Wisdom Lost and Found

These past few weeks have been extremely exhausting.  Mr. Soup started having some pain in his mouth and being a man, chose to ignore it.  Until it caused him to stop being able to sleep and the mornings would wake with tears in his eyes.  Of course, the major pain didn’t develop until a Friday late afternoon.  After everything closed.  It was a long weekend after that.

But the sun shined on us!  We were able to get him in to a dentist on Monday.  We arrived, Baby Soup in tow, to get him checked out.  It’s never a good sign when the dentist says “Oh, Wow.” upon viewing an x-ray.  Turns out, Mr. Soup’s single wisdom tooth that had been exposed for years (sideways of course) was almost completely decayed.  Because of the location to the next tooth and where the gum was aligned, he didn’t have a chance.  The enamel was still super strong, which is why it had only started affecting him.

Thankfully, we were able to get a referral and get in the day after to have it removed.  We juggled baby watch around, I took the day off of work and we were ready to go!

Just in time too, as the pain was getting to the point where he was feeling sick, even with Vicodin.  Everyone at Abe Dental was so nice and helpful.  Dr. Abe was an adorable little Asian woman that I wanted to just put into my pocket.  After they got the pre-tests done, it was time to wait.

This was the first time I had ever been on this side of a procedure.  Waiting at the location was not my strong suit, for sure.  Thankfully, I had lunch next door at the cafe with a bunch of new friends, reading a great book.

Less than an hour later, I got the call.  Everything went perfect.  Almost a week later and he’s still recovering, but it’s getting better!  Thank goodness.

Books!

Reading is a hobby that I will manage to fit into my life any way I can.  I’ll grab a half hour before bed almost every night, no matter how tired I am.  Reading at work on lunch is a common occurrence (and also why I hide in a room away from everyone so people don’t ask me the dreaded question “What are you reading?”  Seriously…I hate that question except from a select few that I know are already readers.  But if you are just trying to make conversation?  Don’t.  For serious.  You don’t care.  Also, I’m not going to want/be able to answer the inevitable follow up question of “What’s it about?”.  Just leave me alone to my book.  Don’t worry, I will recommend the heck out of anything I love already!

In fact, if you’ve read my blog at all, you’ll find a few posts about books and authors and book signings….

I love when I have too many books to read.  Well, love and hate.

Right now, on my side table, I have Mockingjay**, which is the third in The Hunger Games** trilogy.  It’s about halfway done.

Then, right underneath it is The Way of Kings** by Brandon Sanderson.  Also about halfway done.

Underneath THAT is Knife of Dreams** and The Gathering Storm** the most recent books in the Wheel of Time series.  I’m hoping to read this and the subsequent books to get refreshed before November 2nd when Towers of Midnight** comes out.  (BTW….it has a trailer.  Which, really….AWESOME!  I’m loving this trend of book trailers that look they are for movies.)

At work, I’m reading Outlander (again) on my iPhone via the Kindle app because I can.  Also, thanks to the lovely Diana Gabaldon’s blog, I discovered that the ebook is free on Amazon**.  So if you are at ALL interested in the historical fiction with a twist of time travel and romance and action and, oh, just go get it.  For seriously!

**Please note, I am not an Amazon affiliate.  Just wanted to give you links to the books to take a look at if you are at all interested and maybe read a few pages.  These are my own opinions and blah di blahblahblahzzzzzzzzz…….

The Hunger Games

Last week, I got a package in the mail.  It was a box full of books from my dear sweet friend Heather.  She doesn’t update her blog nearly enough, but that’s just because she is crazy busy with her full time job and also her garter business.  I still love her though and we stay in touch with email and Google Chat.

So, opening the package was almost like Christmas!  She’d been meaning to send me these books for ages and they finally arrived.  Life had to settle down a bit…but last night, I finally was able to read the first one.  The Hunger Games.

