My daemon -- gakked from a friend

Your result for The Golden Compass Daemon Test...

Independent Soul.

You are calm and logical, but not unemotional. You are an introvert, at heart, preferring to read alone than be subjected to the crush and noise of a big party or bar. You have a few friends and family, whose presence you welcome - to a point. Even they can wear on your nerves eventually, and you need to retreat back into your personal space for a while so you can recharge. Your energy comes in bursts, after which you need a long nap or a couple of evenings at home to recuperate.

You are comfortable with yourself, and reasonably confident. You want the friendship and goodwill of others, but you are not willing to sacrifice your principles in order to get it. If your close friends need something that you can provide, however, you will be the first to offer it.

You are a good and sympathetic listener, and are aware of your friend's emotional states. With your very close friends, you will open up, but rarely - you don't like to burden people with your problems. At the same time, though, you are honest and are not willing to alter the truth for the sake of convenience. Among strangers you are reserved, and may resort to making jokes to disguise your true feelings.

While you are not afraid of conflict, you do not seek it, either. When you are hurt or insulted, you feel that you have a choice to make. You can choose to take the up on it and defend yourself, or you can let it pass. Your decision may depend on how well you know the person, how personally you take the insult, or simply what mood you are in that day. Your friends may not always know how you are going to react, for that reason. Whatever you reaction, though, you will be logical, rational and unnervingly accurate: a measured strike.

Your daemon's form would represent your calm, introverted nature, your cool logic, and your impatience with crowds of people. He or she would probably whisper ironic comments in your ear, give logical advice and try to hide his or her soft side from everyone, even you.

Suggested forms:
Peregrine Falcon, Snowy Owl, Snow Leopard, Siberian Tiger, Osprey.

Take The Golden Compass Daemon Test at HelloQuizzy

Pooped

I am so freaking tired today. Like, down in the bones, my brain hurts, my eyes are filled with sand tired. I have a book on bonobos sitting on the table, begging to be read, but it feels like even that would take too much energy. It's not like I've done anything to warrant being this tired. So, I was in my chair for eleven hours yesterday, but I was even starting to feel this way yesterday. So strange.

Damn you, Amazon

Your "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" feature is EEEE-VIL! Do you see how long my "to-read" list has gotten in the last half hour? Everything from the history of science to world mythology to the witch hunts to ecofeminism. Even some Milton and Virginia Woolf. That's in addition to the many disability books I put on my list a couple of weeks ago.

::sigh:: Thank goodness I'm going home next week to be near my faithful library with inter-library loan.

Nothing ever happens on a Sunday

1. The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston with Mario Spezi

Nothing ever happens on a Sunday. These fateful words, spoken by a crime desk reporter at an Italian newspaper when he asks a fellow journalist to cover for him, begin a three decades-long search for a murderer that remains unsolved to this day. This book is a first-person account of what is easily the most botched investigation I have ever heard of. I saw this book on the bargain book shelf at the local Borders (unfortunately, independent booksellers without a religious agenda are non-existent here where I'm recovering), and I thought it would be an interesting story of serial murder in Tuscany. What it became, though, was a tragic discourse in political gain at the cost of truth, leaving innocent suspects ruined and victims' families without answers or even the hope of them.

Douglas Preston, famed American mystery novelist, becomes embroiled in the the story of Il Mostro di Firenze when he moves his family to Florence, Italy, to work on a new novel. The villa they occupy is adjacent to an olive grove in which the Monster killed two of his victims. He befriends Mario Spezi, the above named "fellow journalist", who spent much of his career writing about the Monster's murders. The two begin going through all of Spezi's old files with the intent of writing an article for The New Yorker, but instead they wind up being investigated themselves.

