Blue Funk

Posted on 07/13/2007 by chick

I may or may not have fallen into a trap, but I definitely fell into a blue funk. I didn’t cheer up until I thought of a plan that would allow me to avoid 16 hours of solo long-distance driving but still do all of the activities I have planned for the upcoming week. Thank God for airplanes. I hope that spending a week away from home, walking on the beach and doing nothing more taxing than looking for fossilized sharks’ teeth, will dispel any last vestiges of depression. I won’t have Internet access, so I’m cheating time again and arranging for posts to magically appear while I’m gone. During the week after, I’ll regale you with stories of all the fun things that I did on my vacation. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll even have some pictures to post!

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One Hundred

Posted on 07/12/2007 by chick

This is Chick’s hundredth post.

She has written to you (the world) exactly 100 times. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t listening. The point is that she wrote.

But don’t be fooled—almost anyone who loves reading enough to write about it (like Chick does) probably dreams of being a successful author herself someday. Book-review posts and journal entries and even cute little rhymes are all well and good, but they may be distractions from a greater goal. If she ever questions her lack of writing accomplishments, those posts will provide a very good self-defense, because she has, in fact, written something, if not what she really wanted to write.

Has she fallen into a trap?

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The Egypt Game

Posted on 07/11/2007 by chick

I finished The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder last night.

Grade: B+

I bet I would have loved The Egypt Game if I had read it as a child. Coming from a suburb, I enjoyed stories set in more urban areas, which seemed so much more exciting and dangerous. I was also fascinated by Egyptology. This book would have been perfect for me.

Reading it from a strictly adult perspective, I often felt like I could see the cogs of the author’s brain turning, places where she made deliberate choices instead of letting the characters develop naturally. Though it felt contrived in a lot of ways (the balanced racial mix of the characters, for example), it had a solid plot and a satisfactory ending, which is more than I can say for a lot of books. Children who are just looking for a fun story will find it in The Egypt Game.

My copy of the book was already tanned with age and slightly warped when I started to read it. By the time I finished, it was starting to split. I am going to give it away and hope that it stays together long enough to earn a special place in some young reader’s library.

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Harry Potter Strikes Back

Posted on 07/11/2007 by chick

We went to see the new Harry Potter movie (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) earlier tonight. I really liked it. I think it’s the best so far. The acting has really improved, and I was particularly impressed by the performances of Radcliffe (Harry) and Grint (Ron).

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Busy, Busy Bees

Posted on 07/10/2007 by chick

Everywhere I looked for bees,
Under trees,
Behind my knees.
I only found a tiny few.
How they flew!
But none I knew.
Where be my busy honeybees?

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Where Be the Bees?

Posted on 07/09/2007 by chick

I carefully navigated the clovered lawn this afternoon, recalling keenly the sharp sting of the honeybee and knowing that open-toed shoes were an open invitation to pain. The effort was wasted. Not a single bee did I see. Perhaps they were all napping after a long day’s busy work.

It ain’t summer until the bees buzz. I will look for them tomorrow earlier in the day.

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Unusual Reading

Posted on 07/08/2007 by chick

I just finished The Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan. It’s unusual for me to read nonfiction. It’s even more unusual for me to read autobiographical nonfiction. For me to read autobiographical nonfiction by an author whose fiction I’ve never read is unheard of. Yet that’s what I did.

Grade: A

The Opposite of Fate is an interesting look into the head of a modern American writer. Sure, she gets extra points just for singing in a band with Stephen King, but it was really the stories about her mother that won me over. I’m going to add The Joy Luck Club to the list of books that I need to read someday.

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Thought for Today

Posted on 07/08/2007 by chick

I don’t think it’s wise to place your self-esteem in the hands of strangers.—Amy Tan

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Just in Case

Posted on 07/07/2007 by chick

I was reading Amy Tan’s The Opposite of Fate in the bedroom. It said,

If the roof crashes on your head, no need to cry over this bad luck. You can sue anybody, make the landlord fix it.

I looked up at the ceiling, listened for a moment to the bang and crash as my fiance (also the landlord) continued to do God knows what to the attic, right over my head. And I thought to myself that perhaps I should move to the other room. Just in case.

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Separation Anxiety

Posted on 07/07/2007 by chick

We went to the movie theater Wednesday night to see “Transformers.” It was sold out, so we bought tickets for the next showing. We should have taken a hint from the earlier sold-out show, but we thought we had time to run to the store for a beverage. Uh-uh. Twenty minutes before show time, the upper part of the theater was already filled except for three seats, all in different rows. It was either sit up front or sit apart. We would do almost anything to avoid sitting up front, craning our necks backward in a feeble attempt to find a comfortable viewing position. Hey, we’re grownups and we can handle sitting by ourselves, right?

Right! But when you sit apart, you can’t get all lovey-dovey when something in the movie reminds you of your relationship. It figures that “Transformers” would have two biggies in it. No, not the alien robots and the bombs, but rather the chihuahua and the Hoover Dam.

What? You don’t think a chihuahua is big? It is when it has the same name as our lovable cat. And the Hoover Dam IS big. We have the pictures to prove it, tons of dam pictures, which we took during our first vacation as a couple. I would show them to you except that I have no idea where they are.

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