Possibly The Worst Weekend Ever

I survived the weekend!

The chaos started when my best friend called on Wednesday and told me that her mom had died. And then she cried... which she doesn't do, ever. But her family is very close, and her mom is the glue that holds them all together. She was diagnosed with stage 4 (I think) ovarian cancer four and a half years ago, and told she had three months to get her affairs in order. She fought, and won small battles, but cancer won the war.

My friend, M, is a bit of an odd duck and she doesn't have many friends. She didn't ask, but it was pretty clear that she needed me there. So I rearranged my schedule a bit to be home in Ohio for the funeral on Saturday. My original plan was to leave around noon from work and hit the road for home immediately. It's a 10 hour drive, if you don't dawdle around, and it's very hard to not start stalling getting back into the car after about hour six. Of course, when I left at nearly one, I was in such a foul mood from work that I literally didn't trust myself behind the wheel of the car for very long. So I went to the studio, and ended up spending nearly six hours playing. It was SSOOOOOO nice to just relax and spend time with people I can be me around. Then my friend P brought my asshole boss in to tour the studio. Nice. I have scads more pictures, but that's another post.

This was the highpoint of the drive back: a tanker of coffee! I nearly followed him wherever he was going! Then I realized it was gasoline, and the coffee was a lie and I continued off in my own direction after recording it for posterity, of course.



The point is that I finally headed out for Ohio at around 8:30 Friday night. I got to my aunt's house around 6:30 Saturday morning and crashed into bed for a couple of hours. By 10:30 am, I was at the funeral home, and then the processional to the church started about 11:00. M's mom was devotely Catholic, and the ceremony reflected that. It was a beautiful service, all three and a half hours of it. Then we all went across the property to their community center thing and had lunch there. I was SO glad that another of M's friends managed to make it or I would have been distinctly alone.

M was raised in a very close, very strict Catholic home. Then she went to live on campus for college, where freedom was a very heady thing. At break, she'd go home, and her parents, especially her dad, tried very hard to cram her back into the same strict mold. After weeks of total freedom, and doing what you want when you want to, it's very hard to go back to a 9:30 curfew. Her parents, for all that we don't agree on practically anything, did a very good job with her - her rebellion was very tame compared to most. But somewhere along the line, her parents decided that I was the sole reason for their daughter's unwillingness to toe the line. They hate me. At one point, I think her mom truly believed that I was the anti-christ, here to tempt their daughter from the path of righteousness. I have a feeling that M let them think that a lot of stuff was my fault, or idea, because I made an easy fall guy and it saved her from some of the confrontation.

So when her dad hugged me at the funeral home, I knew that the stars were definitely out of alignment. At the church after the procession, we were all kind of milling around and a woman came up to me and asked if I was Ericka. Um. Yes. Turns out the lady was M's aunt on her dad's side. She was a very nice lady, and she made of point of saying, several times, how important it was to M that I was there. Clearly, this was even more important to her than I realized.

After lunch ended, around 4:30, M, her brother and her dad went back to the funeral home to pick stuff up and I headed over to M's house to let her dog out. Shadow is mostly black lab, which something drooley mixed in for good measure. After the morning, playing with the puppy was very good. *sigh* Shadow is aging - her muzzle is grey now, and she struggles with the steps but she's still a very enthusiastic lap dog once she's off the staircase.




She had to go back over to her dad's later so I didn't stay long. I felt so bad for her, and then she said something about wanting to be done with sadness for the day. She just wanted to sit on her couch with me, drink wine and watch Spongebob. Unfortunately, that wasn't going to happen this weekend, but it's a date for later.

After I left her house, I went back to my aunt and uncle's place, changed clothes and then headed out to mom and dad's... where I met their surprise for me: Max. Mom picked him up at the pound last week and surprised dad with a dog! The vet thinks Max is three or four. They found him wandering and picked him up. He's now fixed (as of the day Mom picked him out) and current on shots.


Very late, I stumbled back to my aunt's to sleep. Finally, blessed sleeep. Then Sunday, I met mom and dad over at my grandmother's house. Mom's getting ready for the estate sale, and it's a good thing Grams isn't around 'cause if she saw the house in the state it's in right now, she would kill my mother. There are stacks of boxes everywhere. Mom assures me that there is an order to it. I wish mom would just have a service do it, 'cause Grams had a lot of really really nice stuff and mom has no clue about that sort of thing. She can identify a bird or a flower from 50 paces heading the other way, but Avon and Tiffany are indistinguishable to her. I know mom's doing it herself, and she gets overwelmed but there's a lot that she just gave up on going through and shoved it in the 'sell' stack, which I think is a mistake. Also, she's dumping glassware together in plastic bags and then dragging it around. Maybe it's the gardening or something but she's just a bull in a china shop, slinging stuff around - a lot of it is all the ceramics that Grams made, and completely irreplaceable. You'd think she's be a bit careful.

So that was a fun five hours. Dad and Max came too, and were bored stiff. Max got many walks. Mom says nothing is wrong and they are fine, but she's got a tone in her voice when she talks to dad that makes me very tempted to hit her. And dad didn't manage an entire sentence without her interrupting him. After he tried to say something and she interrupted him four times and he took the dog for another walk and she said something snippy about him leaving, I kinda went off on her about it. She claims that she didn't know she was interrupting him. My response was something along the lines of, "so you aren't listening to anything he says? nice."

Between the smoking, and the fighting between her and dad, and mom and that dog competing for "biggest klutz, glass division" I was an exhausted ball of tension by the time I finished packing the jeep and we left. Also, total sleep deprivation and forgetting to eat equalled headache from hell. And my brother is in an apparent state of denial - he won't go over or take anything from the house, so mom's just boxing it up to get rid of. Some stuff, it's too late - she's already given it away. But now that she's got this tag sale idea in her head, everything is going into sell piles so there's still a chance to save it. So in addition to the things I cared about (And gods, I feel like such a vulture, picking over Grams' stuff. She should be in her house, with her stuff. This is horrible.) I am also scavenging for my brother. I'll put them away for him and when he's ready, I'll haul it back out.



From there, we ate then went to mom and dad's. Mom had most of Grams' jewelry packed up to send to me, except for the stuff she forgot in a drawer, so I went through all of that, got to see Scott briefly and then left from there to head back here around 8:00 pm. The Garmin continues to conspire against me. A case in point? This was on a major highway:


I drove through to North Carolina, then pulled into the welcome center and fell asleep for a couple of hours. I was awake in time for my 8:00 am conference call this morning. After I arrived here, I unloaded the jeep, showered and then headed into work. *yawn* I'm very tired, and my entry is trashed - piles of stuff everywhere...





One thing - I found a clock that I'd never seen before. Who knows where/when Grams got it, but it's a beautiful Seth Thomas mantle clock. It needs love - the nut that holds the hands on is gone, as is the pendulum ball but it's going to look great once I find someone to help me with it. Know anyone that's good with old clocks?



In the meantime, I'm so tired that I can barely move. Off to bed with me, and I hope your weekend was better than mine.

Wordless Wednesday - Long Black Train

One Step Forward...

A friend's grandmother passed away last week, so Saturday morning was spent in a church for the service. The choir was talented, and it *only* lasted an hour and a half and it meant a lot to her that we went (yeah, I dragged P with me) so it could have been worse. Still, I was quite glad to finally make it to the studio.

This weekend was the get-ready-for-school tax free weekend, and somehow they made it apply to stuff at the studio so I picked up more glaze and more clay. Yay for colors! I spend some time glazing, of course, and some time on the wheel. I still haven't decided if the 4 things I threw are worth keeping.

I escaped work tonight and headed over to the studio. Some progress was made. My fuschia vase is heading into the kiln today, so I should have it back on Friday.

Here's the progress of a couple of other things.



The birdies are a stamp, so don't be too terribly impressed there. I carved around the stamp, once it's dried I'll paint it before the bisque fire. We have a dipping glaze called 'rhubarb' that is a pinkish melon color. I may leave the birdies black and then use wax resist and dip in the rhubarb.

The red pot will probably be a give away - the white border isn't even and it'd drive me nuts if I paid too much attention to it.

I worked on trimming, and am done with two of the four from Saturday. I haven't decided if I'm keeping them yet, and I may add handles so they went back into the greenhouse to keep for the weekend. All tucked in:



I may have mentioned that we had a handbuilding class a while ago, and made baskets. Mine is probably going to end up crashing into a wall some day soon - I'm not terribly fond of it. It's been sitting on my shelf for ages while I debated with myself. I did have it bisque fired and there it sits. Whatcha think? Live or die?



Other progress made: Sophia has claimed the cherub chair.



Hope your week goes well!

I Can Has Critters?

