So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish!

Wait a minute! I’m not going THAT far! I’m not going for good either.

If you’re lost on the title or how significant it is when I’m talking about birthdays that my next one (and David’s) will be 42, then you need to brush up on your Douglas Adams! Since I may have piqued your interest with the title of today’s blog, you can start here and go forward or back to figure the whole thing out. Better yet, read all five books in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy trilogy! :)

You know how sometimes you do things because they seem like the sensible thing to do and then kick yourself later asking “why’d I do that?” We all have those moments, right? Right??

Well, if you’ve never had a moment like that, you’ve never moved to another state into a house that was already inhabited!

For Christmas one year, Mom bought me a huge hardcover compilation of the whole Hitchhikers series. It’s a wonderful book to have sitting on the floor by the bed (because it’s too big for the night stand) to read, or on the coffee table to enjoy while the Yankees are playing and David insists on watching it because they’re losing. BUT, it’s not something you throw in a shoulder bag and read in the car while waiting for a train!

I’m currently in between books. The last two I’ve read were disappointing to say the least. “Web of Evil” by JA Jance is a book David picked out at Christmastime because it had a train on the cover. Hey, no laughing there! We all have very simplistic subconscious motivators when we make impulse purchases, like a bestseller at the grocery store! But it’s not a good book. It’s trite and a bit scattered. I usually love a good murder mystery, but this one left me looking for the good murder mystery. I don’t like books where by the second chapter I can tell you how it ends! Unless I’m wrong and a brilliant twist logically alters all of my conclusions. It’s very discouraging when I read the whole book only to find out I was right.

So, after that I decided that I’d go older and try a different genre. I’ve had Scarlett by Alexandria Ripley for a long time. It was written in 1991 and found its way to my Christmas stocking. I love the movie Gone With The Wind, it’s one of my all-time favorites and I read the book a long time ago. What I wasn’t really interested in was reading someone else's idea of what Margaret Mitchell might have been forced to write by a money hungry publisher if regurgitating a sequel to everything was the fashion in the 1930s. And I wasn’t wrong about that either. (grr) Scarlett was 884 pages of wear on my eyes that I’ll never get back. The book was over-detailed, a lot of it completely out of Scarlett O’Hara’s character and just ridiculous in the rags-riches-rags-riches, but we never REALLY ran out of riches story. Where Gone With The Wind was romanticized history, this was just romance fluff. It was like a romance novel without the sex.

So, I’ve gone a few weeks without a book in my tote bag or by the bed. I haven’t read a really good book since the last Harry Potter book. That one frustrated me until the end when everything that bugged me twisted and curved into a perfect ending for the book and the series. JK Rowling is a genius! Why isn’t there someone writing books for grownups that well?

So, back now to kicking myself. I have that beautiful hard cover coffee table edition of the Hitchhiker's series, I also had every one of them in paperback, most of them from the used book store (I LOVE used book stores - they smell wonderful!) When I was moving, there were things I left behind. Things that there just isn’t any room for! Yep - I made the executive decision to take the hardcover collection and leave the paperbacks. Now, I want to go back and reread the series in celebration of my 42nd birthday. We’ll be leaving in the morning for a long weekend east and I have to choose between bringing the ten pound edition or choosing another book. “Why’d I DO that?”

I think I’m going to reread Gone With The Wind.


There isn’t a Friday By Request for this week. I’d LOVE it if someone wanted to leave a comment for me making a request for next Friday! Just start the comment “FBR” and make sure you leave a name or Internet ID - Your request comment won’t be published, so feel free to leave an email if you have questions.


And finally, I’ll leave you with a scrapbook page I have posted on my home gallery at Digital Freebies and at digital-scrapbooking.org (DSO)

As you know from yesterday’s Photoblog, we celebrated Baggle's 12th birthday Tuesday. I commemorated the day with this layout that also met 3 April challenges between the 2 sites!

Happy Birthday Baggle!

Credits: Sweet Affection by Dielle brag book page altered to 12x12, font - Tiza

I’m working on a small, but I think neat kit for the SAS April Color Challenge. It’s the first time I’ve done a kit for a color challenge. I usually do a layout, but I had some ideas and a couple commercial use elements and I figured I’d give it a try. It’s a color kit, but I think my designing efforts are coming along and it’s a step up from Raspberry-Orange Sorbet. I find the color kits harder to do than the theme kits because I don’t have the crutch of being able to photograph and extract elements. The new color kit will be available next week!

Until the next Mug Shot, have a great weekend!