Posts for category ‘NFL’

• In the Once Was Lost department, many thanks to BookBrowse.com for naming it Editor’s Choice, to VOYA for saying “Zarr’s fans will not be disappointed by this beautifully crafted novel about a teen coping with a loss of faith,” and (I don’t think I’ve linked to this yet – if I have, forgive me, oh merciful Internet!) Forever Young Adult’s great review, including this, “when it comes to the mysteries of the teenage heart, zarr knows how to create the Real Deal: the sweet awkwardness, the angst of uncertainty, the shimmering highs and the crushing lows.” Awwwyeah. Crushing lows, baby! You can’t have the shimmering highs without ‘em.

• How about them Saints? I thought it was a pretty great game, as Super Bowls go. Of course the best part of the S-Bowl is that it’s an excuse to re-arrange the furniture for maximum TV viewage, have people over, and eat the kind of crap food one normally denies oneself, such as kettle chips with classic onion dip. A veritable bomb of salt and fat. Until next February, my sweet!

• Over the weekend I read Richard Yates’ The Easter Parade. While I’ve always admired Yates’ prose and Revolutionary Road is a favorite (if you’ve only seen the movie, read the book!), it was pretty bleak (as is RR but this felt more so). Characters trying to transition from post-WWII times to pre-Vietnam, going from cocktail to cocktail and lover to lover, children neglected hither and yon…basically it’s Mad Men without the laughs. Okay, a couple of laughs, but it really could have used an in-office John Deere mishap. It was a fast read, about the same length as your average YA. For Sara the Slow, that is a plus. But now I want to read something happy. I’ve been peeking at G.’s library copy of Douglas Coupland’s Generation A, which looks promising if not happy.

I have my tickets to see The Happening on opening day. Will it be good? With M. Night, it’s a crap shoot. But let me tell you what’s not a crap shoot: Zooey Deschanel will be awesome, and more importantly, will have fantastic hair. I have major ZD hair envy. So much so that…well…I cut my own bangs today. I can’t instantly grow my hair to ZD’s length, but I can get the bang effect going and then wait oh-so-patiently while my hair grows, except at some point—soon—I know I’m not going to be able to stand to feel it on my neck and that will be that. For now, though, a girl can dream.

Along with letting my hair grow for like the next four years, I just need to lose 30 more pounds, bleach the ’stache, and procure an airbrush, then I’m pretty much there. Having an amazing singing voice and being 9 years younger would also help.

You know, it’s not that hard to cut your own bangs. The hard part is to stop cutting them at the right moment.

I hope I don’t forget to wake up at 5:30 tomorrow to take my friend to the airport for her flight to a very important medical project in Africa. That would be bad. Maybe by blogging about it I will for sure remember. After that, I’m taking the DVR back to Comcast so that we’re not paying for the 8 weeks we’re gone. But that means six whole days without cable between tomorrow and when we leave. ::nailbiting:: And when we get back? Perhaps DirecTV. Perhaps DirecTV with the NFL Sunday ticket. (Oh yeah, now you wanna be my friend! Nice try.) Does anyone have any good or bad experiences with DirecTV? The Comcast people like to scare you into thinking that with satellite, you’re going to lose your signal every time the wind blows.

I’m kind of pretending this is Monday morning, because I have a lot to do tomorrow and need to preserve my precious and few morning brain cells for some business items. Fortunately, I see I’m not the only one who does this, because over at The Well-Read Child, Monday morning’s post is already up and it’s an interview with yours truly. Find out why I write about outcasts, my favorite scene in the book, and super-secret info on where I write. Thanks for having me, Jill!

On Saturday the recovery from my mountain driving experience and book launch ended up involving a four-in-a-row Lifetime Moviethon, in the following order: Too Young to Marry, My Daughter’s Secret, Queen Sized, and Girl’s Best Friend. Very, very satisfying in a way that only four Lifetime Movies can be. I’m not proud.

The Superbowl. (Super Bowl?) Well, wow. Kinda boring for the first three quarters, then…drama! This is what editors and crit group people mean when they say that something in a story has to be at stake. The game was just kind of going along more or less as expected—not a bad game, but no drama, nothing to really care about other than how the Pats would take what everyone felt they were entitled to. It had a sense of inevitability that stories can get, too. When the Giants scored in the fourth quarter, suddenly everything was at stake and you couldn’t take your eyes off the game. Every character seemed key, every play crucial. Everything mattered!

If you are in the San Francisco area, please do come see me at Not Your Mother’s Book Club on Tuesday night! At Books Inc., Opera Plaza – 7 p.m.  I’ve got a lot of friends and family in the area, so it should be a lively crowd. Their presence might even get me to REVEAL IMPORTANT SECRETS. (I don’t know what those might be, but I’m ready for anything.)