A memorable memorial migration

I got back last night from a road trip to St. George, feeling sorta tired, sorta sore, and definitely grimy. But I had a lot of fun, too. :)

We (Brandon, Becca, Meili, and I) hit the road Saturday morning around 8, and made great time going south. I think the majority of the holiday traffic probably happened on Friday after work, and I really didn't have too many sarcastic comments to direct at my fellow drivers, at least not on Saturday. We took my Altima, and it performed admirably, getting between 26 and 27 miles per gallon, and making the whole trip down without our needing to stop and fill up. I made it to Cedar City before I had to stop and de-fill up.


Back seat society


Front seat society

We got to St. George around noon, and hit In-n-Out on our way into town, since our hotel rooms weren't guaranteed to be ready until 3:00. We got to the hotel and were told we might have to wait an hour or so, but then as we were walking away, one of the janitorial staff arrived and we were told that our rooms had just been readied. After a brief rest, we hit up the pool for some swimming and sunbathing. Which was a nice change from getting snowed on earlier that week in Salt Lake.

After getting our fill of pool time, it was back inside for more resting and then we headed out for dinner and fun. We ate at a Mexican place I've been to before called Pancho & Lefty's that is fairly decent.


Mmm...dinner

After dinner, we went to a place called Fiesta Fun. One of those mini-golf, go-karts type places, where we played a round of putt-putt and then did a turn on the go-karts. I managed to tie for 2nd place in the golfing (Brandon beat us all by a good 10 strokes) and then got stuck with a two-seater go-kart that pretty much guaranteed my finishing last of our group, since they all got the apparently faster single-rider versions. We got ice cream at McDonalds afterward and then called it a night.


Apparently this is the secret to winning at miniature golf


I was very happy with my "2" on this hole.


Excited for Go-Kart action!

Sunday, we got up bright and early (at least for a vacation) and ate a decent hot breakfast at the hotel, and then headed over to the Bloomington area for church with my old roommate Ray and his family. After church, they invited us over for burgers at their place. I was really impressed with their place. It was really nice to catch up, as it's been a couple years since I saw them last. We ate and then played with their kids for a bit and then played scum for a little while.

The rest of Sunday was spent relaxing and swimming some more, then Sunday night we ate at Texas Roadhouse, which I always love. I didn't get the kabobs that I love so much, but the smothered chicken was pretty good, too.


Mmm...dinner


Brandon's such a deep thinker


But he likes dinner, too.

Monday morning it was up and at 'em relatively early again, as we planned to head up to Zion National Park and do some hiking before making our drive home to Salt Lake. We got away from the hotel a little after 9, and were searching for parking at Zion around 10:15 or so. After not finding a spot at the visitor's center, we felt lucky to find one up the road a bit at the museum. Then we boarded the shuttle and made our way to "The Grotto", where the trailhead to Angel's Landing is located.

I've hiked Angel's Landing once before, about 7 years ago, and remembered being nervous that time because "there are sections with chains to save you from falling to your death!", but then discovering that it really wasn't too bad. There was one section that had sheer drop offs on both sides without chains but it was only 6 or 8 feet long and the rest of the chained section really didn't bother me too much. Well, in the past 7 years, it has remained at its same level of unscariness. (For me, at least. I know some people do have real problems with heights, so I don't want to make light of that) The section I remembered being the scariest now had a chain on one side of it, so it's not nearly as bad. Going up I figured that coming down might be a little more scary, but really even that wasn't so bad.

In any case, we made decent time on the hike and enjoyed the spectacular views along the way and from the top, and were able to feel good about ourselves for conquering the hike. Becca and I had both done that hike before, but Brandon and Meili were first-timers. Brandon and Becca made a little bit quicker time than Meili and I, but I think we had a lot of fun and paced ourselves pretty well and didn't get too exhausted. My knees got a little sore from the crouching coming down, and then just the impact of walking down the fairly steep slope of the trail. My feet were also pretty sore by the end, but I managed to avoid any blisters. I didn't take the best hiking shoes, just some older sneakers that I thought would be versatile enough to use throughout the weekend. Maybe not the best choice, but I guess I dodged a bullet there. They didn't really have any tread on the bottom and a couple times made some scary slidy noises that spooked a fellow hiker, but I really was never in any trouble of sliding to my death.


The view partway up the trail


Taking a break along the way


Walter's Wiggles


At the summit


This looked a lot steeper as I was looking up to take a picture than it felt coming down. So I guess that's good, right? :)

By the time we got to the bottom, we were pretty worn out and ready to eat lunch (it was around 3 or 3:30 at this point), so we caught the next shuttle back to our car and hit the road. We stopped for lunch in La Verkin and then got back on the road. I was worried I might get a little sleepy on the drive back and told everyone else to sleep if they needed to, so they could spell me later on. Fortunately, I never really felt that tired and was able to drive the whole way home. Everyone else stayed awake for most of the ride as well (I think Becca might have slept a bit) and did a great job of keeping me entertained, DJ-ing the ipod and listening to my sarcastic grumbling about my fellow drivers, e.g. "I'm the fastest RV in the world!" We made it back home around 8, and after dropping everyone off, I got unpacked, showered, ate a late dinner around 10, and got to bed before 11.

All in all, a nice road trip with a nice mix of doing stuff and not doing stuff.

Lost in the shuffle

So, for the last 5 years I've been a big fan of the TV show Lost, (caught Season 1 via torrent), and have always enjoyed the interesting adventures of the survivors of Oceanic 815. Toward the end of season 2 and start of season 3, it felt like the show was kind of stalling, and it turns out they were, until the producers were able to convince ABC to set an end date for the show, so that they could tell a true story, with a beginning, middle, and end, rather than having to extend the show out indefinitely forever until people got tired of watching it. And then at that point, it seemed like the show started to give answers to some of the questions viewers had had, and started to move toward...something. Some kind of ending.

Anyway, this week, the show ended, and I have to say I was pretty disappointed. For those who haven't watched the show, I won't try to spoil too much, but I'll just say that while the finale as a single episode was great, for the show to end that way and leave so many things unresolved makes me feel a little cheated. I hoped that at least a significant portion of the storylines that were brought up in the first two seasons would see some kind of resolution, and while a couple of them did, there were many that were abandoned. So that was kind of a bummer. I think that if I were to go back and rewatch the show now, I'd be pretty disappointed, knowing in advance how many of the interesting things that happened would never be explained.

Anyway... going to St. George for the holiday weekend. Excited for some warm weather.

**Relationship Advisory Warning**

Threat Level: Severe (Red)

So, back in 2006, nearly 4 years ago, after a fun talk with CJ, I came up with the humorous idea of a "Relationship Advisory System" modeled after the Dept. of Homeland Security's Homeland Security Advisory System aka the Terror Alert level system.

Who knew that it would take so long before the Relationship Advisory System finally went into the red? And yes, I know that had I been really keeping that advisory system up to date, there would have definitely been alerts issued at Yellow, Orange, and Red, but really I don't always feel like sharing everything related to my dating life on this blog. Especially since so many people that I know have mentioned to me that they read it. :) Not that I don't want to share. Just when things are in those undefined stages sometimes its hard to know what you even know.

Equally now, I still don't really plan on sharing too much of my dating life here on the blog, but I guess if you really want to know more, feel free to get in touch with me (if you have other means of getting in touch with me). I suspect that I will probably find things to share here and there going forward, but for now, I just figured I'd give my shadowy internet following a head-up. :) Suffice it to say that, so far, 2010 has been a great year.

April? Meh

For some reason, when it comes down to the numbers associated with months, I always have the hardest time remembering which months go with 4 (April) and 5(May). I mean, if I think about it I can figure it out quick enough, but all the rest just seem to immediately snap to mind. But 4 and 5? Hmm...

I realized that today when I got an email talking about something happening on 5/26. Had to make sure that wasn't this week. And obviously it's the 30th today so it must be next month (May). But the fact that I don't automatically see 5 and think "May" puzzles me. Maybe it's because there aren't any major holidays associated with April and May? I don't know. 1 (January), 2 (February), and 3 (March) are easy because they are right at the start. 6 (June) and 7 (July) are right in the middle, and 10 (October), 11 (November), and 12 (December) are right at the end. My birthday is in 9 (September) so that probably helps me also remember 8 (August).

Anyway, how's that for a random thought to end April and start May? And in case you didn't already know it was snowing here last night and this morning. Meh.

Some of what I've been up to lately

Sorry for the dearth of interesting blog fodder lately. It isn't exactly that interesting things haven't been going on, just that some of them aren't quite ready for the spotlight of a blog post. Not sufficiently formed enough to be easily describable. Suffice it to say that life has been good to me the last few months and I'm just trying to enjoy things one day at a time.

