Butterfly in the sky...

So, I'm back from my vacay. Sad face. The bad news for me is that I have to return to my reality of cold weather and work. The good news for my vast multitude of readers it that I should get back to blogging regularly. Yay for you.

So, since Jumble Mash fulfilled my request to share with her readers what she reads, I thought it would only be fair to do the same myself. I used to read a lot back in elementary school. Mostly Goosebumps and Judy Blume's Fudge books and the like, but then I kinda fell out of reading all though junior high and high school. I picked up a load of extracurriculars and just didn't have time to read. Once I got to college, though, I started reading again. Mostly Christian self-help type books which certainly served their purpose at the time, but aren't really things I'd read again.

Then I discovered C. S. Lewis.

It is safe to say that Lewis is my favorite author. The first work of his I read was The Chronicles of Narnia. They're children's books, but I didn't get around to reading them until I was 21. I still loved them. They're great stories. Kind of like the Harry Potter of the mid-19th century. Yes, they have Christian overtones, but a lot of people would never pick up on that. Simply put, they are great stories. The Horse and His Boy is one of my favorite books of all time. After that, I read some of his other works like Mere Christianity, The Great Divorce, and The Screwtape Letters. These three books kind of turned my personal beliefs upside down...in a good way. But The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters are also just great stories. Which brings us to...

Harry Potter. LOVE these books. I avoided reading them for a very long time. They started getting popular when I was a teenager and I was obviously way too cool to be reading children's books then. So I didn't read them until about 4 months before the 7th book came out. I've read all of them 3 times. I don't need to tell you anymore about them. You already know.

I read sparingly for a while after that until I went back to school. I had to read a lot of foreign literature for a couple classes. The only book that stuck out to me as "good" was The Kite Runner. Yep, that's about it.

Then I took a Young Adult Literature class this past quarter. I had always turned my nose at YA Lit. Another case of being too cool for something younger than me. I'm an idiot. We had to read 9 novels for this class, but I'll just share the highlights with you.



John Green

I've now read all three of his novels: Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns. All three are very good books, but An Abundance of Katherines might be the funniest book I've ever read. No joke. They're allegedly turning this into a movie, and I certainly hope that happens because it would be awesome.

The Maze Runner

This one was very popular among the class. I thought it was a decent read, but it just didn't quite live up to the hype. There is one very legitimate reason for this. There was a series of books that I read for the class that most of the others didn't:

The Hunger Games

Go out and get these books RIGHT NOW! Several of the kids in the honors class I observed told me I needed to read these books, so I decided to call them on it. I wasn't disappointed. Hubby read them along with me, and we both had finished all 3 books within a week and a half. It took me 4 days and this was at the end of the quarter with all my final projects and such due. Let's just say I lost a lot of sleep. These books are going to be the next Twilight as far as their popularity, but it's a very different story from Twilight. They're currently casting for the first movie and I can't wait to see it. As long as it's done right, a film of these books could be VERY powerful.

I'm currently reading 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher, but I'll hold off on sharing my opinion until I finish it. So there it is. That's what I read.

In other news, a quick and adorable story. Before Hubby and I left for vacay, it had been in the 60s and 70s around here, so our AC was on. I meant to switch it over to heat before we left. It was in the 70s the whole time we were in South Carolina, but then we get back to Ohio and it's in the 40s. Then we get back into our house and it's 58. I do not deal well with cold weather. I downright hate it. It makes me grouchy. It gives me dry skin. It makes my joints ache. I hate it. Hate it. Hate it. So anyway, I immediately turn the heat back on. Hubby starts a fire in the fireplace because he knows the central air won't warm up fast enough for me. Then an hour or so later I mention that I have had to pee since before we got home but I don't want to sit on an icy toilet seat. A few minutes later he disappears, and then I find him sitting on the toilet still fully clothed trying to warm up the toilet seat for me. That right there, ladies and gentlemen, is true love. He's the kind of husband I always dreamed of having, and there is no sarcasm in that statement whatsoever.

Until next time...

Toodles!

La la. La la la la. La la la la. La la.

Sneaky Hate Spiral

Today has been kind of a Sneaky Hate Spiral day. If you do not know what that is, march yourself on over to Hyperbole and a Half right now. I will allow you a moment for research.

Done? Cool. Now, after reading this post, you can go explore all the other awesomeness on that blog.

Anyway, back to my day. Keep in mind that my Sunday and Monday is kind of blurring together into one. The day started off good enough. I woke up shortly after noon having only gotten 3 hours of sleep feeling surprisingly refreshed, rested, and hungry. I suggested to Hubby that we get Jet's Pizza.

Mmmm. Yeah. That's right. Look at that sexy melty cheese. Yeah, baby.

For those of you who do not know what Jet's Pizza is, it's basically manna from heaven. Best. Pizza. Ever. Any day with Jet's Pizza is going to be a good day. The goodness continued as we journeyed on through disk 3 of season 2 of Castle. Great freakin show. Nathan Fillion oozes with awesomeness. Eventually, Hubby decided to go back to bed, and I joined him. After laying there for about an hour and a half, I decided to give up. All this while, my hip feels like there is a knife sticking in it. It's felt like this for the better part of 2 weeks now. I'm not going to the doctor unless it hangs around for another 2 weeks. Why? Because every time I finally do go to the doctor after being ill or in pain for at least a couple weeks, they tell me there's nothing wrong. So I pass the time by going through some old black and white photos I took in college that I might post on here later. Then I rearranged my bookshelf. Then I just sat and stared at my cat for half an hour. I think it made him uncomfortable after a while, because he turned around, so then I was staring at my cat's butt.

Eventually, I decided to give sleep another try. Nothing. I even started counting sheep again. I got to 350 and just gave up. I finally fall asleep at 8. I wake up at 9 grumpy as all get out because my sleep tally for the entire day is 4 hours. I'm already starting to see that it is going to be a Sneaky Hate Spiral day, and every time I think that, I get La Bamba stuck in my head.

I'm packing up all my stuff for work, and I had planned on reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows this week before we go see the movie on Friday. Well, I forgot it. Then, throughout my drive to work, my car actually gets colder. Then, I see Hubby as I come through the gate to find out that he, once again, has not packed a lunch, and will therefore probably be spending about $12 to $15 on something that we probably have at home which annoys me to no end. Then I get to work and we have this new giant computer that is the loudest freakin computer ever. Sometimes I can not notice it, but others, it's just annoying. Then, I decide I want a Cherry Coke, so I go to the break room and realize that I forgot my wallet. Then I find out it doesn't matter because the machine with the Cherry Coke is out of order. This prompted a scream. Good thing nobody's here.

It hasn't been all bad, though. Me and my two co-workers have had some interesting conversation about Jack the Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer, exorcisms, Schoolhouse Rock, Animaniacs, high school gym class and whether lesbian gym teachers make you feel uncomfortable, and athletes foot. Good times.

With that, I will leave you with this.

Counting Sheep

So, this is going be a short post. Earlier today, I was having a hard time getting to sleep. I had read a couple days ago that counting sheep is actually an effective way of occupying certain parts of the brain therefore helping your mind to actually shut down. So, I started counting sheep to try and fall asleep. Somewhere around 75, I started getting a little more creative with my sheep. They started looking something like this:

This would look much better if I had an iPad and a stylus and Photoshop.

Yep. I actually altered about the next 20 or so sheep. Maybe I'll turn it into some sort of series. Word.