stuff & things

One Book One Twitter & how cool is one of my favorite authors?!

Earlier this month a whole bunch of geeks on Twitter voted on One Book to read and discuss via Twitter this summer. It's called One Book, One Twitter (many cities already do this). As a fan of Twitter and fan of books I jumped in and voted. Imagine how excited I was when one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors was a nominee! I voted for said book and much to my excitement that book won! That book is American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

This is an incredible book I read a couple of years ago and looked forward to reading again. I am enjoying the re-read and surprised how much I forgot, missed or just didn't understand the first time around. The Twitter discussions have been fun to follow--especially those shared by people reading Gaiman for the first time. Well if you don't know much about Gaiman he pretty much rocks. You can read his own blog @ http://journal.neilgaiman.com/ to get an idea.

In my opinion he is a genius and must be read by all. Stardust (the movie adaptation was so-so) is a great place to start--fun, quick read or even the graphic novels. If that's not your thing his children's books are perfect for all ages. I personally loved the story Crazy Hair from the Neil Gaiman Audio Collection and The Graveyard Book (A Newberry amongst many other awards winner) is one of the best books I've ever read. He's done children's books, screenplays, novels, graphic novels (SANDMAN!) and oh so much more (just wrote a Dr. Who episode too). He's also narrated many of his own works as audiobooks, he blogs, he Tweets and totally engages his fan base. He is incredible. I adore him more and more each day.

Perhaps the reason for going on and on about him is because of what he did today on Twitter! 

He spent an hour on Twitter this morning answering questions about the book. AN HOUR of his busy genius, writer life replying to tweets! See the transcript: 

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dck87t53_5gwg83kzt#

How cool is that?

I think it's awesome and this One Book One Twitter (#1B1T) thing is the best time I've ever had reading, well re-reading and discussing a book with complete strangers. I hope this is the first of many One Book One Twitter programs and hope future authors live up to the precedent set by Mr Gaiman. I have more thoughts on the subject but I am just rambling the highlights before I turn in for the night. I'm about to crawl in to bed with my Nook (e-reader) and a few more pages of American Gods.

Michael's Beerthday Weekend

My husband celebrated his 39th (gasp!) birthday on Saturday but we started early with the Zane Lamprey's Drinking Made Easy Comedy Tour at HOB Friday night.

One of Zane's buses:

Michael getting Steve McKenna'd

and sporting his new "Drinking Made Easy" T-shirt this evil looking wife bought him

A rather large Pleepleus on stage (take a drink!)

No photos of Zane or Steve on stage :(

BUT BUT BUT we got our photos taken with everyone after the show :)

Photos we'll probably never see :(

We hit Cheesecake Factory after the show for some birthday cheesecake & got a room ;)

Saturday we spent the RAINFREE! day at Wildflower Arts & Music Festival in Richardson. Bands, Michael Jackson Tribute, good beer and good meat--seriously good meat on a stick and the Beers of the World Tent had a great variety of beers for us to enjoy all day.

Smooching on the lawn by the Metro PCS stage

Shiny Happy People

Our friends Dax and Shell (no photos boo hoo) joined us later in the evening too. Good times, good times.

Happy Birthday Pumpkin!

Sign The Petition

What is Three Sheets? Three Sheets is an international travelogue/pub-crawl television series featuring different drinks and drinking cultures around the world. Zane Lamprey travels world-wide and engages in local alcohol-related customs. In each episode, Lamprey eats the local food, which is fol
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Zane Rocks! I saw him on Comedy Tour Friday night in Dallas. He combines two of my favorite activities-- Drinking & Travel. Save Three Sheets!!

I did it all for the Nook-e

e-reader

I got one and I am in love!

Save Spork

via savespork.blogspot.com

Quick call me on my mobile!

via straferight.com

Hahahaha, that still makes me laugh after all these years. "Quick call me on my mobile" is from this mobile phone commercial I used to see all the time when I was studying abroad in Italy. It was a goofy commercial but that was the only part in English so a bunch of us used to go around repeating that line.

Unfortunately after tomorrow no one will be calling me on my mobile. Today I canceled my cell phone service! Yes, I am actually excited about this.

No, that's not my current phone, but it is the first mobile phone I ever owned and I'm feeling all nostalgic.

Back in 1995 or 1996 I was working at the Associates and taking classes at community college and let the smooth talking Southwestern Bell sales guy at the Wal*Mart kiosk talk me in to buying a phone & signing a 2 year contract for service I did not need and could never afford to actually use. I had free weekends and holidays but the minute usage charges were ridiculous and confusing. Peak. Off Peak. Roaming. Long Distance. Ah it was a different world then. I broke that contract within a year and some debt collector probably still has record of that old account somewhere.

Since then I've almost always had a mobile phone. I've been with companies that no longer exist or exist under other names now. PrimeCo, Voicestream/T-Mobile, Cingular/ATT and most recently Sprint (where I also worked for a brief 10 months weeks last year).

Not long ago I used to think I'd never be able to live without a cell phone, but I have spent the last couple of weeks weening myself off the texts, tweets, and various web data use which is pretty much how I've used my mobile phone recently: A Time Waster with a monthly recurring charge.
Something to mess with to kill time, when I'm bored, to pretend to be occupied and/or busy in uncomfortable situations? I rarely make & receive phone calls and can't remember the last time I had an emergency or was in a situation where having access to the phone made me feel safer. Truth is I'm almost always with someone (my husband, friends) or somewhere (work, home) with a phone if I do need to make a call.

I've been trying to stop spending money, pay off debt and get back to a simpler life. Freeing myself of the mobile phone habit and expense just made sense. And really, who is going to miss my mobile tweets?

Lazy Saturday

Today was a completely lazy Saturday. The best kind of Saturday. Husband and I slept in, cuddled, watched some movies and caught up on some TV shows. Later in the day I decided to tidy up files on my MacBook and continue going through all my RCPM concert footage.

I uploaded this little number from Circus Mexicus:

and started working on a highlights of Circus Mexicus movie. I now have Final Cut Express but am a little intimidated; I'm still learning all the features of iMovie! But one thing I know is, I love doing this stuff! I'm practicing on RCPM videos now, but I've been taking video of the dogs at work and want to surprise my boss with a video for our website. Yeah, it's gonna rock.

-rp