6/11/09 - Editing this post to delete the pictures, in hopes that my blog layout returns to normal. Sorry!

Chocolate Parties!

I had the luck of being invited to a chocolate party. Yes, a chocolate party. Nancy had a Werther's Party through HouseParties, so we turned up to get some free snacks. BAGS greeted us. Not little snack-size, 100 calorie bags. BAGS. Like, grocery-store, full-on purchase sized bags. Of Werther's caramel chocolates. Dark AND Milk. Bliss.

The verdict: Chocolate good. Caramel chocolate better. Dark caramel chocolate BEST.

I've been reading obsessively these days. I finished another book for review, The Boy from Baby House 10, by Alan Philps and John Lahutsky. What an amazing story. John was born as Ivan, nicknamed Vanya, and spent 9 of the first 10 years of his life in a 'baby house' - basically, a baby gulag in Moscow where he and the other children were sent if the state or their parents determined that they were not able to be cared for in the home. Because being stripped of belongings and abused and neglected by your so-called 'carers' is MUCH better. As a human being, I was mortified. As a parent, I was furious. But it's a book people need to read. It's coming out in a few months, keep an eye out for it.

I'm almost done with another Doctor Who novel, The Wishing Well. Martha Jones is the companion in this one, and I have to keep reminding myself it's not taking place in the American Old West but a British village. Love the story, but my American brain is just having a hard time imagining a little old British town with a wishing well as opposed to an old Western gulch town - you can thank television, I guess, for that one. I should be done and onto the next one shortly.

I'm also reading another one for review, House of Cards, about a card writer/editor's time at Hallmark. More to come on that one, but it is as hilarious as the narrator is tedious and irksome. I think it's hilarious BECAUSE he's tedious and irksome, because I don't think he realizes that he actually comes off like a narcissistic jackass. Ever experience that?

Oh, and I haven't given up on Canticle for Leibowitz by any stretch. I'm off to renew it at the library today. I'm off, and since we're expecting a 91-degree day, I'll be filling up a big bottle of water to accompany me.