Feeding My Addiction

Read all you like for a fixed price per month.  I haven't tried all of the new platforms yet, but I am giving Kindle Unlimited a go.  So far, so good.  We picked Colin Cotterill's book, THE CORONER'S LUNCH, for our next book club read at StoryBucks (details here if you are curious) and voila!  THE CORONER'S LUNCH was available on Kindle Unlimited.  So now I've read the second one in the series too.  Also included in the Unlimited plan.

Color me happy.  I read like most people breathe and to have access to so many books for the price of one book every month, well, nirvana.  Obviously, I won't be finding everything I want to read in the Kindle Unlimited library but I can discover a lot of new authors and perhaps read up on some older novels that I missed along the way.

Meanwhile, my high school Girlie will be reading Aristotle.  Her schoolbooks arrived for the coming year (she attends Stanford University's online high school) and for her Sophomore year, she'll be reading from THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ARISTOTLE.  I don't know why, but it makes me laugh.  The sucker is 1,250 pages of tiny print.  She has no idea what's waiting for her when she gets back from her summer session at Stanford University.  Of course, she'll probably love it.  That's the difference between her and me.  I would only read Aristotle if there was a Scandinavian crime angle in it somewhere.

Redux

The wheel of life has pointed to writing again.  I've even got a new website devoted to writing:  StoryBucks.com.  I used to write a lot about my daughter, Girlie, but then she got old enough to care.  She's still old enough to care, but she's a teenager and well, she's going to find reasons to be mad at me anyway.

So I'm back, and I'm going to have a little fun looking up old and new friends in the blogging universe.  Happy Thursday everyone.

Bush Calls a Bailout Meeting

Don't Wanna Iguana

So tropical storm Fay disappointed my nine-year-old. Not nearly enough drama. She wanted the power to go out. Ha, ha, ha.... That's the sound of me laughing at the idea of her going five minutes without air conditioning. Luckily for all in south Florida, Fay dumped lots of much needed rain and has done little damage. It's still blustering out there but as I looked out my kitchen window, I saw my new nemesis out for a bite in the rain. Iguana Joe. Joe lives near me and must eat A LOT because Joe has made our pool deck his personal restroom and judging from the olympic size poops, he has a voracious appetite. Apparently they favor mango and hybiscus. And guess what? Small dogs favor iguana poop. Yup. When Marty isn't rolling in it, he's eating it. And Bella likes a nibble too. So every morning it's a race to see whether me and my hose can beat the dogs to Joe's Diner. Yech. But I admit, seeing those foreign looking iguanas reminds me that I'm in the tropics and I love it, poop and all.

Hi Fay

Here in South Florida, we're waiting to see if Fay is gonna say "howdy". She's visiting Cuba first to spread a little good will I guess and then she's expected to head to the Keys. After that it's not clear if she'll rake the western side of Florida or what but it seems clear that some nasty weather could hit our town in any event. So we are preparing. I went to the store last night and bought pudding snacks. Hubby recorded olympic events and Girlie set up her "Hurricane Fortress." A Hurricane Fortress is an indoor tent stocked with a sleeping bag, pillows, a lemonade pouch and her stuffed snake. Clearly Girlie is the only one of us who takes this storm seriously and is therefore the best prepared. Should Fay take a turn in our direction, I imagine you'll find us all huddled in the Hurricane Fortress sharing lemonade and getting lectured by Girlie. For hours, and hours, and hours... My guess is that she'll only stop when I threaten not to share my pudding snacks. Fay? I need you to steer far to the west please. Thanks.

Welcome back, Banana!

I'm doing the happy dance today because I have reconnected with a bloggie buddy that I haven't "seen" in a couple of years. You too should toodle over and say howdy to the Liberal Banana. Go ahead, I'll wait here. La, la, la,.... Back? Great. In today's news, I am a hero. Girlie came in to the living room where I was napping, I mean, thinking really hard on the couch, and told me that for sure, her video game was irrevocably, completely, stuck and ruined. I know very little about this game but after a demonstration by Girlie, I was able to suggest that she blow the wind thingy the other direction and LIKE MAGIC, she wasn't stuck anymore. I'm taking that to the bank, folks. My nine year old is in awe of me, normally the useless second choice for video game consultation. Today, in my house, Michael Phelps has got nothin' on me.

Heroics

Today, I rescued a baby possum. Or I didn't. It's hard to say. I heard Girlie's mutt barking his head off at something in the back yard and naturally I ignored it because he's barked that head off every day since we rescued him from the humane society. After a few minutes I went out back and we had our usual exchange: "Marty, knock it off." "Bark." "Marty, come on buddy, let's go in the house." "Bark." "MARTY!!!" "Bark." "Baby want a treat?" And in the house he ran only as I glanced back to where he'd been standing, I saw a furry something in the grass by the hedge. At first I thought that it was the headless stuffed ostrich that is the favorite of my Italian Greyhound, Bella. But it was actually a very small baby possum. Hmmmmm. I got a shoe box and an old towel and scooped it into the box. I gave it a couple of drops of water and it looked at me with grumpiness and fear. It had a twig firmly gripped in its tiny hands. I called the police, animal services, Pesky Critters, the veterinarian, and a wildlife rehabilitation company. They all were either unable to assist, charged a fortune, weren't available, or uninterested. Hmmmmm. At the rehabilitation company's website, I found that like most idiots, I had assumed that the baby had been abandoned. If possible, they should be left alone because mommy will come looking for them. So I took it back to its spot, turned the box on its side and kept my dogs out of the yard. A couple of hours later, it was gone. Poof! Thin air. No sign of foul play, no cats ever come in our yard (dogs, remember?), and I haven't seen any blue herons or other birds of prey around here. Furthermore, it was fairly protected and hidden by the box and the hedge. So Girlie and I have chosen to believe that Possum Mommy came to the rescue and all is well with the world. If you think differently, I don't want to know about it. (Hands over ears) la, la, la, la , la....