Adventure, horror, happy ending -- the hallmarks of young readers fiction, and Gregor the Overlander is a prime example of it.

This is the first book in The Underland Chronicles and starts the series off smartly. All the things making 11-year-old Gregor's life a sad one (including his father disappearing two years before) are introduced in the first chapter, which ends with his baby sister falling down a hole while he's babysitting her. He dives after her and the two somehow survive the fall but are confronted by a world completely different from home, with giant rats, spiders, bats, and cockroaches and a human kingdom that's never seen the sun. Gregor's only goal is to get himself and his sister back home, even if it means sacrificing the people of Underland, until he finds out that his father is in the Underland enslaved by the rat king. Prophecy is invoked, a quest is undertaken, and relationships are turned topsy turvy before the happy ending.

This is an excellent start to a series aimed squarely at the intermediate reader, say 4th grade up. Both boys and girls will like it because it has a good mix of adventure and relationships. No romance, at least not yet, but seeds are planted for perhaps a bit of adolescent romance in future books.

If you enjoy young reader books because of their relatively simple plots and straightforward relationships (and you're not squeamish about giant cockroaches!), you'll like Gregor the Overlander. I like young readers and young adult books because they're a fast afternoon read with little aftertaste, something I can read and forget when I just need an escape. If you haven't read even a young adult book in years, Gregor may come off a little too young for you. While I enjoyed Gregor, I probably won't go on to read the rest of the books in the series.

Rating (out of 5 stars):

You're probably thinking, 'Hey cab, what the hell happened with your 25 in 2009? We got one review!' Yeah, well. Um.

I did do better than just one book; in fact, I didn't do bad at all considering I'd only read about five books a year for the ten years before that. I read all seven books in Mike Shepherd's Kris Longknife series, the three books (so far) in Zahn's Frank Compton series, the first two of Sandra McDonald's Outback series, the first book in Rusch's Retrieval Artist series, Laura Reeve's two Ariane Kedros books, Elizabeth Marie Pope's The Sherwood Ring, Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life As We Knew It, Susan Matthews' Colony Fleet, and Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief. That makes 20 and I'm pretty sure I've forgotten a book or two that I passed onto my mother or sister because it was so mediocre.

Part of my slackerness was simple couch potato-ness -- too much good TV taking away from reading time. Another part was stress. A lot went on this year, especially this summer and early fall, that left me too stressed out to just sit and read. For a whole month in September and October I was too sick and/or recovering from gallbladder issues that I couldn't be bothered to go online and even magazines were too stressful to read. I watched a lot of game shows and kids shows but not so much grownup shows. Books were completely out of the question.

In fact, I barely started reading again until the week between Christmas and New Year's. My sleep schedule got thrown out of whack from going to bed early Christmas night, and from about 5am Monday to 7am Wednesday I read nearly nonstop. Seven books in two days! And I read another two books before the end of the year!

So despite the fact that I didn't do great with my 25 in 2009 goal, I'm going to up the ante and try 30 in 2010. 30, 20, 10, get it, huh? huh? Yeah, pretty lame, but I'm not sure if I could handle 50 since I'll hopefully be able to afford school again in the fall.

Wish me luck! The first review of 2010 follows.

After a weekend out of town, I only checked my email today because I had signed up for several Burn Notice contests (mid season finale Thursday night!!). I hardly ever check my spam -- Yahoo! did something and I never get more than one or two a day now -- but I thought I'd look to make sure I didn't get an automated response from one of the contests. Of 18 spam messages, I immediately moved 3 back to my inbox for unspamness, then for some reason I decided to check the messages that were more iffy, something I rarely do.

The 2nd possible spam message was from an unfamiliar name and had the subject CONGRATULATIONS! YOUR NAME WAS C. Usually that's enough to get me to delete it without even looking, but today I decided to read it. And the full title was CONGRATULATIONS! YOUR NAME WAS CHOSEN AS THE DETROIT NEWS/JULIE & JULIA CONTEST WINNER! You could've knocked me over with a straw! My winnings were a pass for 2 to an advance screening of Julie & Julia on 8/4 at 7pm, with a strolling reception beginning at 5:30, prize packs, and recipe cards.

But there was one problem -- it was already 8/4 at 6:10 pm. :O I had missed the strolling reception but I was damned if I was going to miss the movie! I called my youngest sister who had just sat down to dinner and probably wouldn't have made it anyway since she lives 45 minutes away. My oldest sister was just as far away. I switched gears and tweeted that if anyone wanted to see it, all they had to do was DM me and meet me at the theatre. No takers. Ah well, tant pis pour elles! Nothing was going to stop me! I made it there early enough to get my prize pack (two in fact since I had a two-person pass) but not early enough for the drawing for a Wusthof knife set. *sighs* What I wouldn't give...

Julie & Julia has so far benefited from both a well-known main character in Julia Child and a great marketing campaign. Nearly all the women I know -- and half the guys -- have been waiting impatiently for this movie, which comes to a theatre near you this Friday. The trailers have been entertaining, it has Amy Adams and Meryl Streep, and it's based on a bestselling book. As long as this movie didn't actively suck, the studio was assured of making good money off it.

And it doesn't suck. It's an appealing movie with some good laughs and a few heart tugs. It has the two awesome costars as well as two excellent actors playing their husbands (Stanley Tucci and Chris Messina) and a nice although underused performance by Mary Lynn Rajskub as Julie's best friend. The food was fabulous, literally another costar! As for the story, in most biopics you lose an obvious story arc with a beginning, middle, and end because life doesn't arc, it's episodic, but the year deadline of the Julie/Julia does its job to give the story some shape. My main criticism is that there's not enough drama. Everything flows along without us being drawn to the deepest depths or the highest heights. Whether that's the writing or the directing -- oh, wait, they're the same, doesn't matter. It's been a long time since Nora Ephron did Sleepless and she hasn't done anything of that caliber since. Julie & Julia does not buck that trend.

I still recommend it to fans of the stars and the blog/book and as a nice date movie or girls' night out movie. I will even watch it again on Tuesday when I go with my mom so if I change my mind about my review I'll let you know.

Oh, the prize pack! I was supposed to get a "limited edition eco-friendly shopping bag, an apron, book-light, and more!" Since I was so late I got the bag,



the apron,



and a bookmark.



I'm happy with that. There were also recipe cards available during the reception when we met the Detroit News food editor Kate Lawson but obviously I missed that. :( I probably would've been too shy to talk to Ms. Lawson but I would've really liked the recipe cards!

See, this is what happens when I plan on reading something and why I think I'll only get about 25 books in this year: I started reading War for the Oaks over a month ago and still am only a couple of chapters in. Every time I think about reading, I start thinking about all the other things I need to do like studying and cleaning and the reading falls by the wayside -- unless a book grabs me by the throat and forces me to read it, which is what The Servants did. Well, maybe not so graphically, but it was such a quick and interesting read that I didn't bother to stop until I was finished.

The Servants is a lovely little ghost story told from the point of view of an 11-year-old boy whose parents have gone through a divorce and remarriage over the past year. He's been forced to leave London for a cold lonely life in Brighton and fears that his mother's new husband has less than good intentions. His mother's health is failing for no reason whatsoever so this unlikable stepfather was the first big change and thus becomes the repository of all of Mark's fears. Mark's defiance leads to him visiting the old lady who lives in the basement apartment and what she shows him at first distracts him and then transports him to another world that is also falling apart before his eyes.

I read this the day I bought it over the course of about 2.5 hours. The horrors downstairs at first echo the anger upstairs but perhaps get a bit heavy-handed towards the end, then the story wraps up very quickly, bumping it from excellent to very good. Still, it was a very good read and something I will recommend to friends.

There's a great new show on MTV called The Girls of Hedsor Hall. It's a reality show so I didn't expect much -- but it's AWESOME!

They took a dozen girls from America, all of whom have had behavioral issues, and brought them to this stuffy Brit boarding school. The goal: Mak'em ladies! The one who survives the process more or less intact wins $100,000. (I missed the beginning of the premiere so I'm a little sketchy on all the details but it was easy to pick up most of it.)

At first I thought it was going to be Rock of Love trashy with all the screeching and hair-pulling and water-throwing and skimpy clothes (and it was AWESOME at that) but then they put all the girls in Hogwarts-style uniforms and told the girls to fix their hair properly.


Half of them came back in little girl pigtails, it was so silly. They also talked to a couple of them, pointing out their attitude flaws. One girl swore like a sailor and had been told earlier she'd have to stop but she hadn't put any kind of check on her mouth. They were very frownie at her. Another girl seemed to always be smirking and they felt she didn't have the right attitude. Then they presented each girl with a string of peals symbolizing their journey to ladyhood. If they get kicked off, they have to return the pearls.

That night they had a cocktail party with some aristrocratic young puppies and the girls did pretty well, behaving fairly nicely at first. Then staff left them to themselves in the middle of it! And one of the aristrocratic young puppies told one of the girls he'd rather look at his horse than her! (Or words to that effect). It was AWESOME! (Plus, two of the aristrocratic young puppies were a set of twins! And they were hawt!

But what elevates this show above Rock of Love trash is that I believe some of these girls really do want to change, they're not there solely for the money. (Which by the way is only $100,000 so not that much.) The requisite bully was told that all of the girls were scared of her, and she made an impassioned plea about wanting only to change for the better. That will be a long row for her.

You can tell that these are highly experienced teachers. I don't know how good they are but apparently they have a reputation for whipping girls into shape. We'll see. They also have Tara Conner, sort of the hostess person. She was a Miss USA then almost lost her crown because of her partying, so I guess she knows whereof she speaks.

Highly recommended. And since it's MTV they'll repeat the crap out of it so no excuses about missing tonight's premiere.

“We have at last glimpsed the surface of the fabled world, Titan, Saturn's largest moon and the greatest single expanse of unexplored territory remaining in the Solar System today... ”
Carolyn Porco

I'm not your typical con-goer. I'm shy enough that I'm uncomfortable at the parties but I'm not so shy that I can't talk to panelists before, during, and after a panel -- but I am shy enough that I can't talk to a panelist in the hall. I will smile at anyone who smiles at me and respond appropriately when spoken to but since I can't imagine that what I have to say is of much interest to anyone else I don't usually initiate any idle chatter.

But neither is the ConFusion series your typical con. It's far more literary than the other cons I've attended, without the TV or movie stars most other cons vie for; however, ConFusion's Author and Media Guests of Honor are rock stars for the weekend, even more so this year when both Cat Rambo (AGoH) and Cory Doctorow (MGoH) showed up.

Surprisingly (or not), so is the Science Guest of Honor. Last year, Kevin M. Dunn (Caveman Chemistry) was the Science GoH and I saw a great presentation on the chemistry and physics of textiles and soap. In the past I've attended panels where doctoral candidates have debunked FTL travel and engineers discussed rocket cars. This year the Science GoH was a husband-and-wife duo, Ralph D. Lorenz and Elizabeth (Zibi) Turtle, both planetary scientists working at the Johns Hopkins Univ Applied Physics Lab in Maryland.

Ralph and Zibi have been working on the Cassini Saturn project for years, Ralph on the Huygens probe that landed on the moon Titan, amongst other things, and Zibi on the imaging systems of Cassini itself. Zibi is also co-investigator for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, the LRO itself scheduled for lift-off this April. The LRO will be looking at the permanent shadows in the moon's craters using various devices and perhaps eventually a more detailed look at the crater Aristarchus (which apparently is the scene of many mysterious happenings) will be included in its mission list. Ralph is hoping Titan will be selected for the next big outer planet mission, although Europa has just as strong a case for it to be selected instead.

I've never been a big fan of solar system science. My favorite science fiction has always been based in the far future, with FTL travel and ansibles, with aliens and adventures and mysteries (aliens not required). To me, science fiction set in the solar system was old hat, based on old science, with nothing new to be told, although I would read a story with a near-Earth setting if exceptionally well written. Exploring the solar system was like riding a bicycle in your backyard instead of venturing out into the world. I never paid attention to announcements about the planets (except Pluto's sad deplanetization, of course) because planets weren't really astronomical: astronomy was about stars, not piddling little chunks of rock.

Boy, was I wrong! After attending Ralph's first presentation on Cassini-Huygens, I completely abandoned my plans to attend the more literary panels and concentrated on the science ones instead. Hour after hour, Ralph and Zibi gave us a great picture of what NASA is doing today, of the projects' missions, their failures, their successes, and their hopes. If we had only had the one SGoH, I'm sure he/she would've collapsed from exhaustion by Saturday afternoon. The only time they faltered was when they found themselves on a panel for which the con hadn't prepared them, but even then they (along with Jim Beyer from the Michigan Mars Society) had audience questions to keep them going.

I received way too much data to process it all in one weekend, but I learned one thing for sure: don't dismiss any extraterrestrial objects just because they're only a few hundred thousand or million kilometers away. The distance of a celestial body from earth doesn't need to be measured in light years for it to be fascinating. Now I can't wait to follow the next big project on twitter!

Seems like all of fandom is holding its breath waiting for the premiere of Battlestar Galactica this coming Friday. I understand why and even share in the anticipation, but it's not the only premiere this week, to me if to no one else.

Yes, Bones returns this Thursday! I know a lot of people were intensely disappointed in the first half of this season. Between Zack's semi-departure and the weird Angela-and-Hodgens dynamic going on, there was a lot of plot to whinge about. It didn't bother me that much, beyond being executed a bit clumsily at times. I loved the rotating grad students and I loved having more Doc Sweets to laugh and awwwww at.

The second half of the season promises new interns, new love interests, and eventually Bones and Booth in bed together -- which I for one am not looking forward to since this kind of thing is very seldom done well. Can't they just be friends?

(1) WonderCon and Comic-Con volunteer registration is now open.

(2) I don't wanna migrate my blog again! I like it here! *cries and kicks the stupid Russians* Maybe SixApart will buy us back? They certainly have enough money now ...

And of course today is the day I'm too busy to do anything about backing up/migrating until I get home from the movie tonight. :(

Well. I have to say right off that I'm not usually a big fan of the wacky comic fantasy. When the Xanth books first came out in 1977, I was addicted to them until I ran out of steam about book #5 or #6. I just could not bear to read any more Xanth books or any of the copycats that had appeared as if out of thin air. That doesn't stop me from remembering them fondly, I just can't open them again without shuddering. So, no Chicks in Chainmail, no Discworld, no MythStories. Glen Cook's Metal series was exempt because he treated his world like it was perfectly normal and the mysteries were the important thing.

Luckily for me, Christopher Moore also keeps the fantasy firmly grounded (or as grounded as it's possible when you're talking about demons) and the wackiness not too over the top. Practical Demonkeeping is mostly the story of a town and its invasion by one man and one small demon.

Travis O'Hearn 'accidentally' summons a demon during World War I. He then spends the next 80 years searching for the woman who can set him free as he is tortured by guilt every time he has to let the demon feed on a human. The alternative would be to lose control and watch helplessly as Catch destroys entire villages and towns. He has managed to tighten his control enough that he can limit Catch to meals of pimps and thieves, but that has not prevented him wandering from city to city, desperately seeking relief of this burden. The only good thing to come out of his travails is his immortality -- despite being born near the turn of the century, he still has the look of a man in his mid-20's.

Pine Cove is a small tourist trap on the California coast. Its English Tudor trappings are idiosyncratic against the overwhelmingly Hispanic background of California, which only ensures the town is that much more of a tourist draw. This makes the locals, of course, that much more cynical about their livelihoods.

There is a small circle of residents, however, who don't depend on the tourists directly and these make up much of Moore's cast: Augustus Brine owns the general store; H.P., the cafe; Mavis, the Head of the Slug Saloon; and Robert Masterson, a failed photo studio. None of these people believe there's any such thing as demons walking the earth nor are they related to Travis' quest in any way, but by the end of the book, they each have an important role to play in saving the town and, of course, the world.

There's a bit of romance, both for the ages and for the night. There's a bit of horror in the way Catch so easily chomps and gulps down his next meal. There are even magic mushrooms, a genie, and a giant owl.

Well written, well told, I would recommend this book to anyone over the age of, say, 16 who had a sense of humor.

Next up for 25 in 2009: War for the Oaks by Emma Bull.

I forgot I already gave Lord Tophet to GorramSister. I'm so lame. So instead of Lord Tophet, I'll start off the year with Christopher Moore's Practical Demonkeeping.

And I think I need my own little 25 in 2009 icon. Yay, something to do to avoid reading!

I'm going to do one of those things they're always talking about on LibraryThing but I don't know those people so I'm going to post about it here.

The goal is to read 25 books in the year 2009. Not that much, it's only a book every other week, except I've been through a very lazy period re reading books lately. Not buying books, of course -- I keep adding to the thousands already taking up way too much room here. I think I've read a dozen real books this past year, maybe more. I'm hoping I'll surprise myself and read a book a week, which will be easier considering...

... I'm going to cheat a little and include comics in TPB form. Not because I don't think I'll make 25 books but because I really need to read the comics I'm interested in and I haven't been doing that. It's hard to overcome decades of not caring. Also, I enjoy some juvenile and young adult novels and will be reading those, mostly the genre ones. A good writer is still a good writer even if s/he is writing to a different audience.

I'm not going to make a list of all the books I'll read. That just limits me too much and I end up not reading at all because I'm not in the mood for the books left on the list. I'll start off with Lord Tophet by frostokovich (Gregory Frost) because I need to get it to GorramSister to read too -- this is the sequel to Shadowbridge which we both liked (see review below).

This book will be published in April 2009, just in time for beach reading. It's an Early Reviewer book I received from LibraryThing.

Gladiatrix is the tale of Lysandra, a Spartan priestess and the sole survivor of a sunken ship, who is enslaved and forced to fight in the Roman arenas. Already trained in the fighting arts due to her warrior cult, she rises quickly in the ranks of the gladiatrix slaves and eventually finds love with a fellow gladiatrix. Her road, however, is a rocky one that involves death, rape, and the loss of her own faith.

This is a fairly quick read. It's no heaving bosom romance by any means, yet Lysandra's love does have a major impact on the plot. Lysandra herself is presented as an arrogant, self-centered young woman with just enough flaws to make her interesting. She's the kind of woman who will have more friends once she's gotten a few years -- and mistakes -- under her belt.

The fighting scenes are well rendered and even the training that dominates the first half of the book is interesting. Once Lysandra is set on her course, Whitfield carries the momentum well to the climax, which itself was somewhat of a surprise and even a little bit of a cheat, leaving the way open for a sequel. The epilogue just underscores that.

Overall, the book was pretty well written. At first there were so many adverbs and adjectives thrown about I thought for sure I was reading something a bit more romantic than action-oriented, but once Whitfield got away from the necessary exposition, things settled down. I was never taken out of the story by an obvious grammar misconstruction which these days is not as common as it should be.

I recommend it as a good beach read, something easily digested, a book you can put down for a while without losing too much of the story. I gave it 3 1/2 stars on LT which seems to be the consensus.

