Exciting weekend!

Rugrat & I went to the HP Midnight Magic party at the local Barnes & Noble. I made Rugrat take a nap after school, and then we went down there around 9 PM, after dinner & stuff. It was *packed*! I couldn't believe how great Rugrat was though...instead of being tired & whiny, he was just excited & kind of bouncing off the walls. Not too bad, though. Anyhoo, got my copy of HP&HBP, and got home around 12:30 AM. Started reading it right after putting Rugrat to bed, and managed a chapter & a half before I passed out.

Saturday morning, our lovely Ginger came over! She's here now, and Rugrat just adores her. He loves it when she gives him "kisses". But she definitely needs some work - she doesn't seem to know any commands (or else she doesn't much care because I am giving them). She hates going in her crate - I literally have to pull/shove her in there (and no, throwing treats in doesn't work, I tried that). She peed on the carpet in my bedroom about 15 minutes after the rescue worker left, but thankfully she hasn't had any accidents since then.

Saturday I spent a good amount of time reading, and stayed up late that night. Sunday morning I finished the book, and it was EXCELLENT. My favorite so far. Much more mature than any of the others in the series (which makes sense, since Harry is growing up), and heartbreaking at the end. Of course, I see why it had to happen (you know what scene I'm talking about if you've read it), but I was still crying my eyes out. Two more years (or so) until the final book!! Let's hope JKR can give us the satisfying finish...because Stephen King sure didn't with the Dark Tower series; I'm still kinda burned about that one.

Our growing family

Our family is about to grow! We're adopting a wonderful Staffordshire Terrier this weekend. Her name is Ginger, and she's just the sweetest thing ever. She doesn't bark, she doesn't make any noise at all...and she would just kiss you to death, if you gave her the chance. She loves to lay on her back and have you rub her belly. :-)

The only thing that worries me is that she is SO strong. I'm going to take her to an obedience class, more for MY benefit than hers. She's a great dog, but since I've never had one before, I need to learn how to handle her when walking & so on - right now she pretty much just drags me along. LOL

Anyway, Rugrat met her tonight and it was hilarious. The rescue woman brought Ginger to the park, and Rugrat was giggling madly pretty much the whole time. He wanted Ginger to kiss him, so he'd get close to her, but as soon as she'd move towards him to kiss him, Rugrat would run away. He's a bit skittish around dogs (so was I, for MANY years) but towards the end of the visit he got more comfortable with Ginger and let her kiss him a few times.

Anyway, wish us luck! I'm really excited and so happy to have her join our family. :-)

CFUNITED

Christ almighty. I need a week to recover from that!

The conference was great - tons of excellent sessions during the day, and plenty of hard drinking at night. I think I averaged 4 hours of sleep each night.

I met a bunch of great people though, some really old-skool CF'ers. Everyone was so nice and approachable. Of course, the open bar on Wednesday and Thursday might have helped in that regard. ;-)

Another thing I noticed was that there were a LOT more women at this conference. The last CF conference I went to was five years ago, and there were maybe half a dozen women at that one. Probably 10-15% of this conference was women, which I was rather impressed with. I don't know if it means that there are more female CF programmers than there used to be, or if they are just coming out of the woodwork now. Heh.

Anyway, I'll yap more about this later. I need to digest all the information, and catch up on sleep!

Septimus Heap: Magyk Book One

About halfway into this fun kid's-lit book. It's similar to the HP series, but more focused on adventure and less on mystery, I think. Anyway, cute book if your kids have "wizard fever" - it's something to keep them entertained while (impatiently) waiting for July 16!

iRobot is the BOMB!

I love my Roomba. Really, truly, I do. It is fantastic and one of the best purchases I've ever made (right up there with TiVo). But of course I wished for something that would also mop my floors - maybe a Roomba with a swiffer attachment or something. Now iRobot (who makes Roomba) is making Scooba, a vacuum/mop system that sucks up dirt, squirts cleaning solution on the floor, scrubs it with a vacuum-type brush, and then sucks up the dirty cleaning fluid & squeegees the floor dry. It will be on sale in time for the 2005 holiday season, and I can't wait!!! With about 1000 sf of hard flooring in my home, this is going to be the coolest thing ever!

Name of the Rose

Meh. The story might be great, but so far it's pretty hard going. Umberto just goes off on these tangents where he babbles incessantly about stuff that seems to have nothing at all to do with the story. Seriously, do I need to read three pages of description of the entrance to the freakin' church? No. Just get to the mystery. He seems to do OK with dialogue, there's just not much of it. He'd be better off with less rambling descriptive crap and more dialogue that actually propels the story along.

In other words, the author seriously needs a decent editor.

Yay, Series of Unfortunate Events!!

Book 12 is coming out on October 18, 2005! Still no idea what the title will be, but Rugrat will be glad to know that the audio book should be available at the library before we make our trip to Disneyland at Halloween this year!

Finished two books today

First: The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey. Interesting fictional story but with quite a bit of historical fact thrown in. Story centers around a policeman, who's stuck in the hospital after a nasty fall. While trying to keep from dying of boredom, he stumbles upon the mystery of Richard III, who supposedly killed his two young nephews in order to gain/keep the crown.
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Our story's protagonist hooks up with a researcher at the British Museum, and together they uncover all kinds of interesting factoids about Richard which make it clear to them that he did not, in fact, kill his nephews, and while he's been reviled for about four hundred years as a notorious murderer and callous blackguard, he was actually a very enlightened ruler and loving family man.


Second: Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi. An unusual non-fiction book written entirely in comic strip format, about the author's childhood growing up in Iran, and all the political and social turmoil she was living through. Very touching in places. Also, a super-quick read.

Next up: The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco.