Birthday Post

Yesterday was my birthday, so I did appropriately birthday-like things even though I did have to go to work. At lunch Jen and I tried a Venezuelan restaurant called Sazon, which was really good once someone actually came to take our order. We both had deep fried everything, which is just by nature delicious.

After work we hung around Reading Terminal Market until dinner time and I bought some marzipan for my sister (who evidently believes that marzipan only comes from one specific store in the world which happens to be in Philly).

Then we went to Vietnam Palace for our birthday dinner (Jen's birthday was on the 24th) with a bunch of friends and had the ever delicious "Seven Courses of Beef" appetizer and a huge amount food and drink (and an avocado milkshake). We finished everything off with an uber-delicious red velvet cake with sour cream frosting from Brown Betty compliments of Micaela and Liz and Sally.



Then it was time to go home and chat on the phone with those people who remembered to make the birthday phone call. That list does not include my parents, however. They either figured that since I'm coming to Edmonton tomorrow they will say Happy Birthday then, or just plain forgot. They did not call my sister on her birthday either. I had to call them and chastise them for not calling. Bad parents, no cookie!

Tomorrow I take off super early and fly home for my annual food festival holiday - hope to see many of you while I'm there!

Cannon in action

Here's a brief video clip of the Pirate Duck Book Cannon in action.

Booktruck bitterness

We wuz robbed!

Last night was the big library block party/Bling my Booktruck contest. Our little band of teammates led by sebethis and captained by Jim, and ably assisted by me and Grimmgirl, made the most kick-ass booktruck evah! We spun on the ubiquitous sight of the "Ride the Ducks" truck/boats that you see all over eastern Center City:



We figured that since sebethis likes pirates and Jim wanted to build a big gun, we were going to make a Pirate Duck with a cannon that shot books. Behold the Pirate Duck in all her glory:





You can't really make it out because of the reflective lettering, but the cannon reads "books to go" on the side. There was a lot of work put into the pirate duck - sebethis built a whole frame out of PVC and actually screwed it into the cart - we all inhaled more than out fair share of black spraypaint, and the cannon, which is a modified slingshot, actually works most of the time.

And we didn't win anything! And objectively (in my subjective opinion), we rocked the competition! I've been told that we didn't win because it took a few tries for the cannon to work in front of the judges. Grrr! I am not a happy pirate today.

Pu Pu Platter for Two

I forgot to mention this in my previous Boston post, but it's so hilarious it deserves it's own post. We were looking for a place to eat Friday night in Dedham, where neither of us really knew anywhere to go (easy for me, since I know nothing about any Boston suburbs). The plan ended up being to go to a restaurant where they cook the meal in front of you and were told that it was called Tahiti. Well, it's not. We went there and immediately walked into a time warp - Tahiti is the Chinese restaurant that time forgot - it looks like something that the Cleavers would go to if they had a Chinese restaurant in their lily-white town. The waiters were in bowties and the menu included items like "strange flavored chicken" and special cocktails in tiki cups. The decor was 50's wood-paneled basement meets diner. The restaurant was pretty empty and the bar was full of suburbanites drinking cheap drinks and playing Keno (I played my first game). We got something that evidently is a staple at Boston Chinese restaurants but what I had never heard of - the Pu Pu Platter for Two.



Deep fried almost everything! Chicken balls, chicken wings, egg rolls, spareribs, and beef teriyaki (it's already eaten in the picture - you can see the sticks they were on). I almost couldn't eat as I was giggling so much.

Boston, the Edmonton of the East

I have to say that while I was in Boston (and suburbs) this weekend, I was struck by how much I felt it was like walking around Edmonton.

The streets were clean (especially relative to Philly)

It's a university city, so walking around some of the neighborhoods felt just like walking around Old Strathcona - Harvard Square has a bit of a Whyte Ave feel.

The houses actually have yards and aren't all connected to each other

Walking around the financial district on a Sunday is like walking through downtown Edmonton on an evening or Sunday - dead.

The have a really nice park right in the middle of the city called Boston Common where throngs of people congregate to suntan, hang out, play in the playground and fountain. It has a little lake in it where you can take boat rides and has many buskers (including a bagpiper). It reminded me a bit of Hawrelak Park during a festival, but with more benches and paths and trees.



