what's up with saturday...

Randomness in no particular order.

1. This morning I woke up at 7am because I had signed up to participate in a volunteer opportunity sponsored at the uni where I work. I figured I could spare a few hours on a Saturday. I was with the group going to Habitat for Humanity. It was pretty cool. We ripped all of the siding off a house so that it can be redone properly next week (apparently the people who put it on did it all wrong). Gosh, my arms are out of shape. I tore into that stuff, yanking off slats, pulling out nails and stuff, hammering in the nails that were broken. By the end, my arms were shaky. lol. Still, it was good to be outdoors and to be doing something physical. I'm glad I went. And I think I will contact HFH directly and see about volunteering from time to time in the future.

2. An entry at zeek's blog made me think of JR Ward's upcoming books. So on a whim, I thought I'd go over to paperbackswap.com and see what the average wait time would be for Lover Enshrined. ha! Guess how many people have it on their wish list? Just guess!

477!

F'real!

3. I love my new crockpot. I got it for Xmas from my parents (basically, I told them that I wanted one, so that's what I got) and I've only used it a handful of times so far. I made some chili last week which lasted me for a long time. Yesterday morning we had a breakfast party at work and I made this cool ham, hashbrowns, egg, cheese casserole thingy that I threw together at night, put the pot to cook all night and woke up and it was done. How cool is that? Now I'm making split pea soup. I'm on a roll!


4. I watched 3 episodes of Doctor Who last night and they were all freaking FANTASTIC! (I wish I could say that word with the same panache of Chris Eccleston.) First there was this amazing two parter Human Nature/Family of Blood in which we get to see the Doctor as someone other than the Doctor. What a great range of emotions and Tennant did a bang-up job. Bravo! I actually shed a tear at the end when he has to make the difficult choice to return to his lonely traveling lifestyle in order to save the world. Then there was Blink, which was creepy and terrifying and not the episode you should watch just before turning out the lights and going to bed. Think of stone angel statues that attack in the blink of an eye but freeze into place if you look at them. Just don't look away and whatever you do...don't blink! (the power of suggestion...my eyes were so irritated from crying in the previous episode I could do nothing BUT blink. lol)

5. Just finished reading With Caution by JL Langley and plan to write more about it for Man Love Monday. Stay tuned...

Here but not here

Wow. I really have slowed down my blogging. I think that's due to a couple of things. One, I'm back in MBA classes which take up my Tuesday and Thursday evenings (class) and chunks of my weekend (homework). Two, my job is hitting the busiest season of our year (college admissions) and by the time I get home, I don't feel like typing or thinking or anything. Three, I'm in a bit of a reading funk. Part of that getting home and being tired thing. Four, I've spent the last two weeks (has it really been that long) on a mega-glom of Doctor Who shows. Fantasy is so much better than reality. le sigh.

Anyways, I did read one new book this past weekend, The Spymaster's Lady by Joanna Bourne. Top notch book; loved it. Gonna try to review it properly soon. And I bought another JL Langley book last night, With Caution. I plan to settle down with that one over the weekend so as to have some new manlove to talk about on monday. lisabea, are we on for MLM this week?

Oh yeah, and I still need to complete my ballot for the AAR poll. I'm gonna do it. Every night I say that I will sit down and finish it. But then I get distracted. Thing is, I don't really read books the year they're published. Or at least not all that many. If you skim this blog, you'll find far more reviews of old books that I picked up at the library than any hot, current ones. What can I say? I'm cheap and the library's free. Besides, there's a lot of books out there and many of them, I've not yet read. *g* But yeah, I will complete my ballot. Because I vote! (and there's another thing that's been taking up my attention lately...politics. But I won't go into that here.)

As for Doctor Who...after starting in the middle of the series, I went back and watched season 1 in which Christopher Eccleston played the Doctor. I have to say, I wasn't expecting to like him as much as Tennant but I grew really attached to him. He's got an almost feral vibe. Very lean and rangy, dark and unpredictable. Funny too. I got all choked up at the end of the season when he 'changed'. *sniff* And then of course I get used to Tennant again (but still miss Chris) and get all comfy with him and Rose flying all over the universe battling Daleks and other evil whatnots. And then Rose has to leave. *sob* So here I am in the middle of season 3. Still hanging in there. Missing old characters but always up for a bang-up story in which the Doctor meets new challenges and manages to save the world yet again.

If it's Monday, it must be...

...yes, that's right, Manlove! Back by popular demand. A day to talk about all things related to the men lovin' the men. Of course, you will have already checked out the fabulous blog of dear lisabea for hijinks and hot man pics. And if you haven't checked it out, then hurry up and do so!

For myself, I have a bit of a confession to make. I was all set to do some pondering and deep thinking and had planned to write about my introduction to m/m love in books. And then I got side-tracked. Basically, my whole day got eaten up by obsessively watching Season 1 of Doctor Who. Did you know that Netflix does this thing where you can stream video over the web and watch movies instead of waiting for them to come through the mail? Yeah. Pretty cool stuff! Um yeah, so that's why this entry will be short and probably a lot less intelligent-sounding than first intended.

