According to WEQX's morning show, this is National Pet Peeve Week. Every day they've been asking callers what their pet peeve is (or are, if they have more than one).

So I started thinking... what's my pet peeve?

Well, there's lack of tolerance for one. People who walk through life with their blinders on, refusing to see any more than one side of a story, or in some cases, refusing to see the whole story, drive me nuts.

Then there's the silly one -- I hate people coming up behind me and looking over my shoulder. This drive me nutso at work, especially the people who decide to start pacing because they're bored or something and are actually *looking* over people's shoulders. *grumbles*

Another one is people who refuse to learn. I'll explain something once, then again. If I get to the third time and the person hasn't been listening and actually learned, then well, I start to get peeved.

So, I'm curious... drop me a comment -- what's your pet peeve??

Thanks to Chris for turning me on to a new web comic, Boy Meets Boy. It is self-described as "The gay odd-couple, only sexier" or something close to that anyway.

I started reading last night, and didn't want to stop because well, it entertained me greatly. I kept bursting into laughter, and seeing people I knew in the characters. It also caused me to remember all the things I adore about Chris and miss him even more. *little sighs*

Just looking at what I wrote earlier regarding my review. I sound grouchy, don't I? That wasn't really what I meant to sound like, which means my writing obvious suffers today.

I really wasn't upset by the review. Its more... it made me upset with *myself* for not really paying attention to my blog and taking a good look at what it looked like. I didn't really do what I wanted to do with my site, and it suffers for it.

The review liked my writing, and I am SO proud of that. That's really the thing I'm here for -- to convey myself through my words and my thoughts. So that part has me really feeling great.

And it got me all thinking about the design of my site, which is awesome (that it got me thinking, not that the design is awesome). And it got me working on an alternate. Gotta get that finished up. *smiles*

Okay, all, I'd like an opinion on my proposed new design. If you're up to offering one, please take a look. I'm still futzing around with it for a bit, but I've got it mostly settled in, at least in the big parts. Now I'm figuring in the sidemenu and stuff like that. So, thanks...

I have been reviewed by The Weblog Review. It... wasn't a great review. Am I disappointed? Yeah, of course. In the review? No, not really. I'm more disappointed in myself.

The review has me really looking at some things on my site.

The reviewer liked the writing, which honestly has me very happy. Writing is one of my focuses in life, and even though I know this is all certainly not among my best work (it is far more casual than most writers out there who endeavor to make their sites more literary) it is a pleasure to hear a complement. I know I certainly haven't been focussing on the blog lately -- not nearly enough to make it something "real" -- and I do hope to change that in the future. But that's a topic for another time. *smiles*

The biggest dings came in the design of the site. The lack of About page? Interesting thought... I think, for some reason, that I somehow expected that the reader would just come to know me magically through my writing. And I suppose that indeed *is* true. If you read it long enough you will know more about me than I would ever put on a static page. There are things that come through in my writing that I simply don't generally say outright when I'm just listing off "this is who I am". Sometimes its because these are things I would rather discuss than use as a definition. And sometimes its because well, I try *not* to define myself. I try to just *be* myself. Of course, that could all also be said on an About page. *smiles*

Which means that I may well try to add one.

But the layout, the design... yeah, that's where I'm REALLY feeling disappointed in myself. I know what look I was going for, and I know where I came from, pre-blog. And I know why I'm unhappy with it all.

I couldn't keep the original look. It was cluttered, not to mention really scattered. My site, before blogging, was a mishmash of original pieces. When I first started, every area of my site had a very different look and feel, with lots of background images. I now know so much more about webdesign, and to be honest, as "pretty" as background images are, they are truly a pain in the neck. Hard to read against, mostly.

So I decided to just clean everything out and start fresh. Go for a very scaled down, cleaner look.

Obviously, I went a little too clean.

And I knew this. I knew what I wanted to reflect (er, pun intended) as an image (also intended) and I knew that what I had done hadn't captured that at all.

This is The Hall of Mirrors. Once upon a time, my site had this great introspective background that looked like reflections up reflections. A great statement too about looking at yourself in the mirror. I liked that. But I gave it up because I couldn't read a bloody thing against the background.

The grey was my attempt at a "metallic" sort of look. The idea being that the whole site is a mirror, reflecting myself and the readers in different ways. But instead, it looks dull and boring, and not mirrored at all.

So I'm playing with some ideas over on a test site -- feel free to take a look if you're curious. With any luck, I'll come up with something new that I really like and can use here. I'd like something a little splashier. Of course, then I have to redesign the Voices section, which should look even a little more different, too.

In a way I'm glad this got me thinking about redesign. I'd like to end up someplace with my site that's a lot more... me...

