Friday, November 28, 2014

Tired of turkey? Spaghetti eating contest!



I'm reading John Cleese's autobiography, SO ANYWAY. Cleese is a member of Monty Python. I haven't wanted to put it down, it's rather funny. Here's a description:
John Cleese’s  huge comedic influence has stretched across generations; his sharp irreverent eye and the unique brand of physical comedy he perfected with Monty Python, on Fawlty Towers, and beyond now seem written into comedy’s DNA. In this rollicking memoir, So, Anyway…, Cleese takes readers on a Grand Tour of his ascent in the entertainment world, from his humble beginnings in a sleepy English town and his early comedic days at Cambridge University (with future Python partner Graham Chapman who was becoming a doctor), to the founding of the landmark comedy troupe that would propel him to worldwide renown. Cleese was just days away from graduating Cambridge and setting off on a law career when he was visited by two BBC executives, who offered him a job writing comedy for radio. That fateful moment—and a near-simultaneous offer to take his university humor revue to London’s famed West End—propelled him down a different path, cutting his teeth writing for stars like David Frost and Peter Sellers, and eventually joining the five other Pythons to pioneer a new kind of comedy that prized invention, silliness, and absurdity. Along the way, he found his first true love with the actress Connie Booth and transformed himself from a reluctant performer to a world class actor and back again. Twisting and turning through surprising stories and hilarious digressions—with some brief pauses along the way that comprise a fascinating primer on what’s funny and why—this story of a young man’s journey to the pinnacle of comedy is a masterly performance by a master performer.
 Published in 2014, it has 400 pages. This is a digital loan from the library. I've included an excerpt at the end of this post.

NOT going anywhere to shop today though I need milk so I'll stop at a convenience store on the way home. Our dinner yesterday turned out well and it was nice to fill our plate and sit on the couch and watch TV. We'll agree to not talk about the Dallas game, eh? I put the turkey carcass and bones back in the turkey roaster after I deboned it and I made broth by simmering it all night. This is the first batch for my food plan that starts on Monday.  I may use that roaster more rather than the crock pot I was planning because I can control the temp better.

It is super mild today, almost 50 but the cold front hits tomorrow and the weekend will be yucky with snow and single digit temps. I'm urging Steve to drive to Townsend to pick up his mom today rather than tomorrow.  My main selling point is that he would then be able to sleep in tomorrow when my main concern is him driving on icy roads. So, I'll be hunkering down with the boys anyway.

Have a lovely day and weekend...

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster


An excerpt from SO, ANYWAY…
By John Cleese

I made my first public appearance on the stairs up to the school nurse’s room, at St. Peter’s Preparatory School, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England, on September 13, 1948. I was eight and five-sixths. My audience was a pack of nine-year-olds, who were jeering at me and baying, “Chee-eese! Chee-eese!” I kept climbing the steps, despite the feelings of humiliation and fear. But above all, I was bewildered. How had I managed to attract so much attention? What had I done to provoke this aggression? And . . . how on earth did they know that my family surname had once been Cheese?

As Matron “Fishy” Findlater gave me the customary new-boy physical examination, I tried to gather my thoughts. My parents had always warned me to keep away from “nasty rough boys.” What, then, were they doing at a nice school like St. Peter’s? And how was I supposed to avoid them?

Much of my predicament was that I was not just a little boy, but a very tall little boy. I was five foot three, and would pass the six-foot mark before I was twelve. So it was hard to fade away into the background, as I often wished to—particularly later when I’d become taller than any of the masters. It didn’t help that one of them, Mr. Bartlett, always referred to me as “a prominent citizen.”

In addition, as a result of my excessive height, I had “outgrown my strength,” and my physical weakness meant that I was uncoordinated and awkward; so much so that a few years later my PE teacher, Captain Lancaster, was to describe me as “six foot of chewed string.” Add to that the fact that I had had no previous experience of the feral nature of gangs of young boys, and you will understand why my face bore the expression of an authentic coward as “Fishy” opened the door and coaxed me out towards my second public appearance.

“Don’t worry, it’s only teasing,” she said. What consolation was that? You could have said the same at Nuremberg. But at least the chanting had stopped, and now there was an expectant silence as I forced myself down the stairs.  Then…

“Are you a Roundhead or a Cavalier?”

“What?”

Faces were thrust at me, each one of them demanding, “Round­head or Cavalier?” What were they talking about?

