Monday, January 12, 2009

Confessions of a Former Blog-aholic

Bless me, gods of the Blogosphere, for I have sinned. I have strayed from my once-upon-a-time addiction of informing my faithful readers of the minutia of my daily life. And by now I have surely lost favor with those now-faithless readers.

The holidays were crazy. The dog ate my laptop. I was abducted by aliens for research.

But really, I've just been busy. And/or maybe somewhat uninspired.

But it's a new year. And so, in the spirit of new year's resolutions, I ask your forgiveness for my past transgressions. And I resolve to try harder to entertain you this year. I am determined to find the will to get back on the wagon. To get back into a regular habit of entertaining the blog-reading public. To try to fill my schedule with things interesting enough to write about. To try to find humor or life lessons in the seemingly insignificant happenings. To try to redeem myself to those readers (if there are any left) who have painstakingly endured my absence.

I have a new website. Which will hopefully (despite the economy) produce more singing work. Which will hopefully set the stage for some interesting stories to tell you.

I have a new-ish job. In the past, the workplace has served me well for material.

I plan to take a (real) vacation this year. That should at least produce some good photos, and hopefully some good stories to go with them.

We're trying to have a baby. Which, if successful, will undoubtedly produce (both in the resulting nine months of pregnancy, as well as the 18-ish years of parenthood that typically follow) enough fodder for more frequent posts.

Happy new year!

Twilight

OK. I know I'm probably the last person on the planet to discover the Twilight saga. But no matter. I still love it. And I'm still going to tell you about it.

I've always enjoyed reading. I'm not a particularly fast reader. But I enjoy books, even if it takes me a ridiculous amount of time to finish reading them. I had heard of these Twilight books, but they were for young adults. So I didn't bother. However, my husband having been a film/TV major back in college, we had to see the movie shortly after it came out around Thanksgiving.

Now I know what you're going to say. And now that I've read all four books (and seen the movie again after reading the first book, to see if it really IS better to read before watching), I agree with all you purists that the books are better and you should read them first. How could they not be, really? It's nearly impossible to pack 500+ pages of detail into a 90- to 120-minute film. Especially when so much of the book is the thoughts of the narrator/main character. But that's not to say I didn't enjoy the movie. In fact, that's what got me hooked.

I found myself spending my lunch hour the following Monday driving all over town to four different bookstores to obtain a complete set of hardbacks. And the next day I started reading. Every lunch hour. Every night before bed. Every day off. In record time (for me, at least) of three days, I had finished the first 500-page book. I thought it was just because I already knew the story that I was able to fly through the pages, but I found as I embarked on the 560-page journey of book two that I was reading even faster, sometimes staying up until 3AM, unable to put the book down. And book three (longer, at 630 pages) also flew by. Now (after a brief hiatus from reading because of the holidays) I'm 150 pages from the end of book four (a whopper, at 750+ pages), and I finally find myself slowing down. Not because I believe, as some others do, that book four isn't as good. But rather, because I'm sad to see the story end. I'm totally invested in these characters and this story, and so I'm dragging it out.
And as an added bonus, I've discovered some great new music from both the movie soundtrack and the bands thanked in the author's acknowledgements.

Anyway, if there is anyone left on Earth who HASN'T read it, you simply must. It's thrillingly intense, sexy, romantic, intelligent, and yet mostly age-appropriate. Don't let the 2500-page commitment deter you. It's easy reading, and so captivating that you'll fly through the chapters quicker than you ever thought possible.