Oh, I've heard great things about this book... then it was on Oprah's Reading List, which put me right off it. Shame that. Working at a book store means you grow to hate all the mainstream stuff. To this day when I hear reference to, or see 'The Secret', I flinch.

Man, I hear you on this one. I'm studying subjects this semester that aren't IT, so I actually need to read academic articles and think about them... *shudder*

Recently I've read
Amsterdam - Ian McEwan (thoroughly enjoyed it. A little creepy and twisted)
Paper Towns - John Green (reading atm, it's a YA book, currently on the NY Times bestseller list. YA books are my guilty pleasures)
The Nautical Chart - Arturo Pérez-Reverte (only a small chunk of the way through this one, uni readings have made me put it on hold. But so far, I highly recommend it)

Yay for mentions of graphic novels! My favourites are a series called 'Flight'. I think they're up to number 5 now. They are collections of short stories that are done by fantastic artists. It's more of an art book than a graphic novel. Stunning!

haha, welcome to my world of literary studies! Well, it was my world 3 years ago. I hated those blahblah articles, but on occasion you stumble upon a really well-written essay or such.

I'd forgotten you were such a book worm btw. And don't let Oprah's recommendation stop you from reading Night, the book is 60 years old so not exactly a fad. It's short-ish too so you can easily go through it in a day. I promise it won't let you go!

I'm gonna try picking up Flight. I love good graphic novels, I'll post some of my favorites later on. The McEwan book looks good too. What does YA mean though?

I'm still reading Ulysses by James Joyce. For like 6 months now. It's so slow, but I can't let myself start a new book without finishing this one. Too bad I haven't read a page in like a month.

I am still in the sword of truth series. It has like 10-12 books int he series. And honestly lately I have been running myself like crazy.... concerts, trips, parties. I can not wait until it calms down a bit and I can spent half a Sat. in a chair with a blanket and my book. I am starting to really long and miss that.

Shiny, you need to take a break from being busy! Doing nothing for a day or half a day trumps a LOT of stuff, except for maybe sex. Actually, probably even sex.*

Satis, Ulysses is crap man. Seriously. I salute you for trying to finish it, but I hate the frakking thing. As a lit major I pretty much was supposed to love it but yeah...it's so bad I couldn't bring myself to it.

* Note: not a derogatory remark regarding Satis' skillz. OR IS IT?! DUM-DUM-DUUUM! Erh, no. No it isn't.

Yea.... it looks like it's one of those 'a day in the life of...' books with no plot. I can't even tell if it's following the same person around or if it segues from one person to another. Oh well, I'll finish it. FFS, I finished the complete works of Lewis Carroll. Do you have any idea how hard it is to read him lambasting the people at Oxford for architecture decisions? In 1880? Like I give a crap. But I read it!

Anyway, we actually had a pretty big do-nothing day on Saturday. It was nice. I hooked up Shiny with a season of Grey's Anatomy episodes to vegetate in front of while I played games.

Yes Saturday was nice. We had a keg of beer to finish off and house to clean. So I would fold up table cloths and such while vegging in front of the TV and drinking beer. I seriously needed that. OK so at some point I will try to get Satis to post some pictures from the party we had Friday Night. I took like film pictures instead of digital this time (I dropped my camera badly last party and thought better of drunkin tech this time).

Curious about the pictures...what was the party theme anyway, if any?

Btw, as I promised earlier on, a short list of fav graphic novels:

-Chris Ware: Jimmy Corrigan, the smartest kid in the world (a classic, but also a bit...strange)
-Paul Auster & Paul Karasik: City of Glass (based on the novel with the same name by Auster)
-Seth: It's a good life, if you don't weaken
-Marjane Satrapi - Persepolis
-Marjane Satrapi- Chicken with plums
-Alan Moore - Watchmen
-Alan Moore- V for Vendetta
-Craig Thompson - Blankets

Meh...actually a very mainstream list, but they're all great. Definitely worth the read.

The party theme was just normal Halloween Party. People come in costume (any costume). I handed out fist fulls of candy to kids that were trick or treating. I had the house decorated with spiders and skulls and pumpkins and such. I made little mummy pigs in a blanket to searve along with other food of course. It was fun Although always some drama but that is a whole other story.

drama? couples arguing?

What's with the mummy pigs tho? I mean, I can't really imagine how it looks. Are the pigs real pigs? Marzipan? *confused*

Real little embalmed pigs as hand-outs would be equally sick and awesome. But I'm guessing that's not what you're talking about.

pigs in a blanket is a food, specifically wieners of some variety wrapped in a breading.



Shiny's pigs were wrapped in such a way they looked like little mummies. Regarding the drama, the main thing Shiny is talking about was a bit more serious. I'll allow her to speak of it, though, since she loves gabbing about it.

The other thing was a ridiculously drunk guy making a fool of himself. But whatever... what's funny is we didn't invite him... he came with someone we did invite. We weren't quite expecting that behavior and next party he will be specifically not invited.

Haha, I've BEEN that guy. And I feel slight shame even now, 7 years after the facts. Yeah, you don't want to do that. Getting all curious about what the drama was now...Shiny, we need your gossip skillz, stat!

lol @ pigs in blanket. I guess that makes more sense than my interpretation. Actually sounds really cool too. I'm hungry...I want to eat something like that. Better to wait a few hours for when I eat a delicious horse steak with French fries tho...mmm

Lol i also was imagining actual small pigs being wrapped in sheets so they looked mummified. Turns out it looks more like a special kind of hotdog.

Though I think our ideas of it are at least as tasty as the reality is Ox.

Heh @ the mummies. Basically it is a Southern Food. Usually for breakfast, where you take hot dogs or sausage links and wrap them in bisquit dough. Very yummy but awful for you.

OK well.... the drama was like this... A neighbor knocked on the door and I answered. He asked to use my phone which was odd cause everyone has a phone and he looks really upset/nervous. I asked him what was wrong and he told me he had been robbed at gun point. I tell him come in and I turn around to grab a phone to call the police. He didn't come in and when I went back out front of the house and start calling 911 (Emergency service) he turns around and says "someone is in my house" and then starts running towards it.

You do not need to be smart to figure out if he was just robbed at gun point that it would be a bad idea to run into your house if you think someone is in it. A few people standing around me by that time and myself all yell to him to not run in there. He does.

Not 10 seconds later we hear 3 small pops which sound like 3 shots from a small caliber pistol. Then we do not see the neighbor come back out so we freak! I was on the phone with police disbatch so they are sending mad police cars at this point.

Mind you that there are young children in the street trick or treating! So I am yelling at the families on the street to come in the house etc. We had about 10 police cars there and eventually a crime scene unit to take pictures and such.

The police later tell us it was not random and a person that lives in the house must have wronged someone. The guy that came to the door moves out the next day.

It was chaos because I had basically an outdoor party in my back yard, kids were on the street, and the neighbor had already told me that he had a gun pointed at him, so.... drama!

Jesus...what kind of neighbours do you guys have? A murder next door does qualify as a drama, yeah! But good that none of you got hurt at the party.