Writer's Block: Pet central

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Personally I believe the animals are the actual guardians and not the other way 'round. I've been using the term "companion" ever since I was a member of PETA back in the day. That's one of the few things that stuck. Thankfully the crazy did not. Or did it? Anyway, I think "guardian" is a misleading term, not so much as "owner," but still misleading. But this is coming from a woman who has a Chihuahua companion that dresses up as a nun called "Sister Ubiquita of Our Lady of the Fuzzy Knuckles" and has Doubt.

Random Bits of Flurfff..f.f.f...

I've had my first bout of insomnia since beginning Zyprexa. Why? Because I'm out of the medication. I called this morning to get more samples and should be able to pick them up when I go see Rosa tomorrow afternoon. Right now, I'm so incredibly sleepy, I feel like I'm having an out-of-body experience, but I'm fighting the urge to sleep, hoping that I can take advantage of the inclination at the proper time tonight. In the meantime, I'm talking Aunt Tudi to death as I strive for consciousness.

Speaking of Aunt Tudi, she caught a cold during one of our sojourns out amongst the Great Unwashed last week. It took her a few days, but she eventually succeeded in passing it on to me. We both sound like Snuffleuppagus (sp??) and feel like bantha poodoo. I went through the worst of it last night, but Aunt Tudi has really been feeling crappy. To her, most colds are near death experiences because of her compromised immune system. I've seen what is a simple case of the sniffles to everyone around her turn into pneumonia for Aunt Tudi. Fortunately, that isn't happening this go 'round. I always find myself holding my breath when she catches a cold though. Serious business.

I got a good candid photograph of Aunt Tudi earlier today. I think I'm gonna make it a habit to post at least one picture of her a week, just for the hell of it. She's gonna be so pissed off at me, but what do I care? I keep telling her that she has her own little fan club on Teh Intarwebs, but she doesn't seem to really believe me. Personally, I think a weekly Tudi Interlude-y is just what the World Wide Web needs. Once I upload the picture, I'll be sure to post it here and on Facebook. I'm sure her shriek of horror and fury will be heard worldwide.

I'm still a little blocked in the writing department. Both The Blood Crown and The Augury of Gideon are sources of angst for me at the mo. I know what I want to say, I just can't seem to say it in the manner desired. My next ploy is to drop the attempt to write prose and go into "biog" mode. What I want to do is work up a complete character study of the Apostate, chronicling his early days in the Tarmian colleges and detailing the crimes against nature that eventually earned him expulsion from the Circles of the Tarmi. I've already decided that he invented spectacles, creating them by using the alchemical tools and wisdom he learned in the college of Khemeth. I want to make him unbelievably brilliant and surprisingly sensitive on a certain level. This aspect is certainly attributable to his anchor. Once I have this character study, I think my words will begin to flow more smoothly and I can continue my work. At least that's my hope at any rate.

The Mother Unit sent me a box of goodies. Books, greeting cards, and happy bits and bobs greeted me when I cut the parcel open. I found the enclosed note nestled in the styro popcorn and chortled with glee at how she signed it ~ M. Unit! I've created a monster! I never realised how fond she'd be of my name for her, but I'm thrilled she likes it. Years ago, she referred to me as "O Spawn of Mine," so we've been using "Mother Unit" and "Spawn" for what seems like ages now. It makes me smile and it apparently does her as well.

Smidgen has a new nickname. When our weather radio alarm went off this morning (the first of many alerts to inform us that Mother Nature was trying to kill us), it sounded like it was a mile away. Why? Because Smidgen had straddled it and draped her flabby body over it like a nesting bird, effectively muffling the sound of the alarm. Seeing her like this inspired me to utter the name "Blobula." Talk about extremes. She was so tiny as a kitten, it inspired her name of "Smidgen." Now she's big and blubbery, inspiring the nick of "Blobula." I thought Aunt Tudi was gonna bust a gut laughing at Smidge's new cognomen. It is kind of funny if I do say so myself.

What else, what else? I think that's it for now. The evening brings to us new House and a new Law & Order (Linus!!!!). Then, hopefully...sleep, blessed sleep.

Bright blessings to any and all who read this scattered bloglet.

Book Meme

Stolen from the lovely batchfile. I think I've done this before, but what the hey, eh?

Bold the ones you’ve read COMPLETELY, italicise the ones you’ve read part of, and no cheating. Watching the movie or the cartoon doesn’t count. Abridged versions don’t count either. BTW, according to the BBC if you’ve read 7 of these, you are above the average.

Total Completely Read: 25

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo