The Beekeeper's Apprentice

So I have recently started writing reviews on Goodreads for the books I read.  After showing my mom one of my reviews her comment was "That's a freaking book report".  This made me realize that I am writing these reviews a lot like a blog entry - so I've decided that I'm going to start posting my book reviews up on the blog here.  Here's the first one.


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(Image courtesy of Amazon.com)

The Beekeeper's Apprentice is the first book in Laurie R. King's Mary Russell detective series. I had never heard of this series before someone selected it for their book club choice, but when I mentioned it to my mom (an avid mystery reader) she gushed about how good it was. That set the expectations pretty high for me, which I am happy to say they delivered.

The basic premise: Fifteen year-old Mary Russell is sent to live with her wicked Aunt after a car accident orphans here. One day she encounters the now retired Sherlock Holmes, who after immediately noticing her intelligence, instinct, tenacity, and spunkiness, decides that he will train her in detecting. This book takes the reader through the first 4-5 years of their relationship, culminating in a big mystery that could destroy them. (Cue ominous music here)

So what is so great about this book you may ask...Well, to start with - King has done an awesome job writing Sherlock Holmes. It had to be hard because I think most people already have a preconceived notion of who Sherlock Holmes is - a pompous, smart-ass, eccentric who just always gets it right. But King has really figured out what makes Holmes tick and brings those characteristics out while also acknowledging that Holmes has probably evolved since the end of Sir Conan Doyle's stories. There is a vulnerability and (dare I say) sexiness to Holmes (in a Rupert Giles kind of way)that I didn't expect, but feels right.

Of course this book is really about Mary Russell, and I dare say that Russell easily falls into my favorite spunky heroines (along with Buffy Summers and Veronica Mars). She's very smart and intuitive, but she has her flaws as well (can we say she is just a wee bit stubborn - a must for spunky heroines). Most importantly, her relationship with Holmes is totally natural. The dialog (as well as non-speaking dialog) between them really sparkles. It's easy to see how their relationship evolves throughout the book. King has done an excellent job of creating this new character of Mary Russell and fitting her in the world of Sherlock Holmes alongside its other iconic characters including Watson, Mycroft, Mrs. Hudson, and even sinister Moriarty.

The other thing I really admired about this book was the structure. As I mentioned, this book covered several years. Because it covers so much time, there are several small mysteries or plots woven throughout the book, but in the end they all tie together. In many ways it reminded me (once again) of the show Veronica Mars. Everything has a place and you may not see how it all connects when you first see it, but you will in the end.

So to wrap this up - I very easily give this book 5 stars. More importantly I'm looking forward to reading the other books in this series.

Just a crack

So of the things I want to share with you that happened last year, the most significant thing that happened to me was that I broke my ankle.

 That picture you are looking at is the x-ray of my ankle. I think I took this picture at one of my final visits so it was mostly healed at that point, but you can see where it was.  It's that straight line toward the bottom tip of the right leg bone.

It was a really tiny crack, but for a tiny crack it hurt like hell.  But the most irritating thing about that wasn't the pain, but the knowledge that after 34 years I could no longer say I've never had a broken bone.

Altogether, it took about 6 weeks to heal wearing one of those huge black boots.  That was 6 weeks of just lumbering around everywhere, barely making it across crosswalks before the lights changed.  I was so glad when I finally got to stop wearing it.

The one thing that I didn't anticipate was that my ankle was going to continue to hurt after it healed.  In fact, it hurt more than when I broke it.  For a couple of weeks I just let it hurt, taking pain reliever when the pain got real bad, and in general just limped around.  Then one day I just thought to myself that maybe the ankle is just weak and maybe what I need to do is to strengthen it up.  I didn't really know how to do that other than using it, so I started to go walking.

Quick back track - just prior to breaking my ankle, I had kinda started jogging.  I say kinda because 1) it was a combination of walking and jogging and 2) my jogging was slower than some people's fast walking.   Obviously that had to stop when I broke my ankle.