Had I understood the question, I would almost certainly have fainted, such a delicate little flower was I. (And perhaps I should explain to the more delicately nurtured that I was not being asked to offer my considered views on the relative merits of the opposing forces in the English Civil War, but to reveal whether or not I had been circumcised.) However, my first day at prep school was not a total failure. By the time I got home I had learned the meaning of two new words—“pathetic” and “wet”—though I had to find Dad’s dictionary to look up “sissy.”

Why was I so . . . ineffectual? Well, let’s begin at my beginning. I was born on October 27, 1939, in Uphill, a little village south of Weston-super-Mare, and separated from it by the mere width of a road which led inland from the Weston seafront. My first memory, though, is not of Uphill but of a tree in the village of Brent Knoll, a few miles away, under whose shade I recall lying, while I looked through its branches to the bright blue sky above. The sunlight is catching the leaves at different angles, so that my eye flickers from one patch of colour to the next, the verdant foliage displaying a host of verdant hues. (I thought I would try to get “verdant,” “hues” and “foliage” into this paragraph, as my English teachers always believed that they were signs of creative talent. Though I probably shouldn’t have used “verdant” twice.)

Of course, I’m not sure it is my first memory; I’m sure I used to think it was; and I like to think it was, too, because it would make sense, baby me lying in a pram, contentedly watching the interplay of the glinting verdant foliage and its beautiful hues.
One thing I do know for certain, though, is that shortly before this incident with the tree, the Germans bombed Weston-super-Mare. I’ll just repeat that…
On August 14, 1940, German planes bombed Weston-super-Mare. This is verifiable: it was in all the papers. Especially the Weston Mer­cury. Most Westonians were confident the raid had been a mistake. The Germans were a people famous for their efficiency, so why would they drop perfectly good bombs on Weston-super-Mare, when there was nothing in Weston that a bomb could destroy that could possibly be as valuable as the bomb that destroyed it? That would mean that every explosion would make a tiny dent in the German economy.

The Germans did return, however, and several times, which mys­tified everyone. Nevertheless I can’t help thinking that Westonians actually quite liked being bombed: it gave them a sense of signifi­cance that was otherwise lacking from their lives. But that still leaves the question why would the Hun have bothered? Was it just Teutonic joie de vivre? Did the Luftwaffe pilots mistake the Weston seafront for the Western Front? I have heard it quite seriously put forward by older Westonians that it was done at the behest of William Joyce, the infamous “Lord Haw-Haw,” who was hanged as a traitor in 1944 by the British for making Nazi propaganda radio broadcasts to Britain during the war. When I asked these amateur historians why a man of Irish descent who was born in Brooklyn would have such an animus against Weston that he would buttonhole Hitler on the matter, they fell silent. I prefer to believe that it was because of a grudge held by Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering on account of an unsavoury in­cident on Weston pier in the 1920s, probably involving Noël Coward and Terence Rattigan.

My father’s explanation, however, makes the most sense: he said the Germans bombed Weston to show that they really do have a sense of humour.

Whatever the truth of the matter, two days after that first raid we had moved to a quaint little Somerset village called Brent Knoll. Dad had had quite enough of big bangs during his four years in the trenches in France, and since he was up to nothing in Weston that was vital to the war effort, he spent the day after the bombing driv­ing around the countryside near Weston until he found a small farm­house, owned by a Mr. and Mrs. Raffle, who agreed to take the Cleese family on as paying guests. I love the fact that he didn’t mess around. We were out of there! And it was typically smart of him to find a farm, where, at a time of strict rationing, an egg or a chicken or even a small pig could go missing without attracting too much attention.

Mother told me once that some Westonians privately criticised Dad for retreating so soon. They apparently felt it would have been more dignified to have waited a week or so before running away. I think this view misses the essential point of running away, which is to do it the moment the idea has occurred to you. Only an obses­sional procrastinator would cry, “Let’s run for our lives, but not till Wednesday afternoon.”

Back to the tree. I revisited the farm many years later, and, just as I thought I remembered, there was a huge chestnut tree in the middle of the front lawn, under which I might easily have lain in a pram. In 1940 the farmhouse had been one of a row of houses of me­dium size strung along a road, with fields opposite; it didn’t look very farm-like from the front, but when you walked up the drive and got to the back of the house you saw there was a proper farmyard, with mud and chickens and rusty farm equipment and ferrets in cages and rabbits in wooden hutches.

And it was this location that provides my second memory. (It must come after the first because in it I am now standing up.) I was bitten by a rabbit.

