Alison and Angie and a whole bunch of other people have been talking about reading challenges for 2009. While I’m not taking part in anything official, I commented on Alison’s blog that I do, in fact, have a sort of unofficial reading challenge for myself this year.

At the time I commented, I thought I hadn’t read anything outside of the romance genre in 2008 (and very, very little in 2007), but I did read the new Lucas Davenport novel—Phantom Prey by John Sandford. But still, that’s only one. (Depending, I guess, on how you classify the In Death series. While, by my own personal definition, only the first was a romance, it’s Nora and they’re utterly romantic, so I don’t really consider that reading outside the genre.)

And a huge chunk of that reading was category romance. Why? 1) I love category romance. 2) In 2008’s financial climate, you couldn’t beat category prices. 3) And I’ve grown horribly tired of good stories suddenly derailing into the gratuitous, overly detailed sex ditch. I’ve reached the point of fed-up-edness where coming across the female P-word will result in immediate book closure. The only exception is authors I trust to give me a strong story in addition to the hot sex—Jaci Burton and Lauren Dane, along with a handful of others.

But as much as I love romance, it’s unhealthy creativity-wise to stagnate in one place, so this year I’m going to read at least one book a month outside of the romance genre. And I’ll be starting with The Broken Window by Jeffery Deaver (a Lincoln Rhyme story) and then I’ll move on to Just After Sunset by Stephen King, because short story collections have always been King at his best. I also haven’t read…Chelsea Cain?—Heartsick and Sweetheart are the titles, I think. (My laptop has been struggling with the opening of multiple windows so I’m not going to bother checking right now.)

So I’m looking for non-romance book recommedations! (Not that they can’t have romance, but they shouldn’t be considered a part of the genre.) A couple of things—I don’t care for urban fantasy or cozy mysteries, and I have to read a series in order or my head explodes so please don’t recommend book 19 of a 30-book series. I’m also not big on inspirationals or “Oprah books”.

Have you read anything non-HEA awesome lately?

I had a blog topic for today, but now I’m saving it for tomorrow because I had some paperwork to do and now it’s 10:30 and I haven’t even cleaned the kitchen yet. I figure since half the day’s a loss already, I’m going to take down the Christmas tree.

It’ll give me an excuse to listen to the iPod, on which I have the current DG3 playlist:

I Will by Jimmy Wayne

I’d Come for You by Nickelback

Yup, that’s it. Two songs. Over and over and over and over.

Okay, I’m off to de-holiday my house. It’s a little sad, because it usually stays up until the 15th or so, but considering how much chaos still surrounds us from the remodeling, I need to declutter. How ’bout you guys? Holiday decorations still up, or have you moved on?

How do you spell cold? Spending the weekend at a campground with windchills dipping to an estimated thirty degrees below zero. Yeah, that’s cold. Fortunately the husband had gone up in advance to get some sledding in and, due to his weather-savvy Spidey-sense, nabbed the cabin before any of the other families arrived. While our campers are all heated, they’re still campers. (The walk to the bathroom? OMG. When you’ve gotta pee and you’re getting slapped in the face by -30, brisk doesn’t even begin to describe your pace.)

When we arrived Friday night, it was still a balmy ten degrees or so, so we all gathered around the campfire:

Saturday morning dawned a bit on the windy side, though it was a tropical breeze compared to what was coming that evening. The Tall Kid donned the husband’s “A” sledding gear and the husband wore his backup gear and they braved the chill to go on the group ride.

Where’s there’s snow, there are snowbanks. And where there are snowbanks, there’s testosterone. Mass donuts and snowbank jumping ensued. Here’s the husband jumping my Rincon:

Where were the Short Kid and I during all of this? In the cabin ’cause we’re not stupid. I worked rather diligently, I must say, on DG3, and what did the Short Kid do? Absconded with my iPod Touch and addicted himself to Word Warp. I’m going to have to put an alarm on that thing.

This morning brought a “nice” day (only 15 degrees, but the wind was down to a manageable mph), so the husband took the Short Kid on his very first snowmobile ride:

And here’s a close-up of the sled’s vanity registration decal, which the kids and I are very proud of. We LOL’d Dad’s sled!