Most people I know have been mourning the loss of Stargate: Atlantis ever since its cancellation was announced earlier this year. Going against the grain, I'm not at all sad that SGA is leaving. I am sad that the quality has dropped off so much this past half-season; there were only a few episodes I particularly liked. Plus, they resorted to the dreaded "You're on trial by an alien court for crimes against #$% ^&*@ so let's show some clips!" show! Fer cryin' out loud.

We were discussing SGU elsewhere (Twitter?) and most people said it reminds them of Star Trek: Voyager which I don't really get. The only similarity I see is that they're stranded in a distant part of the galaxy. Voyager people had control of their ship, knew exactly where they were, and even though the odds of them getting home were not great, at least they could choose their own road. SGU is stuck on a mostly unfamiliar and empty alien ship with gods knows what kind of technology just waiting there to be activated and destroy the ship and everything on it; they have no control over the ship; and they can't use their gate (well, at least at the beginning and hopefully there are issues keeping them from using it periodically once they figure it out). To me it sounds like Rendezvous with Rama except for Rama showing up near Earth and our crew already being familiar with some of the ancient technology. I hope RwR is more the tack they take during the season instead of the standard Star Trek model of "let's meet new worlds and species and solve all their problems in 43 minutes!" I think we've seen every possible variation on that script over the past 40-odd years.

Although gods know Stargate writers have never been averse to stealing a plot idea or two.

I like the choice of Robert Carlyle for the leader. Every team of younger scientists needs more experienced leadership and/or support because most younger scientists don't realize you need both the portable low-power genetic sequencer and a couple of cases of TP. I just hope they let Carlyle be really Scottish instead of having some stupid generic Brit/US accent.

In honor of lilbird:

I need to upload Christmas userpics too. For those looking for Christmas images, most of the ones I'll be posting this year are free clips from Hellas Multimedia and Karen's Whimsy.

*faints with relief* Supposedly my department isn't one of the ones laying off some of the 500-1500 employees who are being canned. Still keeping one of my fingers crossed but I feel so much better today. And it reminds me that I need to get much stricter on my spending habits in case the economy takes a turn for even worse.

I was talking to my doctor about the stress, and she said it's just as bad at her house because her husband works at Chrysler. O.O I think I'd be hiding in the closet for the next 6 months if I worked there!

For the first time in my adult life, I'm afraid of losing my job.

Not that it would happen next week. Or even next month. Nobody in the hospital has said anything, but then top-down communication in our department is not good. They never tell us things that we need to do our job, so why would they tell us something bad? Fortunately, our hospital is doctor-administered so as long as we keep the doctors happy we're probably safe. Hopefully.

Every year for the last five years they've been cutting budget fat and pretty soon they're going to hit bone. The worse the economy in SE Michigan gets, the greater the chance that the next cut will be slicing away people. Like me. And because we rely heavily on the auto industry for patients, we start losing money when people get laid off and can no longer afford elective procedures. We're the second best hospital in SE Michigan but we're also one of the most expensive, so as patients pay more attention to healthcare costs rather than quality, they end up at other hospitals.

I got a little more uneasy today. I've been hoping to switch shifts for a while but there's nothing available that I like better than the one I'm on. I'm finally desperate enough to apply for a transfer to an 8-hour midz shift, and what does my supervisor tell me? All shift changes are on hold. This is probably just a holiday season thing because she has so many people taking days off that one little shift change could ruin her whole schedule. But that's not the first thing that popped into my mind. I was thinking more along the lines of wholesale lay-offs and shift adjustments. Stupid pessimistic brain! Now I can't stop worrying. I really really hope I'm wrong.

The newest Dollhouse preview is out, supposedly the ... 2nd? I think? It was reported that this showed during the first game of the world series but nobody could find any evidence. I've also heard rumors that this isn't exactly the same as that one, that it's been tweaked yet again. Who knows...