Faneuil Hall is like Street Performer's Central. It's the old city market turned into a big food court with lots of stalls selling stuff all around it. And even more street performers. We saw breakdancers, escape artists, hula hoop/yoyo/unicycle performers, and even more elaborate living statues.

Silence broken, and FOR SALE!

Let's see - Last time I posted I was in Washington DC at ALA. Time got away with me, and many things have happened since then, but because I have an atrocious memory I can't remember much of them. A quick summation:

Winning fabulous prizes with Ray courtesy of Overdrive. If anyone wants to buy a 30 gb video mp3 player (Creative Zen Vision M) let me know. I already have my wonderful Archos 504 so I do not need it. Still new and sealed in the box!

3rd of July barbeque with Micaela's magical lamb and mostly the whole gang

Blueberry picking at Linvilla

Discovering that I cannot take Topamax. That brings drugs that give me scary side effects to two in the past three months (I'm lookin' at you, Reglan)

Getting hooked on "The World Series of Pop Culture"

Visiting Boston for the first time and actually doing some touristy stuff. What a great city. And I discovered that if you happen to have a utility knife that folds up and looks like a key, like this:

And you happen to forget to remove it from your keyring before flying, that's okay! My mini bottles of shampoo and such get careful perusal, but concealed teeny knives pass through the x-ray machine no problem.

Busy comme une beaver

Can't write much, can hardly stand still - Day 3 of ALA in Wahington DC and I've accumulated my own body weight in free books and stuff. This is my one chance at a computer since Friday, so I'm going through withdrawal. It's been the glamourius life of shlepping tote bags full of books (and a bobble-head Darwin) around the exhibit hall (I think I've been compressed a few inches, I'll have to measure myself when I get home), back to the hotel, the going out to multiple cocktail parties all evening. Yay!

Talk more when I get back.

Dua Khalil Aswad

I'm sure many of you know about this already: On April 7th a 17 year old Yazidi girl in Iraq was stoned to death by a mob containing members of her own family. This was supposedly an "honor killing" as the girl had being seeing a Sunni Muslim boy. It all caught on cell phone video by the participants and posted on the web.
I saw the video, but I should have stayed away - the idea that people could do that to anyone with no intervention from the police (who were there) is repugnant. I could go into a long rant, but I won't, as Joss Whedon has already done it so well in Let's watch a girl get beaten to death. Go read it. I'll wait.

Whedon's post inspired Skyla Dawn Cameron to put together “an anthology of responses to Khalil’s death and the issues Whedon raised in his original essay ([the] culture of misogyny, violence against women, and the need for equality). It will be printed through Lulu.com, with all proceeds going to charity.” Head over to Nothing But Red to learn more about the anthology and how to make a submission.

Use me, abuse me

I've been sitting on this post for almost a year now, but the time is ripe for a rant. About what, you might ask? Why, about authors who suck you in with a good book, which leads to a good series, which inexorably devolves into one bloated blood-drenched sex-fest after another instead of the fine plots and decent writing of the first books in the series (I'm looking at you, Laurell K. Hamilton).

And then there's those authors whose epic fantasy series become so epic that the 4 books they planned originally somehow become 12, plus assorted prequels and such. And they come out so infrequently that when the new one is released you have to go back and reread the whole bloody series because so much time has passed you've forgotten everything that happened before. This has led to my Robert Jordan Rule: I will only read an epic fantasy series if it is completely finished and I can read all the books in a row, or if the author is dead. One way or another I'll read the Wheel of Time series, but not unless either of those two things happen.

Speaking of Laurell K. Hamilton (not the only one, but definitely the worst of the lot): I used to love her Anita Blake books. But somewhere along the line (maybe when Anita started getting freaky with were-animals as well as vampires) the books changed from being fun dark fantasy romps to wall-to-wall sex with only enough plot to blow your nose into. Really! I'd say the last few books were 400 pages sex, 50 pages story. And that's not even getting into her new series about a fairy who has to get pregnant to gain the fairy kingdom. At least in that series there's no illusion that there's anything other than sex moving the plot along.

And yet...