I love the lolz cats. They make me happy.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures


see more Lolcats and funny pictures


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Danger: Unfair Generalizations Ahead

Jen's post made me think of a conversation I had with a friend/colleague the other day. He is actually the quality manager at my main supplier, and he's currently going in the midst of a situation with the hr assistant at work.

She is on a major power trip and has it in for him, and therefore all of his employees. So she went out onto the factory floor the other day and started berating one of his quality inspectors on the length of her finger nails, in front of the entire floor, while wearing a thin tank top that very (very) generously displayed her... assets. The inspector eventually lost her cool and made a remark about her falling out of her top if she bent over to inspect said nails and things went downhill from there. He (let's call him Q) was worried 'cause she's the sort to sneak around behind your back to try to make trouble. I said something about her trying some sort of harassment suit, and he starting reciting the law, chapter and verse, on harassment. Turns out a lady at a previous company, who was a friend of his, freaked out when she didn't get a promotion and sued the company, naming all of her male friends and a couple of female ones, as having been harassing her. He went through the deposition and the trial and ended up testifying for a couple of hours... so he's quite familiar with the laws on this matter.

Then he turns around and tells another story about another company he worked at before he was married. The admin was older, but very attractive and quite friendly, and also married. So he flirted back with her, at work. Then they started going to lunch now and then. Then she started showing up at the grocery store that he usually went to - on the other side of town from her house. And taking her kid to the park across the street from his house. And staring at his house whilst pushing her kid on the swings.

He did not get involved with her, but he didn't say anything to her about backing off 'cause 1) he was single and 2) she was pretty. She started pushing enough that he emailed her and asked her to back off. Then he forwarded this email to the boss and had a conversation with him along the lines of "don't do anything, just be aware." Her idea of backing off was putting a g-string in his pocket before their morning production meeting. Some days of this - him emailing her to back off, her pushing harder, him sending things to the boss, the boss finally telling her to back off and one fine day, the boss finds her in Q's office, sitting at his desk. He chases her out, goes to his office and finds that mysteriously, all emails from Q are missing. Q still had them, as well as her rather explicit emails and she ended up leaving the company that day.

My thought then was that one of the differences between most men and most women is that had she been male and he female, her showing up at the grocery store would have set off "STALKER ALERT!" warnings in his brain and the next day (or close to it), steps would have been taken to start distancing. He wasn't thinking "stalker," he was thinking "Nice rack. I could get some of that." and the situation escalated far further than it could have.

Another difference between the sexes - men will fight and then it's over. If it's between a couple of guys, and they end up with beer, they may very well end up best friends before it's over. Women, at least some of them, will then do their level best to completely f*ck your world. I know - I've watched it happen. That, however, is a story for another day - it's already too late to go to bed early.

Rainy Days and Sundays, Redux

It's thunderstorming again. We've had some kind of rain nearly every day this summer, but it has allowed us to catch up from several years of drought. I've gained a new stoicism for the process of drying out after being soaked by an errant cloud.

Today, though, is a good day. My house smells of cinnamin candles and hazelnut coffee, Billie Holiday is drifting through the speakers, Sophia proved willing to spend some quality time cuddling on the couch and my house is nearly clean. Once I'm finished with that, I'll curl up with and reread Jacqueline Carey - "Kushiel's Avatar." Yay for Sundays!

Works In Progress...

I spent another lovely day at the studio today. For something that I'm not particularly good at, it's amazing how much enjoyment I get from it. I spent time on the wheel, and yet more time dabbling in the glazes.

My plans to leave work yesterday at 4:00 to go play were foiled. (Again. You'd think I'd learn.) My friend P called me on her way home from the studio to tell me that my little fuschia vase was the talk of the evening - it came through the bisque firing very well and I'm appparently rather lucky that it was still there today. (I try not to be too bitter that her job is such that she can leave at 4:00. *mutter*) All that's left is the clear glaze. I applied it today, but I plan to fuss with it some more, so it's sitting on my shelf drying.

After I threw it on the wheel and trimmed it, I let it dry to the hard leather stage and then carved the design into the side. Then I let it dry completely and applied the underglaze. Most of the colors, I mixed myself since the ones we have weren't quite what I was after. After it dried completely, I touched up a few places and put it in for the bisque fire.

