Happy Halloween

I hope you have had a Happy Halloween this year. Its been a very busy season for me, and I’m glad that its been this way. its wreaked havoc with my reading, but there will be other reading opportunities in the future that I’ll have.

Here’s a pumpkin that I carved this year for Halloween.

May your treats be sweet and your tricks that you play be witty and fun!

Challenge results, sort of

Well, I’m going to have to call the RIP II challenge finished, I guess. I’m not going to finish Dracula in time. I have been reading lots of short stories, though. I managed just a Little Bit of Peril by finishing Harry Potter. I thought I had asked the local library to pull some books for me, but when I checked my online patron record, there was nothing listed in the request area and I had never been contacted by the branch that was supposed to have the books. So I have gone and requested Dan Simmons The Terror and Jonathan Carroll’s Land of Laughs from the library again. I’m going to read them, just not in the challenge time frame.

I also appreciate Carl introducing me to the artwork of Lisa Snellings-Clark and Poppets! Just in time for Halloween, I have managed to home a poppet. Its an Orange poppet, so it may be in danger here, given the Alabama/Auburn rivalry. I think I need to make a home for a Red Poppet and a Black Poppet now.

For the Monty Python lady fans

Here’s a link to one of my favorite sites, ThinkGeek. They are offering a ladies shirt with a Monty Python quote. Its late, but during the month of October, they will donate $1.00 of the proceeds from the sales of this shirt to the Susan G Komen Foundation for Breast Cancer Research.

Added a Link to the Breast Cancer Site

I got around to adding a link to the Breast Cancer Site today. Since October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, it is only fitting that I go ahead on and have that on my blog. Please take the time and click on the link. You can help fund mammograms for women who can’t afford to get one. It doesn’t cost you anything but a bit of time and bandwidth. There are a number of charity causes that you can help fund in addition to the Breast Cancer Site, so go and give some folks a hand today.

RIP II Short Stories

I’ve managed to read a few short stories for the RIP II challenge. I forgot I have an anthology collection of short stories called Fantastic Worlds, Myths, Tales, and Stories edited by Eric S. Rabkin. It was initially published in 1979. It has stories by genre, including horror and ghost stories.

The three horror stories are The Sandman by E.T.A Hoffmann, The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe, and The Picture in the House by H.P. Lovecraft. The three ghost stories are The Hand by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, The Moonlit Road by Ambrose Bierce and Lost Hearts by M. R. James. I think this may have been a textbook for a course on short stories at one time. The publisher is Oxford University Press and the range of genres represented in the book is pretty wide.

I read all 3 horror stories and 2 of the 3 ghost stories. For the horror stories, Hoffman’s The Sandman starts as a story told in letters. It tells of the troubles of a young man who is convinced all his troubles are caused by the Sandman. His father has been killed. He is currently at the University, but when he becomes besotted with a professor’s daughter, he becomes unhinged and obsessed. It goes down hill from there. I’m reminded of some ideas used in steampunk, but the story was written in 1816, so it isn’t retro, its the original deal.

Poe’s The Black Cat would be banned by PETA these days, with good reason. Poor wife, poor kitty, poor Pluto. Our faithless narrator is in the grip of the demon drink, and everyone around him pays for it. The story is moody in the extreme, and much in the mindset of the challenge.

I haven’t read much, if any Lovecraft before, so I was looking forward to seeing what his writing was like. The story is set in his Miskatonic Valley, but without the appearance of the elder beings. Our narrator has been out doing genealogical research in the valley, and is caught by a nasty storm and must seek shelter in a very old house. He meets the owner of the house and sees some of his books. This isn’t particularly scary in itself, but the descriptions of the house and the owner, not to mention the book the owner asks the narrator to read are very creepy. I think I need to try a few more stories of his.

I read Le Fanu’s The Hand, and it seemed like it was a standard ghost story. Nothing really out of the ordinary, but it was written in 1861, so I think I may be a much more jaded reader of ghost stories than his contemporary audience.

Bierce’s The Moonlit Road is a very familiar story, and is a much more tragic one. The ghost of the murder victim appears by moonlight on the road to her husband and son. Husband cannot handle it and runs. Since he was the killer, he is haunted by her.

Short stories are a nice way to be able to read when life is too full. I need to read more stories out of this anthology now.

RIP II challenge update

I may have to change my books for this, or change to reading short stories. Life is not letting me read the way I want to right now. I’ve started re-reading Dracula and it is good. I haven’t read it in at least 10 years, so most of the details are hazy in my memory. Most of my reading time is now right before bed. And I’m burning the candle at both ends, it seems.

I’ve asked the library to reserve some books for me, Jonathan Carrol’s Land of Laughs, Dan Simmons’s the Terror, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, but they’ll get here probably about the time the challenge ends.

So I’ve been looking for some short story collections and will see what I can come up with. I have several stories by Edgar Allen Poe. He’s always good for a creepy story.

Went out tonight

to a beer tasting at the local science museum, the McWane Center. It was called the Science of Beer and had a number of micro-brews available to taste, along with hors d’oeuvres. Now DH is a beer snob. He lived in Germany for several years, so he does have an excuse. They even had a number of beers that I liked. I’m not fan of your traditional american lager. I never developed a taste for it. I prefer ciders or wines to beer. The malt and hops are just not my thing. But I tried several fruit lambics that were really nice. And one specialty beer made with strawberries and balsamic vinegar that was very good.

The folks who run the store for home brewers, AlaBrew, were there with several displays of equipment and flavorings for your own brews. DH brews his own beer, and occasionally makes me a batch of wine or cider. I think I’ve finally finished the last batch of raspberry zinfandel that he made 4 or 5 years ago. The wines he makes are good. The folks who drink his beer think its good too. I’m not the person to ask about that. It was a nice night, and the response was much more than the folks at the McWane Center expected.

Other odd things

I watch TV occasionally. I don’t watch much network tv, its usually pretty bad. I have no wish to watch the night time soaps or “dramas.” They usually have no scripts that are compelling to me.

Last week a co worker told me about a show that was coming on tv that looked like it would be something that I would be interested in. ABC has a new show called Pushing Daisies. I checked it out last week and DH & I were amused. Its got a stylized look and a smart sense of humor. The premise of the show is that the main character Ned can bring back someone or something to life from the dead. But there’s a couple of gotchas to this little talent. If the returned to life person or critter stays alive more than a minute, some one or thing else has to die. And the main character cannot touch that person or thing again, otherwise they/it are dead again permanently.

We watched the second episode tonight. It is a very funny but dark show. We both enjoyed it. There are some really entertaining bits to it, but an appreciation of the absurd is probably best for this show.

Oh my, a good business trip

After my grandmother’s funeral, I continued on to my originally scheduled business trip. It was training and competition for my side business. At the end of the competitions, the organizers announced the top three competitors in each category. I didn’t make the top three in my category. I really didn’t expect to do so. I’m very in-experienced with those particular competitions, so I was competing for me and my own experience. Besides, I knew that if I didn’t compete, I wouldn’t push myself to do the best that I could do. Its just the way I am, and I know it. So I made sure that even though it scared the mess out of me, I went ahead on and signed up to compete.

The organizers just sent out an email with the results of the competitions and the rankings of all the competitors in each category. I just about fell out of my chair when I opened up the document and found that I finished 4th in my category! OMGWTFPONIES! Yay! To say that I’m beside myself is a fairly accurate statement. Woohoo!