Autumn Time Warp

I can't believe we are nearly to December. Sorry for the lack of posts this month. I certainly haven't been sitting on my duff! I am usually so excited for Christmas that I make sure my Christmas decorations are up by the end of Thanksgiving weekend. Not this year. I finally got my last Halloween decoration down today, though! So there is progress. Maybe Christmas can start going up sometime this week.

What have I been doing? Teaching lots of piano lessons, baking for Thanksgiving, eating Thanksgiving food, being with my family, getting spoiled for my birthday, taking care of sick children this week, and going to movies, among other things. I saw Breaking Dawn II (liked it; would go again); Lincoln (LOVED it and can't wait to go again); and Wreck It Ralph (charming and fun; will go see it again at the dollar movies). For the last movie I went with my parents, my children, and my sister and her family on Thanksgiving Day. I love going to movies on Thanksgiving Day. And I've decided that I like assigned seating in movie theaters.

I also read a book I got from Justin for my birthday: The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde. Fforde is a very witty, clever writer's writer from Britain. I loved reading his Thursday Next novels about a literary crimes detective who is able to go in and out of books and interact with the characters in those books. In her first case she has to figure out who kidnapped Jane Eyre from her novel to hold for ransom. Fforde also has a Nursery Crimes series in which the main detective has to solve the possible murder of Humpty Dumpty in the first book. This newest book is great fun too. The main character, Jennifer Strange, is a foundling working as an indentured servant running a magic agency -- the employees all have various magical talents who hire out for everything from organ donation deliveries via flying carpet to restructuring a homes entire plumbing system without using a single wrench. She handles the business end, trying to keep the company solvent. Suddenly everyone with pre-cognition talents is forecasting the death of the last dragon by the Dragonslayer, and Jennifer is up to her eyeballs in the whole affair. I hope there are more to come. Next book on my list is Reached by Ally Condie, the conclusion to her trilogy.

Okay. December. Here I come.