Or rather, I was nibbled by a rabbit, but, because I was such a weedy, namby-pamby little pansy, I reacted as though I’d lost a limb. It was the sheer unfairness of it all that so upset me. One minute, I was saying, “Hello, Mr. Bunny!” and smiling at its sweet little face and funny floppy ears. The next, the fucker savaged me. It seemed so gratuitous. What, I asked myself, had I done to the rabbit to deserve this psychotic response?

The more pertinent question, though, is: why was I such a wuss? And the obvious answer is that it’s because I was the only child of older, over-protective parents. I have a memory (No. 3) to support this. I’m now about three and am in the Red Cow Inn, the hub and beating heart of Brent Knoll. Somehow I bang my hand, and just before I burst into tears, I hold it up to my father and howl, “Daddy, look! I’ve hurt my precious thumb!” This, to my astonishment, gets a big laugh. Is my thumb not precious, I wonder? Dad certainly thinks it is. When the occasion demands, he always says, “Oh, you’ve hurt your precious ——— [fill in applicable body part].”

I hesitate to criticise Dad, because what sanity I have I owe to his loving kindness. But there’s no doubt that he did pamper me, and such early coddling was one of the reasons I embarked on a wussy lifestyle. Throughout my schoolboy days I never felt very manly, or strong, or virile, or vigorous, or healthily aggressive. At school I avoided playground “gangs,” because I didn’t understand why anyone would want to behave like that. I loved ball games, but was always appalled at how rough, for example, rugby looked, even at the safe distance I kept while pretending to play it. When I was seventeen, my assistant Clifton College housemaster, Alec MacDonald, finally took me to task for funking tackles. Describing my efforts as “danc­ing around like a disabled fairy,” he ordered me to watch while he gave a demonstration of how to tackle properly. He asked a member of the first XV, Tony Rogers, to run at him. He closed in on Rogers, and then went in hard, just as Rogers tried to sidestep him. The result was that the top of Mr. MacDonald’s head came into sharp contact with Rogers’ right hip. Mr. MacDonald was unavailable for teaching later that afternoon; indeed he did not reappear for forty-eight hours. When he did, I was too cowardly to remind him that he had specifi­cally told me that “if you go in hard, you never get hurt.” So when I see international rugby teams lumbering out at Twickenham, I look at them with awe, but also with a sense of being genetically discon­nected from them. I was not born to be butch, and I have accepted my innate unmanliness without complaint. Besides, it seems to me that cowards very seldom cause trouble, which is probably why there is a history of them being shot by people who do.[1]

None of this, incidentally, is to say that my infant wussiness was in any way admirable. But while I was undeniably a gutless little weed there was an upside: at least I didn’t display the habitual mind­less aggression of some young males. Better a wuss than a psycho, I say, and I am proud that I have never been able to force myself to watch cage fighting.
If part of my weedy outlook on life came from my father’s pam­pering, a fair proportion was down to my complicated relationship with my mother. And in this context another early memory comes to mind. I am lying in bed, falling asleep, when a noise causes me to turn and see shadows moving on the half-open door of my bedroom. They are shadows of my parents fighting. Dad has been coming into my room and Mum has started attacking him, pummelling him with a flurry of blows which he is trying to fend off. There is no sound—I sense they are both trying not to wake me—and the memory has no emotion attached, although it is very clear. Just the shadows which last a few seconds and then . . . silence. As I write this, my throat tightens a little. The level of violence I’m describing is low: there are no shillelaghs or chainsaws here, just lower-middle-class fisticuffs, with no prospect of Grievous Bodily Harm, as English law calls it. Nevertheless, my beloved dad, a kind and decent person, is being at­tacked by this unknowable creature who is widely rumoured to be my mother.

Young children have so little life experience that they inevitably assume that what happens around and to them is the norm. I re­member that when my daughter Cynthia was very young she was surprised to discover that some of her friends’ fathers did not work in television. So it would have been hard for me to describe my rela­tionship with my mother as problematic because I had no idea what the word “motherly” conveyed to most people. Dad once described to me how, during the First World War, he had witnessed a wounded soldier lying in a trench and crying out for his mother. “Why on earth would he cry for her?” I wondered. When, over the years, I began to hear friends tell me that their mother was their best friend, someone with whom they routinely discussed their daily life, and to whom they looked for emotional support, I simply thought, “How wonderful that must be…”
Please do not think that I am loftily labeling her a “bad mother.” In many ways she was a good mother; sometimes a very good mother. In all day-to-day matters she was extremely diligent: preparing good meals, making sure I was properly clothed and shod and warm and dry, keeping the house neat and clean, and fiercely protective of me. Under light hypnosis, I once recalled a German air raid, with the sound of the bombers not far away, and Mother throwing herself on top of me, under a big kitchen table. If it was a false memory, it’s still what she would have done.

