Book 13: Cat Deck the Halls March 12, 2008

Finally! The last Joe Grey mystery! (Well, the last one in the series so far…)

The book before this one ended with the promise of new feline characters, but none of them were even alluded to in Cat Deck the Halls and I was pretty disappointed about it. Shirley Rousseau Murphy’s cat characters are much more interesting than her human ones.

Beside that disappointment, the book wasn’t bad. Still not the best written material I’ve read, but definitely an enjoyable cozy. Kit continues to develop into a formidable sleuth, and Murphy keeps tabs on the younger character’s development as well – Lori and Dillan seem to be growing up nicely.

I’m still waiting for Max Harper (the police chief) to figure out who his snitches are – I had hoped that this might be the book in which he does. Whatever else Murphy does with her series, she’s still got that card to play. At some point, Max has to figure it out, and when he does, there’s sure to be a very interesting scene. I suspect I’ll keep reading any new Joe Grey books at least until that happens. In the meantime, another character is in the know, and I was pleased with that development.

Now that I’ve caught up with the series, I feel like I can make broader comments on it. I would recommend it for anybody who loves cats and enjoys cozies (murder mysteries in which the murders aren’t graphic… think PG-13). The easy style of writing would make the books suitable for kids who are more advanced readers – maybe kids who love animals but aren’t quite ready for Brian Jaques Redwall series. They’re not bad books for adults – they are intended for adults, I believe – but I think young adults would enjoy them as well.

I still say that the author has a really neat idea here. I’m a sucker for animals, and talking animals are even more appealing. (Dean Koontz’s book Watchers is an old favorite solely because I’m so enchanted by the idea of a golden retriever with human level intelligence.) Still, I hope that she gets around to writing a Joe Grey book (or a book in the Joe Grey universe) for a higher reading level.

Last Weekend Before the Half March 10, 2008

The weekend started out right on Friday night. Matt and I were watching a movie and heard a strange sound. At first, I thought the cat had something – a bug or a twist-tie or a toy – and was batting it around, but Matt quickly ID’d it. It was the ceiling. It was leaking. There’s a whole second story of house between the roof and the ceiling that was leaking, so despite the fact that it was raining, we immediately knew it was a plumbing problem of some sort. The ceiling was already starting to bubble unpleasantly, so we had to act fast. After some strategic scurrying around the house, we were unable to locate the source of the leak and were forced to shut the water off in an attempt to save the section of ceiling. Buckets were set out, the landlord was called (I left several messages in several voicemail inboxes). Once we had the water off, the leak slowed, and the ceiling didn’t seem like it was about to split open and rain down upon us, so we opted to wait for the landlord to call us back.

We slept late and had a light breakfast of oranges and tangerines. I didn’t want to cook anything because we had a limited amount of water left and because I wouldn’t be able to clean the dishes. The landlord still hadn’t called, and I had to get a 3 miler in, so I packed up my gym bag with the necessary toiletries and trucked on out to the rec center. I brushed my teeth and put my contacts in at the rec center, and tried to pretend this wasn’t unusual. (I had neglected to put my contacts in before I peeled the oranges. I wasn’t sure I could get all the citric acid off of my fingers without washing them properly. Any kind of acid in the eyes is not appealing to me at all, so I waited to put them in until I got to the rec center.) After that, I got my 3 mile run in on the treadmill and hopped on down to the locker room to shower.

The rec center has an incredibly awesome “Leisure Pool.” It has several water slides (one of which actually goes outside the building and comes back in), a lazy river, a jungle gym area, and a big hot tub. It’s packed with happy screaming children on the weekend, which means that the locker room is also packed with happy screaming children. I was lucky enough to find an unoccupied shower stall and got cleaned up. There were people waiting to shower, so I wrapped up in a towel and went to change in the locker room area. Being a shy sort of person, I like to pick a corner to face while getting dressed. I’m kinda glad I did this time. There was a group of little girls behind me somewhere taking group photos of themselves with someone’s cell phone. They were all dressed and everything, thank goodness. I hope my rear end isn’t in any of those photos.

The landlord called when I was on my way out of the rec center. The poor guy had been calling all three of us (Matt, Luke, and me) and had been unable to get any of us. Matt was at work (the reception is terrible there), Luke had been napping and had his cell phone off, and I had been in the bowels of the rec center trying to keep seven year old girls from taking photos that had my butt as a background. Anyhow, he and I were able to arrange to have a plumber come out.

I spent the rest of the day hanging about waiting for the plumber. He finally made it by that evening and was able to fix the problem pretty quickly. (thank goodness!) It turned out to be a leak in a supply pipe to a toilet upstairs.

Thus ended the adventures for the day.

Sunday was my last long training run before the half marathon. It was a beautiful day, but windy and a bit nippy out. I think it got up to the 40s, but it was hard to tell with the wind.

I had a really nice 12 mile route planned out. It took me through two wooded park/trail areas, both with nice little streams to run next to. The only problem was that I took a wrong turn in the first one and added a significant distance to my run before I was able to get back on course. As a result, I have no idea how far the route actually was.

I took the training run very, very easy. In fact, I walked a lot of it. As mentioned, it was a beautiful day…the sun was shining, and despite the cold, there were signs of spring everywhere. It was really nice to cruise along, enjoy the sights, and let my mind wander. I spent a significant amount of time waiting at crosswalks. I also stopped at the library to return a book and use the facilities. When I was about to leave the library, the landlord called again to check in. It was windy out, so I stayed put so we’d be able to hear each other. We had a nice little chat and agreed to arrange for him to come by to check out the damage to the ceiling some time this week. I even stopped a couple times to look at the streams I was going by. It had rained recently, and the extra water had made some interesting changes in places. One spot had been dammed up by leaves and sticks and such before, but a section had been swept away. Basically, it was more of a leisurely hike with occasional stretches of running. Boy, it was nice. Nice, but I won’t mention how long it took me to finally meander to the finish line. A long, long time.

This week is the taper before the half marathon. Oh, sweet, sweet taper, how I’ve looked forward to it. Now that the pressure is off, I feel more like running. Funny how that works, huh? Anyhow, total this week, I’ll run no more than 10 miles before the half marathon. Should be nice to purposefully have a low mileage week.

Running Report : C- March 6, 2008

 

This week’s training has not gone particularly well. I’ve been hammered at work – things have gotten pretty busy. I had a couple nights when I didn’t sleep particularly well, which made it too tough for me to get out of bed in the morning to go train. (I am a weenie about sleep deprivation.) Biology sucker-punched me, too. (I am a weenie in general, actually.) Pretty much all the typical excuses.

On the positive side, I did get a decent run in this morning. While I was at it, I tested out the four potentially good running songs that were the result of last night’s frenzy of measuring beats per minute (bpm). These are the four:

• Vince the Lovable Stoner (Fratellis)
• The Sky is Falling (Queens of the Stone Age)
• Millionaire (Eagles of Death Metal)
• Solid Gold (Eagles of Death Metal)

There were a few from the President’s album that might have worked, but I don’t have them on my hard drive at the moment (Matt is kind enough to share his extremely impressive music collection with me, so I was listening on the shared drive of his iMac).

I had already determined that the last two were good running songs, but I figured that since I had measured the bpm for them I might as well put them on the playlist. The Sky is Falling had the right bpm, but I had my doubts about it. While I wouldn’t have guessed Vince would be a good one without the bpm in front of me, once I listened to it and thought about it, I had hopes.

In short, Vince worked out nicely and the Sky is Falling was workable, but pretty far from great.

 

This bpm thing could really work! I’ll keep measuring songs and building my running playlist and sharing with you here.

While I was at it this morning, I did my weight lifting. I was pleased to find that my upper body strength has improved enough that I can now do a whole 10 girly push-ups at a time! Woo hoo! I guess it pays to weight train like Chuck.

Also on the plus side, illnesses and car accidents have been held to the bare minimum of zero. That is a very good thing.

I’ve also planned out this weekend’s 12 mile run and it promises to be a good one as long as the weather holds. I’ll go through two wooded running trail areas – I think I like running on those trails the best.

Still, because I haven’t gotten enough of my training in this week, so far, I’m grading myself a solid C-.

BPM Counter!! March 6, 2008

I ran a couple searches (literally, two), and browsed my way to a free bpm counter widget from www.flyingcheeseburger.com. While working on some other things, I have started counting beats per minute looking for potential running songs. Here are the albums I checked out tonight and each song’s bpm. I’m setting up a Running Playlist for all the songs that are in the 160-170-ish range to see if they work well as running songs. The logic there is that the Podrunner episode that I find easiest to run to is 166 bpm.

(Couple of notes on the widget… it’s a manual thing, so the bpm probably aren’t 100% accurate. I’m laboring under the presumption that it doesn’t have to be for my purposes. Also, I’m pretty sure it’s just for Macs – sorry, PC users.)

If this works, I’m going to have to learn how to not waste precious O2 singing along. I’ll let you know how it goes!
Fratellis – Costello Music

• Henrietta – 117 bpm
• Flathead – 212
• Cuntry Boys & City Girls – 179
• Whistle for the Choir – 131
• Chelsea Dagger – 154
• For the Girl – 222
• Dogginabag – 122
• Creeping up the Backstairs – 245
• Vince the Lovable Stoner – 168
• Everybody Knows You Cried Last Night – 205
• Baby Fratelli – 125
• Got Ma Nuts From a Hippie – 216
• Ol’ Black N Blue Eyes – 130

Presidents of the United States of America: Love Everybody

• Love Everybody – 183
• Some Postman – 119
• Clean Machine – 136
• Highway Forever – 133/266
• Zero Friction – 140
• Surf’s Down – 166
• Shortwave – 181
• Poke n Destroy – 185
• Munky River – 92
• Droolin at You – 177
• Vestina – 155
• 5,500 Miles – 167
• Shreds of Boa – 118
• Jennifer’s Jacket – 222

22-20s : 22-20s

• Devil In Me – 218
• Such a Fool – 123
• Baby Brings Bad News – 124
• 22 Days – 209
• Friends – 97
• Why Don’t You Do It For Me? – 240
• Shoot Your Gun – 113
• The Things That Lovers Do – 132
• I’m the One – 235
• Hold On – 134
• Baby, You’re Not in Love – 103

Queens of the Stone Age: Songs for the Deaf

• You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar – 156
• No One Knows – 171
• First It Giveth – 210
• Song for the Dead – 206
• The Sky is Fallin – 168
• Six Shooter – 170
• Hangin’ Tree – 211
• Go With the Flow – 159
• Gonna Leave You Now – 142
• Do It Again – 133
• God Is In The Radio – 113
• Another Love Song – 148
• Song for the Deaf – 201
• Mosquito Song – 100

Eagles of Death Metal: Death by Sexy

• I Want You So Hard – 165
• I Got a Feelin’ – 128
• Cherry Cola – 145
• I Like To Move In The Night – 112
• Solid Gold – 169
• Don’t Speak – 135
• Keep Your Head Up – 119
• Ballad of Queen Bee – 121
• Poor Doggie – 96
• Chase the Devil – 227
• Eagles Goth – 133
• Shasta Beast – 136
• Bag O Miracles – 105

Book 12: Elantris March 4, 2008

I’ve read a fair number of fantasy books, from the everlastingly classy Tolkien to the slap-a-level-twelve-paladin-and-a-sorceress-with-a-huge-rack-together-and-we-got-ourselves-a-novel R. A. Salvatore. Out of all the novels and series in the genre I have ever read, one of ones that left the biggest impressions has been Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. I don’t know how to talk about it without using grand adjectives – it was epic, complex, and totally engrossing. It was the most remarkable work of fantasy I had ever picked up, except for dear old Tolkien. Each installment was 700 to 1000 pages long. These were heavy duty books to lug around, but I never once gave it a second thought. It was worth the extra poundage to have that book handy in case I had a couple extra minutes.

Then, Jordan screwed it up. Instead of telling his story, he started painfully dragging it out. Not just hundreds, but thousands of pages would go by without resolving any loose ends or furthering the story. I, for one, began thinking Jordan a greedy bastard and swore I wouldn’t buy or read a single one of his books until he finished the Wheel of Time (and I haven’t). I even prayed to dear sweet baby Jeebus for Jordan’s health and safety – it was taking him so long, I was afraid he’d up and die before finishing the series.

Well… that’s what he did. Turns out the poor guy had a rare blood disease that eventually took his life. Perhaps I should do my homework before I start railing against people so I don’t feel like a shit when something terrible happens to them. So, maybe Jordan had to milk his work for every penny for treatments. If so, I can’t blame him really. It’s still a damn shame what he did to the series.

When Jordan passed away this past September, he had been working on the final installment of the series. Internet rumors have it that he left behind extensive notes and his wife (who has been his editor for the life of the series) knows what he intended. So there’s hope for the finale.

A couple months ago, it was announced that an author had been selected to finish the last book – Brandon Sanderson. I’d never heard of the guy. Story goes, he wrote his first novel in college and got it to someone in the publishing world at a convention of some sort. That someone didn’t get around to reading it until after Sanderson had graduated college and moved on. The guy loved the manuscript and wanted to publish it, so he searched the internet for Sanderson until he found him on Facebook…or MySpace…or some social networking site. Let’s go with Facebook. I like Facebook best. And so began Sanderson’s writing career.

The anonymous (and possibly apocryphal) publishing guy liked it, and according to the cover, Orson Scott Card liked it, and this was the guy whose task it is to finally finish the Wheel of Time series, so it went on my List.

You know – it’s pretty darn OK! The rescue-the-fallen-Utopian-society premise was interesting, and the characters were reasonably engaging. It wasn’t a gripping page-turner all the way though, but it wasn’t bad. Especially for a first novel. There were some mildly intriguing twists and turns, but most of the book was fairly predictable. Considering my mild reaction to the book, it’s surprising that my only (albeit minor) disappointment is that it is a stand alone novel. The book spends a good deal of time setting up a moderately complex set of world issues. I didn’t think that these issues were at all resolved at the end – there’s PLENTY of room for expansion of the story. And I’d sure like to hear more about the class of monks that he revealed at the end. And how Elantris is rebuilt. And how an Elantrian and a regular person get along as a married couple…there could be interesting implications for their kids, after all. It’s a minor disappointment because I don’t feel a real desperate need to continue the story.

While I don’t know that I’d really recommend Elantris, I might check out some of his other works to see how Sanderson develops as a writer. After all, the real purpose for reading the book is to get an idea about Sanderson’s potential as the guy who’s going to finish the WoT. He’s written a number of books since Elantris, so I feel fairly justified in hoping that he has grown from a moderately talented writer to a very talented writer over the time that it took to write those books. I think he’s got a pretty good chance of doing the series justice. Good luck, Brandon! It’s a big task to take on, and I don’t envy you, but I’m glad you’re on the job!