Back to healed ankle - after about two weeks of walking, my ankle began to feel better.  I no longer had to limp, and as I continued my walks I found that I started going faster.  I eventually began to incorporate small intervals of jogging.  It felt really good.

I could write a lot more about jogging and how I'm doing with it now, but I will save that for other blog posts.  I will leave you with this picture though.

Photo courtesey of Potomac River Running

Taken by Dustin Whitlow at Lucky Leprechaun 5K on March 16, 2013

 

A new beginning

It's been a while since I last wrote here.  The last entries were about the DC earthquake and Hurricane Irene - events that occurred in the summer of 2011.  That's one and a half years ago, although it feels like a lifetime ago.

So why did I stop blogging?  To be honest - I don't exactly remember.  Reading back on my entries I have a couple of theories: 1) I was in a really dark place but really didn't want to share that really dark place  2) Not a lot of  "significant" events were happening and I felt like life was too boring to blog about.

Next question: Why am I starting again?  I'm not too clear on that other than I feel like I need to be putting sometime out there.  What that something is - I don't know.  This is going to be more of a creative exercise now rather than a therapeutic one.  This means that I'm not going to even try to rehash every little thing that happened in the past year.  That's too much.  But I will probably share what is still relevant as well as talk about other things.  I think I'll leave this entry on this note, but I promise to be back soon.

Go??

So here we are, post-Irene- or at least post-Irene here in DC.

 Now I know that Irene was a beyatch of a storm.  I spent a lot of Saturday watching the weather channel, yelling at the weather man to get out of the wave of the giant waves and praying that I wasn't going to witness someone bite it from a flying hunk of debris on national television.  I have a friend who lives near the beach in Conneticut and posted on facebook that they had to evacuate further inland.  I'm praying that they and their house comes through this unscathed - the pictures from Long Beach are  terrifying (did you see the lifeguard headquarters be swept away from its base with Al Roker looking on?).  And it's really sad that 10 people have died, although I'm kinda surprised that it's not more considering the frat boys who decided to go streaking the news when the hurricane hit VA Beach.

But from where I was hunkered down, Irene wasn't really more than a big rainstorm.

Saturday morning I helped my friend secure the furniture out back because last thing I wanted was a patio table going through my window.  I actually managed to use my bike lock to attach my take to the patio.  After that I went with her family to Second Watch for breakfast.  As we headed back home, the rain started.  At that point I glued myself to the weather channel and monitored Irene's progress up the coast.  Occassionally I would go out and check to see how conditions here changed, but it stayed pretty much the same - rain and little wind.  Around dinner time, I cooked up some pasta and tossed it with garlicm, olive oil, parmesan cheese, and fresh parsley that I had to go outside for a pick from one of my plants (my herbs were all moved to the patio to avoid the wind).

The electricity flickered on and off a couple of times during the day, but it never stayed off longer than a few seconds.  We did end up with a longer black out period later in the evening -around 11pm, but at that point I just switched off the light switches so that if the power came back on while I slept it would not wake me.  If anything exciting actually happened around here, I missed it - and I'm pretty sure that I am ok with it.  I will confess that I was a little confused when I was woken up by the kids running upstairs and I looked at my clock and it read 2:30 am because kids shouldn't really be running around at that hour- it took me a minute to figure out to look at the time on my iPod, which said that it was actually 7:30 am.

There doesn't appear to be any damage around the house, or around many of the houses in my neighborhood.  We were just really really lucky I guess.

Ready, Set...

If you haven't heard this week, we had an earthquake this week in DC.  Well, technically it was centered something like 80 miles away from DC, but we felt it.  Everybody has their own story about it.  Every where you go you hear somebody ask someone, "Where were you?"

Well, my story is that I was caught in the bathroom after lunch.  I could say that I was caught with my pants down, except I was wearing a skirt.  I wsa just about to flush the toilet when I noticed that all the water was vibrating, and then suddenly the toilet was vibrating, and then I was vibrating.  My first thought was "Oh god, we've been attacked - but hopefully it's just an earthquake."  My second thought was "Is it safe to flush the toilet" (It's the polite thing to do).  After the shaking stopped, I quickly rinsed my hands before heading out, where I was immediately commanded to evacuate.

