Herein lies the exuberant review I warned you about.

A Madness of Angels: Or, the Resurrection of Matthew Swift by Kate Griffin

Summary
Two years after he was murdered, urban sorceror Matthew Swift wakes up in his old home, summoned back into being. But more than just Matthew Swift has been resurrected. Along with his flesh, his mind, his memories, there's another entity inside him. When he looks in the mirror, his formerly brown eyes are now a bright, electric blue.

Only a few hours after returning to life, someone tries to kill him - again - and Matthew embarks on a quest to find out who killed him, who brought him back - and to take his revenge.

( My review, in which I wax poetical about fictional things, yet again. )

Speaking of Conclusions: Consider me a crazy Matthew Swift fangirl as of about fifty pages into this book. The sequel (The Midnight Mayor: Or, the Inauguration of Matthew Swift - inauguration? intriguing!) is scheduled to come out in March, and the fourth Horatio Lyle book supposedly releases in February, so next spring will be a very exciting time for us Griffin-Webb fans.

The moon is full and yellow tonight, and I couldn't stop staring at it all the way home. Which is not the smartest action, whilst driving down the interstate.

And now, I'm going to stay up well past my (admittedly pathetic, old lady) bedtime in an attempt to finish A Madness of Angels: Or, the Resurrection of Matthew Swift by Kate Griffin, because it currently OWNS ME.

Exuberant review coming soon.

Drat. I left my water bottle at the dance studio. I suppose that's what lost and found is for.

I must walk crooked or something. I spent all day yesterday at the renaissance fair with Jen, traipsing about in flip flops. Flips flops that are a bit worn out and thus a bit loose (if that makes sense). When combined with the uneven ground and loose gravel of the ren fair's grounds, the ten hours of walking did a number on my calf.

Calf. Singular. My left calf is a big ole knot of ouch today, so much that if I sit still for more than ten minutes, it stiffens up so much that I'm forced to limp around like Igor until it relaxes again. But my right calf is just fine.

So I must walk crooked. I blame my short leg.

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Other than RenFest (again), this weekend contained two fabulous pieces of entertainment that I insist all of you go out and experience immediately.

( 1. Away We Go )

( 2. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society )

The police caught the guy who broke into our house! I never expected this to happen, so it's very exciting. He's in jail, awaiting trial, and they found my laptop and camera in his house. Apparently he was a burglarizing fiend over the past few months. His girlfriend says he broke into 144 houses, but the cops only have enough evidence to prove 20-30 of those. But still - twenty to thirty burglaries. Youch.

Also, as I'm convinced he stole my favorite hat, since I haven't seen it since the day before the burglary (our theory: he used it to carry smaller stuff - cords and controllers and jewelry), I like to imagine his girlfriend wearing my hat. It makes me laugh.

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I finished Pride and Prejudice and Zombies last night (by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith: "The Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultra-Violent Zombie Mayhem!") and heeeee!

( Mostly spoiler-free review. )

I laughed all the way through it. Go read it, now.

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I watched Twilight last week with my Former Roommate, who checked it out from the library in a fit of perverse, morbid curiosity. It was the single most painful cinematic experience of my life. Edward is so creepy! How can people watch this movie and still find him at all attractive?

The whole thing is ridiculous. I loved that they had all these montages of Edward and Bella talking for hours and hours with no actual dialogue, because when we do have to listen to them talk, it's mind-numbingly boring. There's no point actually having any of conversations audible. We'd all kill ourselves. These are the two blandest (creepiest) characters in recent fictional history.

Thanks to the generosity of valancy_s, I now possess the rifftrax audio for this movie, which - judging by the sample - is going to make me cry I'll be laughing so hard. So I suppose that's one good thing that will have come out of Twilight: MST3K fabulosity.

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That song by 3Oh!3 (which, can I just say how obnoxious I find that band name?) that's all over the radio right now - with the lyrics "shush, girl / shut your lips / do the Helen Keller / and talk with your hips" - makes me want to PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE.

Okay. I feel better.

More answers to fascinating questions!

( From madhowan. )

( And chinasparrow. )

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I have nothing else of note to report. Come back later.

Every week, my work email account sends me a list of all the spam it's collected so I can sift through and make sure nothing's getting caught in the net that shouldn't. This usually results in a few minutes of giggling, due to the ridiculous subject lines.

So I've decided to share. Below, a collection of my favorites thus far.

