Dude. You Know What Sounds Good? Hometown Buffet.

I don't know what it is about swimming, but it turns us into rabid squirrels. Seriously. I'll come home and be like, "Okay, Ali, you're eating healthy right now, remember?" And next thing you know I'll have a spoonful of peanut butter in my mouth, followed by chocolate chips. (Although it's really good, it's like a huge Reese's peanut butter cup, I suggest you try it!)

So to celebrate my friends' first meet on Thursday, we're trying to plan a trip to Hometown Buffet. Because where else would you go to induce a carbohydrate coma after you swim a buttload, correct? Hopefully it works out. One of my lifelong dreams has been to go nuts at a buffet with two of my best buddies. Or at least, it is now.

Have you ever read an Irish murder mystery? I've read French, I've read British, but never Irish, until now. The Dead Hour by Denise Mina bored me for a little bit, but I ended up really liking the protagonist.


Meet Paddy Meehan, an Irish 21-year-old who is trying to support her family of five on a crappy journalism job following the police around and... reporting, obviously. She also has weight issues, which every girl can sympathize with at some point in her life, and this makes her so much more likeable (even though Kinsey Millhone, the stick who can eat 3 Big Macs and not feel a thing, is still my favorite).

In the dead of night, Paddy gets called out with the cops to investigate a noise complaint. At the door, there's a man, but a woman is also standing in the background with blood dripping down her head. The man bribes a few of the cops and Paddy (Paddy takes it unwillingly) to not write up the incident in the paper or make a big deal out of it. Next thing you know, the blond woman is dead. It turns out she was a high-profile lawyer. But why would a high profile lawyer not want help if she was being beaten to death?

And so starts Paddy on this whirlwind mystery, delving into the darker side of Ireland. No leprechauns there. And despite the fact that parts of this book get confusing or a bit slow, it's still a good book overall. Not my favorite, but whatever.

Speaking of leprechauns, the other book I read this week was about fairies. In fact, it was THE book; the one I've had on my list since it came out, an installment of one of my favorite series. It is: ARTEMIS FOWL: THE ATLANTIS COMPLEX by Eoin Colfer.

This book... didn't live up to all my expectations. But I did love being reunited with some of my favorite characters, except it always sucks when you remember which ones have died and you're like AWWW MAN, I REALLY LIKED THAT GUY, HOW'D I FORGET THAT?! Yeah. I did that a few times.

In this 7th part of the series, Artemis is now battling insanity as a paranoid, OCD mental issue catches up with him. And then there's bigger problems: someone is using Martian probes to attack spots on earth, possibly trying to get Artemis and his buddies (Holly the elf, his bodyguard Butler, and Foaly the centaur) out of the way for a bigger plot. But who?

I always loved these books because they're like Mission Impossible, Fantasy Edition. You've got these mythical creatures running around with guns and spy cameras and grappling hooks and minisubmarines, kicking butt against all the bad guys (pixies, rogue fairies, etc). It's a new concept, and it's definitely exciting to read.

It made me kind of upset, though, because I got a bad copy of the book! At page 280, my copy goes back and starts at page 249 and then back up to 280, and then picks back up at page 313. So it has the same amount of pages, technically, just about 30 of those pages ARE REPEATED, MEANING I'M MISSING 30 PAGES OF ARTEMIS FOWL ACTION!

As you can imagine, this made the ending kind of confusing to me. Argh. And I can't return it, because I bought it from a Target up north in Elk Grove over Christmas Break, and I have NO IDEA where that dang receipt went. But hey, maybe it's just my luck or something. Ali, Giver of Homes to Misfit Books.

I really wonder what went down in those 30 pages.

Do They Even Have A True Definition of Irony?

Seriously. I've been wondering about this. Because one person will say something's ironic, the other will be all, "OH NO IT AIN'T!" And next thing you know you and your friend are having a giant cake fight over whether or not your sarcastic remark about Teri Hatcher on Desperate Housewives was ironic or just lame sarcasm. However, cake fights are not a bad thing. Hello, frosting.

I read... exactly... ONE book this week! I'm so special. Either that or I'm a super slow reader right now due to the normal chaos going on in my brain: HOLY CRAP I HAVE A HISTORY TEST NEXT WEEK! AND I REALLY WANT BANANA BREAD! BUT I'M IN SWIM SEASON... AND THEY'RE MAKING ME DO THE 100 FLY! HOLY FISHNUGGETS I'M GONNA DIIIIIIIIIIIEEEE! I can't possibly read with this trauma.

So onto what I did read.

Diary of a Teenage Girl: Becoming Me by Melody Carlson. How to say this... this book WAS NOT that good.

Poor book, I'm so sorry you kinda sucked. It's just this author was writing a diary from the point of view of (you guessed it) a teenage girl and it was very unrealistic. It details Caitlin, a girl who wants desperately to be popular and ditch her unique-quirky friend Beanie for the plastic-perfect chick, Jenny. Um, didn't Caitlin ever see any Disney movies? Popularity never works out. Unless you were born that way.

Fortunately Caitlin gets her life straightened out and joins an awesome church. Then the whole book turns to this religious theme. And while I don't mind books becoming highly religious, I'd prefer they deal with the issue REALISTICALLY, rather than "La di da, I go to church now, LIFE IS BOMB!" Because that's kind of how Caitlin came off to me as. Maybe it's just me.

Or, since people usually come off way different than who they actually are in real life when they write diaries or journals, maybe this book is more realistic than we'll ever know.

Either way, not that enjoyable. But others may like it more. Maybe I'm just a reading Grinch this week.

Remind me never to type in yellow font again. With the white background, every time I check to make sure I haven't made any typos I feel like my eyes decided to swim in acid and then dance spastically around a strobe light. Man, that's giving me a funny mental image. It could be because of all the chlorine that my eyes hurt this bad, too.

You know what else is random?! I made it all the way through Valentine's Day without eating ONE candy or chocolate. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?! Everyone knows Valentine's Day is candy-binge day of the year, second only to Halloween. Of course, Thanksgiving still takes the cake in all things foody.

They signed me up to swim the 100 butterfly event in swim... Have you ever tried that? It. Is. EXHAUSTING. I don't actually mind it that much, it's just after 1/4 of the way through, on the first turn, it's like SWEET LEGOS WHY ISN'T THIS OVER ALREADY?!

Have you ever seen 100 fly? Let's view high school nationals, shall we?



It's SCARY! I look nothing like that, seeing as I'm a giant pansy, but still. Give the fliers credit. Most people can be too lazy to reach up for the TV remote and we're dragging our arms over our heads for 100 yards. Okay, I'm still too lazy to get the remote when I'm on the couch.

Today is a Sunday and I have to clean the bathroom. This should be against child labor laws. Anyone want to start a petition?

Hate It When Stupid Things Keep Me From Doing Stuff I Need To Do.

Muse at the Grammys! Watched them last night... must say, they were amazing. Of course, I've loved them since I first played Knights of Cydonia on Guitar Hero:

Good stuff. I could never play as well as this dude, though. And yes, I'm one of the nerds who would go on youtube to look up videos of people beating really hard songs on expert. But at least I was never looking up Call of Duty cheats like *ahem* my brother...

Anyway, life lately's been kinda weird. My cold's all better but I woke up on Saturday not able turn my head to the right! My neck kinked up and it's still a little spazzy... so we'll see how that goes during swim practice today. I already went to my best friend's birthday party with it and got into a giant cake/tickle fight without too much protest, so it should be fine.

AND I NEED TO GET BACK IN THE WATER, WE'VE GOT A FRAKKIN' MEET IN TWO WEEKS AND OUR POOL'S GETTING DRAINED! *awkward silence*

Please ignore the above spaz attack.

So the books I've been reading! I read Sophomore Switch by Abby McDonald on the way home from Arizona, and it was REALLY funny.

Two girls, one an uptight Oxford student and the other a laid-back UCSB student, participate in a transfer program and end up with each others' lives. Emily, from Oxford, is looking to forget about a bad breakup and try something new to break free from her meticulously-planned success schedule; Natasha, from Santa Barbara, is trying to hide from the press after she unknowingly broke up America's IT couple and turned herself into America's #1 Hated Skank.

The only problem is, classes are harder than Natasha expects and Emily can't help but do the wrong thing. Neither girl can loosen up in her surroundings enough to enjoy the change at first, until they talk to each other and realize how to blend in.

The thing I liked was it was almost like a cultural study as well as a great novel. You see how two VERY different types of people live and how one can go from one extreme to the other.

Plus, you know, you've got all those great plot elements such as adventure and romance making this a pretty good book.

And the book I just finished: Middleworld by J&P Voelkel.
As far as I know, this book had a completely new premise for kids' adventure fiction: a race through Mayan mythology. Rich and spoiled Max is pretty mad when his housekeeper books him a flight to the jungle of San Xavier to join his archaeologist parents on a Mayan hunt and then they don't show up. But he quickly realizes something more serious is going on, and he'll have to team up with a native Mayan, Lola, to not only find his parents but also possibly save the world from an evil spirit.

This book combines lots of Mayan history and lore with the bratty Max and funny Lola to weave a great adventure story. I've heard there are two more books in the series and I WANNA READ EM! Plus, the artwork in this book is pretty awesome too. Definitely made the story more interesting, although it's so fast-paced you feel like you're in the jungle with them.

And so ends my post. Hopefully I'll keep up with my reading this week on top of double practices every day, so I can post again sometime soon. =)

Wow, This Slump Is Worse Than I Thought It Was.

Well, it's not so much a slump as the fact that I've been SO BUSY. I had winter formal to go to, homework to keep up with, swim practice, and now to top everything off I'M SICK.

Actually, having this fever-flu combo thing is what's allowing me to post; I have nothing better to do. I mean, sure, I could get caught up on homework, but who would want to do that? That might make me sicker.

Although it's probably not possible for me to get sicker, since I can barely recognize my voice as it is from my throat being so raw. And I'm half-delirious from fever (I walked into a wall yesterday) so please excuse any typos or random ramblings. Because I'm sure there'll be a few.

So now, onto the books I've been reading!

Starting with: Uncle John's Triumphant 20th Anniversary Bathroom Reader by The Bathroom Readers' Institute, apparently. I didn't know they had an institute for that.

This book is FILLED with random knowledge, and it's like the 15th in a series. Thanks to Uncle John, I now know Cockney English, some of the dumbest celebrity quotes ever (yes, one of them was from Britney Spears), the history of bread around the world, and a few words to sound smarter. Now, this may not seem that important, but I assure you some of this knowledge is going to come in handy someday.

Okay, maybe not, but still, it was really interesting. Great book.

Number two (no pun intended): The Night Tourist by Katherine Marsh.

Okay, this isn't the cover on my book, but I couldn't find a picture of that cover anywhere because my copy is an advance proof (doing community service at the public library has its advantages). My cover is all black with just three colored circles right above the title: green, red, yellow. Like a messed up traffic light. I like the simplicity of it.

This book follows Jack, a boy living with his father after his mother's mysterious death. After being almost killed by a car, Jack keeps running into weird strangers who seem to know something about his mother. His father sends him to a doctor in New York, where his mother died, and while at the train station he meets a girl, Euri.

Euri gives him a tour of the New York underground (hence the title) and pretty soon Jack is uncovering secrets about his family he never dreamed could be true.

This book was pretty good, for children fiction; kind of uncomplicated as far as subplots and storylines go, but that was part of the beauty of it. And the end keeps you guessing up until the last pages... it's one of those books where there is a happy ending, even though it's not in the way you might want it to be, at first.

Okay, last one for now: Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland.

I have to say, this book confused me until about 2/3 of the way through, and then suddenly I GOT IT.

The book starts off with this man talking about his colleague, who has shown him this painting that looks very much like an original Vermeer. In fact, his colleague claims it is. But why has he kept it hidden all this time? Apparently, his father stole it from a Jewish family during the Holocaust and he thinks it's too late to return it.

From then on, the book traces the history of this painting, chapter by chapter, showing how it came into all these people's lives since it was painted. The ending's bittersweet, and sort of sad, but all in all it's a good book.

And the language the author uses to describe these families' lives is beautiful in itself; the imagery and the storyline is brilliant, and you'd never guess where the painting's come from, how it's been passed on from person to person. It's almost like Sid Fleischman's Seed Folks except the people never interact with each other. The painting is what ties them all together in history.

Well, enough ranting. I'm going to go lie down with more movies and possibly annotate a little (but probably not) and maybe finish my book later (definitely).

This morning I watched Panic Room, with Jodie Foster and SURPRISE! Kristen Stewart. I remember being like 8 and wanting to see this SO BADLY but knowing it was R and I'd probably never see it. And now I have! Seriously though, look at how young she was:
Crazy! And even at this age, she was still only able to play that one type of character: the aloof victim. Have you ever noticed that? How she's only able to be that person? Like in Speak, or Twilight. I don't remember Zathura being this bad, though.

Whatever. Time to go occupy myself elsewhere.