Now here is the thing, I realized as I was following the masses down the emergency stairs and outside that 1) I didn't have  my glasses on me [they were sitting on my desk] 2) I didn't have my wallet or commuting ticket with me to help me get home [also sitting at my desk] 3) My cell phone was at home 4) I had left a heater going at my desk [I've been super cold somedays this summer and sometimes need to use it to warm up - Tuesday was one of those days] so if the earthquake didn't destroy my building, my heater would and finally five 5) I was wearing my two inch high heels to stand around in and not my comfy flat flip flops [which I commute inand were in my cubicle closet].  Thankfully we were allowed to go in the  building to retreive personal items after a cursory check of the building's structure, but the basic gist is that I felt woefully unprepared.

So just a few days later, we are waiting for Hurricane Irene to hit.  At first I was highly skeptical that it was going to hit us, but each day as it moves closer I become less and less convinced.  So today I went to target to stock up on goods.  I grabbed batteries and a head lamp, a radio that can use batteries, canned food and other things that don't really need heating (although even if the power goes out in my house, I could still cook because we have gas appliances.)  I also got some non-essential but nice to have things like diet coke, pop tarts, and gum.  I already have a case of water, but figure that if needed to I can boil water and then send it through the brita filter if need be (we have regular plumbing and not a well - so i think flowing water won't be too much of an issue - clean water maybe, but actually flowing no).

So that's my plan.  I'll let you know how it ends.

Taking a break (not talking about the blog)

Shortly after Chris died I joined Weight Watchers.  I think 1) I was doing it as tribute to him because our plan was to try to lose weight after the new year and 2) I was too freaked that I was going to die like him if I didn't do it.  And of course looking back, I realized that there was 3) I needed something to control.  Yes, Weight Watchers for me became my focal point and for awhile I was REALLY focused on my food and what I was putting in me and not really dealing with the emotions that were going on within me.  I mean, during that first year on the program - I was the wickedest food tracker ever.  While I think it may have been a good thing to do, I'm not sure if it was the right thing to do at that time because when the emotions finally hit, they hit hard and everything else went out the window.

Anyways - I have been on WW ever since and I have had periods of minor success, but for the most part I've been at the same weight.  And things have changed in that they cancelled the meetings I used to love so I had to find a new meeting on Saturday and then I got really sick and I started needing my Saturdays for sleep.  I'm currently doing the at work program, and while it is great having the support of my colleagues, I don't like my leader and frankly I feel like I've been here, done that.  I mean how many times can I hear how to change a 10 point hot dog into a 3 point hot dog. 

The other thing I've noticed is that all this talk about substituting one thing for another has really turned me off food.  I know that the program has been revamped to get us thinking about fresh food and stuff, but the more I did the program, the easier I found it to just eat the same thing day after day because I didn't have to recalculate points or I ate processed stuff that had the points already printed on them.   I was not enjoying what I ate and so I found that I was eating more. 

So I have decided to take a break from the dieting.  I'm not going to negatize my food.  If I want to have something with butter in it - I'm going to have the butter.  I'm going to drink whole milk because I feel fuller on whole milk.  And I am going to recover my love of food and cooking.  Of course to offset this I will need to increase my activity - but that's why I have my bike  (which also gets me closer to natural things like deer and bunnies - which is good for your soul in totally different ways). 

But I will let you know, that if you want to follow my food adventures - you can go to http://kitchenvixens.blogspot.com/ .  In addition to more regularly blogging here, I am going to do a better job at that blog too.  However, everything at that blog will be food related. 

Something New

Ok...So after a couple of people have reported to me that they haven't seen me blogging in a while, I have decided to post some tidbits for them.

