Things I do not like

1. Locking myself out of my house. Twice. In one week.
2. Interviewing day cares for Cooper. Can anything possibly be good enough for your kid? That doesn't already have a waiting list?
3. Checking citations.

That is all. At least for now.

One of these things is not like the others

I'm a reviewer for Fantasy Literature which is a great gig, because I get books for free, before they are published, and get to tell people what I think about them.

So, I'm posting links to a few of my recent reviews. Most of these were really good, one of them was not. You might be surprised to find out which.

A Darkness Forged in Fire by Chris Evans.

The Enchantment Emporium by Tanya Huff.

The Seven Towers by Patricia Wrede

Wings of Wrath by C.S. Friedman.

You can also come prognosticate about the future of fantasy over on our boards.

Just your standard Monday morning after a national holiday

Wake up. Play snooze tag. For an hour.

Get up. Clean up living room and vaccuum popcorn off of couch so I can sit down to eat breakfast. Find all the missing stringing beads. Again. Including one under the fridge.

Eat breakfast.

Clean out fridge in an attempt to make grocery list. Clean up broken glass off kitchen floor from overly enthusiastic cleaning out of fridge.

Make grocery list.

Get me and Cooper in the car. Drive to the library. Watch man in front of me drive through a red light right in front of a cop. Cooper thinks the lights and sirens are cool.

Get to the library. Clean blood off Cooper's knee from temper tantrum in the parking lot. Pick up three shiny new books. Drop off donations for Friends of Library booksale.

Go grocery shopping. Very quickly figure out how to do Heimlich maneuver on a child while he still sitting in the grocery cart. Say a little prayer of thanksgiving when his face turns back to a normal color.

Buy myself a Suzy Q for getting through the morning with a minimum of bloodshed.

Come home, get all the groceries in the house and put them away.

Sit down with my Suzy Q on the couch and take a bite.

I miss trans-fats.

Signed, sealed, delivered

I signed my new contract this morning. I've started working on syllabi and I have to say that I love creating a syllabus. I love choosing texts, and designing assignments. There is so much potential before the semester starts.

Other than that, it's been basic summer puttering around kind of stuff going on here. Cooper and I did swim lessons for two weeks. His favorite part was jumping off the side of the pool. It kept me on my toes because he would just launch himself off the side and trust that I would catch him.

We planted a bunch of new flowers on Saturday. Friday we had a devastating storm blow through. We got a couple inches of water in an hour, and the wind and hail shredded some of my plants and knocked leaves off the trees. Not to mention we ended up with water in the basement. So that was a fun way to spend the weekend. It was fun picking out new flowers though. I basically went through the nursery and picked out anything pink or purple that caught my eye.

Work on the dissertation is coming, slowly but surely. But slowly.

I got the job, I got the job, I got the job.

Yeah, really not much to add after that title, but I got the job. I finally got the call last night that the board had approved my hire. So offer made and accepted, contract on its way for signatures and stuff like that. I am still in the "happy yay" phase, and am holding off on entering the "oh my heck, I have a real job and need to find day care and grown up clothes" phase as long as possible. We'll see how long it takes me to get there.

On other interesting news, it turns out that when I am in a waiting period of my life, I crochet. In the last month, between the interview and the phone call, I finished the blanket I started for Cooper a year and a half ago, and also have made a purse for my niece, a turtle for the same niece, a bracelet for me which I ended up not liking but Cooper thinks is a great toy so all is well, a market bag for my MIL, a lace bookmark for my mom, another purse (this time for me), a coaster for my new computer desk so I don't leave rings in the wood, an octopus for Cooper, and a lap blanket for reading on the couch. I also have started another market bag, two scarves and a third purse. I finished up the binding on the lap blanket about 15 minutes before the phone call with the job offer came in, so I'm glad that's all finished, so now that the uncertainty about my fall position is resolved, I can get to work.

So, yay!

My current pet peeve

The phrase "Latina woman." It's redundant. You can't be a Latina man. And I know, Sotomayor used it herself, but I'm not excusing her, either. That phrase is like nails on a chalkboard to me.

Dissertation update

I just heard back from my committee chair. My first three chapters have been accepted. No further substantive revisions needed. Wahooooooooo!