Cheez Waffies

The old package from Here.

Here is another place to see men and their Cheez Waffies.

Alas, the Waffies are no longer sold in this area.

Apparently Wise Foods has limited their distribution to the East coast. Why the rest of the country deserves this cruel and inhuman treatment is beyond comprehension.

The new package from Here

We may have to ask relatives on the East coast to have pity on us and send us Cheez Waffies. We'll pay.... oh how we'll pay....

The Judas Strain

The Judas Strain by James Rollins was a good action adventure read. It was originally published in July 2007 and is 464 pages long. I picked this book up just before our move. Rollins has gotten his books down to a formula, but it's a formula that works. It's not great literature but Rollins is very good at what he sets out to do, entertain. My husband has started reading Rollins and he's racing through them. His one complaint is that Rollins doesn't know his guns. That doesn't bother me because I don't know guns either, but those of you who know your weaponry might want to take note of that fact.

From Amazon:

The special-ops trained scientists of Sigma Force battle the criminals of the shadowy Guild in bestseller Rollins's lively third Sigma Force thriller (after Black Order). An ancient and deadly plague, the Judas Strain (which afflicted Marco Polo), has suddenly re-emerged. Gray Pierce, a Sigma operative, and Seichan, a Guild defector, pursue clues to the nature of the plague to the Vatican, Istanbul (with a fine shootout in the Hagia Sophia mosque), Marco Polo's tomb and, finally, Cambodia's Angkor Wat. Meanwhile, Guild members hijack a cruise ship full of plague victims (to provide experimental subjects for the weaponizing of the plague), and Gray's parents are taken hostage (though the senior Grays prove feistier than their kidnappers reckon). Sophisticated the plot isn't, but Rollins includes more than enough action and suspense to keep readers turning pages. 8-city author tour. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The crack, ultrasecret Sigma Force team returns in another adventure that, as usual, unfolds at breakneck speed. Sigma Force, made up of former Special Forces officers trained as experts in various scientific fields ("killer scientists," one of their number calls them), scours the world for technologies that could help or threaten the U.S. This time the group's mission involves a devastating bacteriological plague, a mysterious cryptogram that may predate humanity, and the deadly truth about what happened after Marco Polo's expedition to China. After a handful of Sigma Force novels, Rollins has fine-tuned the formula to precision: characters rendered in broad strokes, punchy dialogue, short paragraphs that propel us headlong through the story. The novels are like prose versions of comic books, or lightly fleshed out movie treatments. But this is not a criticism, at least not completely. The books' style perfectly matches their subject matter, and it's impossible not to be swept up by their energy and excitement. Action/adventure fans unfamiliar with Rollins' work should be emphatically urged to read this series. David Pitt

cell phone

I answered my cell phone while driving this week.

OK, OK, you all are saying, "No big deal. What's WRONG with you?"

As previously mentioned, I have cell phone issues so this was a big deal to me. When it has rang before when I've been driving I've made whoever was a passenger at the time answer it. This week I had no passenger and had to answer my own phone. I always swore I'd never be one of those people driving while talking on the phone. I was very close to my destination, though, and we aren't talking city traffic here, so it was a good first experience.

Guess who it was?

If you guessed my brother, you are correct. It was my brother. My brother seems to have this sixth sense that tells him when I'm at the bank (he's called twice when I've been IN the bank and I've only been inside 3 times) or out driving. When I've been driving in the past, I've had a passenger answer the phone. He finally caught me alone, driving, with the cell phone. I answered it while driving. I turned into a parking lot and parked the car while on the phone. I walked into the store, while on the phone. As I maneuvered the cart into the aisle, the first two people I saw were on their cell phones in the store.

I am now part of the "in" crowd. I'm up-to-speed. I'm on top of it. I'm a cell phone user. I didn't even giggle this time. And, I even tried to put a couple cucumbers into a bag while on the phone. - OK, THAT looked a little freaky 'cus I was having trouble getting the bag open and looked, as my family likes to call it, "special".

(The tag "special" became common usage for us when a hair stylist wanted to know if my son was "special" because he was having a difficult time saying how he wanted his hair cut and kept looking at me. The only problem was he was14 at the time and certainly old enough to tell her how he wanted his hair cut. Some of you will remember the story. He had been going to a barber before that and at the barbers you get to say "Give me the usual." or "I need a hair cut." and he cuts the hair without asking tricky questions.)

Midwest

Haven Kimmel, author, wrote:

"It's been my experience that people who grew up in other parts of the United States (not the Midwest) find it almost impossible to see the beauty there. I mean they literally cannot see it."

