Bibliomama

Nicole and I are bringing memes back, so in typical Nicole-and-Allison fashion, Nicole brought memes back starting two days BEFORE Christmas, and Hannah brought memes back very soon after, and me? Here I am straggling in on whatever the hell day this is, when it's really just a little pathetic to still be talking about Christmas television, but I'M OKAY WITH THAT. Nicole also takes her Christmas tree down the day after Christmas and ruthlessly sweeps out and puts away every pine needle, silver bell and sparkly ribbon, so we're clearly just barely the same species. What is your favourite Christmas television special, and why? A Charlie Brown Christmas. I love The Grinch, and Frosty the Snowman, and, truthfully, all the other dumbass specials that Family Channel spits out at this time of year. But nothing gets me right in the heart like a Vince Guaraldi soundtrack, those manically dancing little Peanuts figures and that pitiful little tree. When I was still in the...

The lovely, talented, sweet-as-toffee-pretzel-bark and ever-so-bendy Nicole decided we should take this Facebook meme to the blogosphere. I have a tendency to overthink these things (I'm sure you never would have guessed) so I've been avoiding it on Facebook, but here it is three days since I've blogged AGAIN, it's 9:30 p.m. and I'm waiting for white chocolate and coconut to firm up enough to scoop into truffles, and who am I to look a gift meme in the mouth? So. Ten books that have stayed with you. Ten books. Jesus. According to Goodreads I've read about 1500 that I've remembered/been willing to admit to. And these days even the things that stay with me don't stay with me, my memory being like....like... you know, that thing you use to sift flour and shit. And, unlike Nicole, I'm not a great rereader - not because I don't think rereading is a wonderful and worthwhile enterprise, but because I'm always feeling like I have to forge ahead in ...

Synopsis from Goodreads:  Melinda Soto, aged sixty-four, vacationing in Mexico, is murdered by a fellow American tourist.   Back in her hometown of Reno, Nevada, she leaves behind her adopted son, Jeremy, whom she rescued from war-torn Guatamala when he was a toddler—just one of her many causes over the years. And she leaves behind a circle of friends: Veronique, the academic stuck in a teaching job from which she can't retire; Rosemary, who's losing her husband to Alzheimer's and who's trying to lose herself in volunteer work; Henrietta, the priest at Rosemary's and Melinda's church. Jeremy already had a fraught relationship with his charismatic mother and the people in her orbit. Now her death is tearing him apart, and he can barely stand the rituals of remembrance that ensue among his mother’s friends. Then the police reveal who killed Melinda: a Seattle teenager who flew home to his parents and drowned himself just days later. It's too much. Jere...

This is what I did this afternoon: The ones on the right (toffee shortbread or shortbread meltaways - my recipe is on a pink page from a flour recipe book, and I've miraculously managed not to lose it - this is almost exactly the same) has become my go-to Christmas cookie over the past few years, and one of the only cookies I can actually "whip up", which to me means very little recipe consultation - since my memory's gotten so bad and I'm a bit obsessive, following a recipe usually means frequent and repeated looking back at the recipe between adding and stirring things. The kids love them, they freeze like a dream and....um... well, shortbread, and Skor bits, so duh. In the middle is salted chocolate toffee pretzel bark , which I found last year, I think by Googling pretzel toffee bark (okay, not the most gripping story - the recipe makes up for it). Every time someone tastes it, their first question is whether you need a candy thermometer to make ...

Alternate title: "Most embarrassing thing I've had to ask about since going to Rogers Video and saying "um, I was wondering if you happened to have noticed that I mistakenly returned an Iron Man DVD case with a Dora's Mermaid Adventure DVD inside?" Well, the most embarrassing one I'm willing to admit, anyway. Adams Family McCaskill Dec 07 10:14 PM (EST) I'm trying to get into my account to see what colour socks I ordered my son and it keeps saying my password is wrong (I didn't think it was, but it's possible), but I asked for my password to be emailed to me and still haven't gotten the email. And I need to order the right coloured freaking socks before Christmas. How do I proceed? Thanks, Allison Evan  (EvoShield) Dec 09 05:21 PM (EST) Hey Allison, Sorry you had an issues with locating your order. If the order was placed as a Guest then you probably can not access it without the order information. Do you know what name ...

Last year when I was about to embark on my -- hang on a second -- FOURTH NaBloPoMo (I was about to say 'third or fourth' and then I remembered that a couple of weeks ago I asked my friend if her husband's law practice had been open for more than a year and she told me it was FOUR, so I counted), a friend warned me that NaBloPoMo had killed her blog. I always think it kind of resurrects mine - the fact that I'm obligated (however artificially) to post every day removes a lot of the pressure to post only weighty or worthy or thrice-polished material, and it gets me back in the habit of writing, after a fall season where school and activites have started and my resolve is often flagging. When NaBloPoMo ends, I usually post again the day after or the second day after, and I think "yeah! I've GOT this! I'm going to keep posting every day! Or almost every day!" And then another day or two goes by, and I've got an idea of what my next post will be, but ...

I have high hopes that I will again someday. Today is not that day. I wanted to write about a book of short stories that I took out of the library. I looked at the book notes that I keep as Word files, hoping that I had made notes on it, although I had no memory of making notes on it - I do many things that I have no memory of doing these days. I didn't make notes on it. I also didn't order a copy of it when I ordered books the other day, using the gift cards Angus gave me because he had a bunch piled up in his room and was never going to use them (talk about a gift that makes you simultaneously exultant and despairing). I would have put it on my list of books to buy; in fact, I might have. But I can't find the list. I feel a little like I'm walking on a disappearing path.  Today while we were sitting waiting for our estimate at the collision centre, I told Matt that I was throwing in a load of laundry in last night, intending to go to bed right afterwards, th...