From a practical point of view, then, she was impeccable. But she was also self-obsessed and anxious, and that could make life with her very uncomfortable indeed.
A clue to her self-obsession, I always felt, was her extraordinary lack of general knowledge. On one of her visits to London in the late ’80s, a salad was prepared for lunch which contained quails’ eggs. She asked what kind of eggs they were and I explained that they were moles’ eggs, and that when we wanted them, we would go up to Hampstead Heath very early in the morning, as moles laid them at the entrance to their burrows during the night, collect the eggs and make sure we ate them the same day before they had time to hatch. She listened with great attention, as my family’s jaws sagged, and said she thought them “delicious.” Later that day she caught a men­tion of Mary, Queen of Scots. She recognised the name and asked me who this was. With my family listening, I pushed the envelope a little, telling her that Mary was a champion Glaswegian darts player who had been killed in the Blitz. “What a shame,” she said.

I was being a bit naughty, of course, but I also wanted to prove to my family the truth of a comment I had made earlier about Mother, which they had not accepted on first hearing. I had told them that she had no information about anything that was not going to affect her life directly in the immediate future; and that consequently she possessed no general knowledge—and when I said no general knowledge, I didn’t mean very, very little. Naturally they had thought I was exaggerating.

And the reason for this was not that she was unintelligent, but that she lived her life in such a constant state of high anxiety, border­ing on incipient panic, that she could focus only on the things that might directly affect her. So it goes without saying that she suffered from all the usual phobias, along with a few special ones (like albinos and people wearing eye patches). But she also cast her net wider. In fact, I used to joke that she suffered from omniphobia—you name it, she had a morbid dread of it. It’s true that I never saw her alarmed by a loaf of bread or a cardigan or even a chair, but anything above me­dium size that could move around a bit was a hazard, and any reason­ably loud sound startled her beyond reason. I once compiled a list of events that frightened her, and it was quite comprehensive: very loud snoring; low-flying aircraft; church bells; fire engines; trains; buses and lorries; thunder; shouting; large cars; most medium-sized cars; noisy small cars; burglar alarms; fireworks, especially crackers; loud radios; barking dogs; whinnying horses; nearby silent horses; cows in general; megaphones; sheep; corks coming out of sparkling wine bottles; motorcycles, even very small ones; balloons being popped; vacuum cleaners (not being used by her); things being dropped; din­ner gongs; parrot houses; whoopee cushions; chiming doorbells; hammering; bombs; hooters; old-fashioned alarm clocks; pneumatic drills; and hairdryers (even those used by her).
In a nutshell, Mother experienced the cosmos as a vast, limitless booby trap.
Consequently, it was never possible for her really to relax, except perhaps for the times when she sat on the sofa knitting while Dad and I watched television. But even then she was active, knitting away against time. I noticed years ago that when people (myself definitely included) are anxious they tend to busy themselves with irrelevant activities, because these distract from and therefore reduce their ac­tual experience of anxiety. To stay perfectly still is to feel the fear at its maximum intensity, so instead you scuttle around doing things as though you are, in some mysterious way, short of time. But although Mother kept herself busy in countless and pointless ways, it did not alleviate her worrying: her pervading sense that she was keeping nameless disasters at bay only by incessantly anticipating them, and that one moment’s lapse in this vigilance would bring them hurtling towards her. I once proposed to Dad that we should purchase a large hamster wheel for her, so that she would find it easy to remain active all day, instead of having continually to invent non-essential activi­ties like polishing cans of peas, or stacking cups, or sewing borders on handkerchiefs, or boiling knitting needles, or weeding the carpet.

Her own approach was to write her worries down on a piece of paper, so that there was no chance she would forget one, thus un­leashing it. After Dad died, I would drive down to Weston to visit her and she would greet me with a cup of coffee and a very long list of worries which she had been compiling during the previous weeks, and we would sit down and discuss each worry in turn at some length: what it was about, and why it mattered, and how likely it was to happen, and what she could do to forestall it, and what we could do if it did actually happen, and whether we would know what to do if it didn’t . . . and after we’d processed six or so, she’d make me another cup of coffee and we would continue working till bedtime. And if we hadn’t got through them all by then, we’d leave the rest for  breakfast. It took me decades to realise that it was not the analysing of her worries that eased them; it was the continuous contact with another person that gradually calmed her.

