Finished Safer by Sean Doolittle.
This book jumps back and forth over several months. It opens with the main character being arrested and goes on to explain how he's been set up (or so he says) by a neighbor of his, Roger, who is (of course) the most beloved man in town.
It's a very suspenseful book and I had a hard time putting it down. I wasn't crazy about the ending, but I may have just been exhausted from not ever wanting to put it down to do things like, say, sleep. :)
I'll see how I feel about it after a re-read. :)
Merry Christmas from my dog.
To my adorable friends: always sing without fear.
Happy Holidays and may you have a New Year that embraces you with all the good things you desire.
I've got one of those stat counters hooked up to my Vox. It allows me to see which posts are getting hits and where the viewers are located. I'm not sure how accurate it is, but I assume that when it says someone in Spain is looking at my picture of Scott McCaughey's shoe, then there's actually someone in Spain looking at my picture of Scott McCaughey's shoe. (For some unknown reason, his shoe is very popular throughout the world.) I know you can get these things routed all over the place to hide your true location, but I don't get into that. As far as I'm concerned, Spain = Spain and Oman = Oman.
As Valerae recently mentioned in a post covering similar territory, there seems to be a trend where people from Middle Eastern countries trawl Vox for titillation. I've noticed over the last six months or so that about a fourth of my hits are coming from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and a mysterious place called Yemen. From what I can tell, they're not here to read my opinions on books and music. Instead, they seem to hit the same slightly suggestive images over and over again. I'm not sure what the internet is like in that part of the world, but I'd assume that their access to smut is severely limited when compared to mine. They're doing the best they can with what's available to them.
More to the point, I've decided to gather all my most popular titillating images together in one spot. That way my friends on the other side of the world won't have to waste so much time going through the 2,800+ images in my library. The attraction of some of the pictures is obvious. The popularity of others only becomes apparent when you realize I've given them misleading names like "sexy results" and "big cock" (for the watermelon and the rooster sign, respectively). But anyway, here they are all together for the first time ever. Enjoy!
We got a kitty cat. Her name is Clementine. She's a funny little thing.
Finished The Christmas Lamp by Lori Copeland.
I think this is another example of "books I like because I am completely exhausted and they are easy and sweet." And also, in this case, seasonally appropriate. :)
Roni lives and works in Nativity, Missouri. The little town isn't doing so well (not many tourists; businesses are closing) and someone's just arrived to help cut expenditures, a guy named Jake.
It's a sweet story and it ends happily. :) It's a little less than realistic, but it's Christmas, so who cares, right? :)
I did this at the end of last year and it was pretty entertaining; so I thought I'd give it another go.
- January: I just saw a headline that reads, "Merle Haggard has kicked the pot habit."
- February: We are not allowed to play Monopoly in my house anymore.
- March: And if you know me at all, you know I don't like snow. Ever.
- April: So I've decided I need to voice this out loud (or at least through typed words) because I've that admitting the problem is the first step towards recovery.
- May: I really hate comic sans font, and any adult who uses this font to produce email, memos, or any other form of important document should be shot on sight.
- June: When I was 21, I bought my very first new car.
- July: Last week was a rather emotional week for me, so when my dad called and asked if we wanted to go camping for the 4th, I jumped at the opportunity.
- August: Natalie has stepped away from Vox and will return when her life ceases to be a massive pile of grownup busy work.
- September: The children started school today, and as you can see, everyone was thoroughly excited.
- October: I saw Regina Spektor at The Tabernacle in Atlanta last night.
- November: Sitting in class today, watching my students work on their final group projects, I heard a loud sort of bang just outside our building.
- December: Teaching evaluations were released today for us to read.
I can't help but post these types of things every time I get them from my aunt or cousin, complete with their little comments at the top:
OBAMA AS SEEN BY THE CARTOONIST
Think
about this: If you don't want to forward this
for fear of offending someone-- YOU ARE PART OF
THE PROBLEM!
It is Time
for America to Speak
up!
Everyone is entitled to their opinion and the freedom to express it. I don't actually agree with everything Obama or his administration does, but it disturbs me when people take things a step further than they really need to go. I feel like I've been hearing the popular Slippery Slope fallacy a lot lately, and I think that's what happens when people start taking their news from pundits and the Opinion section of the newspaper.
I love how this email closes out, too. Really? If I don't forward a fucking email (in the case that I agreed with it) because I'm afraid, I'm part of the problem? What about making legislation that quietly limits the natural-born rights of all humans out of fear? Oh, that's not as much of a problem, apparently. How about actually doing something that matters? Write your representatives and tell them what you want. Forwarding an inflammatory email isn't going to fix the problem, whatever your idea of "the problem" is.
I got a box of Christmas cookies in the mail today. At least I think they were Christmas cookies. The snowman is definitely Christmassy and the tiny gingerbread men probably count, but I think the pumpkin and the bunny might be leftovers from other holidays. I'm not sure how the squirrel and the foot fit in either. And that's to say nothing about the most disturbing cookie of all...the hand that appears to be giving me the finger. I swear the cookie arrived with its fingers already broken. I didn't break them as some sort of protest against rampant holiday consumerism.
