Pheenie

Last night, as I was puttering around getting ready for bed, I went into Bedroom #2 to put my laundry in the hamper. I glanced at Phoenix's cage, as is automatic for me, and he was doing the cutest thing. (Now, I know snakes aren't really the cutest of creatures. And Steve was right when he came home after being gone a year and said "Genny, I can't believe YOU of all people have a snake!" considering that all he'd have to do to freak me out in junior high was put a rubber snake outside my bedroom door. But I digress.)

Anyway, so when Neil feeds Pheenie his fuzzies, he always puts them on this flat rock for him to find. I think it's funny that even though the fuzzies are ALWAYS already dead, and not looking alive whatsoever (I mean, would you expect a thawed-out dead thing to fight back if you tried to eat it?) Pheenie stalks around them like a predator, ever-so-slowly approaching them for the kill. I know it's his nature, but I still get a kick out of it.
So, at various times yesterday, Pheenie was poking his little snout out of his homemade hole, hovering a few inches of his body over his substrate. Neil told me he was probably hungry and looking for food, since he's been inordinately shy these days and wouldn't do this for social reasons. But last night, I see him and not only is he halfway out his hole, but he's staring at the mouse-rock intensely. Like if he stays still enough, fuzzies will appear. It's totally logical, but it still made me giggle.

Oh, and Tuesday's NYTX was a little tough. I didn't finish it. It was a golf theme, so maybe that tainted my stick-to-itiveness. Yawn.

Though my check-out list from DBRL is a mile long, I have a list of re-reads I want to get on. The thing with goal re-reads, though, is how do you validate reading books you've already read when you have dozens and dozens you haven't stacked in your closet? Maybe I shouldn't look at it that way. Just read the library books, then get started on some of these:

• Harry Potter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

• Judy Blume: all adolescent lit (to prepare for "Everything I know I learned from Judy Blume" chick lit)

• Anne of Green Gables series

• Laura Ingalls Wilder series

• Lemony Snicket series
  

Things running through my head today:

-That All I Have to Give song by the Back Street Boys. Why? Why? It certainly wasn't on 102.3 when I woke up today.

-I went swimming today at the ARC for the first time in a few years. It was heavenly. I took the last lap as an extra-slow breast stroke so I could watch my hands glide through the water. I'm a little beat, but I have arranged my schedule so this can be a daily thing. I'll get used to it. Oh, and I saw Royda there as I was signing up....she's changing up the dreary life here for India on Saturday. I don't know if I'd prefer that. :)

Good things about today:

1. All those yummy tomatoes on my chicken sandwich
2. The feel of chlorinated water all around me
3. A surprisingly lower weight on the scale this morning
4. Twelve boys performing on "Idol" tonight. Yayyy, David Archuleta!
5. I finished Pretties last night. (But I didn't love how it ended.) And, in a quite timely manner, I got a DBRL notice that Specials came in for me today.
**Mini-review/ponderance:**
I liked Uglies much better. I hate Shay as a Pretty, as I'm sure we're supposed to, and feel like Tally did a shit job of being there for her friend in this new world that Tally forced her to be a part of. I don't understand too well about the lesions, but I don't want to go back and find that passage with Maddy and Az (and P.S.--what's with all the names? Do they have meaning? Why wouldn't Tally have heard of the name "David" before? I don't want to look it up until I've finished with the last book in the trilogy so I can avoid spoilers) and clarify. They said people like doctors and firefighters had the lesions removed when it was discovered they had a knack for those jobs--but if so, why do all these honorable people stay in a brainwashed society? Wouldn't they, like Tally & co., want to leave? Or are only some of the lesions removed, making sure they don't realize what is really going on? (This is a long shot, I think.) Second, I don't get why Shay is a Special. She seems dumb as ever. Why do people get picked for it? I thought I knew, when Cable confronted Tally about it, but Shay's ditzy ass showing up as one makes that assumption null and void. I have to admit I'm not really looking forward to Specials, but I'll read it, of course. Just please, no more reservations...though I know Tally's sworn to go back and free those folks. I wonder if I shouldn't read another book in between now and when I pick up Specials (avoiding, of course, the DBRL-ers I don't want to run into) this weekend. Maybe I should just catch up on magazine-reading, or choose a book that has nothing to do with teen angst (so, no Twilight just yet).

Not great things:

1. Where did this bloody cut on my right-ring-finger knuckle come from?
2. I have to stop picking/biting at my cuticles. The resolution is here and now.
3. I had to catalog "Grizzly Man," a film I never wanted to know about or see. That guy is crazy. And not in the cute "Aw, emz, you so crazy!" kind of way.
4. The way my swim goggles pushed the dark circles under my eyes into scary prominence. I mean, I always know they're there, but...goodness!