Coffee Flavored Kisses

During the summer, I joined the Adult Reading Program at my public library. I joined primarily because we were talking books, which I love to do, and because I was hoping to meet some new people. I have have done both.

One of the people I have met is this lovely elderly lady (I believe she’s 86) named Helen. Mrs. Helen is quite simply a doll. I don’t know much about her background, but I bet it involved some struggle, but what makes her so delightful is her attitude. She has determined she will see the best in people, and look at things as an adventure, not see the fears and the gloom. I want to follow that example.

Now, Mrs. Helen is probably worlds apart from me in preferred reading material and from others, but she has never failed to show anything but interest and curiosity about the books our varied members have brought up. When we turned ourselves into a book club, she was the first one of us to have finished the book. Not only does she have a wonderful attitude, she’s quite sharp.

I think I want to Mrs. Helen when I grow up! I also want to get to know her story, but I’m not rude enough to ask

In other news, Nor’s tumor is back, and he goes to the vet. He apparently has the worst sort of cancer a cat can have. There is only one result; everything else is to prolong life. However, I know part of my heart will break when I must let go of my first cat baby.

School has started, and things go along as usual, but perhaps if I apply Mrs. Helen’s attitude, I will feel better and thus, cope better. We shall see.

I do know this, the whim of joining that book group is paying off quite nicely.

I’ve been out of school for about two weeks now, and I have read:

The Lost City of Z by David Grann; Lover Mine by J.R. Ward; The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan; The Fire by Katherine Neville; You Suck by Christopher Moore.  I am currently reading Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup and MIstress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin.

More to come

It’s obvious that I have blogs I like to read listed in my blogroll. The reason for some of them is obvious.  I love Christopher Moore and Neil Gaiman, so they’re obvious. I like Poppy Z Brite’s food books, and she lives in New Orleans, so reading her blog often helps when I’m homesick. The cat blogs make sense because, well I love cats.  It’s the others that aren’t so obvious.  Now, Appetites is a New Orleans food blog, and Richard Peyton, the lawyer who writes it, amuses the heck out of me. Plus, he’s a darned good writer.  So I get a homesickness cure and great writing.

However, I want to pimp one of the other blogs: ChefCDB.  This blog is the blog of New Orleans chef Chris DeBarr (life partner of Poppy Z Brite–that’s how I found it).     Chef DeBarr is a wonderful food writer (well and a wonderful writer as well).  The entries that he has been writing since he opened his restaurant The Green Goddess have been a thoughtful and fascinating (to an outsider) look at the passion that goes into such an adventure.  When I get to New Orleans at some point, I definitely want to take the family!  However, his current entry is a wonderful piece on the nature of the kitchen, and it is certainly worth a read.  So go click on the link in the blogroll–you will not be disappointed.

It was a decent week.  There’s a review

Actually, it was a decent week.  Students were all good; everything went well at work. Friday, we had a short in-service (we never have short in-services.) All good.

We’re doing a campus wide common reader..called Them by Nathan McCall, and he was our speaker Friday.  Now, the problem I have is I don’t think Them is a very good novel.  I find the characters stereotypical, and I find the novel itself a bit misogynistic.  I also think it’s a bit heavy-handed, but it’s a first novel so that is too be somewhat expected.  This means, however, I went into in-service less than thrilled.  Mr. McCall surpised–he is a very good speaker.  He kept us interested and stayed on topic.  He made me want to read his memoir Makes Me Want to Holler; alas, he did not make me want to read Them.  It will languish on my bookshelf unread.

Then again, it was a bit hard to hear Mr. McCall since my freaking left ear is stuffed up.  Since I had chronic ear infections a few years back, I am worried about what’s going on with it.  So worried in fact that I have a doctor’s appointment to see what’s going on.  Hopefully, it’s just a massive wax clog, but I am doing nothing until I know what it is.  I’ll work from there.  I’ll probably leave tomorrow with a new cholesterol medicine prescription too. Oh joy.

I have a story rattling around in my clogged head, but it’s not ready to come out yet.  I hope it’s ready soon!

A couple of posts back I mentioned my long and incomplete to read list (a complete list would take longer than anyone has time). I have almost finished a book I forgot to mention on that list, and I would like to shamelessly plug it

Yes, I read a book called Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy through Jokes. As I have mentioned before, I teach an Introduction to Philosophy course; however, I am not really schooled in Philosophy–one of my minors in grad school was Literary Theory–which is a philosophic branch, but that’s it. Since I always feel one step ahead of my philosophy students, I decided to get this little book to help me prepare. May I say that idea was grand! I have learned a better grasp of few concepts (and some trivia), and I have laughed as I learned through the jokes–I will be “borrowing” some of these jokes to help teach these concepts to my class. In fact, if I had read this little jewel earllier, I would have ordered it for my class as a nice little supplement. It’s easy to read, explains things well, and let’s the reader giggle–what better way to read and learn about the concepts that underlie our culture? Kudos to Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein (the authors)!

Not much is happenning otherwise–I treadmill, I clean, I eat, I sleep, and I read. I am currently reading Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician. I am only a few pages in, so I cannot say much about it–yet.

The temperatures tell me it is as does the calendar.  However, I usually feel way more rejuvenated–too many classes in the school year.  I am looking forward to July when I am off for the whole month.

I am still treadmilling.  I do at least 30 minutes a day–6 days out of 7.  I am now watching BlackAdder as I treadmill.  At least I have something to laugh about.

I am reading a book by Martin Millar called Lonely Werewolf Girl. I find that I am really liking this book–it’s amusing, full of interesting characters, and well good.  If you want to get off the pretentious literary novel genre wheel try Millar.  I had read Good Fairies of New York and enjoyed it, but LWG is much better–it’s focused more.  Good Fairies was a hoot, but I really wanted Millar to stay with the fairies and dump the BORING humans!

I have a huge to read list which includes: The Book of Lost Things, You Suck, Under Orders, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon, The Spiritualist, Sin and the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys and the Battle for America’s Soul, Sad Cypress, The Planets, and so forth.  It’s a large list, so I should get to reading instead of blogging.