The last thing that I spent this much time on went boom in the kiln, so I decided to get pictures now, just in case. So, this is what it looked like this morning:


This is what it looks like now:


And this is the picture in the book that I copied:


Another work in progress - my little squirrel. I didn't do anything with him today so he's still sitting on the shelf waiting. Maybe Monday... Anyway, this is his current state:


And the pictures that I used:



I actually got one mug glazed and ready to go. I think it'll turn out pretty cool. When it was greenware, I stamped flowers and butterflies on it with black underglaze and painted the handle with rose underglaze then I fired it. Today, I put more rose on the handle then painted the whole thing with transparent yellow glaze. It's sitting on the shelf waiting for the next glaze firing.

I fooled around some more with my very first mug too. I had underglazed it with a dark blue then glazed it in clear and I wasn't thrilled with the way it turned out. The blue got darker so it's almost black and it's not as smooth and glossy as I'd like either. You can reglaze, so the other day I painted it with Elmer's white glue to help the glaze stick. Today, I dipped it in light blue shino. It's sitting on my shelf waiting for Monday while it dries. Touchups may be necessary.

My time on the wheel was mostly well spent - one little pot was actually centered! And even! Not lopsided! Even a little! This is very unusual for me. It's still on the bat since I didn't have enough time to trim anything today. So, the first step is a ball of clay. This is the second:


I'm counting my chickens before they hatch on this one, 'cause I still have to remove it from the bat and trim it before I can play with the decoration but I can already see it finished in my head so I hope I don't screw it up. I like its shape. I was going for mixing bowl shaped and changed my mind mid-stream. Unexpectedly, it didn't collapse.



P makes darling little tiny bowls, and I keep trying to do them too. Mine don't work out nearly as well. The one I attempted today may end up as a stemless wine glass for our Fridays in the studio, depending. Or I may scrap it. It depends on how well the trimming goes. It's funny to me now - four months ago, in the midst of my class, anything I managed to not destroy on the wheel got fired and now I think I reject more than I keep... I know I can do better, and they aren't good enough to save. They told me I'd get there, I just didn't believe them. Maybe someday, I'll manage lids...

And to keep me from getting too cocky, one thing just a total failure on the wheel. I had a horrible time getting it centered and then I clipped an edge and that was pretty much that. Aw well, I dumped it into the bag of clay to try again later. Maybe next time, it'll be more cooperative.

While there was another auction today, and we had every intention of going, we ate first. We ran past the grocery to forage and then took our finds to her house to eat. She got suchi, I got a rotissary chicken and potato salad. We made it to her couch, and fizzled so instead of the auction, we watched "Mamma Mia!" It was goofy but cute. I'm going to have Abba stuck in my head for the next week.

So, so far, my weekend is going very well. Hope yours is too!

Weekend Adventures

Friday sucked. I blocked my calendar for the late afternoon in an attempt to make it to the studio for wine and a social life and everything! At 4:30, I got back to my desk, shut everything down and was heading for the door when my dear boss informed me that my supplier was on his way with parts for me to approve and I had to wait for him to arrive. Best part? The parts he brought were the same ones my boss approved while I was on vacation. Let's hear it for pointless! I finally made it home after 7:00... to find the Peanut on the rug, wheezing. I gave it a couple of hours, and she seemed to be getting worse so we headed into the emergency vet.


$500 and a shave job later, they gave her a shot which they thought "might" help, since they had no clue what was wrong with her. The xray showed that one of her lungs was not working - maybe full of fluid - but they tried three time to extract some and didn't get any. So they sent me home at 1 am to watch her and see how things progressed, since the next step was exploratory surgery. I set up a litter box downstairs so she didn't have to manage the stairs and fell into bed. At least now I know that she really does weigh a ton, in cat terms anyway - she tops the scales at 16.5 pounds.

Saturday, she seemed a bit better so I went ahead with my typical schedule. I stopped at Dunkin' Donuts for a breakfast sandwich and 2 extra large coffees then headed into the studio. They did a glaze firing since my last visit. I'm so happy with the way my things turned out! Well, my coffee mug still needs some work, I'll be reglazing it. Everything else though, I'm thrilled with!

One of the ladies did a coffee mug that was really cool - textured on the bottom and then glazed on the top and inside. This is my sincere form of flattery, except as a vase:



I was rooting through the drawers of stuff in the studio a few weeks ago and found an impression of a little lizard in plaster. I thought it was just adorable, so I put one on a bowl. That makes it sound easy. It really wasn't. I think part of the reason that I'm so fond of the pottery is that it isn't just pottery the way I do it. It's sculpture and painting and all manner of things. I painted my little lizard green, the bowl is purple and then I added a crawl to him to add texture, and he turned out great! I had a friend in mind when I made him and I think she's going to love him. What do you think?