I’m sure anyone that has been around has probably already read it.  Compared to the other books I’ve been reading (Brandon Sanderson’s 1,000+ page The Way of Kings for example) 375 pages with larger font type was nothing.  In fact, it’s a good thing it was shorter because I stayed up to finish it.  Almost to 1am late in fact.  To someone that normally goes to sleep at 8, 1 is WAY late.  But I could not put it down.

It felt like the first time I read Twilight, but with better writing.  Now, don’t get me wrong!  I enjoyed the Twilight Saga.  Not necessarily for the great writing style…but for the fun read it is.  It’s on my list of “Candy” books along with Harry Potter.  And now, The Hunger Games.

The first thing that came to mind as I started the book was “Wow!  This reminds me of The Lottery (a short story I read in High School which can actually be read here)”   Then, further into the book, I thought “Wow…the title of the book is NOT a metaphor”.  So often, authors get creative with their book titles (which, I totally enjoy btw) but this one was NOT allegorical.

I won’t go into the plot or anything….but I was hooked.  Can’t wait to read the other two books and will definitely need to add these to my collection.

I just need to start earlier in the day I think.

Book Signing

First off, let me share some very very happy news!  My cousin’s family has grown by two more!  Thank you for all your prayers and good wishes for their Haitian children making it home.

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Back in September, I was lucky enough to help out with a book signing at my local Powell’s.  It was so much fun, getting to meet Brandon Sanderson and other Wheel of Time fans.

I finally have permission to share images as well!  Woo!

So here we go, just a few!

The man himself, Brandon Sanderson on the left.  With a local Portland artist, Greg Manchess on the right.  He is a cover artist for Tor, the publishing company for The Wheel of Time.  He is getting to do a project in the future for The Wheel of Time.  I cannot wait to see it!

There were also people with items inspired from the books:

A gentleman with the Sword and Dragon pin of Asha’man.

A Maiden of the Spear complete with Old Tongue tattoo.

These two gentlemen got permission to print out Brandon Sanderson’s Warbreaker novel and bind it for a book making class.  The one on the right is even leather-bound.

After autographing it, Mr. Sanderson was quoted as saying, laughingly “Probably the only time a book of mine will be bound in leather”

These are hand painted Christmas Tree ornaments with Allomantic metal symbols from the Mistborn novels.  Mr. Sanderson was VERY excited to see them.

So there are just a few images from a day way back in September.  It was so much fun, I hope I can do it again!

Wordful Wednesday – RAFO

So last week, I was honored to help out with a book signing for The Gathering Storm, the newest Wheel of Time book.  The creator was Robert Jordan, after he died in 2007, Brandon Sanderson was hired to complete the series.  The Wheel of Time is an epic fantasy series consisting of 12 books, with 2 more to come in the next two years to finish it up.  I highly recommend it if you are into that kind of thing.

Brandon Sanderson is author of many amazing books, including the Mistborn trilogy and a series of Young Adult novels called Alcatrez that are basically improv writing.  Seriously, if you have a 9-13 year old who enjoys snarky comments and stories about librarians that rule the world, or have ever BEEN a 9-13 year old, you need to check them out.  For serious.

As payment for helping out with the book signing, we got to have dinner with Mr. Sanderson, paid for by the publisher.  During the dinner, we got to ply him with tons of questions about anything we wanted.  Only a few were about the Wheel of Time series, but I did get to get in my question.  It’s convoluted and confusing to anyone that hasn’t read them, but it was a question I had asked the previous author, Robert Jordan, years ago when I had met him.  The answer that he had given was this:

“Young lady, you need to have an affair with a man, woman or German Shepherd.  Either way, you need to get a life.”

Upon asking this question to Mr. Sanderson, he interrupted me with “That was you?!”  Apparently the story has been going around the fan world for years.

I also received a coveted “R.A.F.O.” card from him.  R.A.F.O. stands for “Read and Find Out” which was an extremely common answer for any question that might be exposed in the future books.

It was a good day.

And yes, my name is Kathy.  Anyone that has commented will not be surprised.  :p