What's for dinner?

There's a few lines from one of my favorite Barbara Michael's books (Be Buried in the Rain), that have stuck with me. The first one is where the main character is stuck taking care of her elderly grandmother who has had a stroke, in rural Virginia, and without a car.  She's lamenting about cooking meals every day (something she isn't used to, as a student),  and she wails, "Chicken and beef and pork and fish, chicken and beef and pork and fish...."    as in that's all the choices there are. 

At the change of seasons, I start to agree with her.

It's too warm for autumn and winter food, and not warm enough for summer food, like salads, not that Chris will eat most salads anyway.   Last night's meal was stuffed chicken breasts, mashed potatoes, and gravy.  Well, it was supposed to be, anyway....it's currently in the fridge, cooked but untouched.  Neither of us felt like eating it.  I bought hamburger with the half formed notion of meatloaf, but Chris is kind of lukewarm about meatloaf,  so I think I'll morph that idea into hamburger steak.  It'll use those mashed potatoes I made last night, and we haven't had that in a while.  Even Chris admitted it sounded good, and since he usually has no opinion at all about food,  I took that as a rousing endorsement. 

And now, for something completely different:  I just finished Isabel Wolff's "A Vintage Affair".   Really good read, I thought.  I seem to be in an odd place mentally with  my reading just now, instead of sticking fairly close with my favorite Cozies, I'm venturing out into fantasy, steampunk, and general fiction.  I've been browsing the ebookstores and finding some interesting stuff.  Oh, and that other line from "Be Buried in the Rain" that sticks? 

"Again, Melissa.  Every year you come back .  .  .  the same day, the
same place .  .  .  I burn your clothes.  Not once, but every year.

Every year I dig the grave .  .  .  Why won't you and your bastard brat
stay where I put you?"

See why this is my yearly Halloween read?

Work in progress

Ok, here's what I have in the Urban Fantasy library at the moment.  I'm not done with it, as I still haven't decided if I'm going to continue to add everything with a ghost, witch, vampire, werething or zombie in here, or if I'm creating another library for the less urban, less gritty, and more fluffy stuff.  You'll notice I've rearranged the columns a bit - I read by author, so I moved that to the first position, and I added a "Read?" column to show if I've read it or not.  That's going to take some work, as I didn't start with it and now need to go back and fill it in.  I also didn't get as OCD with adding the publication dates with these, so I'll have to go back and edit most of those, as well.  But it's coming along nicely.

This just in....

I GOT AN A IN MANAGERIAL ACCOUNTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Final grades were posted today... I nearly died of shock. Chris is bringing home McD's to celebrate :)

In other news:   I'm finding I'm highly picky about my paranormal/urban fantasy books. While adding them to Calibre, I'm finding out I have acquired a bunch of stuff I bet I never read.  I still haven't decided what I'm going to do with the paranormal fluff romance stuff. I just started adding all the urban fantasy type first, and when I'm done with that I'll figure something out.  I'm up to 51 authors and 210 books in the Paranormal Library....and I'm on the M's in the folder.  Lots less than Cozies, for sure.

I've been fighting an acute case of gadget lust, ever since the prices came down on the Nook (I know, but it drives me crazy not to capitalize it) and then the new Kindle 3 came out.  I want BOTH!  I don't need either one of them,  and I'm still trying to talk myself out of getting one.  HP also is making my dreams come true by announcing a tablet with WebOS.  I'm telling you, if it's halfway decent hardware (and it should be) and they let it have access to the WebOS app store,  it should be a KILLER ebook reader.  I'm still thrilled with both Popelli Reader and pReader....between the two I can read nearly every format out there.

So, the dilemma....get a Nook or a Kindle 3 now (well, with Kindle 3 as soon as they're back in stock, anyway), and then be mad when the WebOS tablet comes out and I'm lusting for it, or wait until the WebOS tablet comes out and then decide if I want that, or whether I'd rather have a Nook or a Kindle 3?  Decision, decisions....

Calibre redux

Are y'all sick of reading about Calibre yet?  Other than the fact that no one can seem to agree on whether or not the name is supposed to be capitalized, that is, including me.  Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, and I can't see that a definitive agreement has been reached among the good folks at Mobile Read, Calibre's unofficial home.
Anyway,  I let my brain recover for a few days, and have now started on my Paranormal/Fantasy books.  The whole genre thing is causing me some OCD anxiety though.  It seems I have two fairly distinct types going: Straight urban fantasy, like the Dresden Files and Kim Harrison's Hollows series, and then the lighter, funnier, more romantic and/or sexy stuff....Annette Blair's Melody Seabright series, and the various Mary Janice Davidson series.
I've already set up multiple libraries in Calibre (I didn't want to use tags, more OCD), and right now I have the main one, named the default "CalibreLibrary" , which is the one with all my Cozies in it, and one for Paranormal named "CalibreLibraryP".   The question is should I split further and separate the lighter stuff from the urban fantasy?  I haven't decided  yet, and if I do that, since I've already started putting the UF stuff in "CalibreLibraryP"  what am I going to call the other category?  "CalibreLibraryPR"?
According to Kovid, version 7.15 of Calibre, due out this weekend,  is supposed to simplify multiple libraries even more. I'm looking forward to seeing what he's come up with this time.
Another neat thing:  Li'l Bit (the Asus T91MT that is my main reading device, for new readers here), is great, but has limited storage space.  What I had been doing was copying books over from my desktop onto an 8 gig SD card and using Calibre's (I know, I know...) ebook viewer to read them on Li'l Bit.  Well, I discovered that if I point the Calibre install on Li'l Bit to the folder on the desktop that contains the Calibre library (ies), I can access everything through our home network that way, without having to put anything on Li'l Bit to take up more room, and I can also still switch between libraries.  This only works if I'm at home and in range of our wireless router, of course.  But that's no different than having to load up an SD card for any other reader when you know you're going to be traveling. 
Even with Li'l Bit, and even though I said I was never going back to a device that only handled limited formats, I find myself wanting both a Kindle 3 and a nook (now that one I know isn't supposed to be capitalized, but it still offends my grammarian's soul).  Now that the prices have come down so much, it is financially feasible,  and the reason for both is that there are still some things you can't get anywhere but at Amazon, due to publisher's not realizing (or more likely, not caring) that they are damaging their author's sales by not making those ebook releases as widely available as possible.   There still really is not a good "all round" reader that handles all ebook formats and is reasonably priced.  What I'd actually like to see is a tablet in the 7 - 9 inch range running WebOS.  There are two ebook reading applications for WebOS, that have all the features and format capability to make a tablet form factor ebook reader running those a dream machine.

My brain is fried....

...but all 199 authors, 221 series, and 1093 books in my Cozy folder are entered into calibre.  I'm probably missing a few here and there that I'll deal with later when I remember they're missing.  Ever since Chris upgraded my hard drives, I've been finding here and there books I missed moving over from the "backup" I put on his machine.

The new phone arrived, and it is wonderful.  I had noticed with the BlackBerry that I was actually avoiding calling places that had numerical options (press 1 for English), or calling my voice mail (because I'd have to enter the passcode).  The Palm Pre Plus is a definite improvement with that!  The touchscreen dialpad is larger, more responsive, and MUCH easier to use.  I'm also liking WebOS.  I've installed a couple of apps - I paid the $1.99 for Popelli Reader, and so far it's handled everything I've thrown at it, which at the moment includes txt, html, lit, and mobi files.  I was also glad to find my familiar Weather Channel app for WebOS. 

I was wrong, however - while the Pre Plus has playlist support, you can't make playlists on the phone, like I could with the BlackBerry.  That is, you can't unless you "jailbreak" it by enabling Developer's Mode and install what they call Music Player (Remix), which is a beta app. that basically took WebOS's music player and redid it the way it probably should have been in the first place.  I'm not brave enough to tackle this, so I'm waiting for Chris to do it. 

BlackBerry vs. Palm WebOS

  Here's a confession. Although I've loved the BlackBerry O/S,  I can't say I've enjoyed the Storm 2 all that much.  I hate the SurePress technology on it, and using the browser is an exercise in frustration with a touchscreen phone. Or at least with this particular touchscreen.  When I had to confess to Chris that I refused to try to do anything using the Storm 2's browser,  he said, "Well, then it's time for you a different phone." 

As I told Chris, I don't even need a browser on a phone, but I was seduced by the other smartphone capabilities and storage.  I personally think a browser on a device with such a small screen is just asking for frustration and temptation to throw said device across a room.  Add BlackBerry's SurePress to the mix and ...ooops. (No, I haven't thrown the BlackBerry across any rooms. But I can sure see why someone with less patience and more money would).

Since we have been needing to add another line to our plan anyway, so Jay can have a phone again,  today spontaneously became phone shopping day.  I was going for something that had the music, camera, and calendar capability of a smart phone, but not necessarily the web capability.  And something that I liked the looks of and the form factor.  And that of course, had ebook reading capability.  Well - you can have two of those, or you can have all three of those, but you can't leave the web browser out of the mix, apparently.   I explained to Chris that since they don't make said device, that as long as he doesn't expect me to USE the web browsing capability, if we could just find something I could type on, (along with aforementioned music, camera, ebook, and calendar capability) I'd be happy.  Unfortunately, BlackBerry doesn't make anything that fit the bill.

Soooo....Sometime on Tuesday, Fed Ex should be delivering a Palm Pre Plus.  Why did I go from BlackBerry to Palm, you ask?   Well....I'm female. I love the looks and form factor of the Pre Plus.  AND...bonus here....There's an app. for Palm WebOS called Popelli Reader -  http://www.precentral.net/homebrew-apps/palm-reader-ebook-reader  that apparently reads almost EVERYTHING - which is more than you can find for BlackBerry, and so that makes me very happy.  The Pre Plus also comes with a 16 gig SD card (as did the Storm 2), so I'm good with storage for both music AND books.  The music player, hopefully, isn't awful, because that's the one facet of it that I didn't get to test.  I do know it has playlist capability, which is important to me.  We'll see how it goes...

Progress report

I'm fairly sure no one cares about this except me, but here it is anyway:   I'm up to 122 out of 213 authors in my Cozies folder.  Careful readers will notice that that's three more folders than last time - that's because I acquired some new books and new authors.  I found out I don't have quite as much in Paranormal as I thought, only 133 authors in there.  I have a few more big collections to add - M.C. Beaton and Diane Mott Davidson come to mind - but I'm over half done with Cozies.  Once this is done, the Library can be exported to any computer I wish, then just point Calibre to it.  Updating across two computers might be a pain, but I do like having it all organized, with covers and series information. 

Steeped in Books

Well, here it is, new release Tuesday for August.  With releases like Heather Webber's second in the Lucy Valentine series, "Deeply, Desperately" and Cleo Coyle's ninth outing in the Coffeehouse series, "Roast Mortem", I'm in Cozy Mystery nirvana.  Not to mention the latest in Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon series, "Burn". 

Three more weeks, and my last accounting class will be OVER.  I've managed to pull B's in the other ones, if I can just haul out of this one with another B I'll be happy.  And relieved.  One thing I've discovered is, I'll never be an accountant!


My latest project is entering all my ebooks into Calibre - the best ebook management/conversion/viewing software out there.  Developed by Kovid Goyal, who I'm proud to say I know via the forums at Mobile Read, Calibre is freeware, and is constantly being developed and improved.  Unfortunately, my ebooks are in such a mess that to avoid having a million duplicates that I'd have to go in and weed out later, I'm having to enter things one folder at a time.  At least this gives me a chance to see what I'm missing, so I can put it on assorted wishlists at the various ebookstores.  Right now, I'm on author 56 out of 210 in my Cozy Mystery folder, with at least that many more in my Paranormal genre folder, and then assorted anthologies, thrillers, novels, YA, and science fiction to go.  I think I might be at this for awhile.  After I'm done, though, I can export this database and use it with any install of Calibre on any other machine, which will be handy.  I have to admit it's kind of fun and addicting, adding all the series metadata and covers.  Here's a screenshot - I'll keep posting them as I make progress.