shush now’s Neighborhood

57paradise

I know, I just thought this would be a cool place to decorate for the holiday!

Ballantines

Holidayfire

Newglasses

Newtree

Oldtaylor

So say I. 

The first cover is A Cool Christmas Vol. 3, but I actually have Vol. 2. Then there's TSO, Brian Setzer, some Celtic stuff, classical stuff, last year's Harry Connick, Jr album, one with Bing and Frank which sounds kind of bad on here, more Frank, and maybe something else I left out. 

Shake Hands With Santa Claus

Louis Prima

Finished Tainted by Brooke Morgan.

I enjoyed this book, although I never really got sucked into it.  Basically, it was good enough where I always wanted to keep reading but not so good that I had a hard time putting it down.  (Solid read, though, and it's in paperback.)

Holly is a single mom (to five-year-old Katy).  She doesn't really have much of a social life (partly due to Katy; partly because she's a homebody anyway).  Katy's dad isn't in the picture and Holly's life is Katy and Henry (Henry is her grandfather, Katy's great-grandfather).  And then she meets Jack.  Jack's British and gorgeous.  He sweeps Holly off her feet (as in they move in together pretty quickly and get married not too long after that).  Everyone seems to love Jack, but is he really what he seems?

Tainted

Brooke Morgan

Do you remember the things you did when you first started using the Web and how it has changed your life?

Sponsored by Yahoo!

The things I first did on the web did change my life, mostly for the better. I only used it now and then from about 1993 to 1996, when we got our first home computer and a sponsored CompuServe account. That's when I became merbelle, a name I kept and used for all internet dealings until Yahoo literally screwed it up. But that's another story. 

I joined two forums at first, a poetry forum, and one that talked about old music. The music one, populated with radio djs and music collectors, taught me so much. First, it was encouraging that the people I spoke with online were just people; I never had any of that fear people developed about how the web was full of evil or whatever. And the people of that forum, mostly men, were kind and generous with their time and knowledge. I owe a great deal of my current music interest and rediscovery of good old music to them. I hope that they enjoyed speaking with me as well, though I did not have as much to contribute. 

The poetry forum, I owe so much to that! I still talk with a couple of those people now and then, and peer into the forum they started elsewhere when CompuServe began to change. 

The man joined it first. And at the time I thought he was more literary than me, and talented in a way that I was not, so I was afraid to join in. (There were other reasons, but not relevant to this post.) I wanted to share a poem I'd written, though, with people who might tell me whether it was interesting and worth continuing effort in the medium. 

This is that poem. Okay, it's not actually a poem, and I knew it then, but I also knew it had poetic devices, and wanted to learn more about that kind of writing. 

if you teach a man to fish, 

when will arthritis prevent him from reeling in a catch?

you never cut your hands slicing potatoes, but the slices are thick and uneven 

and some of them fry up brown and crisp while others still seem cold in the middle.

you’re so thin i could rock you as easily as i rock my own children, 

but you’d never admit you need my touch just as you’d never let me buy you some fish as long as you can 

still cast your rusty hook into the water.

you don’t think i know that you eat those potatoes with nothing but store-brand cola to wash them down 

because it’s cheaper than coffee and you have no bait for that rusty hook of yours.

you proudly display that laminated name badge pocket protector wherever you go. 

but it’s yellow with age, and your once stiff canvas shirt is soft and rumpled; worn through at the elbows.

your myopic eyes, large and faded through those thick goggle-like spectacles, 

sort out the change for the generic antacid that food stamps won’t provide for.

i imagine you carefully wiping your dish dry after your meal, 

and i think of calling my dad.

So I dove in and shared it. You had to do it in just the right way; there were sections for people with a lot of experience and knowledge about poetry, and others for chatter, and some for just sharing poetry you didn't want feedback on, and of course there were developing rules for giving and receiving praise, etc. 

It went over well, I mean, of course it isn't very good, but it does have a sense of balance to it, and it's kind of touching. A couple of the experts were kind, and told me what they thought was worthwhile about it. So that encouraged me to write more, and get to know the people, make some friends, watch so much romantic drama being played out onscreen, which sometimes fueled more writing, etc. There were three men there I'll never forget, all wonderfully talented, all British, though two of them lived in other parts of the world. They each taught me something about how to read and write poetry, and occasionally took a personal interest in my efforts. 

There was another man I met there with whom I had an ongoing online and occasional phone call friendship from that time nearly to this, though we haven't spoken now in over a year. I will always remember him with more fondness than most other people I've ever known. 

