from mindyklasky: Attn DC-area cat-lovers!

A friend emailed this morning to tell me about two cats who are desperately in need of a home. Their owner has left the country and sent them directly to the shelter, having made no attempt to find homes for them. Their sometime cat-sitter created a blog to help find the kit-kats a home:

http://savepumpkinandspice.wordpress.com/


suri here: they look adorable -- fluffy red ringtails (think Boomer, only a little smaller, and longhair). I'd like to solidly kick the owner for just dumping them at the shelter -- you don't DO that -- but finding a home for them would be even better...

Various writes, sundry reads...

Work progresses. With everything else that's going on [oy, don't ask], I'm only 'requiring' 500 words a day. So far I'm averaging about 900. That'll do, especially since a lot of the descriptions are "fill in once I've seen it" and "need to test this against X wine." Yes, really. Weaving some traditional High Fantasy Tropes around quirkier bits, and trying to determine exactly how much is too much detail for people getting et....

Also finding time to do some reading. For reasons that are politic, I only blog about the stuff I enjoyed.

Lynn Flewelling's Shadows Return. (Disclaimer: I'm a fangirl. Worse, I'm a fangirl with direct phone access so I can call her up and bug her about when the next book is coming out. *heee*) After finally acquiring a copy, I sat down just to read a little bit during a break. Ended up losing the entire damn day to finish it. Is it a perfect book? Nope -- you can tell it's been a while for author and readers alike, returning to this world, and there were some bits I thought weren't needed and some bits I would have liked to see more done... but it still sucked me in and reminded me why I love these characters, and feel for them and came to the end of the book thinking "more please, ma'am, now?" (it's a cliffhanger, but a natural cliffhanger, and so long as we do get the next book on schedule I won't cry foul)

John Scalzi's Old Man's War. I now know why it sat on my TBR shelf for so long -- a very good book in a style that I admire more than I enjoy. Heinlein-style space opera without the sexism but with the self-aware stylistic twitches that made me keep thinking "this isn't military, this is Hollywood with accurate technical details." because, really, that level of snark to a superior officer, no matter how brave or useful they may think you are? Will not be rewarded. Also, the main character felt like a bit of a Marty-Stu [brave, strong, smart, loyal, loving, witty, even though he wasn't as handsome as the rest of his cohort, he was still a Damn Good Looking Man with no known flaws, etc etc.] and I wanted to kick him to see if any actual flaws or hang-ups fell out. And yet, I kept reading all the way to the end. Final decision: was satisfied, but in no rush to read the next one.

Still working my way through Decantations by Frank Prial and Tasting Pleasure by Jancis Robinson. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in the wine industry, rather than 'just' wine iteself (one of my favorite bits from Decantations: "A typical wine writer was once described as someone with a typewriter who was looking for his name in print, a free lunch, and a way to write off his wine cellar. It's a dated view. Wine writers now use computers.")


And now, off to the post awful, and maybe a walk around the neighborhood to masquerade as actual exercise...