I’ll attempt to read it on my iPad. I just finished When You were Older, by Catherine Ryan Hyde. The story is set in the months following 9/11; I thought the author did a good job capturing the emotions of that tense time. (Someday I hope NOT to associate certain books with whether or not I read them on my Kindle app, but this was the second I’ve read start-to-finish.)

This month’s good and bad:

• NEW BABY NEW BABY NEW BABY NEW BABY!!! Erin & Kevin’s son was born four weeks early, but he’s doing well. I met him when he was two days old, and OMG, I forgot how lovely it is to hold someone else’s newborn! What a little sweetheart. Picture proof:

Baby Max (with Erin’s piggies in the background)

I love this pic of a very tired Erin and her sweet boy
(Totally stole it off their blog, but with permission)

• Debi visited! We need to see each other more than once a year. Boo.
• I opened an Etsy store and am going to sell my gemstone jewelry creations. I’ve been beading like a madwoman—it’s a very fun creative outlet. I’ll post the store info here when it’s all ready for shopping and sharing with your friends. I feel like I’ve been asking a lot of favors lately, so I apologize in advance for yet another.
• There aren’t enough creative new ways to use four-letter words that convey our frustration with the results of my PET scan. The cancer is back. I have a biopsy next week, and will meet with the oncologist soon after to decide on our next course of action. I’ll do my best NOT to turn Stuff Jen Says back into an all-cancer-all-the-time blog, but will also try to share news as it happens.
• And while I’m on the topic, I’d like some credit for not using more of those four-letter words on my blog. They sure come out of my mouth more than they end up here. Somebody praise me for my restraint RIGHT NOW.

I likes to share the silly stuff:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time to enjoy some February. You should do it too. Laterz.

Nov. 30: Month in review

My summary of November 2013 is a teensy bit late (it’s already December), but I’m dating it as though I posted it on time. Or let’s just say it’s November 31st. Yes, let’s.

Special days I celebrated this month and how:

• Jack’s football team had their end-of-season party. The coaches praised each boy for their strengths and contributions to the team, and left all of us parents grateful and kinda teary. I’m not gonna lie; I’m glad football is done, but I also love that Jack had the opportunity to be part of a great group like this one.
• Our boy turned 12 on Nov. 13. He invited a couple friends to a Blazer game, and the next weekend he had them over again for a sleepover party. In anticipation of that night (better known as FartFest2013), Katie and I made our escape to a hotel in Portland. Fun was had by all.

• Victor and I went up to Long Beach, Washington for a belated birthday vacation from Mother Mary. We stayed at Adrift Hotel, an odd little place just steps away from the beach. Lucy had never stayed in a hotel before, and was really agitated at first—pacing and looking for the other rooms and more people. Then she realized that she’d get several walks each day for potty breaks, and she decided she loooooves hotels. It was a nice little break for all of us. Long Beach is way underrated.
• Thanksgiving! This year we spent our favorite holiday with friends. We had a delicious dinner, followed by an epic poker game. There was also an assortment of Christmas movies, music, hide-and-seek games, and these pear-rosemary cocktails. ‘Twas a lovely day.
• Dear friends Ed and Sheila celebrated birthdays this month. I didn’t celebrate with them, though because neither of them invited me to their parties. Never mind they were in Oklahoma and a Dakota at the time. Happy birthday anyway!

I was in the audience:

• Mom, Dina, and I went to an advance showing of The Book Thief. I loved the book and wasn’t thrilled when I heard it was being made into a movie, but we all thought it was really well done. The cast was amazing—every single character was impressive. I highly recommend it—the book and the movie.
• We upgraded our Christmas movie collection with this purchase. I’m embarrassed—just slightly—to say we watched all four movies in one evening. At this rate, I’ll be Christmas-ed out long before Dec. 25. That ain’t good.

Books and things:

• I started reading Amy Tan’s newest book, The Valley of Amazement. I’m planning to go to her reading at Powell’s on Wednesday.
• My stack of “to be read” books is getting precariously high. I could get through it if I could stay awake for five minutes. Lately reading makes me sleepy. Pffft.

This month’s disappointments:

• Our kitty was sick. At first her teeny-tiny sneezes were really cute, but then she started doing it on my face and that was enough of that. Poor Millie. Getting her to and from the vet was insanely difficult for me and stressful for her. Thankfully, after a round of antibiotics, she’s all better.
• Although Victor had most of the week off, he had to work the day after Thanksgiving. He always does, and I hate it. What’s worse, though, is this year he has to work on Christmas Day. Actually, maybe this whole Christmas-ed out thing will work out well for me. I can spend Christmas Day undecorating the house.

newsy bits from in and around our family:

• These are the people with whom I closed out November 2013—Tina, Theresa, and Val. Lucky me!

• So, I attempted another blog challenge in November and failed in a very successful way. I’m trying something similar in December and predict I’ll do about as well.
• Mother Mary has now joined the rest of us in the 21st century: she finally upgraded from a 1990s-era flip phone to an iPhone. If you get a text from her, you’ll have to add your own punctuation, though. She hasn’t figured that part out yet. Baby steps.

