Sunday Update!

It's starting to feel like Sundays and Mondays are the only days I get to post or do any blog hopping around here these days. They're my weekend now. I worked out a new schedule with my boss so that I'm now working Tuesday through Saturday 3-11 pm which has been such a life changer because my schedule was just so erratic lately. The new schedule's given me the relief of having two days off in a row AND it's given me a whole day (Mondays) where I can now just devote the whole day to private practice clients too...which honestly I don't even see as work. I can't wait until the day comes (and it will one day!!) when that's all I'm doing for a living. Usually on Monday I'm convinced that I'll be able to keep blogging and keep up with everyone else's blogs because I have that nice relaxed state of mind but as soon as the work week starts again, it never fails that time just goes away and I get exhausted :/ So once again I apologize for my absence lately.

I've taken advantage of my first day of my weekend though! I slept in embarassingly late and then took a quick shower and went to get coffee. After that I went and drove by a few houses that I'll be looking at next weekend :) Yes, I'm back in the market for a house finally! One is VERY promising...as in, unless there's something majorly wrong with it which I'm REALLY hoping there's not, I'll probably put an offer in, so cross your fingers for me! More to come on it if it becomes a reality. Trying not to get my hopes too high! After that I hit the nursery and picked up some plants :)

I'll never learn when it comes to vegetable gardening :p I get SO impatient every year to put my hands back into the dirt and always end up planting things in February...as soon as seedlings come out in the nurseries down here in southern Louisiana. So today I went and picked up two tomato plants, an eggplant, a bell pepper and a jalapeno and planted them :) Also cleaned up the rest of the patio because there were lots of dead plants in old pots and stuff that just needed cleaning. So that was rewarding. I guess the one GOOD thing about not having LAND to plant stuff in is that if we do get a late freeze this year, I can at least bring the pots in for the night.

On the book front, I've read a few good things recently!!! I haven't read near as many graphic novels as I hoped to this month. My goal was to read all of them that I owned :p Which was 42. That's just not going to happen at this point, lol. But since my last post I've read Maus by Art Spiegelman and Volume 1 of Gate 7 by CLAMP.

I don't even know how to talk about Maus. It's one of the most powerful and personal stories I've ever read and there are certain panels from that book that I think will stick with me for the rest of my life. For those who haven't read it, it's the story of Art Spiegelman telling his father's story living in Poland during World War II. And it's a painful one. The story switches between Art's father's actual story and the atrocities he went through as a Jew during the war, during the holocaust, in Auschwitz, and then during the current (at the time) actual interviewing his father for the book. It shows the complications of his relationship with his father and how his father's survival of the war has affected him and how Art's never having known his father's experiences personally affect their relationship. There have been many books written about the holocaust, and I've read quite a few, but I don't think any of them have affected me quite the way this one has. It'll haunt me for a long time.

The other graphic novel I got to is Gate 7 by CLAMP..or at least the first volume and I want the other two that are out NOW!! I wanted something light after Maus, and while I know that CLAMP usually makes me cry at some point during all of their stories, I also know that they tell stories that often have moments that make me laugh out loud and just fuel my entertainment. And this is one of their best stories I think they've put out since X in my opinion. I've been a LONG time fan of the group of artists, illustrators and story tellers that call themselves CLAMP. Like I said, they tell amazing stories. They know how to mix humor and passion and action and mystery and intrigue and then pull your heart out so damn well. They do it with every story they tell. I HIGHLY recommend reading X/1999 if you want to discover something by them. I really liked Chobits too, but Gate 7 really surprised me by how much I liked it! I don't know why I was surprised but I was.

It's about a boy that's left Tokyo and gone to Kyoto because he's always wanted to see it. When he arrives, he meets three strangers and is instantly intrigued by them and then quite literally swept away by them....to another dimension. He soon finds himself living in Kyoto and finishing up high school there and runs into these same three people again. While visiting a temple, he's swept away again to this other dimension and it's hinted that these three people are quite important to keeping everything important in the world, though by the end of the book, we're still not quite sure who they are...or why the main character is able to go this other dimension with them. One of the three mystery people is this adorable girl (though I shouldn't say girl YET because there are allusions that we don't really know if she is a girl or if she has a gender....something CLAMP has played with in other mangas) named Hana and we can tell right off the bat that she'll be central to the story and somewhat of a love interest to the main character and I don't even know how to describe her except that I am IN LOVE with this character...anyway, READ IT!

Anyone else do anything fun this weekend?