Most of the women seemed kind of like they were on the make. And there was less talent among them. I do not believe this is because women are less talented at poetry, merely that the ones in that area were probably less focused on it. So I didn't really connect with any of them. But I learned to take poetry seriously, and learned so much about myself and my talents, how to develop different styles of writing and communication, and how to engage people for conversation. 

I wrote a sonnet to share there, my first one, that I was just so proud of, and now it is lost somewhere in the ether of the web. I don't know why it's not saved in my poetry files with all the others. But wow, realizing that I could write one gave me a real sense of power that I've never forgotten, and that I do try to remember to apply to my ongoing efforts. 

I was 31 when I began using the web to learn about writing and other subjects, and to make friends. Thinking about it that way, it seems like a lifetime ago. These past 13 years have been filled with a great deal of extraordinary pain that is still not resolved. But I have an awful lot of fond memories mixed in with all that, and I can thank access to the web for many of them. 

"The absolute holiness of God should be of great comfort and assurance to us. If God is perfectly holy, then we can be confident that His actions toward us are always perfect and just. We are often tempted to question God's actions and complain that He is unfair in His treatment of us. This is the devil's lie, the same thing he did to Eve. He essentially told her, "God is being unfair to you" (Gen. 3:4-5). But it is impossible in the very nature of God that He should be unfair. Because He is holy, all His actions are holy."    Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness

Finished U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton.

Another fantastic Kinsey Millhone mystery.  In this one, she's hired by someone who thinks he may know something about a decades-old kidnapping case.  (He remembers seeing two guys burying something a couple days after a little girl was kidnapped.)  She doesn't have much to go on, but that doesn't stop her. :)

I can't even tell you how much I love the Kinsey Millhone mysteries.  I started reading them in high school after some friends pointed out that if I liked VI Warshawski, I'd probably be fond of Kinsey, too.

Some people get annoyed that these books are still set in the 1980s, but I think it's nice.  Besides, if it moved to modern day, Henry would have to die, and I do not want Henry to die.

U is for Undertow (Kinsey Millhone Mystery)

Sue Grafton

(Almost.  I have 40 minutes to go.)

This has been a batshit insane week at work.  The verdict in our mayor's trial came in yesterday and it was probably one of the five worst working days of my life.  (The other four, all in no particular order:  Virginia Tech shooting, police-involved shooting that happened on the weekend, faux-hurricane also on the weekend and one night where there was a tornado in one of the western counties and we were on the air for an extra hour, making it four straight hours o' fun.  Presidential elections are also always fun.)

So I am more than ready for my weekend. 

I don't have much planned.  I have to do laundry (of course and always).  But beyond that?  I want to finish the new Sue Grafton mystery, which I'm really enjoying.  I bought myself Terminator: Salvation on Blu-Ray, and I hope to watch that tomorrow night, while eating the Grotto's Pizza that my mom thoughtfully bought me the last time she was in Rehoboth.

Also, tomorrow features a two-hour Private Practice special (although I'll probably be watching that Friday, as tomorrow ALSO has new episodes of The Office and 30 Rock).

Speaking of The Office, I'm really close to breaking up with that show.  It hasn't been funny in a really long time.

I might also make my return to reading actual books, because I have some review copies I want to get through.  AND I learned today that I'm getting a review copy of the new Joe Hill book!  I'm really excited for that, because I loved his debut novel, Heart Shaped Box.  (He's also Stephen King's son, but that's not why I like his books.)

I also got a copy of The Phantom Tollbooth today.  I've never read it before, and I won it in a contest. :)  One of my really good friends absolutely loves that book and every time she remembers I've never read it, she gets really sad.  (And also sort of horrified.)  So I'm excited to read that, too.

One of the cool things about the Kindle is that they offer a lot of classic books for free.  I'm hoping to become a more well-read person next year, so here's hoping. :)  I did download a slew of classics (Anne of Green Gables and most of the rest of that series, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, My Man Jeeves--I blame you, Cori!--Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Treasure Island, Black Beauty, A Christmas Carol, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Little Men, Vanity Fear, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Madame Bovary, The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, The Count of Monte Cristo, Pollyanna and its sequel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Pollyanna Grows Up, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Persuasion, and Anna Karenina).  So yay! :)

I have a lot of photos and things to share now that NaNoWriMo is laid to rest, but wanted to tell you about my little side project, going to sort of blog the Decade in Review, here. :-) I hope you will enjoy following along.