Why Mother should have been quite so anxious I simply don’t know, but the net effect was to make her difficult. Actually, “dif­ficult” is not quite fair. There was only one thing that she wanted. Just one. But that one thing was her own way. And if she didn’t get it, that upset her. And she was prettily easily upset; in fact I think it’s fair to say she had a real facility for it; and when something did upset her—and there was a very limited supply of things that, in the final analysis, didn’t—she would throw a tantrum, or several tantra, of such inconceivable volume and activity that there must have been times when Dad yearned for the relative tranquillity of the trenches in France.

But Mother would never have seen herself as a tyrant: her trick was to rule through weakness. Whereas Dad might prefer to sleep with a window open, Mother had to have it shut, because she just couldn’t cope with the alternative. Sadly, there was no choice, so nego­tiation was never an option, although Dad once confided to me that she had been much more flexible before they’d got married.

It was only in later years that I began to see just how alarmed Dad really was by the tantrums. While he talked occasionally about the need “to keep the little woman on an even keel,” his faux-amused casualness was intended to conceal his fear, for when Mother lost her temper, she really lost it: her rage filled her skin until there was no room left for the rest of her personality, which had to move over till things calmed down a bit. The phrase “beside oneself with anger” could have been coined in Weston-super-Mare.
Mother could be quite charming and bright and amusing, but that was when we had visitors. Once they had gone, her sociability began to fade. This meant that there was nearly always tension in the Cleese household because when mother was not actually angry it was only because she was not angry yet. Dad and I knew that the slightest thing—almost anything—would set her off, so constant pla­catory behaviour was the name of the game.

It cannot be coincidence that I spent such a large part of my life in some form of therapy, and that the vast majority of the problems I was dealing with involved relationships with women. And my in­grained habit of walking on eggshells when coping with my mother dominated my romantic liaisons for many years. Until it began to fade, women found me very dull. My own unique cocktail of over-politeness, unending solicitude and the fear of stirring controversy rendered me utterly unsexy. Very, very nice men are no fun. I once wrote a sketch based on my younger self (for the 1968 show How to Irritate People), in which I tried to show just how infuriating this de­sire to be inoffensive can be:
JOHN CLEESE: I’m afraid I’m not very good company tonight.
CONNIE BOOTH: No, it’s me. I’m on edge.

JC: No, no, no, you are marvellous, really super! It’s me.

CB: Look, let’s forget it.

JC: I’m not good company.

CB: You are.

JC: I’m not. I’ve been fussing you.

CB: It’s all right.

JC: I have been fussing you. It’s my own fault, you told me last time about fussing you too much.

CB: Please!

JC: Look, am I fussing you too much?

CB: A bit.

Although there was little real emotional communication be­tween us, my mother and I had our moments of closeness, almost all of them when we laughed together. She had quite a sharp sense of humour—and as I got older I discovered to my surprise that she also laughed at jokes that were rather dark, if not quite black. I remember on one occasion listening to her as she methodically itemised all the reasons why she didn’t want to go on living, while I experienced my usual sense of glum failure at my powerlessness to help. Then I heard myself say, “Mother, I have an idea.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“I know a little man who lives in Fulham, and if you’re still feeling this way next week, I could have a word with him if you like— but only if you like— and he can come down to Weston and kill you.”
 Silence.

“Oh God, I’ve gone too far,” I thought.  And then she cackled with laughter. I don’t think I ever loved her as much as I did at that moment.

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Coda just comes into my lap anyway -- what Kindle?

When I Was Your Age


Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving, everyone. I may not be posting tomorrow. Cooking, eating, watching Dallas win, reading, napping .... SOOO busy. :)

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

A dog and his dolphin

The Weekend Has Arrived Like a Dog Riding a Dolphin!

Because of last night's stupidity in Ferguson (and probably for the next couple days) of the aftermath of the decision, I'm listening to beautiful music and looking at happy things.

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't on tonight so maybe I'll read instead of watching stupidity on the news like I did last night.  Here's to remember Agent Coulson:



Yes, we're sad, too. And next week is the quote unquote mid-season finale.

A winter weather advisory starts at 6pm tonight. Blah.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Monday, November 24, 2014

Where did those bubbles come from?



