How it works

Here is how things have been working for the last few months - or years - or lifetime.

My Brain tells my Self that I should stop playing around and get certain things done.

My Self tells my Brain that I DO have time to play seventeen more games of whatever and also scroll through FB posts and "like" most of them, etc.  Also, there are those awesome kids' crafts that I will never have a chance to use, but, aren't they GREAT??

This continues until, finally, my Brain grabs my Self around the throat and forces Self to do what needs to be done - usually in a half-baked manner.

Then I complain - loudly and often - that I don't have time to get things done, read all the books I want to read, exercise, etc.

Repeat. Ad Nauseam.

Then do a blog post about it.

And in disgust go do something that my Brain might approve of.

That's how it works.

Random Stuff

Readergirlz and Figment are planning a Rock the Drop event on April 12, 2012.  It works like this.  Get a book.  Put the bookplate, below, in the book.  Drop the book somewhere that someone might find it.  It's like International Book Giving Day but more subversive.

So do it.  Easy enough to share a good read with an unknown "friend".

Battle of the Books:  Daughter of Smoke and Bone won its first round - as I predicted.  I am buffing my chipped nails on my lapel as you read this.  Don't forget to read the commentaries after Sara Zarr's thoughtful judging. 

One of the comments to BoB's post mentioned the artwork for today.  I like the little bomb shelter sign that Dead End in Norvelt so ineffectively uses as a shield.  Thanks to RB for drawing attention to these graphics.  So read EVERYTHING on the Battle's page; the decision, the commentaries and the comments.  All fun, all worthwhile.

Monday's match.  Hmmm.  I haven't read The Grand Plan to Fix Everything.   It's hard to imagine that it is better than Allen Say's Drawing from Memory.  So I'm going with Drawing as Monday's winner.  HOWEVER, I might change my mind.

So what happens next?  Come on March 31st to see!

I still have two passes to the Elizabeth Ellis performance on March 31st at Northampton Community College.  Listen to the interview and story at the link above.  Honestly, she is so good we should charge TWICE as much as we are charging.  Try something new. 

How I Stole Johnny Depp's Alien Girlfriend and other random thoughts

Barnheart's trail is stone cold.  (So is the trail for my brown watch but no one cares about that.)  So I am going to post some random thoughts and a book review.

How I Stole Johnny Depp's Alien Girlfriend by Gary Ghislain - who wouldn't want to read about how a fourteen-year-old boy bests the "most attractive" man in the world when it comes to romance?  But is she really Johnny Depp's girlfriend?  Is she really an alien?  Is she merely criminally insane?  You will have to be the judge.

Here's the set-up: A fourteen year old boy is spending the summer with his pyscho-therapist dad in a sleepy town in the south of France - major boredom-inducing sleepy town.  Dad has only one patient living with them this summer, a seventeen year old girl who claims to be an alien searching for her one true mate.  So our hero spends most of his time eavesdropping on the therapy sessions.

When Psycho-Alien-Girl (P-A-G - my term.  Her name is Zelda.) bashes Dad on the head because he won't let her go search for her mate, Mom drives down - with Mom's boyfriend - to rescue our hero.  Surprise! P-A-G has hitched a ride. In Paris the book morphs into an action novel with amazing superhuman feats by P-A-G, quick thinking by our hero, cop chases, an abandoned chapel filled with tattooed women warriors all claiming to be aliens stranded here when their search for the One and Only (I forget what term they use for the perfect mate in this novel, sorry) failed.  Oh, and the DNA profile for this perfect mate matches Johnny Depp! Yeah.

So is she crazy?  Is HE crazy?  And does Johnny Depp even make an appearance in this book?  Read it.  The book is as much fun as the title implies.

OK.  Random thoughts:
1.  Putting candied citrus peels in a hot oven to speed up the drying time is a BAD idea.
2.  Making candied citrus peels in the summer is not too bright either.  It's too muggy for the peels to dry properly.  Too late.  I have two trays of citrus peel on the kitchen counter.

Wait until they're dipped in chocolate!!

3.  You can't just stick dried flowers on a piece of paper for a Father's Day card.  You CAN but fathers are not all that impressed with craftiness in gifts - especially after the kid has a kid of her own (and that kid is on the way to having his own kid. Tempus fugit!).  Hence the candied citrus peels.
5.  Craftiness is most appreciated if it is edible.
4.  These thoughts are not as random as I hoped.
5.  New sneakers - even the ones with the rocker-type soles - do not instantly make their wearers svelte.  Or more inclined to exercise.
6. Random thoughts race away when I sit down to share them.