The investigation is a three-act tragedy, each act led by a different chief investigator with his own theory of who committed the murders and for what reason. The tragedy is that each investigator pursues his suspect with dogged relentless even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Preston remarks on tne evil of the Monster, but also the evil (as it were) of those who investigated the murders:

Some of the top investigators, prosecutors, and judges in the case, charged with the sacred responsibility of finding the truth, appeared to be more interested in using the case to leverage their power to greater personal glory. Having committed themselves to a defective theory, they refused to reconsider their beliefs when faced with overwhelming contradictory evidence. They cared more about saving face than saving lives, more about pushing their careers than putting the Monster behind bars. Around the Monster's incomprehensible evil had accreted layer upon layer of additional falsehood, vanity, ambition, arrogance, incompetence, and fecklessness. The Monster's acts were like a metastasized cancer cell, tumbling through the blood to lodge in some soft, dark corner, dividing, multiplying, building its own network of blood vessels and capillaries to feed itself, swelling, expanding, and finally killing. (p. 202)

The crazy investigation is a commentary on Italian culture, what Preston's friend Count Niccolo Capponi calls dietrologia = the study of behind, i.e., finding what's hidden behind the obvious. "'At all costs, they have to find something behind the apparent reality. There cannot not be something. Why? Because it is not possible that the thing you see is the truth. Nothing is simple, nothing is as it seems'" (p. 222).

Count Niccolo continues by explaining that Italians' inherent distrust of the rich figures into the prominent theory that a satanic cult is behind the murders, and that the investigators must "save face" even in the face of evidence disputing their theories.

"In Italy, the hatred of your enemy is such that he has to be built up, made into the ultimate adversary, responsible for all evil. The investigators in the Monster case know that behind the simple facts hides a satanic cult, its tentacles reaching into the highest levels of society. That is what they will prove, no matter what. Woe to the person . . . who disputes their theory because that makes him an accomplice. The more vehemently he denies being involved, the stronger is the proof." (pp. 222-223)

Preston pays no heed to this veiled warning from his friend and winds up being effectively kicked out of Italy after being intensely interrogated and accused of conspiring to help plant evidence to confuse the investigation. Later, Spezi is jailed.

If a fiction writer were to present a story of this nature to a publisher, it would probably be rejected as "unbelievable." This book certainly proves that truth is stranger than fiction.

Big News!

I'm going home Feb. 2nd.

*happy dance*

This is no place for a girl on fire

I forgot to write a review for the first of these books when I read it back in September or October. As for the second, I started it in 2010, which is why I put it on the 2010 Book List despite finishing it in 2011.


28. Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

There has been a lot of hype in recent months about this young adult trilogy of books and the movie being made of the first one. In my humble opinion, it is well deserved. Collins's characters are engaging -- even the ones we don't like. I love that the main character, Katniss, is not a Mary Sue. She IS smart and resourceful, but she also is unwittingly caught up in circumstances she can't control. She performs actions that she thinks are smart at the time and is stunned when things backfire. She's a kid in an insane world who's just trying to stay alive to continue taking care of her mother and sister.

Today, I had a 45 minute conversation with a 13-year-old boy (a son of the facility social worker) who had just finished this book. He knew I had read the book, and he came to my room this afternoon with the specific goal to talk about it. His enthusiasm for the story and the characters was amazing, and refreshing. I love to see kids excited by reading, and I especially love to see a kid talking intelligently about plot twists and character motivation. Any book that can inspire that is a win in my estimation.



29. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Poor Katniss. Her act of desperation and rebellion in Hunger Games has come back to bite her -- HARD. Now everything and everyone she holds dear is in danger. In an effort to squash rebellions in other districts, Panem's president tries to make Katniss his puppet, but the spark has landed and Katniss's best efforts cannot extinguish it. She has become the face of hope and rebellion, and when she's thrown back into the Games for the Quarter Quell, she resolves herself to being a martyr if it will keep safe her family, her friends, and her entire district.

I am eagerly awaiting my friend bringing me the third and final book.

My Celtic genes are squealing in delight!

