Should've Already Read, but Haven't

I've been thinking about this off and on recently.  There are a slew of authors out there I should have read already, but haven't.  So, here's my list of authors I need to make a concerted effort to read - you know, when I have time and when my TBR pile isn't so huge.

J.D. Robb* (Naked In Death - finished 7/18/12)
Scott Westerfield

Sherrilyn Kenyon
Catherine Coulter
Mark Twain
Madeleine L'Engle (The Young Unicorns - got partway through and gave up 7/22/12)
Stephen Coonts
Dean Koontz
Andre Norton
Robert Heinlein
PC Cast
Patricia Cornwell
Raymond Chandler
James Michener
VC Andrews
Jean Auel
Gregory Maguire
Christine Feehan
Anne McCaffrey
Andre Norton
Mercedes Lackey
James Clavell
Arthur C. Clarke
Arthur Hailey
Joseph Conrad
Herman Wouk
Louisa May Alcott
Larry McMurtry
Janet Evanovich
Laurel K. Hamilton
Thomas Harris
Daniel Defoe

There are probably a lot more, but I think you've suffered enough.   Frankly, I'm shocked that I haven't read at least one book by these people over the years.

Now it's your turn.  Who are some authors you feel like you should have read a long time ago, but haven't?  Any suggestions on which books I should start with from these authors?

*I checked Naked in Death out from the library yesterday, so that'll be off the list soon.


And no, I still haven't read Jane Austen, but after years of trying, I gave up.  She's just not for me.

PIcture Pause - Goose Family

Good morning, All.  I'd like to introduce you to a family of Canada Geese I've been watching off and on over the past couple months. 

From left to right: Ike (who I suspect might be Isabelle), Dad, Mom, and Mike.

I'm a little sad that I never made it down to the lake in time to catch the goslings when they were still small and puffy.  They've only fledged out fully in the past week.  And if Ike there wasn't in the processing of cleaning his/her foot, you'd see its head feathers are still pretty light in comparison to the others.

Anyway, this is the first year since I moved here that any waterfowl on that lake has had babies reach adulthood.  (Or in the case of Mike and Ike, young adulthood.)  Either the eggs never get a chance to hatch or the babies get wiped out by hail or predation.  So YAY for Mom and Dad Goose getting these two darlings this far.  Pretty soon, they'll stop acting like a family group and go their separate ways.  Mike and Ike will have to finish growing up on their own.  But I think they'll do fine.  The hardest part is over.

And pretty soon I'm going to have to let them go.  Once they stop hanging out as a foursome, I won't be able to tell them from the rest of the geese out there.  =o(

Former Friends and Old Lovers

Do you ever just snuggle up to Facebook, tickle it a little and see if it spits out the whereabouts of former friends and old lovers?  Okay, so maybe it's just me.  Every once in a while, I feel the need to skulk around the interwebs, looking for people I used to know.  I blame yesterday's excursion on Facebook itself.  I loaded my FB page only to see the face of an old boyfriend glaring at me from the sidebar under 'People you might know'.  Yeah, I knew him.  I was trying to repress that whole experience.  TYVM  :shudder:

Anyway, seeing him sitting there in my sidebar made me wonder who else is out there, perhaps skulking around the interwebs looking for me.  In minutes, I found five old boyfriends on FB (two of which I promptly blocked), and almost the entirety of my college gang.  Not bad.  The gal who used to be my best friend is still married to the guy she married the summer between my third and fourth years of college.  (I was maid of honor.)  One of my exs is now working at the same place with the guy who was his best friend back in 1990. And that guy I could never remember the real name of - cuz we mainly called him by his nickname back then?  Well, mystery solved. 

In my FB search, though, one person was curiously absent.  Of all my non-computer-junkie friends and exs from way back when, he was the one I was sure would have a page.  So I went to Google (the perfect place for stalking people without them knowing you're stalking them) and typed in his name.  Within seconds, it was perfectly apparent why he wasn't on Facebook.  He died in April of 2007 at the age of 55.  Massive heart attack.  Too bad because he was a nice guy - just not the right guy for me.  He was the first - that I know of - old boyfriend who'd passed on.  (Although that guy I was engaged to in 1989 had such a toxic personality I'd be surprised to learn he was still alive.  Liver failure or a drug overdose should've claimed him years ago.)

It's an interesting thing to go back in time this way.  It can also be a depressing thing.  To find that all the people who were my friends are still friends with each other...  Well, yeah.  That stung a bit.  Most of them went on to graduate while I quit school, got knocked up, and then got brain damage.  Over the years, I tried to reach out to them.  One short phone call here or there.  An interesting but truncated email exchange.  And that was it. 

My friend, Kathy, was the last one I talked to and that was ten years ago.  She's happily married (thankfully not to either of the dudes she dated when I knew her) and her little boy who survived cancer while we all sat around the hospital with her waiting for news is a healthy adult now.  Life is good for her.  Life is good for me.  Our good lives just no longer intersect.

It's an interesting thing to go back, but it also makes me realize something.  I can never go back.  Flipping through the interwebs this way is like reading a set of short stories I can no longer relate to.  Too bad something in me keeps wanting to try.

What about you?  Have you ever tried to find former friends and old lovers using the interwebs?  How'd that work out for you?  I've heard success stories - is yours one of them?

900 Bottles of Beer on the Wall

Would you believe 900 posts instead?  According to my dashboard, this is my 900th post (on this blog).  Pretty amazing, especially since I've never really stuck with anything this long except parenting, writing and my marriage.

I've been settled into this place since 3/19/09.  :looks around:  Not a bad place to be.  Everything's set up just like I like it.  The decor suits me.  It's comfortable.  Homey.

