I Blame It On Twilight

In 2007 I had a personal goal of reading 52 books - one a week. I made that goal and actually exceeded it by a few. (How I miss the day of junior high and high school when I could read 2 or 3 books a week. But that was before full-time jobs. And fanfic. And I watched very little tv then as well.)

In 2008 I went back to school to finish my bachelors degree, so I made a goal of reading 26 books - one every other week. I fell short by three and I'm telling you, it's all Twilight's fault. I saw the book on a coworker's desk and she offered to loan it to me. I like vampire stories, so I borrowed it, read it - it was neither good nor bad and I made polite noises when I returned it to her - so she ended up loaning me all the others. Each book is, I think, double the size of the first and, while the story itself is ok (except for that teenage, Romeo & Juliet, "if I'm not with you I'll diiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeee note that does run through all of them) and the writing does improve perceptibly with each one, the author needs an editor. Desperately. Each novel could be a fraction of the size it is now and still tell the story effectively - maybe moreso. Anyway, the last one is something like 10,000 pages long (ok, so I exaggerate a bit) and even though I was speed-reading it, skimming huge chunks - and I'm a fast reader anyway - it couldn't keep my interest and took me over a month to read. I should've been reading other books at the same time but I wasn't, so for over a month I didn't finish reading a single book. So I'm three short of my goal and it is all Twilight's fault!

My goal this year, by the way, is 39, at least for now. I finish school in June, so I split the difference between 26 and 52. I think 39 is right. Anyway, I'm contemplating grad school and if I do that, then I'll be revising that goal, but for now it stands at 39.

Meat Included

There's an apartment complex I pass every day on the way to and from work. My middle sister lived there for a little while in 1985 and, while they're small and old, at one point I would've considered living there. (The neighborhood's changed, though, and they've had trouble with gangs and burglary and other things you don't want at home.)

Anyway, this complex has a sign by the road, trying to attract tenants. It reads "Heat Included" - but when it's creased a bit by the wind, which happens frequently, it looks like it reads "Meat Included." That used to crack me up until one day I got to thinking - you know, if a leasing agent told me that, upon signing a lease, they'd supply a chest freezer filled with a pig or half a cow, I'd be signing on the dotted line. Meat might not be such a bad incentive! (Of course in this single-digit cold, heat's a good deal too.)

R.I.P. Ricardo Montalban

Khan, Mr. Roarke, and "fine Corinthian leather". How can we not miss him?

I wanted to embed a video from YouTube but it seems to have disappeared. It was of Ricardo Montalban and Esther Williams in Neptune's Daughter, singing "Baby It's Cold Outside" - fitting for a day like today.

Look around YouTube for more video of Ricardo Montalban in old movies - what a charmer!