A Spaniard playing Irish bagpipes -- these are the lovely and odd combinations I live for! Thanks, Roulette, for the link.

Torchwood sister series

Russell T. Davies -- he who revamped the Doctor Who franchise and then spawned Torchwood -- has come across the pond to work on what I'm calling a TW sister series for STARZ called Torchwood: Miracle Day. There's a little about it here and here. And more specific info about casting and such here.

::heads to bump up Torchwood in Netflix queue::

It's a boy!

My friend Marlo had her new baby boy at 3:48 this morning. He was 8 lbs, 8 oz. -- so he came in a TAD smaller than his older brother who was that weight when he was three days old. I don't know his name yet, but hopefully Marlo planned ahead this time and had a boy name in mind. With Cylis, she was absolutely convinced throughout her entire pregnancy she was having a girl. Poor kid went by "Baby X" among our tribe for a week. :-)

I'm thrilled for her but sad for me that I couldn't be there for this birth, too. Hopefully she'll send me pictures soon.

Texting, Circa 1860

From about.com's Grammar site

Essay to Miss Catharine Jay

An S A now I mean 2 write
2 U sweet K T J,
The girl without a ||,
The belle of U T K.

I 1 der if U got that 1
I wrote 2 U B 4
I sailed in the R K D A,
And sent by L N Moore. . . .

This S A, until U I C
I pray U 2 X Q's
And do not burn in F E G
My young and wayward muse.

Now fare U well, dear K T J,
I trust that U R true--
When this U C, then you can say,
An S A I O U.

(Charles Carroll Bombaugh, Gleanings From the Harvest-Fields of Literature, Science and Art: A Melange of Excerpta, Curious, Humorous, and Instructive, 2nd ed. Baltimore: T. Newton Kurtz, 1860)

Amazing short story

Thank you to a friend for posting this on her blog.

Go read A Private Experience by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. You will not regret it.

Stephen King Library

I just joined the Stephen King Books site so I can work on completing my collection of his books. What's funny is: (a) I just bought the introductory book (his latest -- Full Dark, No Stars) on one of my visits home, and (b) I just ordered one of the free gifts (the SK desk calendar) through one of my other book clubs. Not to worry! My aunt (also an SK fan) is having a birthday in ten days, so I will give her one set.

Now I just need to go through my collection to determine which books are missing/which need to be replaced so I can mark on their list which ones they should send me.

Forensic geek girl squee

CSI marathon on USA! Starting with the older ones.

Grissom, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

As if my 2011 To-Read list weren't big enough . . .

. . . I get the Goodreads January newsletter with a ton of new releases.

Oy. I'm going to be on a first-name basis with every McPherson Public Library employee. But then again, I should be used to that.

Grrrrrr!

Stupid impending snow showers. Stupid healing broken bones. Ow. Ow. Ow.

At least I got in a good lunch with Lynlee and Pax before my legs started hurting.

Seriously . . . where's my Percocet? Yes, it's that bad.

I wear my sunglasses at night

Or, while I'm sleeping. Cuz I'm groovy like that.





This is my cousin Amanda's baby, Grace. You can't tell me she isn't one of the cutest babies ever.

Are you kidding me?

I just saw the most ridiculous commercial -- a $90 per month facial cream called "Stem Cell Therapy" that will "stimulate the stem cells in your skin to make you look YEARS younger."

Listen up, people. We do not have stem cells in our skin. We have rapidly reproducing skin cells in our skin, but they are not stem cells. Stem cells can differentiate into any of several different types of cells depending on the stimuli they receive. Skin cells are just that -- skin cells.

Save your $90 and learn to love who you are.

More 2010 good news

I just learned that my friend Brian has finally gotten a publisher for his book Hell to Pay. The book will be out this August.

Congratulations, Mighty Bri -- I'm SO excited and happy for you!

2010 in Review

As I lay in bed late last night (early this morning) listening to the fireworks and gunshots ringing in the new year, I was momentarily depressed as I realized I had spent more than half the year in rehab. I'd lost my entire summer and fall, and I'd spent my birthday and favorite holiday (Halloween) locked up. My poor, dear Moby suffered an early, untimely, and certainly undeserved demise at the hands of a careless young man.





My body, as though not experiencing enough physical challenges, was busted all to hell, resulting in me being pinned and plated and rodded to the point that I now have more hardware inside me than a Home Depot. I thought of all the rough things my friends have also gone through this year.

But suddenly I thought, "Wait. It's the first hour of a new year, and thinking of the negatives is not the way to start it." So instead, I started thinking about the good things that have happened in 2010, and suddenly I realized that even though so many bad things have happened, some pretty amazing things have happened, too.

March -- My cousin Josh and his wife Kyla welcomed the newest member of their family, Makynna Lynnlee. "Kenya" (a slip of one of her sisters' tongue) is Josh's fourth and Kyla's second.





March -- I was introduced to the group Great Big Sea ("from the tropical island of Newfoundland") via a concert my friend Lynlee took me to.








March -- My friends Jonikka and Erik were married on the Spring Equinox. I was the maid of honor.







April -- I received notification that I had been awarded one of the prestigious Ford Fellowships to help me complete my dissertation.

April? -- My friend Suzanne successfully completed her Ed.D. at UCSD.

May -- My friend Anita quit her job. You might think this would be a bad (maybe even a horrible) thing, but if you knew even half the s--- she had to put up with from her boss, you'd realize how fabulous this is.

June -- My cousin Amanda and her husband Jim welcomed the newest member of their family, Grace Ellen. She is Amanda's first and Jim's third.





July -- I got up in my chair for the first time in a month.

August -- I went with my folks to see Celtic Woman in concert. Fab. U. Lous.

August -- I celebrated my 39th birthday. Many people dread birthdays of this magnitude, but not me. According to the doctors in London who diagnosed me when I was 3, I wasn't supposed to live past 20. Every birthday since then has been a celebration.

October -- My fluctuating asymmetry review -- on which I'd been writing and rewriting for four years and had submitted to three journals -- was finally accepted for publication by Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries.

October -- I officially became eligible for the state program "Money Follows the Person" because I had been in rehab at least 90 days. This program automatically gets me paid attendant care at home when I finally escape this joint -- something I've been trying to get since I moved back to Kansas last December.

November -- My friend Marrus married her very own G.I. Joe (term used affectionately) in a "shotgun" wedding as Jay will be deployed very soon. You can see their custom cupcake topper and a picture of their gorgeous selves on Marrus's LJ.

November -- I got to go home for the first time in six months.

November -- My friend Amanda and her husband Roger welcomed the newest member of their family, Kaylynn Lee. Kay was a little early and experienced some respiratory issues, but to my knowledge she is now doing well. She is Amanda and Roger's first.

November -- My friend Anita successfully completed her masters thesis at WSU. She was so amazing.

December -- I was contacted by a masters student in the Philippines and a professor in Germany requesting copies of my review as their universities do not have subscriptions to that journal.



So now, my goals for the year. I really only have two major ones. First, I'm getting out of this rehab hell. Seven months is far too long for someone like me to be locked up, and it's time to go home. Second, I'm completing my Ph.D. It might take me until November, but you can put money on being able to call me Doctor Dawn no later than Christmas. Early notice to my New Orleans tribe -- you are hereby invited to my dissertation presentation and to my hooding at graduation, and we should start planning where to have my celebration. As to that last, there had better be fruity-rum drinks involved! To my biological family and to my Kansas pack -- anyone who wishes/is able to come to either the defense or the hooding is soooo welcome!


Finally, I'd like to thank everyone who has been so supportive of me over the last seven months. Your visits, calls, and emails have really helped keep me sane. I love you all, and I hope your 2011 is filled to overflowing with love, happiness, and blessings in your personal and professional endeavors.