Okay, so he walked those few steps weeks and weeks ago. And then he refused to do it again, unless he was holding onto something.

Until tonight.

He was standing just a few feet from me, and I called his name and he turned and walked right to me! It was four whole steps, and then he did it again and again! He's still not got the strength to walk all over the place, but he's doing an excellent job. He's willing to walk, sometimes, when he sees something he wants and its the quickest way to get there.

So that mobility phase is coming SOOOO quickly!!

It wasn't a good night tonight. And when it was all over, I felt like a horrible parent for not figuring out what was wrong much, much sooner.

Kevin got Ryan all ready for bed tonight, gave him his bottle, and settled him down. It took some work, but then, the past few nights Ryan just hasn't wanted to sleep. He fusses, whimpering and unsettled, making unhappy noises for about ten minutes, and then usually he nods off.

Although last week we had to resort to the car once. We hate doing that -- we certainly don't want to get him used to taking a twenty minute drive in order to fall comfortably asleep.

But tonight... tonight it just wasn't happening. Got him settled, started watching Angel from the Tivo. Ryan fussed. We paused Angel, and gave him more of his bottle. He settled. Kevin laid him down. A few minutes later, he started fussing.

So fine, next step is to try to let him cry it out. So Ryan continues to cry, while we are downstairs, finishing up Angel. And with every cry my head has a knife plunging into it again and again, as my sinus headache echoes with the sound. I can't take it. It makes me ready to just curl up in a corner whimpering. Then add in a healthy dose of guilt because my son is just getting utterly hysterical over something and I don't know what it is.

Kevin goes upstairs with the bottle, but Ryan doesn't calm down. I can hear Kevin getting more and more frustrated, so I went upstairs as well. I took him, and for a moment Ryan was calm -- mommy was there. But then whatever was bothering him didn't go away. And he started screaming again.

So we figure, maybe he's too wound up. I growl about not being able to drive (I can hardly see straight the pain's so bad -- I hate these headaches) so Kevin packs him into the car and takes him out. Twenty minutes later he's back, and Ryan's asleep. He settles him into the crib.

It lasts all of a few minutes. Tops. And then the whimpering... then the shuffling of a little boy sitting up in bed, and then the all out screaming.

I go upstairs again and scoop him up. I sniff him, and then decide that even thought I smell utterly nothing, I'll change him. There was a time once when we pinched a small bit of very tender skin in the fold of a diaper -- maybe that's happened again.

I start to take off his pajama bottoms when I realize that his foot isn't properly into the footy part of the PJs. His toe is stuck, pointed up slightly, and probably godawful uncomfortable. I quickly pull the PJs off and massage his poor little red toes. As I touch them, the screaming intensifies. This, then, is most definitely the problem. And neither of us had seen it.

But to make me feel guilty, my memory scrolls backwards and I realize I *did* see it. I noticed it when I saw Kevin putting the PJs on him, and just kind of discarded it, automatically assuming it'd get fixed as Kevin smoothed out the PJs. But Kev didn't notice it had happened. And Ry didn't start crying right away.

Poor guy. I felt really really badly about it. Once I got him settled this time he went right to sleep with just some backrubbing. But I still feel really badly about it. Its so hard when they can't just say what's bothering them.

I just took a glance at the new "Archives Index" page. I've done 13 book reviews now, and those reviews cover a total of 17 books (the second Wen Spencer wasn't explicitly reviewed, and the four parts of the Dalemark quartet shared a review). I've got one book still in the queue to be reviewed that I finished over the weekend. So that makes 18 books read since roughly 3 1/2 months ago or so. Not a bad total! If I can keep up at that pace I've got a chance of reading through a quarter of my to-read pile in the next year.

I really shouldn't put it that way, should I? Yowch! Thank the gods I read fast!

The Mediator: Shadowland
by Jenny Carroll
paperback from Pocket Pulse 2000

I collect Young Adult books. Generally genre fiction, although some non-genre fiction does creep in as well (and I still have all the books I've bought over the years, including those from when I *was* a Young Adult myself!).

I'm not sure where I picked this one up -- whether I picked it off of Glen's table last Boskone (Glen Cook always has such *good* YA books to buy on his table in the dealers' room) or whether I just bumped into it on my own. Its the first in a series, and according to Amazon, there are a total of four books out so far. I can't tell by just looking if its an open-ended series. But I do know I plan to buy more of them.

This isn't a kids book written for adults. Most adults probably wouldn't have the patience for the writing style, although the style is one of the things I like about it. The book is written in first person vernacular, like Suze is talking to the reader directly. Its the style I use, all too often, and I have a fondness for it. It reads like I could be reading it out loud and I can hear her voice in my head. I like that.

The style of the book definitely trades on the popularity of Buffy. There's this girl -- Suze -- and she's a Mediator. That means she can speak with the dead. Hells, she can talk to them, touch them, and even "kick ghost butt" when necessary. What she's supposed to do is help them find their way to the other side. But Suze (rather like Buffy) has gone all alone for the first 16 years of her life. She had no help, no one to teach her how to deal with this gift. So she's developed her own techniques.

Now she's moved from New York City to San Jose, because her mother has gotten married. And suddenly there's a priest at her school who knows exactly what she is. And three step-brothers becoming involved in her life. Not to mention Jesse, the *really* cute ghost with the amazing six-pack who just happens to reside in her room. Suddenly life is different for Suze, but the ghosts are still there. And Heather, who died not long before Suze arrived at the Mission school, can't stand her.

The book reads quickly, and I can see the episodic nature (meet ghost, fight or fix with ghost, get them to the other side) and the relationships forming. There's Jesse, the ghost. Her step-brothers (I rather like Sleepy, even with the little we've seen of him, and I especially like Doc). The not so popular kids at school, and the popular ones. Yes, very reminiscent of Buffy. But in a good way, and enjoyably done. Now I just need to go get the rest of them.

When we were getting ready for Albacon this year, I warned Kevin that we hadn't been on a real big book buying binge since Boskone in February. Oh, he'd bought a few books for us in March, and I'd bought us a few used books over the summer while on walks with Josh, and there was the time we went out and bought the Hugo nominees we didn't already have.

So I looked at Kevin and tried to warn him. And afterwards I had to say -- "Am I allowed to say I told you so??" He said I could. *laughs*

We spent a lot on books. I won't go into detail on the costs, but suffice to say we probably came home with about 50 or so new books. We finally counted our to-read piles, and Kev's got 99 books in his, and I've got 205 in mine (yowch!). The best part is that there are a lot of books in each of our piles that we BOTH want to read. Yeah, there's some stuff in each pile that the other person has already read. But we bought a lot of books for both of us. So that means that as we read, the total over 300 number doesn't really go down very quickly at all!

I was going to talk more about our books, but well, I'll leave that for another day -- when I get Kevin to bring home the digital camera so we can take pics of the books. And our "library". The images are just necessary to the true udnerstanding. *laughs*

May I borrow a cup of internet?

So I'm here, in the hotel at Albacon, and enjoying the convention. But its Saturday, and while I've got my BlackBerry (and therefore have been happily reading my mail since I've got an amazing signal for once) I've still been dying for a connection. Okay, yeah, so I'm addicted.

Add in that when my hard drive died over the summer I never remembered to add back onto the rebuild any of my Earthlink access numbers, and suddenly I'm really stuck for a way to get online. I could use the high speed internet access in my room, but at $10 a day that's pricy. Eek! I usually do the simple 75 cents a dialup which is over all simpler.

So I am borrowing a cup of internet. *laughs* And wow I'm feeling just SO much more relaxed.

I haven't done a Group Therapy in a really really long time, mostly because I haven't had the time to. But I'm having a peaceful quiet day, and I really felt like answering this one, even though I suspect this is one of those topics I'm not supposed to publicly share on.

My really close friends already know most of these answers. Anyone reading this from work might be a little surprised. I don't lie about my religious beliefs. I also just don't always go into them where people can bother me about them. Or where friends might be bothered by them. *smiles*

1. What is your religious background?
My mother is Catholic, my father is Congregational. I have been told I would have been baptised in a Catholic church, except that the one my mom took me to wouldn't do it because she didn't officially belong to the parish. I couldn't possibly have known this, since I was far too young and didn't hear the story until about 4 1/2 years ago, but I get the feeling this somehow set the tone for my religious life.

My grandparents would take me to church when they visited, or when I visited them. I also went to church with friends on occassion, or learned about Judaism from my Jewish friends (Natick was a very Jewish town). So I wasn't uninvolved in religion. In fact, I rather treasure the way I grew up because it gave me a real overview of organized religion -- I learned a little of everything as a child, and it taught me a very big lesson about religious tolerance.

2. What belief system do you currently follow?
I call myself a pagan. I was 22 when I finally started reading up on paganism, at the recommendation of one of my close friends. I had to get past the gut instinct I've been raised Christian so this must be bad feeling that I had and just read about it to find out that basically, paganism is what I've been all along. Its the religion I chose for myself.

And I'm solitary. This means I do my own thing, by my own belief system. I don't belong to a coven, and that's really not the way I do things. I'm a pagan because of *what* I believe in, but not how I worship.

And I do have faith. I have a very strong faith, and that's one of the things that keeps me going somedays. But it isn't the same as everyone else's faith. And in my opinion -- that's okay. Faith should be personal, not dictated.