A couple other things came out of the firing too - nothing super special, but I'm happy with the results. A little blue bowl, and a little brown one with a lip. The brown one should have had a darker rim, but that didn't work out exactly as planned. (I should probably add some kind of scale to these. The brown one is about four inches across, and the blue one is a bit less than two inches across.)




I bought a book a couple of weeks ago, and I love it. It's called "The Chinese Brush Painting Bible" by Jane Dwight. It gives step by step instructions for flowers, birds, bugs, landscape elements, etc. I'm not painting them, I'm carving them into the sides of my wet clay bowls. You can't count your pots 'till they come out of the final firing, but I've done a couple of things that I'm excited about. I'm not really an artist - I can't come up with an original thought to save my life, but if the picture is in front of me, I can copy it. So, we'll see how these come out.

From the studio, I came home and checked on the Peanut. She seemed a bit better, so I left to meet my friend for dinner at a Japanese steakhouse. Oh. Yum. I had the filet and chicken combination, with a glass of plum wine. So very very good.

From dinner, we headed to an auction. This is the first time we've been since "our" auctioneer moved to his new location - about 15 minutes away. It's not quite the adventure that it was before - when it was an hour trek into the wild to find him - but it was super convenient. I didn't get a table - the ones they had were beat up and water damaged - but I did find a few things...

A neat lamp, which needs a shade.


A wooden stool, which needs refinished, but that should take less than an hour and it was $3 and it's perfect for my shop. Also, I got a chair. It came from a priest's estate, and between that and the cherubs, I almost expected to burst into flame when I sat on it. It's super ugly, what with the cherubs and all, but it's really comfortable. Next up: adventures in reupholstering. It can't be that hard, right?

Seriously. Cherubs. Who puts that on furniture??


The real prize of the night though was a bag full of cds. I love doing this, and I've found some really great artists this way. (Last time, I bought every cd the library was selling for $0.75 each and listened to them on the commute to and from work. Some of the songs made my (and my coworker) ears bleed, but some were pretty cool.)


I ended up with 58 cds for $10, plus a bonus pair of specticles and a messenger bag. The cds are in these nifty cases - each case holds 6 disks and the brand name on it is pioneer, so clearly they're part of some kind of sound system. There's at least one Kenny G in there, and it seems to lean heavily toward classical (which I like) and Mexican (which I don't know enough about to say) so that should be an adventure.

From there, I dropped my friend off and headed home. The Peanut met me at the door, clearly she was feeling better, so that was a relief.

I caught up on my sleep today. When I wandered downstairs this afternoon, I found te Peanut bouncing around as normal. I'm going to just assume that the shot they gave her at the vet's worked 'cause otherwise that $500 was a total waste and that'll just make me unhappy... so the shot fixed her!

My friend just got back from vacation, and she shared the peaches that she got in her rambles. I had one for "breakfast." OMG. I forget how good peaches are when you get them fresh and ripe from a farm. The juice ran down my chin and it was like eating sunshine. It took a ridiculous amount of self-control to not snarf down the rest of them.


Then I spent an hour lounging on the couch with my Sophia and now I'm playing online, so the rest of the weekend made up for Friday. Hope your weekend is going well! Sophia, in a more playful mood...

I Want One!

How cool is that? OniMushaKid made it from pop tabs.

It's my most recent "coolest thing ever."

Carry Me

This was taken at a rest stop in (I think) Virginia on my way back here from vacation a couple of weeks ago. I took it with my shiny new iphone!

I'm almost done with the vacation post, with pictures, but I keep getting distracted by all the apps (okay, games) that I've downloaded to my shiny new iphone. My current favorite is "HarborMaster" where you have to organize ships in and out of docks. Simple, yet addictive. I have to put it down now and go to bed - I'm up way too late on a work night. *yawn*

To steal from Suldog, soon, more with better stuff...

My New Best Friend

I got an iphone last week. OMG. I'm in love. This thing is THE COOLEST NEW TOY EVER! I have spent every second that I wasn't at work at home downloading applications (apps).

Some of them confirm my utter dorkiness... the light saber and the phaser, for instance. The shooting gallery with very lifelife shotgun noises may very well have saved people's lives this week. And they have bejeweled, which is the best game ever... organizing shiny things into patterns - never has there been anything more perfect for me. Then there are the apps that may come in quite handy... one of them uses the product bar code to go online and find comparison prices as you shop. One takes the lyrics from the song stuck in your head, finds the song, title and artist, then gives you the option to buy it from itunes. Another tracks the location of public bathrooms, for those times that you need one now. One is a German translater, to help communicate with my dear colleauges. I've got maps, news, music, search engines - really this gizmo is like something out of the Jetsons. I may not have my flying car, but I'm sure Apple is working on an app for that.

I Broke.

Friday was one of the top 10 worst days of my life here, and trust me when I say that that is saying something. It started off at 7:00 am with my first phone call with a supplier, then moved to several meetings due to MAJOR crisis that were all completely preventable but were brought about by stupid people and went downhill from there. At 2:00, I made a major mistake. I thought to myself, "well, that's probably the worst of it." When will I learn?!?!?! 'Cause not even 10 minutes after that, I got a call about a major problem requiring us to sort every part in stock before our next production run and 10 minutes after THAT, I got a call about a final audit failure.

I had every intention of leaving before 5 to go to the studio, because every day last week was hell and I was on my last brittle, hormonal little nerve. Then something else came up and it was 7:00 before I made it home, where I found ginormous roaches in the entry and cat yak all over the couch. Ever think some days that someone upstairs is fucking with you just to see how far you bend before you snap? I curled up in a ball on my cat-yak free recliner and sobbed for a while, then crawled off to bed.

Saturday, I got up and went to the studio, where my friend, who I was supposed to meet at the studio on Friday, wondered what happened, since I hadn't returned any of her calls, after texting her that the studio wasn't going to happen. I told her that I'd tell her about my day on Friday, but warned her that if she dared to defend anyone in Development (her department, btw), I would rip her face off and feed it to her. I'm very calm and even tempered, you know. The rest of the day was spent glazing and centering myself (if not the clay, but that's another problem). I decided that going to see "Rocky Horror," which was playing at 10 pm, was a bad idea because I realized that I hadn't gotten myself back yet and one person flipping rice the wrong way and it could all be over. Sunday was spent in blessed solitude.

I really thought I'd gotten myself back to suitable-for-use-with-other-humans, I really did. Then, in today's 7:30 am meeting, the cause of a great deal of my frustration had the gall to demand to know when he'd get paperwork (about 30 MB worth) that we BOTH received Friday afternoon. And, in front of the entire room, I looked him dead in the eye and told him to shove his paperwork. He started, in his slimy little way, to laugh it off, but I really wasn't kidding. And it showed. He ended up getting very quiet and someone else distracted me from the utterly silent death glare I was giving him. Yeah. That whole playing well with others? Not so much.

Up until, well, now, these people had no idea what they were dealing with in me because I was quite careful. They saw me, lite - the fluffy bunny version of me. But dealing with the never ending bickering and stupidity and pettyness has finally gotten to me and well, they'd better brace themselves 'cause it's going to be a bumpy ride going forward. I have had enough. They will by God do their jobs, and do them the right way and if I have to ride every one of them into the dirt, well, it's way overdue. Thank the gods you don't have to deal with me right now 'cause until I drag this damn project into launch, it is not going to be pleasant for anyone around here. I personally guarantee it.

(picture stolen from here)

Reading... Sometimes, It Rots Your Mind.

You ever read a book and get to a point that you realize that the asinine plot, stupid characters, utter lack of any cohesiveness or sense and assorted other problems with the so-called storyline are actually draining IQ out of you with every page? I'm so there.

When I was younger, I used to consider it a point of pride that no matter how much I disliked it, I would power through and finish the book I'd started. Some time ago, I asked myself why I was subjecting myself to such unnecessary torment. Self had no idea either so we, um, I stopped.

I have to confess that I (normally) thoroughly enjoy what I call "brain candy books." It's light fiction, beach read sort of stuff - and a lot of it is extremely well written. On a lovely Sunday, with a pot of coffee and no cares, I can rip through 3 or 4 of them.

I knew I was in trouble with this one before the end of the second chapter. Then I skipped to the end and it was utterly absurd, and so were the two spot checks in the middle. *sigh* I must remember to not buy any more from this author - now that I'm reading this one, I remember that the last one was drivel too. How do these people get published anyway?

I'm going to go read something by John Sandford and clean out my brain.