( Have you got anything without spam? )

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Upcoming Events:
- Watching - and mocking - Twilight with my Former Roommate.
- A weekend in Kansas for my dad's birthday.
- Writing a story to go with the pictures I took of my action figures taking turns beating up the Edward Cullen my Former Roommate bought me for my birthday for that very purpose.
- A meeting with my belly dance girls so we can form our own dance troupe.
- Three important birthdays.
- A trip to the city to see my cousin, if he can get off work.
- RenFest, take two.

And then it will be July.

Oh, mighty weekend. Between torrential downpours - and sometimes during (Seriously, it's like the Twilight Zone here right now. Usually we spend all summer trying desperately not to burst into flame as a collective state, and but it's rained every single day for two weeks, at least. Sometimes just a little, but the last three or four days, it's rained hard. I'm not sure what to do with myself.) - I attended the Renaissance Festival, an engagement party for a friend, and a Jeeves & Wooster marathon.

Renaissance Festival
I just adore RenFest. My sister came for a while this year, and before we left, we were joking about how she might discover her "inner rennie." I think she kinda did, judging by the fact that she bought a parasol, lace fan, and two corsets. Which we then wore around for the next couple hours. AWESOMESAUCE.

Some friends from Denver met us there, and we romped about for the day, watching the belly dancers and Celtic bands and jousting. And the hot acrobats from a couple years ago were back. So I dragged everyone to that show.

After the show I went up to the hot Scottish one and asked if he could be Scottish for a minute. He blinked, then beamed at me and said, in his natural accent, "Yeah, I can be Scottish for a minute. I'm impressed you remember that." And I thanked him and left him to the rest of the crowd clamoring for his attention. I consider it a highly successful encounter, as I was wearing a corset and he called me "sweetheart." It has to be illegal to be that attractive and silly and Scottish all at the same time.

Jen and I are going back in a couple weeks, before the acrobats leave. We're ridiculous and I love it.


Engagement Party
Wine! Cheese! Strawberries! Chocolate! And Laura, being gorgeous and engaged and modeling her absolutely stunning wedding dress. Sadly, it was monsooning out most of the evening, so we couldn't enjoy the lovely garden party area Jen created in the backyard, complete with candles hanging from the trees.


Jeeves & Wooster marathon
That show makes me giggle a lot. Hugh Laurie's so silly, the dialogue is absurd and wonderful, and Stephen Fry does so much with an eyebrow and a twist of his mouth. Fun was had by all.

We also watched the final - last, forever, never will there be another - episode of Pushing Daisies which was wonderful and hilarious and OH MY HEART. The super-speedy epilogue-wrap up at the end felt, well, rushed, but it's nice to know Olive and Randy stayed hooked up and Emerson finds his daughter and everyone gets to live happily ever after, including the aunts, who now know Chuck is alive. We'll never know what was up with Chuck and Ned's dads and Dwight and the watches, but at least Lily's secret is out. And...there are going to be comic books? So perhaps all the daddy issues can come back into play there.

And that moment when the aunts and their entourage strut into the Aquacade in slow motion? I made Liz rewind so we could watch it again. Because I love their hats so much and Emerson and Olive are wearing the most amazingly horrendous track suits in the history of sportswear and Ned with his aviator sunglasses and slow-mo look over his shoulder, like a secret service agent or something. SO UTTERLY FABULOUS. Also fabulous: that the aunts' "training" includes doing everything in synch.

Good-bye, show. I love you. You will live forever in my heart - and on my DVD shelf.

Turns out I'm pretty terrible at writing up book reviews right after I finish a book. So here's everything I've read since, oh, the middle of March.

( Drive-by Book Reviews )

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( Penultimate Pushing Daisies episode EVER was on tonight, and I have squealing to do. )

( I have a tiny laptop! )

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Someone remind the weather that it's June. It's been rainy and gross for days now, and it's getting down to 40 degrees or so at night, which means I've had to turn my heat back on. This is absurd.

Summer, where are you? I pine for thee.

I spent most of today in a bad mood for various reasons I won't go into here.

So, in honor of the fact that ABC is finally showing the last three episodes of Pushing Daisies, the first of which aired this weekend, I'm doing something guaranteed to cheer me up:

Pushing Daisies Picspam!

( Once upon a time, there was a Pie Maker named Ned. )

I have two belly dance performances this weekend, one of which is my dance studio's recital. Tonight was our first run-through of the show. Tomorrow is dress rehearsal.

