Bookishly Fabulous’ Neighborhood

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Originally uploaded by the big chill festival

Awww.

:)

Tim Minchin's Christmas song, White Wine In The Sun, is now available for single purchase on iTunes!

Give this a watch/listen, and then go buy it!  The iTunes version has some very beautiful string accompaniment too.

My Nook was delivered yesterday! I'm so excited about it - its
everything I was expecting and I'm excited to buy books for it. On
Tuesday night we drove to a Barnes & Nobles about thirty miles away in
order to get a cover for it (our B&N didn't have cases, just a
display) and I'm really happy with the one I choose. It was between
the brown one and a red one. The red one was nice, but I was looking
for low-key.

I was also happy to go online and see that B&N has adjusted their
eBook prices to MATCH Amazon! I bought "Her Fearful Symmetry" -
originally $26.99 in hardcover, now $7.29 in hardcover - for $5.79!
Brilliant, isn't it?! I've got so many books I want to buy - let's
just hope that I can hold back!

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Hey Terri! Look in the upper corner - it's your letter!!!

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My husband will get all huffy and say "not until the 21st!" but to me, once the temp dips 35F and below and snow/sleet/ice start blowing around, it's winter. My least favorite season (I'm not alone there, I know) because driving is stressful and just getting anything done or going anywhere is a big hassle.  Not to mention it's fucking cold, and as I get older, cold hurts more. Why can't I convince my husband to give up this farming gig so we can go move someplace warm? I don't care if we're poor, we'll be warm!

Right, now I've got that whining out of the way - who's ready for Christmas?  Another thing I'm grateful for as I get older - Christmas/Holidays is FAR less of a big deal than it used to be.  I do enjoy buying gifts for people, but no longer am I all excited/concerned about what I'll be getting back.  Some might say the loss of that excitement is a bad thing - to me it just means I'm more self-sufficient, and that's a good thing!  (If I really want/need something, I just go buy it now.  Anything extra is nice but nothing to get all worked up over!)

I also gave up (pretty much before I ever started) the stress of holiday cards, decorating, and all that extra jazz.  I send cards to the people closest to me (and the in-laws because they'll get huffy if I don't!) but we don't bother with decorations or parties or anything like that anymore. YAY.  True, I'm still forced to do the holiday parties at work, but even those are low key and require very little from me.  I show up with food, and all is well.

Speaking of food - damn I do hate this section of the year because no matter how hard I try to keep it from happening, the pounds pile on.  That's what New Year's is for though of course, and like billions of people I'll be making that resolution to "get back to a healthy weight".  If only just so my pants fit comfortably again.  I'm annoyed that my favorite trousers are currently all too tight!

Sooooo.  There we go, that's my boring update. Hope your lives are all well.

I should has it by Thursday night!!!!

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Well, my vacation is over - all ten days in a blink of an eye. This was the first vacation that I've taken since Evy was born and it was a bit of an eye opener. The biggest difference is that we couldn't simply drop everything - we had to maintain some kind of schedule and that kind of sucked. I was looking for that...vegetation period I've always had with vacations. But, no use crying over split milk - this is parenthood and I wanted it!

Tuesday we tried to go to Disneyland - but we were silly in thinking we were the only ones on vacation. The park was packed and we ended up leaving after three rides and a stroll around California Adventure. A big part was that I really wasn't feeling "it". I was initially excited to get out of the house just with Paul (we'd left Evy with my parents) but once we were going I didn't feel like talking much and I felt really "blah". Such a waste :( I also really missed Evy! Seeing so many cute cuddly kids at Disneyland while mine was at home was killing me. But the fact is that we can't ride hardly any rides unless we take someone with us, which we couldn't this time. Luckily, we got out of paying for parking because their credit card machine was down so I didn't feel that obligated to stay and make our $14 count. Unluckily, we hit traffic on the way home and after three hours of stop-and-go with our manual transmission we were pooped.

Thanksgiving went, in my opinion, REALLY well. My parents ended up coming as well, we all met at my sisters, and other than the kids making us start a little later than we'd like it was all amazing. Food was great, best candied yams I've had in awhile. I should have taken some with us, but I was so stuffed I had no eye for food as we were packing up the left overs.

My sister decorated for Christmas over the weekend and it's made me want to decorate as well. Last year we didn't decorate because we were moving ON Christmas Eve, and then Paul & I both got this really nasty stomach flu. The last time we did a live tree the mess was tremendous, so I think this year we're going to take a look at the artificial ones. However, if the price is too much then we'll probably do a live one and then take advantages of after Christmas sales in thought of NEXT year.

My Nook ships today!!!

I don't know if I've mentioned this - but the Nook is taking gadget
prone readers by storm this Christmas. The pre-orders sold out within
the first two weeks and now if you pre-order you wont get it until the
first or second week in January. I ordered mine in time, and it'll
still be shipped on Monday.

However, now the Nook is selling well on eBay. There are 10+ bids on a
single Nook causing the once reasonable price of $260 to skyrocket -
and in some cases double. So I'm now wondering if I should play the
patient one and put my Nook on eBay - and let it pay for itself and
just get it AFTER the holidays. But I don't know if I can. I've been
waiting well over a month for this thing and that's a long time for
me. The last time I waited so long it was for a doll who had to be
cast and sanded.

Paul's telling me I don't have to sell it, but I know that he thinks
we'll just make the money back and so it's foolish NOT to sell it. But
I don't know, the bubble may burst after the devices are officially
shipped and people are able to get real reviews on the thing. Then
again...I bought it blindly, didn't I?

I'd ask for everyone's opinion, but to tell the truth I don't think
anyone will be able to make this decision but me...

It takes me for-freakin-ever to read nonfiction.  Not sure why I can fly through fiction but nonfiction takes me at least three times as long to read.  Am I paying more attention or something?

Anyway, right now I'm making my way through Moab Is My Washpot, which is Stephen Fry's autobiography.  The

Moab Is My Washpot

Stephen Fry

 wonderful thing is that he did write it himself and it's completely in his "voice" so it's rather like sitting across from him as he tells you the silly tales of his childhood and school years.  I always wonder how people can remember their earlier years with such detail.  I certainly remember "scenes" but if pressed I doubt I could put them into an actual factual timeline.  It's just as well since I doubt anyone would want to read my life story anyway.  Although I did have a damn fun childhood.

Bad Science

Ben Goldacre

I'm also plowing (slowly, slowly) my way through Bad Science by Ben Goldacre.  I say "plowing" only because I read so dreadfully slow, not because the content is laborious.  If anything, Goldacre makes what might be snore-worthy and makes it fun and interesting.

This is a book that has been known in the Skeptical community as a must-read... along with Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy, and Simon Singh's Trick Or Treatment. It reveals what commonly-held beliefs are misplaced and generally teaches you to question what often sounds too good to be true.

What makes reading both of these books even more fun is both of the authors are also on Twitter so I'm "getting to know" them both through their writing and through their day-to-day twitterings as well.