Fifteen Minutes of Delusion

I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 100. Actually, my wife is thinking of the number. I like to involve the family. Whoever guesses closest in the comments wins a copy of Far World: Water Keep. You have until Midnight Tuesday. Go!

I had the great privilege this past summer to preview the first book in the new Far World series, Water Keep, by J. Scott Savage. I've learned a lot from J. Scott, (also known as Jeffrey S. Savage) by reading his blogs ( here and here ) and attending his workshops at writer's conferences. Plus, Jeff and Scott are good friends with James Dashner , and I trust his judgment. Other people may see thirteen-year-old Marcus Kanenas as an outcast and a nobody, but he sees himself as a survivor and a dreamer. In fact, his favorite dream is of a world far away, a world where magic is as common as air, where animals tell jokes, and trees beg people to pick their fruit. He even has a name for this place-Far World. When Marcus magically travels to Far World, he meets Kyja, a girl without magic in a world where spells, charms, and potions are everywhere, and Master Therapass, a master wizard who has kept a secret hidden for thirteen years, a secret that could change the fate of two worlds.

Guess what I found out today? Our ward still has opening hymns at the beginning of church. I mean, I didn't have any reason to doubt this, but I haven't seen it for myself in a while. I've been way behind on a lot of things lately, and this blog is no exception. Unfortunately, it's actually kind of the prime example of my behindedness. Which is too bad, because there has been a lot going on. For example: Wednesday night, smoke came billowing out of the garbage disposal. Thursday morning I gathered up bits and pieces from unfinished and abandoned projects and returned them to Home Depot for enough in-store credit to get a replacement. Friday afternoon Anna arrived at the house in tears, having brought her baritone home for the first time. Technically, what she has is a euphonium, and for a not-quite-eleven-year-old, it's a bit large. (See the comparison below) We bought her a luggage cart at Wal-Mart to haul the thing around. I could have used one of those during my

A few months ago, I was asked by Janet Kay Jensen to review her book Don't You Marry the Mormon Boys . My schedule got a bit out of whack this summer, but I have finally put a review together. This is Janet's first novel, though she has quite a bit of writing experience. You can learn more about her at her website here . Gather 'round, girls, and listen to my noise, Don't you marry the Mormon boys; If you do your fortune it will be, Johnnycake and babies is all you'll see. -old western folksong When Andy McBride met Louisa Martin, he knew he had found the girl for him. There was only one problem: polygamy - a lifestyle that Louisa could not escape and Andy would not embrace. As medical students at the University of Utah, Andy and Louisa fall in love - but can a mainstream Mormon and a Fundamental polygamist overcome the cultural barriers between them? Both r

We survived the first day of school (and at this point, at least for Alyssa, the second day). The morning routine started a little later than usual, due to a combination of Kara being here to help and my desire to begin exercising in the morning, which postpones the daily shower by a few hours. Both girls were up and ready to go. We let them sleep on the bedroll in our room, which they see as a big treat. Actually, they're starting to see it as a God-given right, so we may have to work on that a bit. As a special back-to-school breakfast treat, we made strawberry muffins Sunday afternoon. Too many strawberries caused them to fall flat, but they taste very good. Kara and I tag-teamed Alyssa, helping her get dressed (though this year she's doing everything but her shirt by herself), doing her hair, and getting her lunch packed. She was very excited about her bus coming again. Anna decided to get up at the same time as everyone else, even though her bus comes an hour later this ye

"Fifteen years after meeting at Education Week at Brigham Young University, Juneau, Deenie, and Erin face new challenges. Deenie, now living in Gainesville, Florida, begins to question everything she has believed about herself as she sees her actions through others' eyes. Juneau's feelings of guilt come to a head when a secret from her childhood and the mystery of her great-grandmother, Letitia, combine to force her to confront her past. And Erin, whose painful divorce has made her cynical about love and marriage, must decide if she can take a risk when she has a second chance for love. "Staying in touch through phone calls, e-mails, and periodic vacations together, the friends offer one another support, sometimes in the form of blunt feedback. But as they anticipate reaching their goal to become Crusty Old Broads, life takes a turn that puts their twenty-five-year pact in doubt." Surprise Packages is the third and final book in The Company of Good Women series

In honor of back to school time, it's book blog tour week at Fifteen Minutes of Delusion. Tomorrow (Monday, August 25) I host Surprise Packages by the Crusty Old Broads. On Wednesday, August 27, I talk about Don't You Marry the Mormon Boys by Janet Kay Jensen. Then on Friday, I will host Far World Water Keep , by J. Scott Savage. As an added bonus, I will be running a contest August 26-28, where you can win your very own copy of this exciting new book, which is not even in stores yet. So stay tuned. I will also try and keep you up to date on the many happenings as the girls start back to school tomorrow. In less than 12 hours. Not that I'm counting or anything.

After more than a week of frequent rain, we've had a few sunny days. As a result, the mowers have been running all day along the street. Mine included. Since I hadn't mowed out back since June, the need was acute. Although, to be honest, a long dry spell this summer greatly reduced yard care urgency. This dry spell now appears to be over. So, with a bit of lawn mowing effort I have managed to turn myself into a bundle of achy stiffness. We'll see how much of this is age, and how much is the Lyme treatment. The doctor yesterday told me to take a month off from my antibiotics. It's only been a day, and I think I'm already starting to feel some improvement. We'll see. Anna's Lyme test came back, and while the results weren't as overwhelmingly positive as mine, they are still pretty clearly so. We've decided not to start her on antibiotics until next month, when the school year is well underway. The guinea pigs are still doing fine. Anna is too busy taki

Not to slight the schools in the town where we used to live, but we have been very pleased with the education our girls have been getting since we moved her to Texas. I fear that may change this school year. Tonight was Meet and Greet at Alyssa's school, and New Student Orientation at Anna's new school. Two very different experiences. We went to Alyssa's school, and met her teachers. They seem very nice, and we got the few questions we had answered quickly and easily. We then came home for a quick dinner and tire change (and accompanying shower), then went to Anna's school for the orientation. This did not go so well. First off, the "orientation" was a Powerpoint presentation in the cafeteria to an overflow, standing-room only crowd. We couldn't hear very well, but the little bit we did hear was all information that would have been better presented in a series of handouts. That was it. No teachers. No answers to pressing questions. We came out with more qu

Sunday afternoon we went to an open house for Alyssa's new school, McCall Elementary. I love the tile on the wall - very stylish and durable. Alyssa constantly asked to go to "PE" so we found the gym. It's pretty nice, with a soft, rubberized floor. This is Alyssa with her Functional Academics teacher, Mrs. Mraz. We'll find out who her mainstream 4th grade teacher is Thursday at Meet the Teacher. And of course, no elementary school is complete without a fun and exciting playground.

Anna has had a lot of fun with the guinea pigs since she's been home. So has Alyssa. She has them all over the house. It's a good thing these are social creatures, because otherwise they'd be socialized to death. Even Kara likes them. Today I put in a complete new kitchen in 30 minutes. It keeps the food in one end of the cage and the rest of the cage stays clean. Guinea pigs poop "at the speed of light" and their innards work like a conveyor belt, with the food going in and coming out at the same time. This way, ALL of the messes stay in one little section of the cage. Tonight we had a big community party for Jessie Hall . You may have heard of her - she's a little girl who had a hemispherectomy to help stop seizures, and her story has been on the national news several times. Anyway, she lives in the little town next to ours, and she's been home and having a super recovery. The party was organized by a lady in our ward. Anna decided to get her face painte

Safe and sound after a five-leg journey (including two car rides and a three-hop flight). Anna made it to Guinea Pig Land without exploding! Although as we got close to the house, I started to wonder.....

We finally have our family pictures hung on the wall. We started this project on Saturday, and finished up tonight. I like it.

Last night wasn't too bad. My bed was pretty new, so it was fairly comfortable. The mattress crinkled and the springs popped, and Kara said that kept her awake. It didn't bother me - I slept with ear plugs in. Kara didn't sleep all that well, and the noisy mattress was only a part of it. She thinks she was reacting to something she took. Probably so. Every time I looked over, she had the Olympics on. Thank goodness for all night coverage. Everything went well on the ride home. We synced up our drive time with her pain pill schedule, and that worked great. Once home, she took a couple of long naps on the couch while I worked. Hopefully she'll still be able to sleep tonight. Our babies come home tomorrow night. I'm excited to see them, although I'm not sure I'm ready for them to be home quite yet. But only 12 more days until school starts!

Kara's still doing well. We are going to stay overnight at the hospital, just to be safe. Plus it's a long ride back to the house, and the shocks on the van are pretty old. We'll leave to go home tomorrow.

Kara's out of the recovery room. It took a while, but she typically takes longer than usual to come out from the anesthesia. Still, I was starting to get a little worried. But she's looking great, smiling and animated. They have her in a regular room, but we still don't know if we'll be going home tonight or not.

Kara's surgery is done. They moved her down to recovery, and it will be a half-hour or so until I can go see her. The doctor said everything went well, and she's looking good on the inside. He gave me some pictures, but I'm not sure I'd post them even if I could.

We made it to the hospital OK this morning, and Kara has been in surgery for about 30 minutes now. The doctors have both worked with her before, and they are both very good. Our confidence is high this morning. We got a little off our schedule yesterday, what with the guinea pigs and all. That put us behind getting everything packed up for today, which put us behind watching The Return of the King last night, so we didn't get to bed until much later than I wanted. Once we did get to bed, Kara kept waking me up. I guess she was dreaming about orcs or something. We were up by 5:00 and on our way by 5:40. It took us just over an hour to get here, and I'm a bit surprised at just how heavy traffic was. Days like today I'm especially grateful for my non-commute. Kara got all changed into her little robe, and we both got a short snooze before they moved her to pre-op. Once there, the poor nurse spent half an hour trying to find the glass IV bottles that the doctor had ordered for

Today has been a fairly intense day. It started out when the alarm went off at 6:30, and I turned it off so I could sleep until 7:00 and didn't wake up until 7:58. Oops. I managed to scurry around and get myself on the road by 8:35, which is the same time I usually start driving when I have to chase the girls around in the morning. It's also the departure time that gets us to church exactly 5 minutes late. (Sigh) Can't blame the kids for that one. Then while at church, I got a text from Kara informing me that what I thought was Alyssa's loose tooth turned out to be a loose crown, and the crown had fallen off. Remember that the girls are visiting their grandparents. I felt terrible! But grandparents are full of experience and they capably handled this crisis on their end. Being in a small town and knowing the dentist personally, they were able to get the tooth looked at and treated, even on a Sunday. We're busy trying to get ready for Kara's surgery tomorrow. We&

I had a pretty big list of things to get done today. My body decided it was old and conked out after the first few. To be fair, the first task involved hoisting a dozen or so boxes and bins into the attic, some of them containing books. The second task was to rearrange the living room. These are pretty big tasks and took multiple hours and a fair bit of physical exertion. Wii Fit never made me ache like this. I feel old. Even my aches have aches.

So far, the two biggest advantages of our childless week are 1) once part of the house gets clean, it stays clean and 2) we get to watch movies that aren't animated or full of whining, singing teenagers. We watched 27 Dresses on Thursday night, which is about whining, singing 20-somethings. Last night we watched The Fellowship of the Ring , which is full of computer-animated sets and creatures. OK, so I guess not much has really changed since the girls left. Oh, actually, there is one important difference. Last night my pizza had ham and pineapple on the whole thing! None of this half-cheese business. No siree. With the girls gone, we're living the high life. Stay tuned for today's incredibly exciting job recap, proving that all of the mess and mayhem in our lives is really the kids fault, and without them we could be reasonably well organized people. Not that we'd trade our kids for a clean house. At least, not for more than a week.

We got the girls delivered safely to Southwest this morning, and Southwest got them delivered safely to Grandma. Kara spent her day doing doctor things, and I've been sequestered away in the library, working hard. Just as advertised. She's on her way to get me now, and then we'll head over to a friend's place to eat our dinners. I brought left over chili and noodles. I'm not sure what Kara brought, but I don't think it's yak. We have four days without the girls before Kara goes in for surgery. Could be fun.

To celebrate the pending removal of Kara's gall bladder, Grandma and Grandpa are treating the girls to an all-expense paid trip to Washington. The trip includes airfare to SeaTac and ground transportation to the fertile Columbia Basin, where fresh produce and semi-tame cats are on the agenda. The house has been a flurry of finding and packing the last few days, and we leave for the airport early in the morning tomorrow. Since tomorrow is Kara's pre-op visit in Dallas, we have decided to make a day of it. I will hunker down in a library somewhere and work as much as I can, while Kara will take care of all of her doctor visits. Surgery is scheduled for Monday.

Alyssa played Nintendogs on Anna's DS Daddy played Frankenstein's Monster and carried Alyssa to brush her teeth Anna's DS played suicidal and took a flying leap Anna played drama queen when the DS screen detached Daddy did a Google search on "How to disassemble a DS" Daddy proved he has some technical competence They all lived happily ever after

Oh, my freakin' heck , this guinea pig thing is getting out of hand. Anna has been in tears because she just can't wait another 10 days to get these little rodents. I remember being so excited about something I thought I would explode, but it never drove me to tears. Perhaps it's female prepubescence complicating the picture. The girls leave for Grandma and Grandpa's house in Washington on Wednesday. They will be gone for a week. During that time, Kara will have her gall bladder out. And maybe we'll clean out the girl's room. Really clean it out. And trust in the out of sight, out of mind philosophy that has usually served us so well.

The car is gone; delivered to the buyer. Finally. Hooray. This happened early this morning in the parking lot of the store where we were doing more back to school shopping - this time for clothes. I'm really glad Kara is around to take Anna on her trips to the underwear section. We also got ourselves moved out of one of the remaining two storage units. One more to go. Hopefully a big yard sale sometime in the cooler months will allow us to get completely out of there. I started working on some difficult paperwork for a big task. It's been rather unpleasant, but it needs to be done. Hopefully I can get it wrapped up soon I like when I can share a bit of humor in this blog, but the only really funny thing that happened today was my impersonation of Anna and her morning routine, and that doesn't translate very well to a blog post. So here's a funny but completely unrelated cartoon.