After watching all the other dancers - from darling five-year-old girls just learning ballet to adorable kids totally rocking hiphop moves to the jazz dance troupe - I have this deep longing in me to just dance. The kind of longing that makes it easy to answer the question, "What would you do if you had one trip in a time machine?" Answer: Tell my eight-year-old self not to quit the ballet/jazz/tumbling class I was in for all of three months.

Because if I'd stuck with it, I can't even imagine what I might be able to do now. Ballet? Tap? Jazz? Hiphop? Belly dance? All of the above?

I desperately wish I could do all of the above. If I had unlimited funds and unlimited evenings in my week, I'd be taking every dance class my studio offers. Including the capoeira, probably.

I wish I hadn't quit that class in second grade. I wish I'd picked up dance lessons again at age 15 or 16 when it started crossing my mind every six months. I wish I'd gone ahead and enrolled in the Beginner Ballet class in college. I wish I was a dancer.

I guess all I can do is work on that from this point.

According to my dog, the space between the toilet and the wall is the safest place in the house.

We've been having thunderstorms off and on for the last couple days, which I am loving. But poor Titus is not. I keep finding him in hilarious places, trying to hide from the thunder: between the toilet and the wall seems to be his favorite, but he's also been under my bed, under my sister's desk, and in my paper recycling box.

( Poor thing. )

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Examined Star Trek action figures at Target yesterday and concluded they're not as bad in real life. Am now pondering whether or not I need to buy Scotty and Bones. (And Sulu and Chekov and, ooh, Pike!)

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For absolutely no reason whatsoever, I'm sharing a ridiculous macro I stumbled across the other night. It made me cry I was laughing so hard, and I have no idea why. I was a bit slaphappy, yes, but still.

( I present to you a goat. )

Okay, it still makes me laugh.

---

Titus is now under my bed, and now I feel guilty about the fact that I'm leaving him in about ten minutes to have a Jeeves and Wooster marathon at a friends' house. (I made blackberry honey tarts! Which...mostly just involved tossing some blackberries into tart shells and drizzling them with honey, but whatever. I still made them.)

Wait - this just in: Titus is not under my bed. He's here:

( It's so sad! )

I don't even know how he got in there. How am I supposed to leave him?

For someone whose job is telling authors how to revise their books, I sure hate revising my own. How's that for irony?

Spent the first fifteen minutes of my writing date tonight making horrid faces at my practice novel before deciding screw it, I didn't care. So instead I stared at the idea file for my supposed next project, which is languishing in Plotless Land, where most of my ideas go to die.

Then I gave up and played spider solitaire. Which I lost spectacularly. Four times in a row.

I'm also suffering from random "I should read more" guilt, sparked by the fact that I haven't done any real reading in a week (I was at a conference for most of it, but does my brain acknowledge this? No.), the reading I have done involved various ridiculous things on the internet instead of actual books, and I bought two new books today (new Jonathan Stroud! The Mysterious Benedict Society!) to add to the couple hundred already filling my house that I've yet to read.

And now, instead of starting a new book, I'm going to read an Entertainment Weekly from March. I'm so productive.

Right! I attended the Flight of the Conchords concert at Red Rocks Amphitheatre on Saturday. It was, of course, fabulous.

(This is going to be an extremely long post. I certainly don't expect you to care about the amount of detail I go into; this is more for my own benefit than anything. If I write down as much as I can remember now, I won't want to kick myself in six months when I'm reminiscing and all the little moments have vanished into the murky depths of memory.)

( And with that warning, let us commence. It's business time. )

There! That's done.

Flight of the Conchords concert post coming soon. It would be coming tonight, but I've opted to go see Taken in the dollar theater with my Former Roommate instead. Liam Neeson is a spy. I can't resist.

A few quick things:

1. Conference went well. More about it in a locked post someday, perhaps, as there are some good stories.

2. TV apocalypse averted! Chuck, Castle, and Dollhouse have all been renewed, after spending the last month as unknown quantities. That's three of my four shows, right there, that I was convinced were all going to get canceled. Instead, they're all safe! What a lovely late birthday present.

3. I went to Burger King last night and bought a kids meal specifically so I could acquire one of the Star Trek toys. Of course, I wanted a specific one, which seemed to baffle the poor girl on the other side of the drive-thru speaker. After about a minute of me shouting about how I would like to request a specific toy, please, and the girl just sitting quiet for ten seconds before asking the standard "would you like anything else with that" question, I managed to convey my desire and she said she'd show me what they had at the window so I could pick. They only had three to choose from, but one of them was Scotty, my life goal for the evening, so I count the whole fiasco a success.