And yet I still read the series in the hopes that one day the author will remember the type of book she used to write, the ones that sucked me in and made me love them. I have in my possession her latest Anita Blake book, The Harlequin, and I shall read it in the fervent hope that some of the old magic will reappear. My expectations for that have pretty much been trampled and then spat upon, but there are a few gasps of hope left.

There's a great article about this phenomenon over at Bookseller Chick, and Smart Bitches Trashy Books talked about their favourite use me, abuse me authors as well

This is my life

Go Yankees!

I went to New York this past weekend and went to a Yankees game at Yankee Stadium and got a Yankees cap. No, I'm not about to turn into a fanatical sports nut, but I have to say that it was a whole lot more fun than I thought it would be. Of course, the company I was keeping probably had something to do with that, but I did get into the game and was quite happy when the Yankees won! Plus, I got crackerjacks and a baseball cap! Whee!



And for more fun:
I am worth $2,107,000 on HumanForSale.com
How much are you worth?

And country music makes three!

So I've just read two books about music stars using the heroine for inspiration and I thought that was coincidental. Now I received a copy of Tides of Time by Sonya Kate Childers which is about...wait for it... a heroine who inspired the songs of a famous country star.



Sigh. I don't think I'm going to read this one based on my completely biased dislike of country music and romances set in Texas. But still - that's three in a week. What are the odds they would all just happen across my desk?

1 theme, 2 books

In the past few weeks I've run across two sets of books that deal with the same basic premise or theme. Of course, that meant that I had to read them all :)



Succubus Blues and Hell's Belles both deal with the romantic adventures (and Hellish misadventures) of their main characters, both of whom happen to be succubi. They are both also first novels in anticipated series. I thought both books were surprisingly good, but did like Hell's Belles better - I enjoy cheerfully amoral heroines quite a lot.

On another theme, 2005 saw the publication of Off the Record, the plot of which follows a woman who discovers that she was the inspiration for a smash hit pop song called Janey 245 (think Jenny 867-5309).



Just this week Dedication, by the authors of The Nanny Diaries, comes out. It concerns itself with a woman whose teenage relationship with a soon-to-be rock star has led to him mining their relationship for hit songs, thereby publicly humiliating her every time one of them comes on the radio.



I just finished reading both the books and I liked Dedication better (and a whole lot more than the uber-sophomore slumpy Citizen Girl). I thought the characters were more realistic and it was a bit less chick-lit-y than Off the Record.

And now that those are done with, I can re-devote my time to Tanya Huff's Blood series, which has spawned one of my new favourite tv shows of the season, Blood Ties.

Pretty girls do not fart...or do they?

They fart not, nor do they sweat.

Daring? Not so much

You Are Bold And Brave

But daring? Not usually? You tend to like to make calculated risks. So while you may not be base jumping any time soon... You are up for whatever's new and (a little) exciting!

How Daring Are You?

Fanfic

This article was a feature in this month's Locus Magazine. I read a bit of fanfic in my day (Kirk/Spock for-evah!) Oh god, I did not just write that.

Anyhoo, it's a really insightful look at one way fans take their favourite characters to heart.

Jerry Falwell

I know I'm a little late on this one, but I don't think I can top what Christopher Hitchens says about the man:

Quiz day

I am a huge sucker for online quizzes.

You Are 35% Left Brained, 65% Right Brained

The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning. Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others. If you're left brained, you are likely good at math and logic. Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet. The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility. Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way. If you're right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art. Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports.

Are You Right or Left Brained?

On the bandwagon

One of my favourite books, The Golden Compass, is coming out this year as a movie. If you've read it, you know that everyone in Lyra's world has a daemon. Now you too can have one! Check out mine, and for the next twelve days you can have input as to what the final animal will be:

New Obsession

My sister got me hooked on Facebook the other day. Oh goodness, is it addictive! It's like Myspace, only much more aesthetically pleasing. It's not the place to go for new bands and celebrity pages and stuff, but it's amazing for reconnecting (or just connecting) with friends. I'm finding tons of old friends and acquiantances from junior high on up.

Of course, It's also making me have yet another angsty moment as I realize how many of them are still working in theatre, while I gave that all up for the bright lights and glamourous lifestyle of being a librarian. But on the other hand, I absolutely love my job and I can afford to eat regularly and well. But still - it makes me sigh and go "What if...?"

And on that note, here's something fun: