amanda_lodden

Goodreads sent me a lovely little email saying "Congratulations, you read seven books this year!" and I said "What the hell? I read way more than seven books this year."

A little poking around revealed a few things:

1. I am absolutely terrible about putting books I've read into Goodreads.

2. I am not making up for it by posting reviews of books I've read here, or anywhere else.

3. I am much better at buying books than at reading them. As part of trying to clean things up on Goodreads, I went through my Kindle purchases, and realized that I have a LOT of catching up to do. Erm, oops.

However, I have ThingsThatMustBeDoneBeforeTheEndOfTheYear (tm) and I'm a little over-scheduled this week, so I really can't afford the time it would take to sit down and figure out everything I've read. What I got, in the hour that I gave myself, in no particular order:

* Wicked Appetite and Wicked Business by Janet Evanovich

* Tapped Out by Natalie M. Roberts

* A Tangled Web by Mercedes Lackey

* Chuck Cave and the Vanishing Vixen by C.C. Blake

* The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

* Queen Victoria, Demon Hunter by A. E. Moorat

* The Ugly Stepsister Strikes Back by Sariah Wilson (which actually did get a review, so go me!)

* First Truth by Dawn Cook (and I read all four books in this series, so I assume that fact that the first one is in 2013's list means that all four of them should be)

* Beauty and the Werewolf by Mercedes Lackey

* Party Crashers By Stephanie Bond

* New Amsterdam and Garrett Investigates by Elizabeth Bear

* Wine in my Sippy Cup by Deborah Dove

* Ever After and Into the Woods by Kim Harrison

* Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton

* Engraved on the Eye by Saladin Ahmed

* The Rook by Daniel O'Malley

* A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton

* The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

* The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

With any luck, having the list will prompt me to post reviews of these someday. Or at least help me remember to clean up the Goodreads list.

I wanted to see this because it looked funny, but I expected it to be slightly dumb-- just a little bit of cheese, some silly, hopefully not too painful.

Result? Much, much better than expected. There's quite a few genuinely laugh-out-loud moments. There's a bit of cheese, but not as much as I expected. And despite having its share of pandering-to-the-lowbrow bits, those pieces are worked into the story coherently rather than just "here's something gross/sexy/stupid" so that it's not painful. Still, don't take your kids. This is a bad movie to take a child to. I'm somewhat of an expert on this.

The trailer (which you can view here) doesn't do it justice. The Fitzgeralds and their "I've never touched another woman before" scene in the trailer is.. well, it's not exactly taken out of context, but the full scene has a lot more to it, and I was surprised at how much communication and negotiation Mrs. Fitzgerald engaged in before touching Mrs. "Miller"-- something that's highlighted (highlit?) by the utter lack of communication between the males in the scene. Jennifer Aniston's striptease is just as hot as it looks in the trailer, but quite a bit more empowering. And yes (minor spoiler), it does save their lives, because the "cheap stripper" is far more resourceful than the trailer leads you to believe. Kenny's tarantula bite is awful and one of the things put in for cheap laughs (and also one of the reasons why you should not take kids), but it also sets off a major portion of the plot and ends up drawing you in to the heartwarming bits. Is "there's heartwarming bits" a spoiler? It shouldn't be, if you've seen roughly any movie ever. And best of all: the heartwarming bits aren't too cheesy and overdone. The ending is satisfying yet believable in that nobody walks away consequence-free or magically completely different in personality.

I recommend it.

I am simultaneously geeked and overwhelmed by the plans for the party tomorrow. The 8-year-old in me is squealing "It's gonna be so cool!" and the adult in me is whining about aching backs and feet and how much I totally don't want to put together the last few things.

If the kids don't get a huge kick out of all of this, I will be sorely disappointed. Hell, if the adults don't get a huge kick out of it, I will be sorely disappointed, because some of it is So. Very. Awesome.

I ordered new cabinets. You may have heard the squeal of delight-- I've been wanting to redo the kitchen since we moved in 15 years ago.

The guy at Home Depot (Dave) was nice. Once I'd finally decided what I actually wanted, it was fairly easy to get them ordered, though the design phase was slightly frustrating-- mostly because I actually took courses in architectural drafting (a million years ago, admittedly), and could make some logical leaps faster than Dave could. My initial math was wrong, and I had to change two 36" cabinets to two 30" cabinets, and it took a few minutes to explain to Dave why 36" + 36" + 36" wasn't going to work in a 96" space. He would have gotten there himself eventually if I had just shut up, but "just shut up" is not my default setting.

Home Depot had some excellent specials running, netting me 10% off of the cabinets and 20% off of the countertop (or vice versa, I can't recall). They also have a "2 years at 0%" promotion going for financing, provided the total is over $2400. My total is over $2400-- it's $2700 for the cabinets and countertops plus $950 for installation. Dave rang up just the cabinets and countertops, saying that when it was time for installation they'd back out the charge and re-run it with the install fee. (I asked, because I'd like to get the $950 into the 24-months-at-0% thing as well.)

Fast forward about a week and a half, to when Jeff at Home Depot calls me to tell me that my cabinets are in, and when would I like them delivered? I stammer something along the lines of "uh, I assumed you'd bring them when you installed them." Jeff knows nothing about installation. Jeff's systems don't indicate that the cabinets are being installed. Well of course not, because Dave did something unusual and weird with the charges. We flounder for two days until Dave comes back in, and then Dave says something like "Huh, I don't know why they didn't send someone out to do the second measurement." (Dude, really? No one sent out an installer because no one but you and I realize that there's any damned installation to be done because you have some weird phobia of ringing up the install fees.) But we get it sorted out, and my request for a second measurement so that we can proceed to installation gets sent out to the company that actually does that, which is a partner of Home Depot.

The company that actually sends someone out to measure doesn't have anyone available that week (it was, admittedly, a Thursday when Dave put the request in, and I didn't get a call to set up an appointment time until Friday), and the only day that they can come out that I plan to be home is Thursday-- which works out to "today".

The gentleman who came out was very nice, and very professional, and told me that:

1) Anything that they touch, they will bring up to code, because they pull permits. That means that if I have them do any plumbing (including removing the sink so that they can remove the old sink-base cabinet and put in the new one), all of my kitchen plumbing will be brought up to code-- at my cost, obviously. I am actually okay with this.

2) The company that makes the countertops will install them-- so when this company comes to install my cabinets, they will pull out the old ones and take them away (yay!), put the new ones in, and then the other company will have to be called to come out and deal with the countertops. Which means a minimum of one day of no counters, and probably more (because you know that if this company needs its own measurements, the countertop company will need them too). I am... a lot less okay with this, but it wouldn't be the first time that we've had to work around a household construction project. (Though not having to have our lives disrupted for weeks on end is part of why I was excited about having Home Depot do the install-- they've got a lot of incentive to be in and out in one day.)

3) This company will not re-install anything old. Like my sink. Or my only-a-year-and-a-half-old faucet that I really really love. I will need to purchase a new sink and a new faucet. This is where I said "Uh, I'm not sure I want you guys to do the install, because I really love that faucet."

4) Installation, with the upgrade-to-code items that they know about by looking, will be $6000. It's not included, and the $950 is to install the countertop, not the cabinets.

And that made me say "Oh hell no." We called Chris to get him to quote it, and he figures it will cost half that-- we don't NEED to bring the electrical up to code, since we're not touching it, and that was a big part of the code-violation parts. It does mean that the old cabinets won't get hauled away, but I can work with that-- there's a Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Lapeer (and I thought there was one in Pontiac, but Google says no) that would love to have them, I'm sure-- they're in good condition, they just don't work that well in our kitchen.

So, I called Home Depot back and said "I'd like to arrange to have my cabinets delivered, please." They said "We'll leave a note for Jeff to call you." Then this afternoon, they called back to say "The toekick you ordered [as an add-on, after today's measuring guy noted that my order did not include any toe kicks or back veneers for the island-- and he was the one who submitted the add-on, so I know that they have received the second set of measurements now] is in." I said "Can you deliver it when you deliver my cabinets?" and she seemed a little bit surprised to find out that I have cabinets, so... that's a bit frustrating, too. But she's also leaving a note for Jeff, so I assume that by the time he gets in he'll have about fifteen notes asking him to call me. She's also putting a note in this file to stop asking for John, because I find it wildly frustrating that even though I ordered the cabinets, everything is in his name (except the credit card, which I had to apply for to get the 0% deal). I'm pretty sure it's just that his name was already in the system under our phone number from a previous project, but it is still annoying as hell. We'll see how the "note in the file" thing goes.

So, I'll have Chris next week, and hopefully I'll have cabinets next week as well. No idea when the countertops will appear, but we're not making a lot of structural changes to the countertop layout so if I have to have the old one laid on top of the new cabinets for a little while, it's an option. I hope. Or maybe I'll have plywood "countertops" for a week or two.

To be clear: I'm not blaming Home Depot as a whole-- everyone has been very nice and very helpful when I say "but you're missing a vital piece of information" and very willing to work to make it right. Dave, however-- I would very much like to wring his neck. Actually, I would very much like to sit him down and explain to him that he does not work in a vacuum, and eschewing the standard system in favor of his own process means that no one else has any fucking clue what's going on and can't do their part of the job in a timely manner. And THEN I'd like to wring his neck.

It's seventy-something degrees here in San Antonio, much more pleasant than yesterday's eighty-two degrees. We had to turn the air conditioning on in the car instead of driving with the windows down, people! I got a little bit of a sunburn, nothing serious. I know you pity me. You should. Pardon me while I duck this incoming rock aimed at my head.

I've just finished the book that I grabbed for the flight here. While a part of me would have very much liked to plunk myself down in a corner and just read for hours and hours until I finished the book, politeness required me to have interesting and entertaining conversations with our hosts, sometimes until the wee hours of the night, developing a much deeper friendship with fabulous people. It's awful, I know. Please, your sympathy embarrasses me. Why, there's another rock. How very curious.

The book in question is one that I would like to give 6 stars to on a 5-star scale. Slightly more intense than I was expecting when I grabbed it, and of a subject matter too coarse for me to refer to it as "delightful", but quite a good read. Of course, that means I will feel obliged to review it, after I have finished turning it over in my head. Alas, my work is never done. Goodness, are we having a rock storm?

Let's pretend I wrote a journal entry yesterday about how my physical therapy was going. (I've been meaning to.) It would go something like this:

I started physical therapy for my back again at the beginning of the year, at my request. It helped my back a great deal a couple years ago, but the pain never completely went away and instead settled into a lowish-level of chronic pain, and I'd really like to have it go completely away.

I'm going to the same place, because I really liked the therapists there, even the ones that I never actually worked with but were just "around" at the times I was there. There was really only one person that I didn't like, a brash young guy who may or may not have been interning there (I was never all that clear) who pushed too hard even when I said "No, that movement hurts" to the point that he made me cry. So I called up and made an appointment and told them that I'd worked with [K] a couple of years ago. We worked out a time, and as we were finishing up, the receptionist said "Okay, that's 12:30 with [B] on Monday. See you then!" and I said "Sounds good!" and hung up and said "Wait, which one is [B]?" and started wracking my brain, going through each of the therapists I could remember, and then said "Oh, crap, I think [guy who made me cry] is [B]."

I debated about what to do about it for the entire weekend prior to my appointment, and ultimately decided to give it a try anyway. Maybe [B] was a different person entirely. Maybe [B] was the same guy but had gotten better-- he did look pretty aghast at making me cry back then, so maybe I had been an object lesson in listening to patient feedback. Also, in the intervening years I have gotten better about communicating clearly, and I've got a better handle on what movements I can and can't do, so even if [B] was the same guy and hadn't gotten better, *I* had gotten better. I was there entirely at my own option; if I didn't like how it was going, I had options for demanding a different therapist or a different location, so there was no point in punishing a therapist for being an asshole without giving him a chance to actually be an asshole first. (As a side note: that's actually a pretty good rule of thumb no matter what the situation -- if you're going to punish someone for being an ass, make sure you've given them the chance to actually be an ass first.)

I went. And [B] turned out to be the guy who had made me cry last time. And I sucked it up and treated him as though he were a brand new person I'd never met and gave him a chance, and he turned out to be absolutely fantastic-- better than [K], and [K] had been really good. In part BECAUSE of his "Let's try this and see whether it makes a difference" attitude that led to him insisting I do the move that made me cry the first time, he found a tight muscle in my hip (my IT Band) that was contributing to a lot of my pain, and I feel better than I have in years-- and that muscle is in my hip, where I've been saying for quite some time that something is wrong, and kept being told that it was referred pain and the real problem was in my lower back. So in addition to providing some serious pain relief, this new "work on the IT Band" regimen has come with a heaping side order of vindication as well.

Aaaaaaand then there was today. [B] took a class on low-back pain this weekend, and he was eager to apply the new teachings to my back. He asked if I was willing to do a little evaluation worksheet with him, and I said yes. This was my first mistake, because while it started off pretty innocuous, midway through it I complained "you said eval, not torture." The movements and positions pissed off both my hip and my lower back, and I've been popping pain pills like I did when I first hurt my back.

Of course, this new class of [B]'s taught that pain in the hips and legs of a back patient is still centered in the back and should be treated by treating the lower back, so the things that help my hip feel better didn't happen today either. And despite [B]'s promise that we would still work on the IT Band as well but he just didn't have time to do both today... I have this crushing fear that we'll revert back to the "standard" back treatment that left me with the low level of pain that Just. Would. Not. Go. Away.

Today has been a lot of crying, partly from the increased pain but mostly from the emotional baggage that comes from realizing that all of the progress I've made can be undone in one fell swoop, and at the behest of an expert who supposedly knows what they are doing (*). Then there's the fear I mentioned earlier, not just of having to put up with a therapy regimen that doesn't help as much as I know it could, but also of having to fight tooth and nail to have someone LISTEN to me about what hurts and what just isn't right. It's so very, very frustrating to KNOW that something is wrong and have doctors and nurses and therapists and other people who don't live in your body tell you that it's something else, and then have all the treatments for that something else still leave you feeling that the thing you've been saying is wrong is still wrong.

(*) I am not intending that in any sort of sarcastic tone. [B]'s earlier efforts resulted in such a tremendous leap forward that I will not deny his expertise, though at the moment I am seriously doubting the credentials of whoever taught his damned class this weekend.

I decided to take a nice soak in the bathtub this afternoon to try and loosen up some tight muscles and clear out my sinuses. While I was relaxing and reading, I suddenly smelled something acrid and foul, and looked down to find a cat on the floor next to the tub, trying to bury its fresh pee. Not only did my cat pee on my bathroom floor, he did it RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME.

For bonus points: finding pee in that spot has been an ongoing problem recently, but we've been unable to figure out exactly which cat it was. John insisted that it couldn't possibly be his sweet darling Sisko, because Sisko is a little angel and wouldn't do something like that. Do I even need to tell you which cat is was that peed in front of me? Of course not, because you've already correctly guessed it was Sisko.

Ambercon was, as usual, full of awesome. Gaming bits are below; I know not everyone cares, so I'll hit the non-gaming parts first:

We landed at nearly-midnight, so by the time we got our baggage and hauled it out to the parking garage, it was about 12:30am. We noted that both the front tires were soft, with the driver's side being worse than the passenger side, but we felt that it would be fine as long as we didn't do anything stupid-- we'd stop at the first service station to throw air in them, and check periodically on the way home, and we'd be fine.

By the time I got out of the parking garage, I was riding on the rim on the driver's side. I pulled over and tried to figure out the best plan, and decided that it would be 1000 times easier if I got past the cashiers, as there was a large open area off to the side before the garage traffic merged with the normal traffic. Sure, it was painted with lots of yellow stripes and "No Parking", but there was no traffic flow through it-- it was pretty much designed as an emergency area. Then I sat on hold with AAA for 10 minutes (ugh!) before they took my information and found a tow service to come put the spare on. We sat for nearly an hour. The tow truck showed up, took off the flat tire while CJ emptied the luggage out of the back so that we could access the spare tire, and as he was rolling it back towards the back of the car he asked "Wait, what was wrong with this tire again?" because it had poofed back up. He put air into it, then tried to make it leak again-- jumping up and down on it, etc. Did I mention it was 1:30am and f'ing cold outside? I understand the desire to fix it if possible, but I kinda just wanted to go home. He put the tire back on, went around to the passenger side to put air in that tire, and I said "Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I swear that [the driver's side] tire wasn't as soft when you put it back on as it is right now." So he took it back off and swapped it for the spare, which meant taking the luggage out of the car again, because CJ had started to put it back in when he thought we weren't going to need the spare.

We pulled into the driveway at 2:46am, and I flopped into my bed at 2:49am.

The next morning, I awoke to leaves that were still on my lawn despite the lawn guy being called to come give us a quote well before I left (he had intended to do it when he did a final cut on our lawn, and then it was wet and rainy and he didn't come do a final cut), bits for repairing the baseboard still in the garage (the heating guy who dropped them off will be out "probably this weekend" ... or so I've been told for the last four weekends), my desktop computer suffering from Blue Screen of Deaths every 5 minutes, no space in the barn that I was planning on putting the bikes in to get them out of the garage so we can park in it for the winter, and a generator being installed in such a way that we will no longer be able to safely park in a place we frequently park.

The good news is that I took my frustration out on my to-do list, and the pantry drawers that I've been trying to get done for months are now fully finished and I have started to put things in them. So apparently if I want to get anything DONE, the solution is to get me good and PISSED OFF.

As promised, the gaming bits:

Despite not being jet-lagged, I still fell asleep in the first slot, so there's a new rule of "Don't Let Amanda Sit On The Bed" for next year. I'd also like to try checking into the hotel the day before the con, because there's not enough time between when the hotel's check-in time begins and when the opening ceremonies begin, so I still felt rushed and NotReady(tm).

The three games I ran went amazingly well. The 1920s mystery game was better than it had any right to be, largely because I got the hell out of the players' way and let them play. The Winnie-the-Pooh/Torchwood crossover also went well, though not exactly as intended-- CJ and I figured that his Doctor Pooh game and my Hundred Aker Torchwood game would run independently for about an hour before combining. My players asked for something that I knew for certain was in the possession of the Doctor Pooh crowd (CJ and I had talked about where certain items would be), and because players are smart and figured out that a Doctor Pooh game and a Hundred Aker Torchwood game running in the same time slot and next-door to each other were intended to combine, they decided to just go knock on the door of the BEARDIS. So we combined a little early. Like after about 15 minutes. It worked. The Hogwarts Summer Camp game also went smoothly, but ended early. I don't think anyone was displeased by the game, just tired and not wanting to goof around with side stories.

CJ's Weird West game remains a favorite, and I was pleased that the returning sisters did not run roughshod over the new players-- not because we didn't TRY, but because they kept up with us. Two thumbs up to them for hitting the ground running. Best part of the game? One of the new players leaning over to me and quietly saying "Y'all are a HOOT to game with" when CJ's attention was on the other side of the room.

The long game was fun, and I enjoy the setting, but the GMs are utterly terrible at ending on time, and that does not mesh well with a highly-scheduled trip. I ended up walking out in the middle of the final scene, because we had plans for dinner. I don't really know what to do about this for future games with them-- it's an ongoing campaign, and I enjoy it, but the whole "runs way past its scheduled end-time" thing may well be a stopper for me.

The last game was a Firefly/Doctor Who crossover, and I am sad that the GM plans to NOT run a sequel next year, because it was entertaining. The Firefly crew took a slightly more pragmatic view for dealing with a menace than the Doctor usually does, and just shot the bastard in the head. This meant that the game ended early, because the GM had figured on an hour or so of negotiating first. But honestly, absolutely no one is broken-hearted when the last game of a con ends a little early, because by that time everyone is So. Very. Tired.

I skipped the traditional "extra slot" of going to the soaking pool, because it was cold and rainy and I hate being in a warm pool with cold air on my head and shoulders. Instead, the force of nature that is Chloe pulled me into the beginning of a game of Monster Hearts (which I watched rather than played, because I realized early on that I would have to go to bed before it ended and I didn't want to pull a character out of the story midway through) with some amazingly cool people, most of whom were new to me. Monster Hearts is... interesting. CJ owns it, so I'm going to have to get him to run a session or two somewhere. Hopefully at a faster pace than the Paranoia game I've been trying to get him to run for a couple of years now.

CJ and I are flying out to Seattle this weekend, to visit friends and sight-see a little before heading down to Portland for Ambercon Northwest. I dutifully went to bed early last night so that I could get up early this morning to get down to the airport in time for our flight.... which left yesterday morning. Somewhere in the planning phase, I screwed up, and put the wrong date into the calendar for our flight.

Exactly how this happened, I'm not entirely sure. I do have a chat log from talking to CJ about the flights as I made them, and in it I bitch about the available options for both Friday and Saturday. I also recall flipping back and forth checking flight options for both days, because as much as I did not like the Saturday choices, yesterday was my wedding anniversary, and I really didn't want to spend it away from John. My best guess is that once I settled on the Saturday flight, I hit "Back" in my browser a couple of times to get back to those flights, rather than starting a new search, and accidentally hit "Back" one too many times. (Or Southwest sets a cookie and remembered the old search terms. Or something.) And then I proceeded to ignore the date on every single communication from Southwest and stubbornly insisted that we were flying today.

On the plus side, Southwest was pretty awesome about rebooking us, and we will only be arriving 3.5 hours later than expected. Of course, it cost me $$$ to do this rebooking-- but the charge was equivalent to another discount-rate flight, rather than a last-minute flight. So it could have been much worse.

I also reserved the rental car for the correct day (presumably I did it while looking directly at the airline confirmation page), so I just got off the phone with Enterprise, re-reserving my car. Interestingly enough, despite upgrading the car size, the total reservation came up for $500 LESS than the prior reservation. This... makes no sense to me, but tells me that I should stop using Enterprise's online system to reserve cars, and should switch over to using their phone-in system. Still, I'm please to have a good chunk of the extra flight costs offset by a drastically reduced car rental.

me: WHY do I do these things to myself?

CJ: Because you're convinced that if you don't admit to limitations, they will melt away like morning mist under the sun.