And now I have a tiny plastic Simon Pegg with a giant head who shouts, "I'm givin' it all she's got, Captain!" whenever you push a button on his back. Yay!

(There was also a Kirk in my bag, so I got two toys for the price of one. Kirk just says, "Kirk to Enterprise," which isn't nearly as fun, and he looks exactly like a Ken doll. If Ken dolls had the proportions of bobbleheads.)

Maybe if I get a hankerin' for fast food before they switch out toys, I'll try to get my hands on a McCoy. Apparently he says, "I'm a doctor, not a physicist!" Hee.


Whoops. Time to leave. Liam Neeson needs to beat up half of Paris.

This weekend was kind of the Let's See How Much Stuff We Can Give Yoni! weekend. Which...not gonna lie, pretty awesome.

Firstly, my birthday haul was astounding (and it's not over yet!), including seasons 2.0 and 2.5 of BSG, A Fine Frenzy piano book, a ton of books (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies! The Madness of Angels! My friend Liz's novel, fresh from her box of author copies!), a pre-order of Pushing Daisies season two, and sundry other fantabulous things. Northanger Abbey! North and South! My Former Roommate got me a Star Wars lunchbox and an Edward Cullen action figure because my "other action figures need someone to gang up on." Expect epic photostories involving Edward meeting numerous bloody ends at the hands of the cast of Lord of the Rings. Coming soon to a theater near you.

My mother was out for the weekend, so I took Friday off to hang out with her, and we went to Home Depot and bought a shopping cart full of flowers, then came back and made my house pretty. Daisies! Columbines! Dahlias! Lilies! I am happy. I also need to remember to water them, since Colorado isn't going to do it for me.

Then my mother had had enough of our hand-me-down furniture (the couch isn't too bad, as long as you sit inbetween these two cushions, prop a throw pillow behind your lower back, put your head right there), so we went to a used furniture store and bought a new (well, used) couch and armchair. I HAVE REAL FURNITURE. I don't recognize my living room any more. It's so...nice.

On top of all this, I'm getting three times as much money back from the insurance copy for my stolen items as I thought I would. SCORE. Some of it goes to my sister, yes, but I have more than enough to replace my laptop and camera. Especially as my sister has convinced me to buy one of those mini netbooks. They're so cute! And I only ever used my laptop for internet and to write, anyway, so they're all I need. Cheap and small. I'm in.

I made out like a PIRATE this weekend.

---

( Also, I saw Star Trek. Twice. Because it was AWESOME. )

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I'm off to a writers conference on Wednesday followed by a Flight of the Conchords concert, so I'll be scarce until Sunday. But I'm getting paid to do thirty-minute critiques, so that's nice. We'll add it to the Give Yoni Stuff total for the month.

Things Spotted in Recent Days:

- A kid slowly shuffling straight-legged through the grocery store, his arms held stiffly out at his sides, bent at the elbow. His mother, a few yards ahead, stopped, turned and said, "I know you're C-3PO, honey, but we need to hurry right now."

- A guy in the car next to me at a stoplight with Spike hair. Bleached-blond, over-gelled, slicked back with a comb.

- A guy learning how to ride a unicycle, using his girlfriend's shoulder for balance support.

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Geeky Things of Happiness:

- Aaron Allston responding to my comment on his blog post. It's almost like getting en email!

- "Wedge Antilles is now following you on Twitter!"

- Getting in a fake brawl with bitwhizzle over a fictional character.

- Television Without Pity compared the old Star Trek characters with the new. The differences between Old Spock and New Spock: "Old Spock lived his life with dignity and respect. New Spock is on Heroes." Hee.

- This is my desktop wallpaper right now. (I AM SO OBSESSED.)

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You guys, I'm so excited about seeing Star Trek this weekend, which really surprises me. I've never been a huge Star Trek fan. I've seen a handful of episodes from the original series, watched The Voyage Home about twelve times when I was younger because it had whales in it and made me laugh, and was once traumatized by the ear-bug things in The Wrath of Kahn and thought it was kind of sad when Spock died. I watched The Next Generation on a sporadic basis as a kid. Because it was on at nine, it was a treat to get to stay up late and watch it. I saw the first two TNG movies, but then stopped bothering.

