Meet the new blogger ...

... same as the old blogger ....


this is a bit scary, after nearly ... eight years in the same place. But I felt the need for a change, a makeover and a new address that was a bit more accurate for me.

So, if you will, go over here ................ http://lifetheuniverseandcats.blogspot.co.nz/ and say hi :-)

Same old me, brand new address.

The restless reader

I have - so far - been having a pretty good reading year. I've been trucking along nicely, and keeping pace with my goodreads challenge.

I've read some good books, some great books (STATION ELEVEN) and some ... other books.

But, now, I find myself in that unenviable position: What's next? The fuzzy photo on the left is all of the books I have on my bedside table at the moment. One pile of my own books, and one pile of library books.

Misery is on there, for the June readalong, hosted by the ever lovely Care of https://bkclubcare.wordpress.com/ and I had aspirations to start it today. I got about 10 pages in. I've read Misery before, and I do love it, but for today, my brain went "meh." So it's on the shelf, for now. I have a terrible unweildy omnibus which contains Misery so I might see if my library has a more hands-friendly copy and go from there.

My lunchtime ibook reading is Reaper Man by Mr Sir Terry Pratchett, and that's going okay. The book itself is wonderful of course, funny and sharp-witted and all of the best things. I took it with me today when I took spawn to the playground and my brain went .. "meh."

It's not you, lovely books, it's me.

I've had six months of excellent reading, and as I said previously, some excellent books, but I have hit that dreaded thing: The Wall.

Well, okay, I haven't hit it very hard, obviously, as I still have books on the go, it's more like .. I've stubbed my toe on the corner of the wall, and now I'm wary of touching the wall again because the wall means pain.

The wall.

(Sorry).

I want my momentum back, is what I'm saying. I want the wall to bugger off. Or better yet, crumble into dust at my feet. I realise that I haven't hit the other dreaded thing yet: The Slump, but I've been having such a good reading year so far, that I want to avoid that at ALL COSTS.

So. I'm thinking what I can do to dodge the evil slump, where it lurks in the swamps behind the Wall.

Old favourites?
Something entirely new?
Non-fiction?
Something I haven't thought of yet?

Any ideas? :-)

Health updates and a cat thing.

As some of you know, I had  a health hiccup in April of 2014. By “health hiccup” I mean I had the period of doom for three weeks and wanted to kick puppies.

I had blood tests and a smear test, and that all came back normal. The lovely doc also wanted me to have a vaginal scan (woo hoo) and that was scheduled for November.

I finally had it last month, and they found …. nothing. Not even fibroids. Just nothing. My body was just messing with me because it could, which. THANKS A LOT.

Though I am grateful that it turned out to be nothing more than a random aberration.

The cat thing. I didn’t talk about this on here, because I wasn’t sure if it would ultimately be worth its own post or not, but one of our cats - Morgana - brown tabby and lapcat extraordinary - went missing. She just … vanished.

I duly called around the vets, and called the SPCA and put an ad on Trade Me but nothing was forthcoming.

Then, one morning, about a week after she went missing, I got up early to go to the loo, and was greeted by some rather frantic meowing. I had to go back to get my glasses because I was 100% sure that was not the meow of any of the cats currently in residence.

I was correct. It was Morgana - brown tabby and lapcat extraordinary - popping up like nothing ever, meowing her face off and demanding cuddles.

A very minor miracle, but I still think of it as fairly miraculous.

An anniversary, sort of

I realised last week that on Friday, I would have been blogging here for seven years. I meant to do a post on Friday, but sunk into post-Christmas laziness instead. Yesterday I went out into the real world (went to a friend's), and so here I am, hastily writing a post before I forget.

My modest goal, at the time, was to have somewhere to record an also modest goal of reading one classic novel a month, and maybe a space to write some reviews.

Over the years, of course, my focus has shifted slightly. Some years I've hardly blogged at all. This year, I made more of an effort because I do like my little corner, but I've ... I can't really say expanded. I don't really post many reviews, but that's fine. I half-decided to try this new thing instead, where I talk about life and books and cats and spawn and general things.

It's sort of working.

Seven years ago, I poked my nose over the book-blogging fence. There wasn't anyone at first I could say "hi" to, but I went out in search of other bloggers, and memes, and put myself out there as it were.

This tiny space has never, and will never be a place people visit for deep and insightful reviews, or posts. But I hope in my ramblings about books, cats, spawn and life in general, people find something to smile at, and something they recognise.

Onward, yes?

Yes.

Stuff, some things maybe

It's Sunday night, I have a Lily-scarf across my neck, so of course it's the perfect time for a vague sort of life-update post.