I can't tell you how nice it is to read a Moon book again. TiD was published way back in 2004 so I should've read it long ago but that was the period when I had to stop reading books altogether because I was getting zero sleep at night -- there were so many good books out around then and I have no reading discipline. Naturally once I put off reading it I could never find it again, so I've been picking up the other books in the series but unable to read them until I found this one again. *sighs* You'd think dementia was kicking in but I've always been like this.

I've been cataloguing my books in LibraryThing and ran across both Marque and Reprisal and Engaging the Enemy this past week. Can't remember if I got around to buying Command Decision yet, but I think so. Seeing them reminded me that I've never read TiD and I've recently gotten back into reading again so I went scrounging through my bookshelves for it. I found it right around 4:00 a.m. I should have told myself 'Great! I'll start it tomorrow when I have more time!' but of course I didn't. Five and a half hours later I finally closed it, went to the bathroom (I'd been crossing my legs for a couple of hours), and crawled to bed.

Kylara Vatta is a romantic at heart, not a lovey-dovey insipid little lady but an adventurer who is willing to work hard and face danger and possible death to fight for what's right. That's why she turned her back on working for the family business, an interstellar transport company, and signed up for the academy instead. Unfortunately, she could not control her urges to champion the weak and helpless and when a fellow student maliciously takes advantage of her known quixotic tendencies she is kicked out of the academy just months from graduating near the top of her class.

While nobody at home scolds her for what happened, she chafes under their assumption that she was too soft-hearted to be a military officer. In order to get her away from the media circus, she is made the captain of an old tub of a transport with a crotchety drive and ordered to take the ship to the scrapyard and return. By then her actions would be old news.

Upon arriving at Belinta, a small agricultural colony, she discovers that a rival corporation had reneged on their contract to deliver a shipment of agricultural machinery from Sabine that is desperately needed on Belinta. She decides to take a chance and delay her trip to the scrapyard to take on this contract herself, even though she will have to buy the machinery on spec.

This seems eminently safe and doable -- until the drive picks the next jump to degrade badly enough that they are reluctant to test it with another jump; until Sabine turns out to be in the midst of an insystem crisis; until an unknown party chooses that time to destroy the ansibles, the communication lifelines between star systems. Rebuffed by the Sabines, injured by merc soldiers, forced to watch friends and crewmembers die, Ky learns what she is made of but also must decide where her adventurer's heart and mind belong.

I like Ky. She's not perfect, but it's a believable imperfection and she is likable enough that you forgive her errors. Moon takes the time to show Ky at her greenest which you don't usually see -- heroes and heroines tend to have all the green scrubbed out of them by the time they are introduced to the reader. This is also the period when Ky is at her numbest from the scandal so the two aspects together slow down the first third of the novel a bit, but I think it's worth it in order to see the difference when Ky wakes up at Belinta, looks around, and realizes there is life out there, and danger, and adventure, and profit.

... be so cranky for so long? Practically since we got back from California I've been nearly nonstop crankish. I don't think it's medical. I have switched my blood pressure medication but I don't see how that would affect my mood.

Part of it may be that I'm still putting off workouts. Everyday I come up with a new excuse, a new and valid excuse, but if I'd start working out I'd have the energy to do all the things I say I'm going to do instead of working out. And then I don't do them so it just snowballs.

Hopefully the cooler weather will help. I like running in the cold, even the freezing cold, as long as the sidewalks are clear of snow and ice. I think getting back on an 8-hour shift would help too because I could choose when to go running. Sometimes it's a lot easier to run after work, but I can't do it at 4 in the morning. On a mids shift, 9 o'clock in the morning would be a great time to go running.

Another thing is that in November a local T'ai Chi studio starts a new basic class on Tuesday evenings. This would work either on this shift or a mids shift if I switch. I probably wouldn't be able to do both T'ai Chi and school, though, so another dilemma pops up which will make me cranky again. Of course.

ETA: Turns out it most likely was the medication. The doctor took me off metoprolol in November because it wasn't working that well and my mood has steadily improved. I now feel back to normal. Funny, huh?