So when I heard they were remaking Star Trek, my reaction was a mild interest. "I'll Netflix it" interest. The first preview didn't up my excitement much, other than a brief squeal of delight at Simon Pegg being his glorious self. Then I saw a different preview, which actually looked pretty cool, so I figured I'd go. I knew my mom would want to see it when she came out this weekend, and I was okay with that.

But suddenly, this week, I'm really excited. I don't even know why. Maybe I'm just ready for an action-packed sci-fi adventure (with Simon Pegg), but I am ready for this movie and will probably be dragging my mother into the theater instead of the other way around.

Weird.

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My mother. Is coming this weekend. We're going to plant flowers and (obviously) see Star Trek and who knows what else. We'll go up to the city to visit her sister's family (cousinbabies!). She was thinking about coming out today but decided to come out tomorrow instead, and now I'm all listless and sad that I have to wait a whole extra day to see my mom.

*dramatic sigh*

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Robbery update!

Sent lots of information to the insurance folk today. Apparently I have to make some sort of recorded statement, and then we're good to go.

The deadbolt on our back door functions now, but the knob lock is still broken. Handy Dave supposedly fixed it this morning, but the thing that he showed us was broken (thanks, thieves-with-crowbar!) is still broken, so maybe he couldn't find the part or something. I'm waiting for him to bring our spare key back so I can go for a walk. He said "after 5:30," which is when I get home. If I'd known that really meant "after 7:00," I'd have gone for a walk as soon as I got home. I hope he shows up before the sun goes down. Titus is getting twitchy. And it's hot! And sunny! I want to bask!

My house got robbed today.

This is the first time I've had anything stolen. Whoever it was got in through the back door (which only has a knob lock, because the deadbolt has been broken for ages and I'm really regretting not getting the maintenance man on that before now) and took my laptop, my fancy new SLR camera, a couple pieces of cheap jewelry (which makes me laugh - I don't have real jewelry, and they still took some), my sister's Wii, and my sister's Bluray DVDs. They rifled through my closet and my dresser, went through all my sister's stuff. Yet somehow missed her laptop - much better than mine, and lying out in plain sight - despite flinging her empty laptop bag around. They also missed her Sony reader and her GPS thingamajig (my sister likes gadgets). They didn't take either of our desktop computers or TV or DVD players or anything. Too passe, I guess.

I've felt kind of silly about having two computers for a while, but now I'm very glad I do. They didn't take my desktop, which has all my photos and writing on it. The only thing that was on my laptop of note was the latest version of my practice novel, and I just backed that up on my desktop this weekend. Serendipity!

My sister and I are okay. A little shaken, but mostly I just laughed. I didn't really know what else to do.

The police came and wrote everything down, and now I have a case number I can give to my insurance folk. Maybe we'll get some money back. Right now I'm waiting for my landlord to call me back so I can tell him what happened and ask for a new deadbolt, please.

Titus is more emotionally traumatized than anyone. He's very clingy and if we leave the room, he's practically on our heels, following. I'm sure he barked his head off the whole time the thieves were in the house, but I'm very glad he was kenneled. One, because they had no reason to hurt him or something, and two, because they left the back door and the back gate open when they left. I could have lost my dog, too.

(Of course, if he wasn't kenneled, he might have been a stronger deterrent. Not that he's at all intimidating, as he only comes up to your knee and has a floofy tail.)

In all, we got off pretty light. They didn't break any windows or the door. They only took a handful of things, nothing irreplaceable. And we're okay, which is the most important thing.

My first criminal victimization. Can I be done now?

First of all, I need to get this out of my system regarding Vienna Teng: I LOVE HERRRRR.

Okay. Better.

( Now to talk about the show. )

Conclusion: She only got to play five songs, but those five included one of my favorites from her new album (I can't stop listening to "Grandmother's Song." It's fun and peppy, and somehow manages to be funny, poignant, and empowering all at the same time.), and the interview part was great. She's very intelligent and articulate, and I adore her even more now than I did.

Now I want a real concert. Come back soon, Vienna!

( A few things about Dollhouse. Or maybe a lot. )

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I have absolutely nothing to do today (well, besides clean my house, but that doesn't count). Nowhere to go, nothing to bother getting dressed for. Especially since it decided to be rainy and cold today. I'm so tired of being cold. I choose blankets, books, and movies for my day.

Then tomorrow I get to go to a Vienna Teng concert. I'm basically a big ball of glee over that. I plan to take lots of pictures; hopefully they come out.

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I need this shirt.