I say "vague" because not a lot has been happening, really. Patrick turned seven(!!!) last month, I turned 43(!!!) a couple of weeks ago, and life shuffles along as it is wont to do.

Patrick asked me a few weeks ago if scientists were real, because he wanted to know if he could learn to make potions. After assuring him that yes, scientists are real, he now wants to be  a chemist. It's an advance on a ninja or Spider-man anyway.

All valid career choices, obviously.

Work remains work-ish. There's not a lot to say when you literally, actually work in an office from 9-5.

The period of doom hasn't returned *fingers crossed*, and now I'm just waiting to hear about a scan.

I saw What We Do in the Shadows - a Kiwi-made vampire comedy - yesterday, and it's hilarious. Very, very Kiwi in its sensibilities and sense of humour, and very unapologetic about it.

Great fun.

Uh ...... I also slayed a dragon and discovered life on a distant planet.

Health stuff and hey I read some books

See here: http://justaddbooks.blogspot.co.nz/2014/04/readathon-and-health-thingies.html

And now, the sequel. (This gets TMI for anyone who's a bit delicate about discussion of interior ladyparts).

I went back to the doc, and I'm anemic (which, I had my period for three weeks, NO SHIT SHERLOCK) and I have an infection. So I have iron tablets and antibiotics. Yay.

Anyway. I'm waiting to hear back from the hospital about an ultrasound, and after that the doc said the next likely step would be a Mirena coil, which is apparently a tiny magic piece of plastic that gets fitted inside your ladyparts, lasts for five years, and reduces/stops your period.

I AM VERY ON BOARD WITH THIS. But nothing can happen till after the scan. Doc said getting the coil fitted wouldn't be my best day ever but honestly after the period of doom, I don't care - lol.

I also learned that, at the tender age of 42, I'm not menopausal. So, there's that.

And that's what you missed on Glee!

Now, reading. I'm a bit behind with the goodreads challenge now - six books apparently - but I have finished a few since I last did a mini-reviews post. I'm not going to do another one now - I'm too lazy - but suffice it to say I'm keeping up with my challenges - Women Writers, the TBR challenge and also Once Upon a Time, so there's that at least.

Most recently I've finished
A Storm of Swords part 1 by George R R Martin
Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik
Adaptation by Miranda Lo
While We Run by Karen Healey.

I've had a good run because I did enjoy all of those books a lot. Especially Adaptation, and While We Run, which is the sequel to Healey's novel When We Wake. I'm going to hand-wave writing reviews because I'm lazy and still kind of recovering.

Now I'm re-reading One Hundred Years of Solitude for the fourth time (RIP Gabriel Garcia Marquez) and reading A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan which is taking me ages to finish for some reason.

:D

Connections

I realised  - not all that recently - that most of the friends I have at this stage of my life are online.

That's fine. I'm 42, I'm old enough and ugly enough to not care if people are going to judge me for that. I have two people that I count as some of my closest friends and I've only met one of them in person.

The other lives in Canada.

I live most of my social life online - on twitter, generally, in fandoms, and a little bit on tumblr.

And, once again, that's fine with me. I'm content. I have a healthy family, a good job where I work with good people, and I have hobbies that more than enrich my own inner life.

Oh, and cats. I have cats.

A few years ago, a real life friend of mine mentioned she hadn't seen BBC's Sherlock, and I happened to have just bought series 1 on DVD. We decided to have a watching-night and so regular Saturday night stitching-and-watching dates were born.

We do them at her place - she's not fond of cats and she's the caregiver for her mother who has Alzheimer's. We buy ice creams, we watch TV and we stitch and talk.

And, as absolutely fine as I am with most of my life lived online, balance is also a good thing. Meaning that it's good for me to be forced to leave my house once a week for something other than work, and to interact with someone I'm neither related to nor work with face-to-face.

We don't do much. We watch things like The Amazing Race and Survivor, and we stitch and talk, and drink tea.

But in this oh-so-fragmented modern world - that as I say I have no problem with, it's  where I live most of the time - a real-life, real-time friend connection is beyond important.

On not buying books

I've made one of those impulsive decisions that seems  like a good idea.

I have decided - from now and for the whole of next year - to not buy any books.

Any books at all.

Not a one. Not from bookstores, or book depository, or amazon, or charity book sales, or the library sales ... well, you get the idea.

We're saving for a big move, probably at the start of 2014, from where  we are now to near where Jeremy's parents live. I'm simply transferring offices rather than jobs, so it's going to be costly, which means that sacrifices have to be made.

The good thing is that we have an excellent library here, and I have more than enough books on my own shelves to keep me occupied for the next year.

For MORE than the next year, let's be honest.

So. No new shiny books for me for a year or so.

That'll be challenging. :-)

There's a storm coming ...