I'm currently reading FIELD OF DISHONOR by David Weber. This is 4th of 14 in the Honor Harrington space opera series. Here's a description:
The People's Republic of Haven's sneak attack on the Kingdom of Manticore has failed. The Peeps are in disarray, their leaders fighting for power in bloody revolution, and the Royal Manticoran Navy stands victorious. But Manticore has domestic problems of its own, and success can be more treacherous than defeat for Honor Harrington. Now, trapped at the core of a political crisis she never sought, betrayed by an old and vicious enemy she'd thought vanquished forever, she stands alone. She must fight for justice on a battlefield she never trained for in a private war that offers just two choices: death . . . or a ''victory'' that can end only in dishonor and the loss of all she loves.

Published in 1994, it has 384 pages. 

Because our cable company went all digital last week and the TV in the bedroom wasn't, we got a new TV this weekend. I don't think Steve will leave the bedroom on weekends. It is pretty.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Friday, November 21, 2014

SOMEbody loves the snow



I'm currently reading BLOOD MAGICK by Nora Roberts. This is 3rd of the The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy set in Ireland. Here's a description:
County Mayo is rich in the traditions of Ireland, legends that Branna O’Dwyer fully embraces in her life and in her work as the proprietor of The Dark Witch shop, which carries soaps, lotions, and candles for tourists, made with Branna’s special touch. Branna’s strength and selflessness hold together a close circle of friends and family—along with their horses and hawks and her beloved hound. But there’s a single missing link in the chain of her life: love…She had it once—for a moment—with Finbar Burke, but a shared future is forbidden by history and blood. Which is why Fin has spent his life traveling the world to fill the abyss left in him by Branna, focusing on work rather than passion. Branna and Fin’s relationship offers them both comfort and torment. And though they succumb to the heat between them, there can be no promises for tomorrow. A storm of shadows threatens everything that their circle holds dear. It will be Fin’s power, loyalty, and heart that will make all the difference in an age-old battle between the bonds that hold their friends together and the evil that has haunted their families for centuries.
Published in 2014, it has 336 pages. I enjoy Roberts' writing, but this wasn't one of her strongest trilogies.

Planning on visiting B&N tomorrow with Mom. We'll do a little browsing and probably have lunch. Haven't done that for a while.

I made "impossible" coconut pie last night but I must have found a different recipe than my Mom's. This was more custard-y than what I remember her doing. Maybe I'm remembering incorrectly.

Have a great weekend!

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Houston, we have a canine gravity problem ....


















(Somehow, photographer Julia Christe got all these photos of puppehs bouncing up in the air.)

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

And it looks hungry

Take the Food, Just Don't Abduct or Probe Me

Nothing on TV tonight for me so I will hopefully read. Groceries after work, getting prepped for Thanksgiving. I will pick up the turkey on Monday from Good Earth Market.

Not much happening otherwise. I may not be able to post the next couple days. We'll have to see how it goes. :)

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Dog v. tator tot



Tonight I have Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to watch.


It's only about two more episodes before the hit crime fighting TV series "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."
 NOOOOOOOooooooo! But Agent Carter will start in January.
Season 2 will have its mid-season finale and things are getting more intense as the date nears.
In the upcoming episode titled "The Things We Bury," fans will see Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) and his team embarking a mission to Hawaii and Agent Carter interrogating a HYDRA agent.
A series of sneak peeks showed S.H.I.E.L.D. gearing up for a mission in Hawaii.



Another promo video showed a flashback where Hayley Atwell's Peggy Carter questioning Werner Reinhardt (Reed Diamond) in an interrogation room with a pen on a table waiting.



Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Monday, November 17, 2014

Reason # 6 why I have dogs

Is it Worth the Daily Noms?


Currently reading NIGHTINGALE GALLERY by Paul Doherty. This is s 1st of 14 in series featuring Brother Athelstan, a Dominican monk, and John Cranston, a coroner, in 14th century London. Here's a description:
In 1376, the famed Black Prince died of a terrible rotting sickness, closely followed by his father, King Edward III. The crown of England is left in the hands of a mere boy, the future Richard II, and the great nobles gather like hungry wolves around the empty throne. As a terrible power struggle threatens the country, one of London’s powerful merchant princes is foully murdered and Coroner Sir John Cranston and Dominican monk Brother Athelstan are ordered to investigate. When further deaths occur, they find themselves drawn ever deeper into a dark web of intrigue.

Published in 1991, it has 260 pages. This is from the library. 

Steelers play tonight so we'll be watching that unless is goes majorly badly then we'll ignore that it ever happened.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Friday, November 14, 2014

TGIF












Have a good weekend, folks!

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Thursday, November 13, 2014

It may take all weekend ...



Gack! I thought I did the post yesterday. Sorry.