In terms of things that I have done lately and can easily describe, I went to another Jazz game last week, their final game of the season against the Phoenix Suns. The night before the Suns had beaten Denver, and the Jazz had beaten Golden State. Because of how tight the west was this meant if the Jazz won they would get the #2 or #3 seed in the West for the playoffs, while a loss to Phoenix would mean dropping to 5th and losing home court advantage. Carlos Boozer didn't play after suffering a "strained oblique" against the Warriors. And the Jazz proceeded to get blown off the court by the Suns. :( It was nice to be there on the night that the team honored former owner Larry H. Miller, who passed away in the last year, by retiring a jersey with his longtime softball number on it, and announcing that the floor will now be named after him: "Larry H. Miller Court at Energy Solutions Arena". Here are some photos from the evening:


The Bear getting the crowd ready for player intros


Kosta Koufos getting rejected


Larry's jersey

Also last week, Saturday was the University of Utah's annual spring football scrimmage. I picked up my buddy Shawn and we headed to Crown Burger for lunch and then up to the U for the game. We got there in time to catch the end of an alumni flag football game that featured Scott Mitchell and Brian Johnson as the quarterbacks.


Scott Mitchell playing QB for one of the alumni teams.

The scrimmage followed. It's always a little interesting to watch a game where you're cheering for both sides. Really just wanting to see good plays and see which of the young and/or new guys look promising as we look ahead to the coming season. 3rd string QB Griff Robles played well and I was impressed with receievers Westlee Tonga, Kendrick Moeai, and Griffin McNabb.




There were estimated to be about 10,000 fans in attendance for the free game. Pretty much all the red seats on the west side were filled in.


Terrance Cain threw this pick on his first pass, but eventually settled down and led his team to victory.


Robles throwing a touchdown pass to Devonte Christopher

Anyway, it was a great day to get out and enjoy some warm spring weather (finally!) and as the Red-White game is often my first sunburn of the year, I remembered to put some sunscreen on before I left and was able to enjoy the day worry-free.

Random Thoughts on the English Language #21: Guess... What?

Whenever I type "Guess what", I want to add a question mark at the end. And yet, it's really not a question. It's a command. Not sure if it's because it ends in "what", or what. Did some Googling and found that it's similarity to "Know what?", which could be expanded to "Do you know what?" might be part of what confuses me.

Just because it's snowing outside on April 1st

Maybe, by looking at this picture, I can pretend that it's actually 80 degrees outside instead of 33.

Old Book, New Book #18: A Wrinkle in Time -> Traffic

Well, that went quickly, didn't it? I managed to finish this book in just over a week, so it must have at least been entertaining, right? :) And it was. I remembered this book only vaguely from reading in my younger years, so it was still full of surprises. And still a little weird. But enjoyable. I just felt like a lot of what happened was unexplained. I'm sure that some Children's Literature grad student has broken it all down in a thesis somewhere, but I'm not sure that there really are satisfactory explanations for some of what happened. What's important is that things turned out alright in the end. :)

As I took this one back to the library, I went straight to the shelf where I've seen the sequel "A Wind in the Door" each of the last few times I've been there. And wouldn't you know it? It was gone. So I'm going to have to put a hold request on that one and move on to the other book that I have checked out: "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What Its Says About Us". It was recommended by my friend CJ and looks to be an interesting pop-psychology-esque look at driving. Stay tuned and I'll tell you what I think about it.

Sweet Madness

Last night went downtown to the Energy Solutions Arena (home of the Utah Jazz) to watch NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 games with some buddies from high school. A year ago, one of them suggested we all put in for the lottery to buy tickets for this weekend's games that would be in Salt Lake. One of us was lucky enough to win an opportunity to buy, and then we all bought tickets from him. Who would have guessed it would turn out to be such an exciting set of games?

The first game (#1 Syracuse vs. #5 Butler) started just after 5, so I left work around 4 and figured it would take me a bit of time to find a parking spot and walk to the arena. However, as I was driving down by the stadium, I lucked into a spectacular free curbside parallel parking spot that I 8-point-turned my way into. Almost took a photo to capture the moment forever. Mr. Mohler, my drivers ed teacher, would have been so proud. I was literally half a block from the arena, right outside a pay lot that was charging $10 a car. In any case, I made it there with plenty of time to spare.

Which meant I got plenty of time to watch Syracuse and Butler warm up.


And also check out my surroundings. For instance, these Syracuse fans were on the row right in front of me:


And this old guy came and sat down right next to me:


We found out later he was in the wrong section, but he was definitely an interesting one. He had a scorebook where he was tracking the game, binoculars, and the radio you can see in the photo. When it turned out he was in one of our seats, he asked if he could please wait for a break in the action before moving, so that he wouldn't have to miss any of the game.

In addition to the interesting people, it was interesting to see the changes they made in the arena for the games. The most obvious was the entirely new floor that was brought in. However, in addition, all Jazz paraphernalia inside the actual arena (as opposed to the concourse area) was taken down or covered up. The division and conference championship banners were gone. Retired jersey, also gone. The plaques commemorating Stockton's assists and steals records were covered up. No "Bear Cave" or "Boozer's Buddies" banners. Nothing. The LED ring at midlevel, that usually shows ads during Jazz games only had some simple NCAA branding. I assume it's all part of what you agree to when you agree to host (and officially this event was hosted by the University of Utah, even though it wasn't in their home arena).

Anyway, then it was time for the National Anthem,


and then it was time to get things going.


Butler jumped out to a quick lead, leading by 10 or so for much of the first half, while getting 9 steals and keeping Syracuse from getting anything going. Butler didn't shoot so hot either and probably squandered chances to increase their lead. The half ended with Butler up 10. In the 2nd half, Syracuse battled back and made a game of things, taking the lead a couple times late.
I didn't take a lot of pictures during this game, but here one from early in the 2nd half.



In the end, Butler made some huge shots down the stretch, including an amazing 3-pointer that was in-and-out-and-way-up-on-the-backboard-and-in-again that pretty much sealed the deal. Final score: Butler 63, Syracuse 59. Down goes another top seed.

We then had 30 minutes until the start of the 2nd half of the night's doubleheader, #2 Kansas State against #6 Xavier.


This game started out looking like it was going to be a blowout. K-State jumped on Xavier early and was up 19-4 when I decided it would be a fantastic time to go find some Papa John's pizza for dinner.

*Tangent Alert*: At Energy Solutions Arena, among many other concessions, they sell personal-sized Papa John's pizza. And when you buy your pizza for $6.50, they also offer a choice of beverages, including sodas and bottled water, for $3.25 each. But if you want to go for the "Double Team" combo, you can get pizza and a soda for $8.75, saving yourself $1 over the cost of buying them separately. However, if you want pizza and a bottled water, it's still $9.75. Even though soda and bottled water sell for exactly the same price. ($3.25) You can only get the discount if you get a soda. What kind of madness is this? I ran into this at a Jazz game earlier this season and was equally stumped. I was hoping last night that I'd figure out a way to get around it. For instance, could I buy a pizza, soda, and water for $12, then decide I didn't want the soda and get $3.25 refunded? I feel like if the individual retail prices of soda and bottled water are identical there's got to be some way that I could get the $1 discount with bottled water instead of soda. So far, I'm at a loss. I'm sorry that I don't want to drink your Coke Zero, ESA.

*Tangent Over*

Anyway, by the time I returned with my pizza and water, Xavier was starting to turn things around, and managed to close within 1 by halftime. The 2nd half turned out to be spectacularly thrilling, close all the way. Kansas State led most of the time but never by much, and Xavier just kept hanging around. I remembered to take more pictures this time around:











Of all the teams' fan groups, Kansas State's was the most boisterous, standing for long portions of the game, and doing some loud, coordinated cheers several times


Even early in the game, it became clear that Xavier's players were not afraid to chuck up 3-pointers from way outside the arc, and though many of them missed, if you take enough eventually some are going to drop.


Kansas State was not shy about throwing up the treys, either.


The two teams combined to shoot 47 3's. And make 20 of them. Which wasn't spectacular, but for teams that only managed 65% and 76% from the free throw line, it was pretty impressive.

Coming down the final stretch, Kansas State appeared to have the momentum and had a 3 point lead with 10 seconds left. But Xavier's Terrell Holloway managed to get fouled while shooting a 3 with 5 seconds left and then proceeded to make all 3 free throws to force overtime.


Overtime was a flurry of excitement with both teams scoring 15 points a piece in only 5 minutes of action. Both teams continued to toss up deep threes with reckless abandon and we were joking that Xavier's coach was telling his players to shoot from further out.






Again it looked like Kansas State might have it wrapped up, leading by 3 with 19 seconds to play. But then this happened:


Jordan Crawford (who you might remember hearing about from his dunk over LeBron last summer at a Nike camp) pulls up from 35 feet away (practically from the "We Support the Troops" ribbon) and drills a huge 3 to force double overtime. Ridiculous.

Well, the excitement had to end sometime, and in the end Kansas State pulled away (well compared to the rest of the night, a 5 point lead was pretty big), on more strong play from Pullen and Clemente.


All in all, it was a fantastic night. Saturday's game between Butler and Kansas State will be hard-pressed to provide an encore of equal excitement. But who knows?

Laughing at Illiteracy #3: Take it ease-y

From a (distant) friend's Facebook status:

..favorite past time #2.. Ease dropping on others convo's

From one doctor to another

"I wish all my patients were doing as well as you."

That was my doctor's assessment this morning at my diabetes follow-up appointment. It's been almost exactly a year since I was first diagnosed with Type II diabetes, and, in the short term, it would appear to be one of the best things that's happened to me health-wise. :) Obviously the potential for complications down the road is probably something that I'll always need to be wary of, but for now, things are good. In the last year, I've lost about 45 pounds, lowered my HbA1c (an aggregate measure of average blood sugar over the previous several months) from 7.5 to 5.9 (up a smidge from the 5.8 it was last time, but certainly still very good), and in the last 4 months since starting to take a super-cheap generic statin, my cholesterol has dropped dramatically from 188 to 128, while at the same time my good cholesterol (HDL) has gone up a tad.

Coupled with so many other great things going on in my life, I continue to feel really blessed.

Old Book, New Book #17: Shen of the Sea -> A Wrinkle in Time

Finally got "Shen of the Sea" finished. Took about a month. Not to say it wasn't mildly entertaining and enjoyable. But I think because of the nature of what it was -- a bunch of short stories -- it never really gained any momentum to make me want to push through to the end. Just 5-8 pages of a story, the end, the beginning of the next one. Anyway, it was alright. And if you were buying this book in 1926 (the year that it won the Newbery Medal, you'd probably be pleased to get so many stories for the price of one book. You could pace yourself and have enough stories to last you for a good, long while. Now in the age of libraries packed full of books that you can read for free, maybe the quality of the individual stories would need to be a little better. Or maybe it just wasn't my cup of (Oo loong) tea.

In any case, I've moved on to another Newbery book, "A Wrinkle in Time". It wasn't my intention to read another Newbery back-to-back like this, but I've been wanting to re-read the whole series for a while, and I can never find this, the first in the series, at the library when I'm browsing. And then I end up taking home Pet Sematary even though I'm not super excited about it. So when a friend mentioned this book recently, it reminded me to put a hold request in for it.

After a couple weeks of waiting (high demand? low supply? both?) it showed up last week to my local branch. Now that I've got it, I figure I better get through it before it has to go back to the next person who puts a hold on it. Also, because late fines are getting steeper. Used to be 5 cents a day. Now it's 10 or 15.

As I was saying, my original plan was to read at least one non-Newbery book in between each medal winner, but I'm setting that aside for now to focus on this one. As I mentioned, this is actually a book I've read before. At least 2 or 3 times. But I can't seem to remember many of the details. And I always remember that I really liked the 3rd book in the series ("A Swiftly Tilting Planet") a lot, and would like to read it again (which means I'll probably also want to read "A Wind in the Door" again, which I remember approximately nothing about. And now there's a 5th book in the series. I know, right? Since when could authors keep writing more books in a series, after you thought you'd read them all?

Anyway, this series could move to the forefront of my reading list for the next little bit. But maybe I'll still try to mix in some other things. I've got at least one more book that I already checked out and am interested in reading.

Sign Language

I know I don't blog much about my work, and that probably won't change much in the future either, but today I'm going to share with you something that, while unrelated to the actual work that I do, did take place at my place of employment.

My office is in the basement of the hospital, and every day I go up 2 flights of stairs to the 2nd floor to get breakfast and lunch at the cafeteria and then come back down. In the stairwell there are handy signs to mark which floor you've arrived at. Like these:





But at some point, the sign marking the 1st floor disappeared. Don't know if it was broken, or taken down or what. In any case, every day when I'd be going up, I'd get to the 1st floor where there was no sign, and somedays I'd wonder "Is this the 1st or 2nd floor?" Sometimes I get distracted while I'm going up the stairs, ok? There was just a blank spot on the wall. For a long time. A few months at least.

Finally, one day, I decided that the 1st floor needed a sign, too. So I made one. On a post-it note. And put tape on the sides so that it wouldn't just fall down when the post-it's stickyness wore out. And put it up in the blank space where the sign used to be. And several months later, it's still there. :)

Party like a (Sham)Rock Star!

A year ago, we had planned on having a St. Patrick's Day Party at the amazing new house that my roommate-to-be was buying, but with some delays in the paperwork for closing, we had just barely moved in and the house just wasn't ready. So we moved the party to his parents' house and had a great time there instead (Thanks, Bart and Sue!) Anyway, fast-forward to this year and we decided that the house still needed a good St. Patty's Party. So we had an organizing meeting over pizza, invited friends, and got the double shot set up for the first time since the basement's been finished. Good times ensued!


Some of the few people who ventured up to the Eagle's Landing


Losing to my roommate (who went on to win the tournament) at double shot. Seemed unfair that I had to play him in the first round. He would have been so disappointed if I'd beat him.


Ladies' ping-pong


General sense of fun in the basement


The kitchen squad




Lots of socializing going on on the main floor

Definitely a good time. I'm lucky to live in such an awesome place with awesome roommates and awesome friends.

Follow-up on Yesterday's Visit to Grandma's House

So last night after taco dinner at the Harden's, and lots of fun times with the grandkids, we finally made it up to Grandma and Grandpa's to start looking through what is there. And believe me there was a lot there. Probably a lot of stuff that no one wants, mixed in with some nicer odds and ends. In reality, it's kind of a surreal experience to be looking at someone's stuff and realizing that a) they're gone and not coming back, and b) we can (and in many cases should) take this stuff for ourselves. Weird, I know.

In any case, I went through the games closet and picked out Rummikub (one of at least 3 that we found there), Boggle, Pit, a box of dominos (again, multiple sets were seen), and a backgammon set. I looked for the cuckoo clock but didn't find it. There are still a few more rooms and closets to dig through, so it may still turn up. If it does, apparently I get to have it. Didn't see the Zorba yet either.

I grabbed a couple books that looked interesting (including a 1922 edition of Jesus the Christ that was a little beat up). Oh, and there are a couple sets of luggage that I guess I'll get one of. To be honest, there's nothing that I feel a lot of emotional attachment to now, though I suspect that in time as these things become all that we have left of my grandparents, I'll probably appreciate them more.

I imagine that I might make another trip up there at some point and just take a little more time looking through stuff and see if any of it would be useful in a purely utilitarian sense (kitchen stuff, toolbox stuff, etc). It's just weird to think about it all in this way.

On a less weird note, I had tons of fun with the grandkids and am jealous of everyone who gets to have their nephews and nieces living nearby.

I don't just read books all day, you know?

Lest you think that all I do these days is read award winning children's literature, I figured I better sit down and write some kind of post about something other than what books I've been reading lately.

The question really is, what should I write about? Well one thing I wanted to share was a photo of my grandpa who just passed away, together with my grandma who passed away about a year ago. I had forgotten that I had it, and then was looking through my photos in Picasa the other day and found it.



I'm happy that they are together again without the constraints of illness that hampered them quite a bit over the last 10 years.

Tonight, we're going up to their house with my uncle's family to look through their belongings and decide what things people are going to keep and what things will get sold as part of an estate sale. I've been trying to think what, if any, things I'd want of theirs. If my grandpa's old Zorba computer was still around I might want that, as it is identical to the one he gave us that was the first computer we had at home (not counting our TI home computer). Maybe some games (Rummikub, Funny Bones). I imagine the cuckoo clock on their stairs is already spoken for, but that's something I always liked. Used to make them change the time, so it would chime and the cuckoo would come out. :) I don't know what else. Guess when I get up there I'll see.

Old Book, New Book #16: Pet Sematary -> Shen of the Sea

I finished Pet Sematary in a relatively short amount of time. Of course after reading Atlas Shrugged for 9+ months last year, every book I read seems like a quick read. :) But, honestly, it was kind of nice to get into a book that kept me coming back to see what would happen next. Thinking I need to mix a few more of those in with some of the others I've been reading lately.

On the whole, I thought Pet Sematary was good but not great. A lot of it deal with the idea of death and coping with death, which perhaps struck me a little more deeply since my grandfather passed away last week in the midst of my reading it. In any case, I liked the first two-thirds of it a lot, but thought the ending was a tad week. Would have liked a little more resolution. Not my favorite by King ("It", "The Dark Tower" series), but not my least favorite either.

Up next is Shen of the Sea, Newbery award winner from 1926. I read it in snatches while I was already reading Pet Sematary. It's a collection of mythological-sounding short stories from China. I haven't looked into the background enough to know if they are original stories by the author (Arthur Bowie Chrisman) or if he just collected them. In any case, they tend to be humorous for the most part and easy reading. I suspect I'll have this one finished before too long.