3. How often do you attend a place of worship?
Rarely. Was just there a couple of weeks ago for my son's Baptism. Sometimes at Christmas. For funerals & weddings. That's about it.

4. How firm are you in your belief system?
I have strong faith.

I'm not into organized religion. To me, my beliefs and an actual organization are two different things. As I said above, I believe faith should be personal. So I have no difficulties with someone else believing in an organized worship manner. In fact, I encourage it -- everyone should have some sort of faith and most people feel more comfortable in a standard organized religion. Basically, find YOUR niche and go there. Be happy.

Er, I digressed. I suppose the best way to say is it that I am firm in my faith, but I'm not sure that translates into a belief system. *smiles*

5. Do you pray? If so, how often and for what purposes?
I talk. Its not prayer -- I'm not asking for anything, not even tolerance really, except occasionally please gods let me get through this day/drive/flight. But I talk to the gods around me -- the world, the air, the earth -- and I figure they're listening because they listen to everyone. Sometimes I feel like they answer, just because of things that happen.

I figure this kind of dialog keeps me in touch all the time, not just the "right" times to do it. Faith is always.

6. How do you react when someone invites you to their place of worship?
I go. Like I said, I have no problems with someone else's religion as long as it isn't harming anyone ("a man's right to swing his fist ends with another man's face"). I've been to baptisms, christenings, baby dedications, holidays, funerals, weddings, etc. I've got friends who have invited me to things designed to convert me, or at least teach me more about their organized religion, and those I will politely decline. I will celebrate their faith with them, but I will not subscribe to their organization. We agree to disagree, and I've really found that this works.

7. What are your thoughts on life after death? (Heaven, reincarnation, etc.)
I hope there is something. I am a realist, and for this reason I am terrified of death. I get the shivers thinking of there being NOTHING except decomposition. I know why there is belief in life after death, and I don't know if I have that sort of belief. But I do have hope.

Today I was talking to Josh about the old X-Men comic books and X-Men: Evolution. We've been talking about the plotlines, and I've been hoping they'd do some of the older ones. I'm actually very happy with the cartoon -- despite all the changes they've made to the canon, they've still done an excellent job with it. And I just adore getting to see Kitty Pryde in one of the cartoons. I've been hoping they'll do some of the Illyana plotlines, and I think, with some of the setup that's been done, that there is a good chance they will (yay!).

So as we're walking, I think to myself that they're doing the stuff from the early 80s, when I started reading (I was 15 in 1983) and I blurt out, "They're doing the stuff from 20 years ago."

Then I stop. 20 years? TWENTY years? Eep! Damn, its hard to realize that I can now refer to my high school life as 20 years ago.

Desire
by Amanda Quick
paperback from Bantam (Historical Romance) 1994

Okay, so I'm on a romance kick for the moment -- you'll need to either put up with it or just skip over these book reviews if you find romance novels disgusting. *smiles*

I discovered Amanda Quick (a pen name for Jayne Ann Krentz) a few years ago, at the recommendation of the owner of Flights of Fantasy. Yes, the bookstore does cater to SF & Fantasy, but it also includes other genre fiction, such as Horror, Myster, and yes, Romance. Why? Because she likes them. And that's one of the reasons I love that particular store so much.

So I've read some of Krentz/Quick's work, and now when I bump into them in the used bookstores, or on a discount rack, I snap them up. And then when I go on a romance binge (like now) I really enjoy tucking into one or two of them.

Amanda Quick writes romances that have heroines with guts -- no simpering ninnies here. The story revolves around the Lady Clare of Desire (that being an island) and Sir Gareth of Wyckmere (The Hellhound). After Lady Clare's father dies, she soon realizes that she cannot protect her island and its valuable perfume business alone. And that her overlord will expect her to wed. So she sends a "recipe" for the perfect husband to him.

What she gets is The Hellhound -- too large, too serious, but he *can* read, thus fulfilling one of her three requirements. Of course, there is intrigue, there are dangers, and eventually, there is (surprise surprise) love. Yes, it is a romance novel, and yes, in many ways it is predictable.

But the characters are fresh and alive, and the conflicts are enjoyable. There is nothing that sets my teeth on edge, grating against my sensibilities (as so many heroines in romance novels do) and there are no saccharin coated phrases (heaving bosom anyone?). It is a pleasant story, enjoyable, and entertaining. Enough so that I'm happily reading another Amanda Quick book now to follow it up.

"Its like a family. A backstabbing weird one... but if you don't have anything else..."

from Haunted 10/1/2002

They're talking about the underground music scene, not Amber, but y'coulda fooled me. *chuckles*