On January 1st, 2005, my first blog post went up, so we’re four years old today!

Dayum, time flies. The Tall Kid was nine, the Short Kid was four, and I was unpublished (for thirty more days). I think it would be kind of cool for me to sit and read the entire four years worth of posts in order, but I suppose that’s time better spend writing.

Like many writers, I suspect, I’m a bit of an introvert in person (I don’t care for the phrase IRL, because y’all ARE a part of my RL), and the relationship I have with all of you—sharing bits of my life with you and you sharing bits of your life with me—is sincerely very special to me.

Thank you for hanging out with me.

I impulse-bought a $4 bottle of Arbor Mist Strawberry White Zinfandel at Walmart, dusted 15 1/2 years of dust off my wedding wine glasses and I’m ready for a New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. But first…

I hope 2009 is a great year for all of you! Happy New Year!

I’m having a little trouble getting back into the post-holiday swing of things because a variety of things are conspiring to keep me curled up in my jammies on the couch all days—the new wee baby Asus, the iPod Touch, Undercover, a smokin’ hot futuristic romance from Lauren Dane, and the basket of homemade chocolate goodies from my sister.

The husband went to work today, and I feel kind of bad because it can’t make a man happy to have his family give him the bum’s rush out the door, but he’s a pain in the butt to have around during vacations. It starts early in the day because he tries to watch The Today Show while I am slavishly addicted to the warm, wacky, fun chemistry of the Good Morning, America crew. Then he’ll try to steal the television away from the kids and the PS3, which is never in my best interest.

So electronics have totally taken over my life. Seriously, I must have 986 USB cords lying around the kitchen and right now I think I have something plugged in and charging in every downstairs outlet. Crazy! And syncing all four mp3 players? Madness. The Short Kid treats his song choices as though it’s the only music he’ll ever get to listen to for the rest of his life and must agonize over every single track.

I also noticed when I went to do a little book buying last night that my plan to fully embrace the Touch as ebook reader is more doomed than I thought. Not only do I have a huge virtual TBR pile of .prc books (which are held captive by some serious DRM, most of it eHQN’s), but after trekking through ebooks.eharlequin.com and mybookstoreandmore.com, I found none of the books I wanted were available in the iPod’s format. So I didn’t buy them. I went to Fictionwise and bought something else, but I’m put out by the thought of having to buy the .prc in the future, which means keeping track of/syncing/charging two separate devices.

Ceiling Cat forbid we should have one standard, universal format.

Sadly, that’s about all I’ve been up to. My mission for today, should I choose to accept, is to find decent snowtires for the car. At least those don’t come with a USB cord!

When the husband tossed a copy of Madden 08 (football) for PS3 into the mess of things going under the Christmas tree, I might have rolled my eyes and called him an idiot. Maybe.

See, the boys aren’t really sports savvy. They’re both history buffs and enjoy games like Civil War and Blazing Angels, plus they love racing games. The Short Kid, in particular, is rather gifted when it comes to the Need for Speed franchise. But they have no sports games, and that’s no accident. So not only is Madden 08 very technical and quite complicated when it comes to using the controller, but neither kid knows jack about football.

Friday afternoon, while the husband was off snowmobiling, the kids decided to give football a try. An afternoon of unintentional hilarity ensued, and I’m here to share a few snippets of conversation:

Tall Kid: OMG, I caught it! I have to run! How do I make him run?
Short Kid: I tackled you! I don’t know how, but I tackled you!

Short Kid: I sacked you! (*does a bizarre victory dance*) Hey Mom, what does sacked mean?

Tall Kid: Why are my own guys trying to hit me?
Me: Because you’re running toward the wrong endzone, dumbass.

Both kids, off and on throughout the afternoon: Mom, what a WR? Mom, what’s an FB? Mom, what’s HB stand for? Mom, what’s the line of scrimmage?

Oh, and probably two hours into the gameplaying: Mom, what’s a down?

Their very first game went into overtime when BOTH teams were tied with EIGHT points each. Yes, I’ll let you football fans dwell on the improbability of that score, but for the record, the New England Patriots (TK) beat the Indianapolis Colts (SK) in overtime.