My old place over at the original Writing Spectacle (which started life as Musings about Writing in December of 2006) had started to pinch after 2+ years.  I've been here longer with no unsightly bulging or uncomfortable binding.

Anyway, I'd like to thank the 117 people in my posse over there, as well as all the people who wander by and never bother to 'friend' me or comment.  You're all part of the Spectacle.  I'd tell you all to have a beer in celebration, but it's early yet.  Have a cup of coffee instead.

And thanks for stopping by.  :HUGS:

I'm Not That Big a Person

Flipping through my blogroll this morning, I stumbled across a familiar name doing an interview on a wildly popular blog.  It was my old critique partner from several years back - you know, the one who just stopped returning my emails with no warning and no explanation.  She's got a book coming out.

I want to be happy for her.  I want to be thrilled she's getting interviews and that her life has turned around.  Really, I do.  But I'm not that big a person. Sure, I'm not small enough to want to see her crash and burn, but would it be too much to ask to discover she's stuck in the same place I am after all these years?  (Okay, maybe a little behind me... but since I'm pretty much nowhere, that would be hard.) 

You know me.  I'm the person who shouts good news from the rooftops for my friends.  Hell, I'll do it for acquaintances if I like them enough.  I've even done it for people I don't even know because I liked their writing.  But this?  Well, you know how the old saying goes 'Screw me once, shame on you.  Screw me twice, shame on me.'  And it's not like I haven't had other crit partners that I've parted ways with.  We mutually agreed to let it end, or it ended slowly over time.  Sometimes things just don't work out, and that's okay.

:shrug:

Anyway, I just thought I'd let y'all know.  I'm not that big a person. 

In other news - because I don't want this post to be all about negativity...

At 6:30am, my husband's cell phone rang.  It's a work phone, so he always picks it up by saying the company and then his name.  The caller says "Hey Steve, how's it goin'?'  (His name doesn't even rhyme with Steve.)  At which point, I can hear my poor husband trying to explain that he's not Steve.  The whole thing reminded me of that old Cheech and Chong bit.  "Dave's not here."

(The Cheech & Chong video was embedded here, but then it disappeared.  I don't know whether to blame Blogger or YouTube.)

And stay tuned. It looks like my next post will be #900. It might be tomorrow, if I have something worth talking about.

Coming to America

Back in the 1800s, August Meissner fought in the Franco-Prussian war (on the German side).  After he was injured, and seeing the direction his beloved homeland was headed, he struck out for America, leaving behind his wife and four young children.  That was 1895.  Later the same year, his wife, Ida gathered up the kids - Olga (4), Wilhelm (3), Emil (2), and Frieda (6 mos) - and loaded them onto a Norddeutscher Lloyd steamship (whose name on the manifest is illegible) headed for Baltimore.  It took them 12 days to arrive.

I can't imagine what poor Ida went through - the only adult traveling across the ocean with four small children.  It lends a whole new wrinkle to the phrase 'are we there yet?'  (Of course, 70 years later my own mother would travel from Idaho to Michigan with four small children - ages 5,4,2 and less than 1 - but that coincidence is a whole other story.)

Thanks to my great-grandfather's sound thinking and Great-Grandma Ida's fortitude, the Meissners made it to America - land of the free, home of the brave, a place where he could raise his family without fear of the war that ravaged his own homeland.  August and Ida had a dream of freedom, and despite the trials they had to go through to get here, they made a good life for a little family that would swell over the years as they added 5 more children.

I'm sure they missed Germany.  But they loved their new home.  They had to - after all, they instilled that love in Wilhelm, who passed his own love of the U.S.A. to his youngest child, Charles.  And Chuck?  Well, he passed it along to me.

Back L to R: August, Wilhelm, my Uncle Ken.
Front: my dad, Charles

This may not be the best place every single instant of every single day, but there's still no place I'd rather live.  And if, all those years ago, August had been a weaker man and thought 'well, Germany sucks, but moving halfway around the world is scary, so I'll stay'?  Well, I'm guessing Wilhelm would've been goose-stepping with the rest of the Nazis.  Or imprisoned for not wanting to fight.  Or dead. 

So, on this day, I'd like to say thank you to August and Ida Meissner.  You gave independence to a long line of little Meissners after you, and I am eternally grateful.

And thank you to our Founding Fathers for creating a country where a man could come to be free.

Happy Independence Day, Everyone!  I hope your day is filled with the joy and fun that only freedom can bring.  =o)

Totally Random Thoughts

I'm totally sick of the heat wave.  The forecast is showing 100+ temperatures through July 6th now.  Bastards.

Because of the above (or at least that's the story I'm sticking to), I'm sucking down frozen treats like crazy.  Pop Ice, ice cream sandwiches, ice cream, Dole Fruit & Juice bars...  These temperatures are totally ruining my diet.

I love coffee.  If it weren't so hot outside, I'd totally bathe in coffee.

We've been having a dragonfly invasion these past few days.  Yesterday at dusk the sky was filled with the buggers.  And as I stood outside smoking (no, not because I was on fire - even if it felt like it), they were everywhere.  I was rooting for the Western Kingbirds to eat a few, but dragonflies must taste totally nasty because the birds weren't interested.

Friday I bathed Max the Wonder Cat.  Neither of us was happy about it, but it had to be done.  It's awfully hard for a cat with only 5 teeth and a busted tongue to wash himself.  Of course, this necessity resulted in multiple puncture wounds for me.  I totally look like a pincushion.

Last I heard most of the Colorado wildfires fires were either totally out or partially contained.  So there's that.

If you type the word 'totally' enough, it starts to look weird.

What totally random thoughts do you have today?