7 Stages of Falling in Love with an Author

This weekend I got hooked on Kelley Armstrong's "Women of the Otherworld" series. I've read the first four books in the last three days. If you like Laurell K. Hamilton and/or Kim Harrison you'll like Kelley Armstrong.

All things considered, it's quite brilliant that I received the following cartoon in my inbox yesterday morning:
























And now I must go read the last book (so far) in the series. Very slowly.

I think I gained 6 pounds...

It's Restaurant Week again in Philly, and last night a group of us went to The Melting Pot, a fondue restaurant. Oh my goodness, that was a lot of food! Delicious, delicious food. I felt like a big marshmallow trying to get my jeans done up this morning, but it was so worth it. If you ever go I recommend the Flaming Turtle chocolate fondue - pretty much a pot of melted Turtle chocolates flambeed tableside. We all got spoons when we ran out of things to dip so we wouldn't waste a drop of the chocolate (Oh yeah, we had pure dark chocolate fondue as well, but I'm more of a milk chocolate fan).

In honour of my eating my body weight in cheese and chocolate and meat and such over three hours last night, I give you this video. I remember seeing it last year some time, but it makes me laugh especially hard right now. Enjoy!

Reasons to learn a new language

I've been debating whether I want to take French again, and I have just discovered a good reason to learn a new language:



Maybe I'll take up German... Just in case...

Gold star for me!

Two fun Library patrons this afternoon:

I had a patron on the phone who, after a fairly long refernce question where we both ended up laughing, asked where I was from. When I said Canada, she started going on about how we had a commercial that made her cry. Evidently Canada used to (or still does, who knows) do tourism advertising on TV here. This lady then proceeded to sing me the commercial jingle, which she remembered after umpteen years, because she thought it was so beautiful. This is my first serenade while on the desk. I quite enjoyed it (plus, it made me laugh)!

Right after that I had a lady who wanted to read a book series by an author she didn't remember, featuring a character she didn't know the name of, whith titles she didn't know. I pulled out my super-librarian sleuthing skills and with the only clues being the character lived in Maine, solved myteries, and fixed houses, I found it in 3 seconds flat! Literally! Sarah Graves' "Home Repair is Homicide" series. The lady was thrilled and gave me a gold star (well, she said, "Gold Star for you!!" which I will accept as an acceptable stand-in for a real gold star). I'd like to thank Google, for making my ability to answer reference questions appear even more magical to the patrons.

All hail my mad research skillz!

The Illness

Argh - this month has been crap for getting sick. Everyone I know has been or is ill in some form or another. Last night was my turn (again, for the third time this year). I think I have the flu, or food poisoning, or something. It's 2:30 in the afternoon and I've finally made it out of bed into the living room. I'm now okay sitting or lying still (a big improvement from midnight to 7 am this morning). I'm still queasy, but it's not as awful anymore. I hate being sick! Hopefully I'll be okay tomorrow as I have a ton of stuff I really want to do this week at work. Plus, tomorrow is Girl's Night - What's a Thursday without gathering to heckle Project Runway?

But it's not all sickness, self-pity, and boredom. Check out the movie trailer below! I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain yet but oh my, is this funny!

Book suggestions from the Great White North

I had two books recommended to me from some of the Edmonton folks in the past month or so. I finally managed to get my hands on both of them.




First we have The Game: Penetrating the secret society of pickup artists by Neil Strauss. This was recommended to me by Susan, who thought it was brilliant. Me, not so much. I got 98 pages into it before putting it down for good. I figure if I'm going to read about some guy learning how to pick up women for quick one night stands, I at least want him to be funny, sympathetic, and/or sincere. This guy is none of the above. I didn't care about him, any of the other people in the book, or what they were doing. I guess Susan might have liked it because it was all about salesmanship, but I just felt vaguely icked out and bored. I suppose the one good thing about the book is that looks exactly like a bible. Faux black leather cover, gold trimmed pages, red ribbon bookmark. I felt very religious reading it. Ironic, really.




Secondly, my friend Dave's wife's brother bought a copy of Spin by Robert Charles Wilson for his father for Christmas. He showed it to me when I visited baby Zaara (and Dave and Gaia, of course). This science fiction novel begins when all of a sudden all the stars in the sky disappear. The flyleaf description sounded fascinating, and I made a note to pick it up from the library. I finally got it and read it this week. This is one of those books that you want to just keep reading. I resented anything that took me away from my book - work, going out, sleep. And to make the already interesting book even more fun, it had a subplot about fundamentaist Christians trying to breed a red heifer. A couple of months ago Mark explained the religious thought behind the whole red heifer thing, and we've been joking about it ever since. I really liked this book, which had interesting science, big ideas, and great character development. Thanks, Dave's wife's brother (whose name I'm blanking on, but for some reason I think it might start with an N)!