But let's go back to the beginning. I have been trying to think back and recall the very first time that I read a book that included some m/m action. I don't want to count the bits from some of Robin Schone's books (I'm vaguely remembering something from The Lady's Tutor?) where m/m is a kind of shorthand for 'evol and depraved' cuz honestly, where's the love? No, I think the first time I ever stumbled across manlove would have to be when I picked up the last installment in Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty erotic novels. Holey wow! For a nice little Christian missionary girl like me, this was an eye-opening experience. (*cue music to "A Whole New World"*)

From there I moved on to some good ol' Emma Holly. First up was Menage which I got because I thought it sounded kinda spicy. And it was. Only the spiciest bits were not so much the threesomes, they were the intense and passionate exchanges between Joe and Sean. That whole ending where Joe comes back all alpha male and "marries" Kate? Rubbish. I don't buy it for a moment. Those guys have to be together. Whether or not they add Kate to the mix is immaterial. Point being, it was the first time that I was emotionally rooting for the other guy (something like cheering the notorious "other woman" perhaps?) to get the guy.

More Emma Holly followed. Cooking Up a Storm featured a hot Quebecois chef who was very, shall we say, comfortable with his sexuality? And another Holly book, Fairyville, again was all about the connection between the two men that made the book worth reading. All that crap about Magnus and his magical wee wasn't nearly as compelling as Bryan and Alex. (Although I will say that the best scene in the book, for my money, is when Magnus goes down on Bryan...hothothot!)

Which leads me to my first REAL m/m romance novel. Yes, you knew I had to mention it. My Fair Captain by the incomparable JL Langley. I already blogged about this one, so I won't rehash it here. But since then, I'm both eager to jump into more m/m books and also terrified to do so for fear that none of them will live up to my very high expectations after Langley. Now that I've typed that, the solution occurs to me that I should probably start by...um...reading more Langley? righto, sula, you're a real bright one.

Anyways, to finish this rather rambling entry, I figured I'd take a page from my dear buddy lisabea and offer a copy of My Fair Captain to one lucky reader out there. Yeah, ok, perhaps it's just a scheme to get you to comment on my blog, but consider...you could win one of the best reads of 2007! So join in the fun of the day and share your thoughts, recommendations, cheers, jeers, or whatever.

Happy Manlove Monday!

Doctor...Who?

Well I'm now officially addicted to another TV series. Ever since I realized belatedly that I've had BBC America all this time on my cable line-up (I thought it had gone away when we cancelled the extra set of channels but stupidly never bothered to check), I have been revelling in the ability to satiate my Richard Armitage fetish by DVRing Robin Hood. Now, thanks to a hot tip from Carrie Lofty, I've added another show to my 'record all episodes' DVR list. Thanks a lot, Carrie...now I'll be sure to waste hours and hours in front of the tube! lol.

Do I dare to even try give a summary as to what the show's about? I've only watched five episodes so far - the last three of season 2 and the first two installments of season 3. I don't even have all of the characters or plot lines remotely straight. There's this quirky guy who doesn't have a name other than "The Doctor" who travels around space and time in a police box and sorts out problems dealing with various alien forces and manifestations. In the episodes I saw, he was accompanied by a side-kick or assistant named Rose. Now it appears that she won't be in the next season and another gal is being set up as the side-kick. I'm sure that fans have their opinions as to the relative merits of this development. Me, I don't have an opinion. Other than that what I saw made me want to go back and see how the relationship between the Doctor and Rose developed because it was quite obvious in the season finale that there was a something very real and deep between them.

What I quite liked about what I've seen so far is that this show is not strictly sci-fi. It also has strong elements of drama, comedy, adventure, and even little hints of romance. And while I found myself laughing at the almost Peter-Pan like whimsy of the Doctor on than one occasion, the "bad guys" and their nefarious intentions are very real and quite dark. Who would have thought that a tin can that looks like a squared-off version of R2-D2 could actually be scary. When it's gliding around screeching "Exterminate!" in maniacal-robot tones and then shooting people into dust bits, it starts looking a lot less cute. And then there was this super-creepy part in which the humans are being conquered by these machine-like beings and having their brains sucked out and installed into metal bodies. eep!

What makes it all watchable is the human element. The Doctor is a multi-faceted character who is alteratively really funny, incredibly smart, deadly serious, and deeply intuitive. You get the impression that beneath his cheerful and often flippant mannerisisms he is an old soul. From what little I saw of Rose, she impressed me as having her head screwed on straight and not just being a TSTL female side-kick installed for the purpose of making the male lead look stronger and smarter. She's in touch with her emotions, but she's also strong and resourceful. I quite liked her and look forward to seeing the previous seasons.

Now I'm off to netflix to see if I can't find the aforementioned previous episodes. Yay for more entertainment to fill my already busy schedule.