Zoe’s about to wake up any second, but I haven’t posted for a while- so, some quick notes.

Comic-Con is this weekend and we’re not there; there just wasn’t a way to pull it off around Zoe’s schedule this year. Hopefully next year. Instead of being there, I’ve been volunteering doing name extraction from old Census records for Family Search (which is totally awesome and I’ll write more about it later) and making a treasure box for Zoe to hold all of the Mardi Gras coin treasure that her daddy got her.

Harry Potter 7: We got it the day it came out and I started it at 7:30 and was done at the stroke of midnight. Really. It was really enjoyable and I thought she tied things up nicely. I won’t write more at this point in case Becky is reading this because she hasn’t read it yet. (I don’t think.)

Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez: I was conflicted about reading this memoir, because I’d read something about how Rodriguez hadn’t recompensed the people she wrote about like she said she would, but I got over it, and I’m glad I did. it tells a powerful lesson about life in Afghanistan and about the difficulty of trying to affect any kind of change. So many things are broken there, but Rodriguez shows that even the smallest efforts are important. (Her effort was pretty dang big though.)

She went to Afghanistan with a relief effort and wound up feeling for a while that there was nothing she could contribute because she was “just” a hairdresser, not someone highly trained in a skill that would really lend itself to relief effort. But she came away realizing 1) how difficult the lives of the women she met were, 2) that if women could have their own salons they could have a lot more independence, and have the ability to support themselves and their families, and 3) a lot of beautification was being done that was really unsanitary and was harming people’s hair. So she got a lot of help and started a Beauty School to teach women all the skills they would need to open a salon, from hair cutting to money management. The stories of the women who attend the school are heartbreaking, but the hope they receive by learning the skills to allow them to work is just awesome.

Rodriguez’s experience is interesting because she doesn’t allow cultural differences to get in her way– sometimes to her detriment as she kind of bulldozes through them– but mostly to her benefit and the benefit of others. She marries an Afghani, and their cross-cultural relationship is fascinating. Overall, I greatly enjoyed it, and felt enlightened without feeling lectured.
Martha Stewart’s new craft line: If any one has the deep desire (or even the shallow desire) to spoil me absolutely rotten, I’m in love with so many products from Martha’s new line. Which disturbs me slightly, because I’m kind of anti-Martha on principle, but maybe not at heart. She’s just got such an amazing aesthetic. I’m reorganizing all my craft stuff, and I want want want her organizing boxes for my closet. I can picture it in my head, and it is beautiful.

And last but not least,

Congrats to Jennifer de Guzman on winning the Friends of Lulu Woman of Distinction Award. I don’t really know Jennifer- just know her through other people, but oh, I couldn’t be more pleased. She’s the editor-in-chief at Slave Labor Graphics, and she deserves this.

I haven’t posted anything substantial in a while, and I don’t know that that will change with this post, but at least I can get something down that I will perhaps elaborate on in future posts.

I’m up to 31 books read this year, which is pretty dismal but still has me on my way to my 50 book goal for the year. I have the feeling I’ve forgotten to write down at least one, but for the life of me I don’t know what it was, so oh well. Read recently are:

Everybody Kills Somebody Sometime by Robert J. Randisi :An entertaining mystery set in and around the Rat Pack. Someone’s sending Dean Martin threatening letters, Frank Sinatra hires a guy to look into it. Some people end up dead. Over all, pretty good.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: I read this one to fulfill my goal to give a book I hated the first time around another chance– except I started reading it and realized I’d never actually tried to read it, I just assumed I didn’t like it. So I have to pick a different book that I hate, which is another story all together. (Jane Eyre, I’m looking at you, lady.) But anyway, Wuthering Heights was interesting. Especially as I’d just watched The House of Yes, and there are some shared components in the two that are thought provoking. The whole issue of identifying so closely with a sibling and then leaving them to get married, and how you deal with that… interesting stuff.

Have You Seen the Horizon Lately by Jamie S. Rich: This was the final read through before the book went to print, (with me being another set of eyes checking for typos and things), making it the I-don’t-know-how-many-th time I’ve read it, but it’s proved to be a very rereadable book. (Which doesn’t surprise me.) It’s still poignant and sad and hopeful and inspiring, and I still got caught up in the story, to the detriment of my proofing concentration. I can’t wait to see it all bound and pretty.

Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk: Chuck P is a really up and down author for me, but this was definitely one of his best. It’s the story of a man who may or may not have started a rabies plague that’s killing thousands and thousands of “nighttimers” (people whose daytime is at night by government mandate because there were just too many people trying to function during the day); who may or may not have created Party Crashing, a game where people purposefully crash their decorated cars into each other during regular traffic; who may or may not have inoculated himself against all poisons by letting every kind of spider and animal bite him; who may or may not have discovered a secret of the universe, and who may or may not be really pissed about that. Chuck P’s previous books have had a vagueness about them that’s caused me to wonder if he really was in control of the thematic elements he was working with, but he’s in full control with this book, and it was a pleasure to read.

That’s it for the books, I know, I’m slacking. Next up I’m reading The Bobbed Haired Bandit, the true story of a young woman who robbed banks in the 1920s. It looks really good.

Other random thoughts:

I’m incredibly late to the party, but the show Spaced is awesome and I adore it.

The finale of Studio 60 was lovely.

The fact that Cedric is still on So You Think You Can Dance makes me really mad, and the judges have no one to blame but themselves. (Not that I mind Cedric, I think he’s a very classy, sweet young man. He just in no way has the versatility to make it on the show.