I'm also reading ILLEGAL ACTION by Stella Rimington. This is 3rd of 8 in series featuring Liz Carlyle, an agent in MI-5 Joint Counter-Terrorist Group, in London. Here's a description:
Liz Carlyle has been transferred to Counter-Espionage, along with her research sidekick Peggy Kingsolving. Once the hub of MI5 operations, the department has been reduced in size since the end of the Cold War, and priority within the service is on counter-terrorism. Yet there is plenty for Liz to do. In fact, there are more spies operating in London today than during the height of East-West hostilities. This includes Russian spies, who continue to operate in number. What has changed is their targets — now they spy on the international financial community, as well as on the wealthy, influential Russian “oligarchs,” many of whom live in London. Liz learns of a Russian government plot to silence one of these oligarchs, Nikita Brunovsky, who is an increasingly vocal opponent of Putin. How he is to be kept quiet is unclear, but since the Foreign Office dreads any kind of incident, Liz is assigned to keep it from happening. To protect Brunovsky from his Kremlin foes, Liz goes undercover and joins the oligarch’s retinue as she tries to determine who around the Russian might be willing to betray him, and hoping at the same time to learn the identity of a certain Russian “illegal” operative working undercover.

Published in 2007, it has 464 pages. This is a digital loan from the library.

I've got several books out from the library - not 14-day ones -- that I haven't even gotten to yet. I'm hoping after I finish the Patricia Wynn, I'll work on that stack. It's a good thing I don't have any new releases I'm waiting for now for the rest of the year. Phew!

Nothing on TV tonight, it appears, so I hope I will get some more reading done.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster 




Tuesday, November 11, 2014

How cold is it?



I'm about to start ACTS OF FAITH by Patricia Wynn. This is 5th of 5 in series featuring Gideon St. Mars, a viscount who becomes the highwayman Blue Satan, and his friend Mrs. Kean, in early 18th century England. Here's a description:
Convinced that she will never see the outlawed Viscount St. Mars again, and nursing a broken heart, Hester Kean is not sorry when her relatives send her alone into Yorkshire to prepare her cousin Mary for life at the English court. Travelling on the stage, she befriends a reserved young gentleman, returning home after many years, whose mysterious behaviour is due to his fear of being arrested for receiving an illegal Roman Catholic education in France. When the young man arrives home to learn that his father has been murdered, Hester wants to help, but her efforts are stymied by the secrets the young man and his family are forced to keep. Encountering degrees of prejudice against "papists" on all sides, Hester cannot blame them for their clandestine lives, but was it that very secrecy that led to the murder? Hester has an affair of her own to keep private, for Gideon has tracked her north in disguise, determined to win her. Elated to know at last that he loves her, she still has to discover whether he wants her for a mistress or a wife. Somehow, they must hide their intimacy from Hester's cousins, while stealing the moments alone they need to resolve their future together.
Published in 2014, it has 379 pages.  As I mentioned in a previous post, it has been almost four years since this author last wrote for this series. I'm very looking forward to reading it. 

I finished CJ Sansom's LAMENTATION last night. It was WONDERFUL!

Tonight, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returns after a week off. Woot!  


Last night, we went out to dinner at Outback. It has been at least a dozen years since we'd had their food but I think I'd seen a commercial recently and their steak and lobster combo looked good. We were pretty disappointed. The bloomin' onion wasn't as I remembered. It was greasy and the onion "spindles" were thin and, well, spindly. Then my lobster was small (I expected that) and so salty along with the butter so salty it was almost inedible. And my rice was salty. I mean, we didn't complain -- maybe we should have -- but we didn't. There were other food problems but the service was all right. Just ... disappointed. My birthday overall, was 99.9 percent lovely.  Steve also got me the Beleek lamp I've been hankering for but he received an email this morning that it is delayed until December 19th. I told it is a wonderful Christmas present. :)

Today the high temp is 8. Eight. We're used to cold in Montana but the abrupt change of so mild in the 60s over the weekend to this, doesn't allow the body to adjust. It just feels super cold. Cooooold.