I’m just not going to have time to write anymore, I think. The iPod Touch Kool-aid is potent, and I’ve been guzzling it hard since about eight o’clock yesterday morning.

So I asked Santa for a pink iPod Nano. I liked my Zen Stone, but I really wanted a small video screen for no other reason than so I could watch Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog at will. I’m not kidding. But I must have been a very good girl this year because Santa upgraded me to an iPod Touch. WHEEEEE! I was a little intimidated at first, because I’m a technomoron, but then I turned it on.

The first thing I want to say is that after spending a day and a half with the iPod and hearing about Jaci’s experiences with her new Mac, I believe Microsoft and Windows are really an evil experiment to see how far into the depths of hopeless frustration you can drive the human race before we self-destruct.

First, the bad….umm…*crickets*…

Okay, if I had to come up with something, it would be the fingerprints. Yes, it has a screen overlay on it and yes, I get the “touch” part of iPod Touch, but I’ve always been fanatic about fingerprints on my electronics, so it’s driving me a little crazy. And I had to wear a hooded sweatshirt with a front pocket today because it doesn’t have a clip thing for my pocket.

It took me about two seconds to hook the thing into my network and I checked my email. WHEEE! Then…I found the app store and everything else in my life became unimportant.

The first thing I did was PenguinLite—a very cute game in which you catapult penguins at polar bears. Heeheee. Then i found Twitterific so I could Twitter. Found a hangman game. The Short Kid and I play hangman in restaurants all the time, so it would be a fun thing to have in places that don’t offer paper placemats.

Then I came across Stanza, which I remembered seeing mentioned on Dear Author. Touched the screen and it was installed. Voila! Hit the online catalogue and there were the four free Harlequin Minis, so just like that they were downloaded. Voila!

I’ve been very happy reading Mobipocket on my Palm TX, but I have to say, ebooks look really, really nice on the Touch. Plus, turning the page with a minute swipe of the thumb is so much nicer than having to hit the button at the bottom of the device, which can make the Palm awkward to hold.

I also found the lighsaber app so it has the picture of the lightsaber and makes cool lightsaber sounds when I move the device, and Jaci mentioned Word Warp, which is a massively addicting word game. Oops.

I haven’t used it long enough to see how the battery will stand up to music & reading mixed usage, but I’m already afraid my poor Palm will be falling by the wayside. The screen on the Touch is a lot more crisp and there’s no stylus. Not having to find the cord and go through the sync process every time I buy a book.

The big thing will be figuring out the Fictionwise thing. Just last week I bought the club membership thing and I have some micropay dollars and a huge TBR list of books I’ve downloaded in .prc. I’m not totally sure I want to make the switch.

I AM totally sure I love this iPod Touch more than chocolate. (Oh, and in case you were wondering, I did put a few songs on it, too.)

We had a lovely Christmas! Christmas Eve we all gathered at my aunt’s house and there’s nothing more exciting than 10 kids aged 1 to 13 tearing through a pile of gifts. Proving she knows her grandsons like nobody else, my stepmother’s gifts to them included an argyle sweater vest for the Tall Kid and a whoopie cushion for the Short Kid.

And in case you’re wondering why on earth you’d buy an argyle sweater vest for a 13-year-old boy, it’s to make his face light up because he’s rather odd and desperately wanted one:

And what 8-year-old boy doesn’t love fake flatulence? The irony, of course, is that it’s not as impressive as his natural ability, but he’s having fun with it. The dog thinks he’s a freak, but that’s nothing new. And, thankfully, he hasn’t figured out he’s supposed to hide it in other people’s chairs yet.

And a conversation that took place during the preparation of the Christmas turkey dinner:

Me: Oh , you

Hubby: Hey, that’s merry.

Me: The biscuit can exploded before I was ready and it whacked my left nipple. It hurt!

Hubby:

Me: you, you

Hubby:

Yeah, pretty typical holidays and Casa Stacey. Tomorrow we go over the river and through the woods to Maine to hang out with my sister and her family. Then a very, very cold weather trip north next weekend for a holiday wrap-up party with the other seasonal campers and we’re done!

Hope you all had a great day, too!