Don’t mind me, I’m just excited. BECAUSE IT’S TIME FOR BATMAN.

Er, nearly. I got my ticket today, and I’m going tomorrow after work. It’s on at the completely pants time of 7.15pm which is hugely inconvenient for me, but I AM GOING ANYWAY BECAUSE BATMAN.

Ah …. this is my brain …. THIS IS MY BRAIN ON FANGIRL. Lots of caps and things and stuff.

Anyway. Non-Batman things.

I had to go back to the nurse at my doctor’s surgery today and yay, no more pressure bandage! I don’t have to go back, and I just have a couple of patches of magic netting thingy covering the remaining  ‘worst’ spots, which aren’t that bad. But the BEST part is I don’t have to go back to the doctors any more and I can take the magical netty stuff off myself in about 10 days if it hasn’t come off on its own by then.

The nurse said something like, “I’d say we won’t be seeing you back for a while, but you seem to be having a run of things lately.”

You drop ONE CLOTHESLINE on your head … anyway. All is well now and I can go back to bumbling through my days like always.

I haven’t been stitching much this week, apart from Sunday night when I watched Worried About the Boy, a biopic of Boy George, which was good but a bit heavy on the shagging.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely down with the shagging. Absolutely. But the film was kind of out of balance, if that makes sense. I wanted more backstory of Boy George and Culture Club. Keep the shagging, obviously (plus, bonus, one of the guys the very cute boy playhing Boy George was making out with? RICHARD MADDEN. Robb Stark, to the rest of you) but like … punch it out with a bit more story.

I’m about 100 pages from finishing The Night Circus and oh my GOD this BOOK. I got to a part near-ish the end that’s basically ripped my heart out and I’m super-wary now about how it’s going to end. But the CIRCUS. I’ve never wanted to go to  a circus half as badly as I want to go to the Night Circus and have it be a real thing.

*Sigh*.

Disco inferno?

Well not quite an inferno, but quite enough to be going on with, thank you very much.

If you follow my twitter/have seen my tumblr, you’ll know I had a bit of a cooking mishap on Monday night. I was careless putting mince into a frying pan with hot oil, and the oil splashed back and burned my arm.

Off to A&E, where I was duly bandaged and sent home with instructions to go to my doctor the next day to get it re-dressed. Luckily, after Monday it had stopped hurting and “only” one blister formed. So I went to the Dr yesterday and the nurse rebandaged it, and back again today for more of the same.

The nurse today (different to yesterday’s) re-dressed it with some kind of magic liquid, magic netty stuff and a pressure bandage, which is MUCH easier to deal with than a normal bandage. The frustrating part is that I have to keep the bandage on for another week.

So, I did what any sane and sensible person would do. I went to the Warehouse and bought books and coffee mugs.

I bought a pretty-sounding French cookbook, even though I don’t cook much, The Fault in Our Stars, Never Let Me Go and The Snow Child. The coffee mugs are for work. I have this weird quirk where I don’t like to use the mugs that are available in the cafeteria to anyone – I prefer my own. They’re just $2 mugs from the Warehouse, but I like them :D

I finished Railsea at the weekend, and now begins the back-and-forth between myself and Jodie at http://bookgazing.dreamwidth.org/ while we fangirl/discuss the novel. :D

In my cross stitch rotation at the moment, I’m working on Circe by Jill Oxton, but haven’t got much done lately – see: burned arm *sigh* and I’m reading The Night Circus, which I’m not very far into but is very promising so far.

In between books I’m reading a little P G Wodehouse – his Jeeves and Wooster short stories, mostly.

That’s … as interesting as it gets today.

Things ...

You know those weeks? Those weeks where all you feel capable of doing is watching season four of Supernatural and playing angry birds?

Yeah. This has been my week.

Some of you may or may not know that Patrick has been sick the past couple of weeks with what I thought was a cold but turned out to be strep throat and scarlet fever. He’s feeling much better now but for a few days there it was pretty tiring. So I’ve basically been a potato this week.

I haven’t picked up my book (Railsea by China Mieville) since … Sunday? Something like that anyway. Same with my cross stitching. It’s funny that when things like this happen, I don’t turn to the things that make me feel better, and more myself, but to things like TV and iPhone games. Hmmmm.

Although I have to say I did enjoy S4 of Supernatural. Especially the epic and no doubt doomed love story between Dean and Castiel. I enjoyed that very much.

I also hadn’t gone to the movies for a couple of weeks, which – for me – is unsettling because normally I go every Thursday after work. I broke that streak this week with The Amazing Spider-man which was pretty good, even though it’s awfully soon for a Spider-man reboot.

Today we’re doing lots of nothing and I’m revelling in it. I’m even hoping to open my book!

