I Love My Little Terror

As I'm sure you are aware, I have a new man in my life. Yes, he is four-legged and covered in fur, and as much as I would love to say he looks like Taylor Lautner from Twilight, he is NOT a werewolf. However, he is a terror...

He has found his voice and likes to use it loudly and at odd times. He will bark at his reflection in my glass entertainment center. In fact, yesterday he figured out how to slide the door open and gladly informed me of this by barking directly into my DVD player.

He has also found that the springy door-stoppers are GREAT fun. He spent many an hour yesterday hitting one and making it go "boinnnng". Well, he did that up until the put where it broke off the wall and he decided to make it a chew toy...which I promptly took away from him. He then headed to another one to see what it would do. Since I would make a loud noise whenever he approached it, he lost interest and hopefully will not find it again.

He is also the destroyer of many toys. I'm okay with him destroying his stuffed toys with squeakers. I've come to realize that this will happen and have vowed not to acquire anymore of that ilk for him. I have found a brand that is supposedly nearly indestructable, which we are going with from now on (they just aren't very cuddly, but I guess that is the sacrifice he will have to make). However, he also decided that his dog bed was just a giant stuffed toy as well. He had many an hour of great fun attacking the bed, flipping the bed, rolling around on the bed, chewing the handles off the bed, but then he would also pee on the bed, which caused the bed to get washed. This last time while washing, a little tear the terror had made grew and all the stuffing started coming out; guess where the bed is now. So, being the good mommy that I am, I bought him a new bed, sherpa lined, microsuede, cozy. Eight minutes. It took him eight bleeping minutes to chew a hole in his new bed. I am now on the hunt for a bed made out of ballistic material, again will have to forego coziness for indestructability.

Last thing the little terror did yesterday was to come up to me in the bedroom, look right at me while I'm texting Sara, and start to pee not three feet from me. I of course yell horrible things at him, which makes him stopp peeing and run away from me, after some chasing around I finally get him out the door to finish his business. Sadly, the whole time I'm trying to reason with him and am saying things like "You WILL NOT pee in my house!!" or "Wdo you think you are doing? You know better than to pee IN MY HOUSE!" or "If you do this one more time, I swear you are going to be an outdoor dog!!" Which of course, I know he does not make sense out of other than "wow, she has a loud bark".

But then, I cannot stay mad at him. He looks so pitiful when he wants to come back inside and it is cold out there and he is just sitting there with his tail wrapped around him. And then, when he knows it is safe to approach me, he curls up next to me and puts his head in my lap and sleeps (and my mom will get a kick out of this...he drools on my lap). And, I feel really awful today because he woke up about 2:00 this morning and tried really hard to get outside to throw up. And I couldn't get mad at him when he threw up 3 feet from the door.

My poor terror....

Ears....

As you have probably seen from pictures of my baby, Leo, he has some pretty big ears. I think I could probably get Radio Free Europe tuned in on those. Since it has gotten cold out, I notice that every time he comes in, those ears are ice cold and I feel guilty that he has to go outside...but, he ain't doing his "business" in my house.
So, last night I'm curled up asleep and he is curled up next to me with our heads kind of together (yes, he sleeps with me). All of a sudden, he goes and shakes his head and I get whipped in the face by those ears...
Not only can I get radio stations in on those ears, but they could also be deadly weapons.

2011 - Book 27 - Blameless

As I'm sure you have gathered, I've been doing a lot of reading lately. As soon as I finished Changeless, I dove directly into Blameless, the third in the Parasol Protectorate series.

Quitting her husband's house and moving back in with her horrible family, Lady Maccon becomes the scandal of the London season.
Queen Victoria dismisses her from the Shadow Council, and the only person who can explain anything, Lord Akeldama, unexpectedly leaves town. To top it all off, Alexia is attached by homicidal mechanical ladybugs, indicating, as only ladybugs can, the fact that all of London's vampires are now very much interested in seeing Alexia quite thoroughly dead.
While Lord Maccon elects to get progressively more inebriated and Professor Lyall desperately tries to hold the Woolsey werewolf pack together, Alexia flees England for Italy in search of the mysterious Templars. Only they know enough about the preternatural to explain to her increasingly inconvenient condition, but they may be worse than the vampires -- and they're armed with pesto.

Again, great mind-candy kind of book. Not very challenging and yet very entertaining. Lots of steampunk visuals and hand-to-parasol combat. At the heart of this series is a love story and a girl's search for who she really is. There are two more in this series and I'm about to begin the fourth book....sadly, the fifth book will not be available until March of 2012, but I already have it on my wishlist!!

Oh, and now I'm hungry for pesto....

2011 Book 26 - Changeless

I just finished another trip to DC and while on the trip, I read Changeless, the second book in the Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger. Here is a quick description of the book:

Alexia Tarabotti, the Lady Woolsey, awakens in the wee hours of the mid-afternoon to find her husband, who should be decently asleep like any normal werewolf, yelling at the top of his lungs. Then he disappears - leaving her to deal with a regiment of supernatural soldiers encamped on her doorstep, a plethora of exorcised ghosts, and an angry Queen Victoria.
But Alexia is armed with her trusty parasol, the latest in fashion, and an arsenal of biting civility. Even when her investigations take her to Scotland, the backwater of ugly waistcoats, she is prepared: upending werewolf pack dynamics as only the soulless can.
She might even find time to track down her wayward husband, if she feels like it.

This is a very fanciful series that I am completely addicted to. It is all very far-fetched and proper English. The characters are fun and the intrigue is well, intriguing. This series is a very fast read, which may also be why I am enjoying them as much as I am. I would give this book, and the series as a whole, the better part of two thumbs up. I would recommend them to only those people that I know who might have an interest in steampunk literature and who don't have a need to be overly challenged by their books.

2011 Book 25 - Mockingjay

I actually finished this book a couple of weeks ago on a bus trip to Houston and back with my mom. And, I know that I've been a really bad blogger, again, but to be honest, work just has me flumoxed and not really in the mood to write about anything. However, I will document my reading. Mockingjay, the final book the Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy was great. Oh wait, let me give you the bookjacket first:

Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire, has survived, even though her home has been destroyed. Gale has escaped. Katniss’s family is safe. Peeta has been captured by the Capitol. District 13 really does exist. There are rebels. There are new leaders. A revolution is unfolding.
It is by design that Katniss was rescued from the arena in the cruel and haunting Quarter Quell, and it is by design that she has long been part of the revolution without knowing it. District 13 has come out of the shadows and is plotting to overthrow the Capitol. Everyone, it seems, has had a hand in the carefully laid plans – except Katniss. The success of the rebellion hinges on Katniss’s willingness to be a pawn, to accept responsibility for countless lives, and to change the course of the future of Panem. To do this, she must put aside her feelings of anger and distrust. She must become the rebels Mockingjay – no matter what the personal cost.

As I was saying, this final book was really great, as were all of the books in this series. All three of these books were highly entertaining and really hard to put down. As stated at after I finished Catching Fire, I am now very much looking forward to how these are going to be portrayed on film. I also have a hard time looking at these books as 'young adult' as they are extremely violent. I give all of these books two thumbs up and a 'heck yeah, you should read them!' In fact, my niece, whose copies I was borrowing, has requested that they be returned as she wants to read them again.