A post about nothing

Have some penguins. I have no idea where that pictures is from, by the way. I just like it. :-)

I was mentally going over my week, but nothing outstanding or extraordinary happened. I went to work, I came home. Went to see Crazy Stupid Love on Thursday, which was a bit 'eh' for me. Too much Steve Carrell and not enough Emma Stone. Also Ryan Gosling is kind of funny-looking.

Other than that, it was business as usual. Except I seem to have caught Patrick's cold, which is fun times.

I finished a book this week, which I always celebrate as a major achievement - lol. Anyway, I read The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino - a thriller set in Japan. It was an interesting read, but I'm still not sure how I feel about the ending - whether I liked it or not.

So now I'm in that strange gray area, where I don't know what I want to read next ...

Finished a couple of books last week - A Game of Thrones by George R R Martin and Finder's Shore by Anna Mackenzie.

LOVED A Game of Thrones. Seriously good stuff, honestly.

I liked Finder's Shore - third book in the Sea-wreck Stranger trilogy but I always wanted those books to be a little bit longer. They're all about 220 pages each and I think the worldbuilding and backstories would have benefited from being a little bit longer.  Also all of the conflicts were resolved super-quick which made for slightly unsatisfying reading.

I enjoyed the series, I just wanted a bit more depth.

A Game of Thrones on the other hand, is nothing BUT depth and I love it. I'm not ready to take on A Clash of Kings yet - I still feel a little bit like I need to lie down in a dark room bathing my temples with lavendar - lol. There's just so much in the book - a workmate of mine called it a soap opera and it sort of is, but you know, with swords. And incest. And dragons. Which make everything better.

I met Nicky aka @stormfilled yesterday - she's touring New Zealand and having a great time. We went to Zookeepers - a local restaurant for hot chocolate and ended up there for dinner as well because we were talking so long - lol. Twas a great night.

We were going to go for coffee and bookshopping this morning, but Nicky's laundry queue at her motel had other ideas. So this afternoon we went to the local museum and art gallery, to see the tuataras, which I've blogged about before: http://daysmeanmore.blogspot.com/2010/11/november-catch-up.html (well, sort of). And oh ... it's been less than a year since we visited the museum - I thought it had been two! Time flies :-)

They were out in force today, because it was sunny, and it's always awesome, seeing dinosaurs in action. Well, sort of action. We roamed the museum, which has definitely undergone an upgrade since I was last there, and had coffee. Twas a good afternoon, and it was awesome meeting someone from my twitter feed in real life. :-)

It's Monday! What are you reading?

Your meme is here: http://bookjourney.wordpress.com/

I had hoped to finish A Game of Thrones by today, but I have about 100 pages to go. I'm still loving it but I don't think I"ll plunge right into A Clash of Kings just yet. It makes me want to lie down in a dark room with lavendar to bathe my temples - lol.

Next up, I think, might be The Poisonwood Bible. I'm not sure. We went to the library on Saturday and yes, I know, ban, but I promised Patrick we'd take him to the children's library and Jeremy said he didn't need to get any books, so what's a girl to do?

Exactly.

I've  had The Poisonwood Bible for a while, and it's from my TBR so I shall try and be good. :-)

Happy reading.

Dad's chair

The chair in the photo belonged to my Dad. It was his office chair years ago when he worked for the Railways. I think he brought it home with him when he retired.

Mum kept it after she moved to her flat, and we used to prop Patrick in there to feed him when we'd visit Mum at lunchtime. It doesn't look it from that photo but it's actually pretty good for feeding a baby. (Not a newborn, obviously, but a baby able to sit propped up).

Hilites used to sleep on that chair, and as you can see, it's been well appropriated by our other cats (Piper and Misty in this photo). We ended up with the chair because no one else seemed to want it and I have memories tied to it. And, okay, it's kind of ugly but I couldn't stand the thought of it going into the garage sale.

So here it is - the Chair. With bonus extra cats.

Things and ... things ;p

I have random things colliding in my head, and since this is my space, I'm going to share them with the interwebz. ;p

I went to Rise of the Planet of the Apes last Thursday after work. It wasn't bad. Certainly no Planet of the Apes, circa Charlton Heston but it was better than the remake with Mark Wahlberg. (I'm sorry, Tim Burton, I love you. But Planet of the Apes was a mistake.)


Anyway, I went on my own about 4pm (was parolled from work early because of working overtime a couple of days before that) and there were hardly any people there. Just the way I like it - lol. Except when I want to be in a theatre full of people, like for Harry Potter. I love movies, and it's something I want to dig more into, if that makes sense. My backlog of unread Empire magazines would agree with me ;p

I managed to get through reading Order of the Phoenix - it's not my favourite Harry Potter  - it's too long, for one thing and it's a little ... indulgent? I mean, I understand that teenage boys can be angry but seriously OotP gives me a headache.

Anyway. Recently I also finished The Shattering by Karen Healey, which was fantastic. I'd do a review for it, because it's a Kiwi YA novel, and I still have my challenge in the back of my mind, but ... eh. I can't be arsed. It's really good, though. You should read it if you come across it. :D

I also read Elfland by Freda Warrington, which I loved. I randomly remembered, when I saw the book in the library, how much I loved The Court of the Midnight King, which is an alternate history/fantasy novel set during the reign of ... Richard II? III? Anyway, I loved it. Elfland was really good too, but I could have gone my whole life without ever seeing a penis described as a 'wand'.

I came home from work early yesterday, because I thought I was going to pass out at my desk. Somewhat embarrassingly, it was simply exhaustion: I went to bed, crashed for a few hours, and felt rather better. That'll teach me to think I can go to bed at midnight, get up at 7, work an 8 hour day and be there for Patrick at the end of it all ... I'm not Superwoman, who knew?

So when I got over what I call my Jane Austen vapours, I picked up A Game of Thrones. And. Like. Why didn't I know? I mean, I'm not even quarter of the way in but holy shit. Holy shit. I'm loving it. Loving loving loving it.

You know how every single fantasy novel ever gets compared to Lord of the Rings for no good reason? Like ... for me, Lord of the Rings is in a class all of its own. Yet, the comparisons happen over and over again and by now they're just ... tired. But. A Game of Thrones is the first fantasy novel I've read where the comparison is valid. And I'm so very late to the party.

All I want to do is lie down on my couch with a cat or seven and snacks in arm's reach and read. I love that feeling.

Randomness of the day: I checked my cellphone at lunchtime. (That's not the randomness, obviously.) I had a text from my brother and sister in law saying they had the share of  the money from the garage sale of Mum's things. I had no idea the garage sale had even been held. I'm fine with it; I got what I wanted of Mum's things before the funeral, so it's not that I'm upset about that. I'm  ... amused that I heard about it after the fact. And slightly surprised that my share was $200. Nice, no? And yes. This is how my family communicates. When we communicate - lol.

Work tomorrow, and lunch for a co-worker who's going on maternity leave. Then I'm going to Cowboys and Aliens. :D

... Wow. tl;dr I went to the new Apes movie and had a Jane Austen moment. Read some books, got a little money.

It's Monday! What are you reading?

Your meme is hosted here: http://bookjourney.wordpress.com/

I finally finished Order of the Phoenix. I struggle with that one because it's not my favourite Harry Potter and it's just so damn long! I just bought them all in Bloomsbury's lovely new imprint, so I've been treating myself to a re-read.

I like to take a break between Harrys, so I'm deciding right now what to read next.

I'm having a self-imposed library amnesty for the month of August, which is designed to make me read from my own bookshelves for a while. So far I've taken all my books back and haven't got any new ones out.

It also helped that I was mired in finishing OotP - lol.

Anyway. I've pulled three books from the bookshelf, and they're hanging out on my nightstand, along with Return of the King, which I've been meaning to re-read since ... last year. Erm.

The other books are Game of Thrones by George R R Martin, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and The Children's Book by A S Byatt. So ...  one of those.

Oh! And my at-work breaktime read this week is Finder's Shore by Anna Mackenzie - book three in the Sea  Wreck Stranger trilogy, and a Kiwi YA novel ... my poor challenge D: http://kiwiyachallenge.blogspot.com/ (I need to work on that).

Happy reading!

Era two?

I was thinking about making a radical change. Shifting to wordpress, changing my blog name, my twitter name ... basically everything that people have come to associate with me (I'm assuming) during four years of blogging.

Then I actually had a decent night's sleep. (Long story. Suffice it to say that Patrick started morning kindy the week after I started working days permanently ... we're all tired and I'm not a morning person.)

I thought about what it would really mean - to me - to give this blog up and ultimately discovered I couldn't do it.

This has been my "home" for nearly four years and it turns out I'm a sentamentalist. Who knew? ;P

So. Anyway. This is a very roundabout and rambly way of saying that I'm not going anywhere, I guess? And also that I'm hoping to get back into regular blogging/reviewing from this week.

Hoping - lol.

Thank you, everyone, by the way, for your kind words about Mum, and about blogging/tweeting. I haven't replied to all the comments but I wanted you to know I read them all, and appreciate them very much.

Forward, yes?