Oh! And follow my tumblr: http://daysmeanmore.tumblr.com/  :D :D

So I've been thinking ...

… about this whole blogging thing. I decided to take  a break from it for the month of June, think about what I wanted to do, and I seem to have reached a decision.

Er, of sorts.

Mostly what I’ve decided is to stop doing reviews on here. It’s a time-consuming thing that I wasn’t enjoying, and I have so many other calls on my time that it really wasn’t a hard decision to make.

However, that led me to wonder whether I should give the blog away completely, given that I started it to be a books blog, of sorts. But the thing is, I like blogging. I like the people I’ve met through it, I like talking about books, and things on it … so in the end I decided to keep it, and just sort of … change direction a  little bit.

I like talking. Which will come as no surprise to anyone who’s ever met me – lol. So that’s what this blog will be. Me, talking. About – hopefully – lots of different things.

Books, of course. Cats, yes. Patrick sometimes. Work occasionally, maybe, though I’m not big on talking about work online. Movies, TV … things that I love and get excited about.

Also, while I’m making changes, I’ve set up another tumblr (because I forgot the name of the old one – lol) – it’s here: http://www.tumblr.com/blog/daysmeanmore it’s mostly for photos – it’s replacing my days mean more blog which I am quietly retiring.

I’m starting with Photo a Day for July,  that I ganked from Chris at http://www.dream-stuff.com/ and here’s July’s list at the source: http://fatmumslim.com.au/photo-a-day-july-see-the-list-join-the-challenge/ and I’m still half-assing with the whole Project 365 thing, which is why I started Days Mean More (the blog) in the first place. It’ll just be on tumblr now.

So. Yeah. I’m letting the reviewing go (I was only ever a half-assed reviewer any way) but holding on to the blog, and to the things that I truly love – Patrick, cats, movies, TV, books – and all of you all. :D

Miscellenae

Been a few weeks hasn’t it? Hrm.

I haven’t been doing anything out of the ordinary that I can think of …

Let’s see. What in-the-ordinary things have I been doing?

Well, reading, obviously, although I’ve only finished a couple of books lately and I’m not feeling the reviewing mojo at the moment.

I read 11-22-63 by Stephen King which, for me, wasn’t up there with his best. It was readable and the premise was interesting but I found it very easy to put down and walk away.

I also read Engines of God by Jack McDevitt – I seem to be entering a sci-fi reading phase which happens once in a while. It’s the first in a series of books featuring pilot Priscilla Hutchinson (Hutch) and I really loved the premise, which was about finding alien artefacts on long-abandoned worlds and what responsibility do human beings have to long-lost alien cultures?

I really enjoyed that one and I have the second one in the series out of the library.

What else.

Patrick is enrolled in school. Which is a huge shock to my system and he’s not even starting officially until May – lol. He’s having school visits twice a week from now until then, though, which I actually think is a really good idea. He’ll get to know his little classmates and it won’t be such a shock to the system.

His first one is meant to be Tuesday but he’s got an ear infection at the moment that seems to be coming and going so we’re keeping him home tomorrow and Tuesday and taking him to the doctors as early as we can get him in. I’m probably being over-protective but that’s how it is. I’m the mum, therefore what I say goes. :P

I saw Midnight in Paris at the movies on Thursday and oh my gosh what a lovely movie! Even before it had finished I knew it had to be mine because as soon as it was over I wanted to start watching it again – lol. By virtue of Invercargill being a large cultural wasteland, it’s already out on DVD and therefore it is MINE ALL MINE.

I’m working – slowly but surely – on my room; turning it into a kind of escape from the boys/cats where I can just come and kick back and read. It’s getting there, but I have a couple of corners that still need to be cleared out. I cleaned off my dressing table and I now have only seven things on there so my brain is going “hmmmm … minimalism” (that’s very minimalistic for me. I have crap everywhere).

I’m musing on whether I can pare everything down and just have three bookcases – two for books and one for DVDs/cross-stitch stuff/sundries. I’d really really like that but it means getting rid of a fuck-ton of books.

My cross-stitch rotation is going well although I haven’t done much lately – mostly lately at night I’ve been mooching on twitter and watching crap TV. They both have their place but you can overdo it and I do believe I have.  I have Stuff To Do.

I started Clash of Kings and I’m loving it – just waiting for the body count to start tallying up. It can’t be long now – I’m already about 100 pages in. I’m still picking away at Bleak House on my eReader and it’s still fascinating, even though I truly have no idea what’s happening. I’m also about to start Taken by Robert Crais – it’s a review book for work so that’ll become my lunchtime read. 

I do believe that’s all I have. How’s it hanging, blog-world? :D