I imagine the same could be said about the high desert, but, truth be told, I'm finding it beautiful back in the Midwest. It feels like home.

The Blind Assassin

I've reread The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood for a reading group. Originally published in 2000, my hardcover copy is 521 pages long. Atwood won a well deserved Booker Prize for The Blind Assassin.

From Amazon:

"The Blind Assassin is a tale of two sisters, one of whom dies under ambiguous circumstances in the opening pages. The survivor, Iris Chase Griffen, initially seems a little cold-blooded about this death in the family. But as Margaret Atwood's most ambitious work unfolds--a tricky process, in fact, with several nested narratives and even an entire novel-within-a-novel--we're reminded of just how complicated the familial game of hide-and-seek can be:

What had she been thinking of as the car sailed off the bridge, then hung suspended in the afternoon sunlight, glinting like a dragonfly, for that one instant of held breath before the plummet? Of Alex, of Richard, of bad faith, of our father and his wreckage; of God, perhaps, and her fatal, triangular bargain.

Meanwhile, Atwood immediately launches into an excerpt from Laura Chase's novel, The Blind Assassin, posthumously published in 1947. In this double-decker concoction, a wealthy woman dabbles in blue-collar passion, even as her lover regales her with a series of science-fictional parables. Complicated? You bet. But the author puts all this variegation to good use, taking expert measure of our capacity for self-delusion and complicity, not to mention desolation. Almost everybody in her sprawling narrative manages to--or prefers to--overlook what's in plain sight. And memory isn't much of a salve either, as Iris points out: "Nothing is more difficult than to understand the dead, I've found; but nothing is more dangerous than to ignore them." Yet Atwood never succumbs to postmodern cynicism, or modish contempt for her characters. On the contrary, she's capable of great tenderness, and as we immerse ourselves in Iris's spliced-in memoir, it's clear that this buttoned-up socialite has been anything but blind to the chaos surrounding her."

I know my reading and reviews have been scant these last 2 months. I will eventually pick up the pace, scouts honor.

freaky

Before moving, we had discussed with friends the odd people we saw at Wal-mart at night. I've been to the Wal-mart here a couple times after 9 PM and it's nothing like Reno. First, since we're in a big university town, many of the late nighters seem to be college kids or young adults (who are seriously shopping - not just hanging out). Then there seem to be many everyday, normal folks who are just picking up things in the evening. Not one freaky person at all.

We were all sort of freaky in the bank this week though. My son, and I needed accounts opened. We finally settled on what bank and went into a branch office where a nice young college student helped us. FYI: I had just renewed my NV driver's licenses online before moving, sovit has this  renewal sticker on the back. That always seems to throw people for a loop. (I was questioned about that at the airport too.) At the bank she thought at first that 
my driver's license was expired. Then they have these homeland security questions they need to ask. I had to pause and think before answering all of them. Hopefully she chalked that up to old age and assumed I needed extra time to process information.

When it was time for my son to open up his account, he was all indecisive. We had no idea approximately how much money he'd be depositing in a year. He has no job, but may get money back at the end of the college school year from scholarships. He may get a job. We don't know. We knew we were going to be making deposits from our account to his so he could pay for his gas and lunch from his account. We all had to come up with a number. Then, when he had to type in his password for online banking he kept having to retype it because he wasn't able to get it right the second time. We all sat there as he tried repeatedly to get the same code in both boxes until I finally said "Make it simpler." After a couple more tries he got it right. He also got signed up for his first credit card. It's a student card; the bank wisely gave him a $300 limit.

Just before we were done (and I'm sure the young woman was wanting us out of there at this point) I got a phone call. I'm still intimidated by my cell phone, but I had remembered to bring it. The problem was that I didn't recognize that it was MY cell phone ringing. I was looking around to see whose phone was ringing. Once I figured out it was mine, I fumbled to find it in order to answer it. It was my brother. I said hi and told him we were at the bank. Then I started to giggle because answering my cell phone always makes me giggle. I know I need to overcome this reaction, but, alas, I giggled. My brother told us it was hot wings night in town and asked if we wanted to go out for wings... so I asked, as we were still finishing up at the bank, "Do we want to go out for hot wings?" and giggled.

We finally got out the door of the bank, with me still giggling while trying to talk to my brother. "Could we BE any more freaky?"

You know, I'm not sure that we could, but I imagine we'll give it another try sometime...

Contest

5 Minutes for Mom has a contest where they are giving away an Insignia 37" Flat-Panel LCD HDTV, courtesy of Best Buy! It's valued at $799.99. Head on over, read the details and enter today! We love Best Buy at this house!