My mom was in town because we were going to go on vacation.  She has a mini-van so usually if I need to do something that involves hauling stuff, I save it for when she is in town.  Anyways - so one thing that I have been moaning about is that my bike had been broken.  Now, the think about the bike is that this is the bike that my parents bought me when I was young.  In my mind I was 11, but my mom insists it was more like 8.  Either way - considering that I am now in my 30's, that bike is old.  When it was manufactured bikes  weren't made to remove tires easily or with shock absorbers or a bunch of other stuff.  Anyways, a couple of years ago Chris and I were talking about it and I said that I wanted to get it fixed up and start riding again and he mocked me saying that it was too old and I should just get a new one.  So I took that as a challenge, had my mom take me to the bike shop and got it fixed up.  Problem was that mom left before I could get it back, so Chris and I picked it up and to get it home we had to pop a tire off the bike - but like I said, this bike was not made to do that.  Chris promised to fix it but never got around to it.  I tried and got to ride it a few times, but always ended up with the tire falling off in the middle of the ride or the handle bars rotating in their socket.  It wasn't safe.  So no more riding.

Anyways - when my mom came up this trip she suggested that I buy a new bike.  I kinda hee'd and hawed, but after she told me she saw a sale at the local bike shop I agreed.  So now I have a new bike.

It's a red.  It has tires that are meant to come off if need to but stay in when riding, has tweed on its handle bars. I've named it Merry Cherry.  I've ridden it a couple of times and what I can say is 1) I am totally out of shape and 2) it is so much fun.  As the weather mellows out, I hope to take it out more.  I may even take it out tonight.  I'm hoping to build up my stamina so I can go further and further, and eventually hope to get a bike rack so I can take it to other places to ride.

The sad thing about getting a new bike is that I had to get rid of the old bike.  I kinda felt like I was betraying it as I dropped it off in the neighborhood trashbin - but it had a good life and I won't forget all the times I rode it as a kid and young adult.

thoughts

I'm thinking of ending this blog.  Whenever I try to start a post, I somehow begin to think about Chris and it goes into this really dark place.  While it's nice to get those kind of things off my chest - I'm a little worried that it holds me back.

So right now I am on a holding pattern and I will let you know what I decide to do.

Bargaining

Dear God,

I know that you have some sort of grand plan for everything, and I know that you love us and sometimes it is tough love,  but I'm asking you very nicely to quit picking on the mom's to be in my life right now (I know quite a few).  You have not been very kind to them this week and I don't really understand why.  It's just not right.  If you need to test someone - let it be someone like me - who doesn't really have anyone else depending on them.  You know I can take it.

Sometimes you really baffle me.

Emily

A Life Well Read

I've been off the blog for a little bit because my main computer kinda died in December and I am currently having a friend look at it.  Until then, I have borrowed an old lap top of another friend.  Have I ever mentioned that I'm a desktop kind of girl.  So I've been reluctant to blog off of the laptop because I usually have a hard time typing, but after about a month and a half, I think I have finally gotten the hang of it.

So a couple weeks ago I was talking with my mom about the book I was reading for my second book club, The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  While I was telling my mom about the book she kind of stopped me and told me that she wasn't interested.  When I asked her why she said, "I once read an article that said that a well-read person reads about 5,000 books in my life.  The older I get, the more I realized that I won't have that many more books to read in my life.  I want to make every book count - so I'm picky about books I want to read and that one doesn't seem like one I would want to read."

That really made me think about how much I read.  In order to read 5,000 books by the time I turn 50, I would have to read about 100 books a year every year.  I can tell you that I definitely don't read that many books a year.  So this year I am trying to read more books. 

My first effort to do that is I entered the What's In A Name 4 Book Challenge:

This is my first book challenge, so I think it's good that its a small one.  The way it works is that during the year, I must read one book in each of the following categories:

1. A book with a number in the title
2. A book with jewelry or a gem in the title
3. A book with a size in the title
4. A book with travel or movement in the title
5. A book with evil in the title
6. A book with a life stage in the title

This is my first book challenge, so I think it's good that its a small one.  I have already read one book - Wicked Appetite (Category 5) and I am in the middle of a book that will satisfy Category 3 (The Thin Man).

I've also challenged myself on Goodreads to read 28 books this year.