I recently came to the sad conclusion that I must give up eating chocolate. In all its forms. Entirely. That’s a whole food group kicked out of my diet. Because I tended to overindulge, and it started making me sick. I won’t go into detail. Let me just say that the consequences of eating chocolate [...]
Jul 052010
Okay, so I meant to write this review and get it up here on my blog a couple of weeks ago — it was supposed to follow the first review in somewhat shorter order, but you know how it is with the best laid plans and so on (you know you’ve heard the quote, modified [...]
May 142010
It was a very long time ago, when I first made the journey to Roger Zelazny’s fantasy world in The Chronicles of Amber. It was, in fact, sometime in 1984. Why do I remember the exact year? Because I remember reading the book in the laundromat at the front of the R.V./mobile home park where [...]
Sep 132009
I have a friend who studied history and languages and women’s studies while I was studying zoology and mammalogy and ornithology and a whole bunch of other ologies relative to wildlife. We often trade books back and forth. Although we both like some of the same science fiction titles, our tastes in non-fiction don’t line [...]
Aug 302009
They were the very first hybrid sport utility transportation. Mules. That’s what I’m talking about. To a lot of people, mules represent the best possible example of that beast we call hybrid. And although it’s true they can’t reproduce like us — and the birds and the bees — they can be cloned. It seems [...]
Aug 242009
So I went to the library at the local university the other evening to get a book that wasn’t available at either of the local public libraries. I went after 5 p. m. so I could park in a lot and not have to pay (like in the Visitors Parking Garage) and not get a [...]
Not long ago I re-read William Zinsser’s On Writing Well, a book that was required reading for the writing course I took through Long Ridge Writer’s Group. This time I read with a red pen in hand to underline key passages and fix in my brain the high points of the wealth of knowledge it [...]
Apr 012009
…or, how to manage a psychotic neurotic dysfunctional dog. She would like to be addressed as “Your Royal Highness,” I’m sure. Although I think that when I call her “You Heinous Bitch,” she thinks it’s the same thing. She’s not a big dog. She’s even quite small for a basenji. And she seems to have [...]
I have been slacking on the painting, and now I have found another awesome cat portrait to reinterpret artistically The work is backing up. But I had to read a couple of books — historical research for my blog, you see. The first book, The Mote in God’s Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, [...]