I likes to share the silly stuff:

 

Happy December, friends! Smell ya later.

Oct. 31: Month in review

Time for my summary of October 2013.

Special days I celebrated this month and how:

• Sherilee and I had a mini girls’ weekend in celebration of our birthdays (mine last month, and hers the other day). We stayed at the Hotel Rose, had dinner at The Melting Pot, saw Gravity in 3D (still nauseous), met up with Lisa H-S for breakfast the next morning at Mother’s Bistro, and wandered in and out of stores all over downtown. So much fun! Thank you, Sher!
• On October 21, there were posts all over the ‘net about it being the exact date Marty McFly travels to in Back to the Future II. But it wasn’t 2013 he went to; it was actually 2015. Here’s the countdown clock to the real date, at which time we’ll all have flying cars and food hydrators. I can’t wait! (One of my favorite parts about the 2015 scenes in that movie is their reliance on fax machines and pay phones. Such advanced technology!) This article from earlier this year lists the things BTTF2 actually got right.
• Our giant puppy, Lucy, turned two years old. She celebrated with extra loves and carrots, which is pretty much the way she celebrates every single day. Here’s a video of her singing along with Katie on the piano (this might be the first video file I’ve ever embedded in a post, and I apologize if it takes eleventy years to load).

I was in the audience:

• Last weekend the four of us went to Spamalot at the Cottage Theater in Cottage Grove. It was so much fun! Sometimes community theater is really well-done and that makes me happy. Why did we go all the way to Cottage Grove when we could have seen it in Lake Oswego in September? Because I didn’t do very thorough research, obvy. :(
• Lisa and Sher suggested I watch Sherlock. It’s quite clever and if not for the combo of fast-speak and British accents, I might not have to watch each episode three times before I get it. Season 3 will be airing on PBS back-to-back with Downton Abbey in a few months! That loud sound you just heard was me falling over from all the awesome.
• My review of the new TV shows I’ve seen: The Blacklist – OMG yes. So good. Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D – Meh for me. Victor likes it. The Goldbergs – I’ve gone back and forth with this one. The first two episodes were really funny, the third was stupid, and the fourth very subtly referenced Sixteen Candles and in doing so, may have won me back. Ironside – You’d think more Blair Underwood on my TV would be a good thing no matter what, but you’d be wrong. I’m not surprised it’s already been cancelled. Super Fun Night – I wanted to love this, I really did, but it’s just not doing it for me. The Millers – I watched the first episode and thought it was funny, but I need to watch more before the show gets a spot on my Hulu subscription list. Brooklyn Nine-Nine – So dumb. Sean Saves the World – I do love Sean Hayes, but this show seems like it’s trying soooo hard. I’m on the fence. The Michael J. Fox Show – Meh. This is another show I really wanted to love.
• I watched the first season of Girls. I liked it fine, but can someone tell me how this show is not exactly like Sex & The City? I mean, besides the absence of ridiculously expensive shoes.
• Since early in the summer, I’ve watched all seven seasons of The Closer and both seasons of its spinoff, Major Crimes. That’s a lot of time spent with Homicide Division; I feel like I got to know each character pretty well and I already miss them. Also, I know Provenza’s not old enough to be my grandpa, but I wish he was anyway.

Books and things:

• This month I went to the Jamie Ford event at Powell’s. He was charming and fun, and it was fascinating to listen to him talk about the backgrounds of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter & Sweet and Songs of Willow Frost. My mom wanted a book signed but couldn’t make it to the reading, so I asked him to be kinda snarky. Here’s what he wrote:

 

• Powell’s is pretty much the King of Author Events ‘round here. If you’re curious about upcoming dates, check out their calendar. Amy Tan will be here in December with a new book!
• I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned BookBub before, so this might be a rerun. If you enjoy ebooks—on Kindle, Nook, Kobo, whatever—sign up at BookBub.com to get daily emails with discounted and free ebooks. You can choose the genres that interest you, so if the emails suggest you buy books you don’t want, it’s your own fault.

This month’s disappointments:

• I really was hoping—for Jack’s sake, not mine—that his football team would make it to the playoffs. Bummer.
• My laptop died. I don’t think I’ve ever bought a laptop and been happy about it—it’s always an emergency to replace the busted one. Grrr. My new one has Windows 8 and thus I have begun my slow descent into madness.
• The blogging streak of September didn’t continue. I actually hoped to post a little more often this month. I guess I was too busy watching all that TV and screaming at Windows 8.

newsy bits from in and around our family:

• Jack came back from Outdoor School alive and not even very muddy. He had a blast.
• Katie’s cross country team won the league championship.
• Jack made a touchdown in his last game of the season. I’ve seldom seen that boy so happy, and that sooo makes sitting through all those games worth it.

Anything else noteworthy:

Just some funny tweets, courtesy of Huffington Post.

  

  

  

  

 

That’s it for October. Happy Halloween!