Ryker, of course, is loving it.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster


Monday, November 10, 2014

Yeah it is









 Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Friday, November 7, 2014

TGIF already

I Can See it From Here


I'm also reading THE DANTE CONNECTION by Estelle Ryan. This is 2nd of 5 in series featuring Doctor Genevieve Lenard, a nonverbal communications expert who as has high functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder. Here's a description:
Despite her initial disbelief, Doctor Genevieve Lenard discovers that she is the key that connects stolen works of art, ciphers and sinister threats. Betrayed by the people who called themselves her friends, Genevieve throws herself into her insurance investigation job with autistic single-mindedness. When hacker Francine appears beaten and bloodied on her doorstep, begging for her help, Genevieve is forced to get past the hurt of her friends' abandonment and team up with them to find the perpetrators. Little does she know that it will take her on a journey through not one, but two twisted minds to discover the true target of their mysterious messages. It will take all her personal strength and knowledge as a nonverbal communications expert to overcome fears that could cost not only her life, but the lives of many others. 
 Published in 2013, it has 365 pages.  

Ya know, I don't think I'm in the mood for the Michael Connelly book right now. I'll give it another shot this weekend but I'm just not feeling it. And it is feeling rather repetitive from his previous books so it's being  ... meh. I've got it for 14 days so maybe I'll get back to my beloved CJ Sansom and the above book this weekend and try again later. 

Not much planned for the weekend. Steve will be taking his mom to visit her sister tomorrow. I've been feeling a touch blechy the past couple days like I'm fighting off a cold so I will be doing the chores and reading for the most part.  

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster  

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Seriously


About to start THE BURNING ROOM by Michael Connelly. This is 19th of 19 in series featuring Harry Bosch, a homicide detective in Los Angeles. Here's a description:
In the LAPD's Open-Unsolved Unit, not many murder victims die a decade after the crime. So when a man succumbs to complications from being shot by a stray bullet ten years earlier, Bosch catches a case in which the body is still fresh, but any other clues are virtually nonexistent. Even a veteran cop would find this one tough going, but Bosch's new partner, Detective Lucia Soto, has no homicide experience. A young star in the department, Soto has been assigned to Bosch so that he can pass on to her his hard-won expertise. Now Bosch and Soto are tasked with solving a murder that turns out to be highly charged and politically sensitive. Beginning with the bullet that has been lodged for years in the victim's spine, they must pull new leads from years-old evidence, and these soon reveal that the shooting was anything but random. As their investigation picks up speed, it leads to another unsolved case with even greater stakes: the deaths of several children in a fire that occurred twenty years ago. But when their work starts to threaten careers and lives, Bosch and Soto must decide whether it is worth risking everything to find the truth, or if it's safer to let some secrets stay buried.
 Published in 2014, it has 400 pages. 

A high of 67 expected. Enjoy it. Snow is coming Sunday or Monday. Of course.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Barter system at work: toy for breakfast



I did watch the returns last night until about 9:15 when they called the majority of 51 seats. Yes, I'm pleased with the results but we have two months left of this congress who will be desperate to do something before their time runs out and two more years of this President who will be rather not happy to put it very mildly. So take today to enjoy the wins but get to work after that, I say. 
 
Not much on TV tonight so I will be reading while Steve is at his shooting. I'm almost done with the Lovett book and will be moving on to the Michael Connelly since that is another 14-day book from the library with the clock ticking.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Sometimes you just have to hold your nose and vote....



As you may imagine, I'll be watching the election returns tonight. I'm interested, of course, but also Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't on tonight.

No matter your affiliation, be sure to vote today. This is your chance to have a voice in what matters.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Monday, November 3, 2014

What Monday feels like ....

Unexpected Function


Over the weekend I read TO DWELL IN DARKNESS by Deborah Crombie. This is 16th of 16 in series featuring Detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James in London. Here's a description:
Recently transferred to the London borough of Camden from Scotland Yard headquarters, Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his new murder investigation team are called to a deadly bombing at historic St. Pancras Station. By fortunate coincidence, Melody Talbot, Gemma's trusted colleague, witnesses the explosion. The victim was taking part in an organized protest, yet the other group members swear the young man only meant to set off a smoke bomb. As Kincaid begins to gather the facts, he finds every piece of the puzzle yields an unexpected pattern, including the disappearance of a mysterious bystander. With the help of his former sergeant, Doug Cullen, Melody Talbot, and Gemma, Kincaid begins to untangle the truth.

Published in 2014, it has 336 pages. 

I also finally finished NIGHT OF A THOUSAND STARS by Deanna Raybourn (I just had a couple chapters left) and also raced through AURORA: CV-1 by Ryk Brown, a space opera. Now I'm back to the Charlie Lovett, FIRST IMPRESSIONS before starting the new one by Michael Connelly.

We had 13 trick-or-treaters on Friday. We kept the light on until 8pm but I didn't turn the light on until about 6:30 waiting for Steve to get home so I missed at least one group, maybe two.


Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster