The gift that keeps on giving

The holidays are over, The Sickness has run amok through my household and everyone is finally on the up and up, and college bowl season is officially done after that truly awful national championship game. That means it's back to the grindstone! And I'm pretty excited about my next selection: Guide to Missouri Vegetable Gardening by James A. Fizzell. 

I orginally got this book for my wife, but after reading it I am so pumped for starting a garden I can hardly wait till Spring. I have a tiller on the way and I am going to go nuts!

And I feel fine. . .

Twas the week before Christmas and no one was gloom, even though soon we would all meet our doom.

10 years ago, I was working at a Wal-Mart in Moscow, Idaho. Oddly enough, working the overnight shift in the receiving department was not as glamorous as it sounds. But it did provide me with the opportunity to witness a very witty discussion about 2012, the Mayan calendar, and the end of the world.

One gentleman commented he would take a bunch of sleeping pills when he went to bed December 20th, so he could sleep through the end of the world. Another said he would spend his remaining years collecting guns and ammo. I simply smiled and went about my work.

Seasonable for most of the week, then a slight chance of DOOM!

I don't put much stock in the Mayan's calendar, but I am a big fan of post-apocalyptic scenarios, especially if they involve removing the heads the risen dead or helping a gasoline rich community fend off mohawk wielding bandits.

So, imagine my delight when fate led my next random book selection to the shelf populated with self-defense. Meet Selection #16: Self-Defense: Steps for Survival by Katy Mattingly.

No, I will not be taking photos of me trying out the moves they illustrate.

I've only thumbed through it, but I have not found the bandit or zombie sections yet, I'm sure it's in there.

Failure is not an option . . . wait, nevermind, yes it is

I have failed. I have read zero non-fiction in almost a month. Forget, non-fiction, aside from some Elder Strolls blog posts I've hardly read anything at all.

But it's all good. When you are attempting a project as large as this, failure should not be feared. In fact, failure should be expected and welcomed. Bad things happen if you worry about failing and you actually fail. There is that instinct to just throw your hands up and give up. But if you anticipate failing, I think you are much better to deal with it when it actually happens.

Because I knew this would happen, I am much more willing to dust myself and get back to it. . . not now of course, that would just be silly. I'm in survival mode at this point. Hunker down, survive Christmas, re-assess the situation when the New Year's confetti clears.

Minecraft

With Santa season looming I have this mixed bag of excitement and dread. This has led to comfort gaming. Comfort gaming is that magical time where you play a game with no goals, no princesses to save, no aliens to defeat, no checkpoints, and no storylines to follow.

My comfort game is Minecraft. I will spend hours on end, ignoring the entire world while I collect cobblestone, turn sand into glass, and build structures that have no concept of gravity or physics. The simple and slightly OCD nature of Minecraft is very relaxing, but also extremely time consuming and distracting. My non-fiction reading has dropped to nil this past week. I'd like to blame at least a little bit of that on family that is visiting from out of town, but no, it's all Minecraft.

I's 5:00 somewhere in Minecraft.

Next week will be a monster. A new library branch opens, and that means a busy week for the IT department. And just as we recover from that, then Thanksgiving happens, my hours increase, and there is a good chance I'll be shut down for the rest of the year.

My gut says this is time to take a break, but maybe this is a great time to use reading as my comfort. That makes a lot more sense that building a 47-story-high castle with indoor lavaflows and patrolling Snow Golems. Maybe I need to set an aggressive goal to keep me honest? How about 5 straight days of reading 20 pages? Then next weekend I can build to my heart's content and maybe recreate Middle Earth in cube form like I've always wanted to do.

Nightmares, Bohemians, and jolly old elves

I may not enjoy Halloween, but I do have a tradition for Halloween. Every year I sit down and watch Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. Why? One: I love this movie. and Two: once Halloween is out of the way it means that Santa season is fast approaching.

I do feel sorry for Thanksgiving, its sad that a season gets bushwhacked like that. But this year Santa arrives on November 10th and no matter how much complaining I hear about Christmas arriving so early . . . I love it!

Being Santa brings a joy that I have not experienced in any other job, ever. Will I have to deal with screaming toddlers, shrieking babies, smelly diapers, annoying and pushy parents, and beard pulling brats all while sweating in a felt suit with a fake white beard strapped to my chin? Yes. And I'll do it with a smile on my face because of that one kid that tells me what the want for Christmas and then squeals with delight when I tell them, 'I'll see what I can do if you're good.'

It's the little things that make it worth wile.

On a sad note, I've turned in my video game book, Extra Lives: Why video games matter by Tom Bissell. I enjoyed it immensely and I wish i could go back and re-play most of the games that were mentioned.

Onward and upward, not rain, nor snow, nor part-time jobs of dressing up as a jolly old elf will keep me from my non-fiction quest. Meet Selection #15: Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939 by Virginia Nicholson.

Has the devil put aside for me, for me, for meeeeeeeee....

Here is what I know about Bohemians: Queen made a rhapsody for them, and Ewan McGregor played one in Moulin Rouge. . . that's about it. Hopefully I'll learn some more about them soon.

The Boy That Hated Halloween

You would think a fat kid would love Halloween, with everyone being loose with their candy. That is not the case with me. Halloween was just an extra day to get picked on and I did not look forward to that at all. And even though I remember watching The Evil Dead with my older brother, that did not mean I was less prone to being jumpy.

My Halloween tradition was to sit in my room and let my parents pass out the candy. As a teen we traditionally went on vacation around Halloween, possibly to get away from our degrading neighborhood. In college Halloween became less about candy and being spooky and more about women dressing up as naughty nurses, naughty teachers, naughty devils, naughty angels, basically any half-logical costume that a woman would wear minus most of the fabric that covered her. And while I admit this was enjoyable to see, it kind of got old, not to mention that it was almost always accompanied by drunk guys whistling and hollering.

As I moved into my professional life, Halloween meant a food day and possibly dressing a little more casually that day. Living in an apartment meant no kids would come around.

This year, however, I will not only actively participate in Halloween, I'm downright excited for it to get here. Since my wife and moved into a new house this year it will be the first time we are actually able to pass out candy. We will not be the couple on the street that is stingy with the candy, and we are passing out the good stuff, not the 5 year old Smarties or those Mary Janes purchased during the Jimmy Carter presidency. I know, I know, bringing out the good candy is a rookie mistake.

Plus, its Emma's first Halloween so we have to take advantage of dressing her up while she has no power to resist us. She'll be a strawberry this year . . . her last name is Fields . . . Strawberry Fields  . . . Beatles song?
OK glad we got past that. Because personally that whole Stawberry Fields thing was kind of destroyed when the Quantum of Solace came out.

Strawberry Fields Forever

Anyway, I'm really excited about Halloween for the first time in a long time. Even though it means Santa season is right around the corner and the next 2 months will be exhausting.

Next week I should be able to pick up some new books. I've been pretty lax and choosing titles that I want to read recently so I will definitely using my random number generators.

Cooking the Books

The sluggishness in my non-fiction reading seems to be waning, that relaxing weekend was just what I needed. The British history and the global warming books have been turned back in and I'm thoroughly enjoying my video game critiquing book, Extra Lives by Tom Bissell. I might be done with it before the weekend.

I made the mistake of reading the first chapter of The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card yesterday at lunch, now I'm trying to figure out how to squeeze another book into my schedule. This is dangerous considering my affinity for Card's novels, it would very easy to get sucked back into fantasy fiction. I need to make sure I keep some structure to my reading, reading at lunch is to be NF only, maybe I can read some fiction in the evening?

I haven't cracked Capote's In Cold Blood yet, but I plan on tackling it this weekend.

Now, I'm not sure this book counts, as it has been on my holds list for a while now, but here is selection #14: The Baby & Toddler Cookbook: Fresh, Homemade Foods for a Healthy Start by Karen Ansel, MS, RD & Charity Ferreira.

Now that we have a freezer full of homemade carrot, pea, and green bean cubes, time to start planning ahead.

My wife and I have been feeding the little girl solid food for a while now, and yes two weeks is a while when you have a 6 month old that doesn't like peas, so this book is to give us some new ideas and help us plan when she gets a little older.

This is my first cookbook, and it raises a difficult question: When are you finished reading a cookbook? Does my 50 page limit apply to cookbooks? I wonder if there needs to be a new rule for books with a lot of pictures, or maybe I should plan on reading the whole thing, giving me the opportunity to copy down recipes I want to try?