In which trek reviews Flight of Shadows

Last year, I read Broken Angelby Sigmund Brouwer. This year, Brouwer has released the sequel, Flight of Shadows. Very well-written, these novels are both riveting and disturbing; not a good choice for bedtime reading if the reader is susceptible to nightmares.

I found it pretty much impossible to categorize these volumes into a single genre; there are elements of science fiction, Christian allegory, and even a slight hint of love story entangled in one dense, haunting package.

The action is set in the indeterminate future. In that postapocalyptic future, Appalachia has seceded from the United States. Imagine America as a futuristic Roman Empire and Appalachia as a dystopic theocratic city-state. The power in America is held by the extremely wealthy Influentials, while the ostensibly Christian theocracy of Appalachia is despotic and autocratic. I wouldn't want to live in either place, quite frankly.

The story of Caitlyn Brown is punctuated by fear; fear of discovery, fear of capture, fear of the government, fear of intimacy, fear of the future. Over this substrata of fear is a veneer of hope; hope that the future might not be as bleak as the present, hope that someday, someplace, she might find a place to rest, a place to feel safe.

There are so many details I would love to share but that, as they say, would be telling. Instead, I strongly recommend you read both of these books, including the author's notes, and to think about the messages they deliver.

When George Orwell wrote 1984,people laughed and said that he was paranoid. How many of his predictions became reality? If not by 1984, by 2010? How many of Brouwer's literary predictions will become fact instead of fantasy?

I shudder.

In which trek reviews Home in Carolina

A while back, I was invited to review Home in Carolinaby Sherryl Woods. The amount of time which has passed between being asked to read and review this volume and today's review is indicative of how difficult it was to get into the story.

Back story... Protagonist Annie Sullivan and her best friend from childhood evolved into more than just friends as adults. As teens, he stood beside her as she battled an eating disorder. As an adult, he became a major league pitcher and betrayed her trust by entertaining the female fans in a rather friendly way; so friendly, in fact, that one of those adoring fans came to visit one day, dropping his son on his doorstep.

At the beginning of Home in Carolina, Tyler has come home to recuperate from that bane of pitchers, a shoulder injury. Would it be a surprise to anyone at all that the best sports therapist in town is Annie Sullivan? Or that their mothers are very the best of friends, members of the Sweet Magnolias?

No, I didn't think so.

The situation between Annie and Ty is obvious from the very first page, as is the eventual resolution but that is fairly typical of the genre. My main problem with this book is that the author has tried to address so many major issues that the characters come off as caricatures instead of as real people with whom the reader can connect. Annie struggles with an eating disorder. Both Ty, his father, and Annie's dad all had fidelity issues. I could go on and on, reciting each major character's tragic flaws but I shall not. Instead, I shall simply say that I do not care for this author's style and that I cannot recommend this book.

WWW - Running edition

Let's all pretend that it is still Wednesday and that this edition of the Weekly Wednesday Wrap-up isn't late.

• Yes, I am fully aware that today is Thursday not Wednesday but yesterday was so busy that I never even saw my computer.



• I did take a walk yesterday morning. It was raging hot and humid and the air quality was horrid.



• On the plus side, I did return home from my walk with four nice cucumbers.



• Right after that, it was all running, all the time here.



• Number Guy was running late for work.



• Bobblehead was running late for the all-day play date.



• Not her fault, really, since a seven-year-old can't legally drive in this state.



• I ran a load of laundry while the girls played, then,



• The three of us, Neatnik, Bobblehead, and I, ran to the store to pick up a few items.



• While the children ran the hose to fill the wading pool, I ran the lawn mowers to rein in growth of all of those green things to which I am allergic.



• I needed to frost the cupcakes for the Brownie scout end of year party but it was so warm beastly hot that the frosting was literally running through the pastry bag and I had to chill the filled bag before I could apply the frosting to the naked cupcakes.



• All of this chilling and waiting caused me to be running really late for my allergy shot appointment.



• I enlisted the assistance of the girls to load up the car and we ran to the park where the party was planned.



• A couple of hours later, the cupcakes having been consumed, we ran back home where Bobblehead's mom met us and then Number Guy, Neatnik, and I ran down to the tae kwon do school to watch the adult colored belts test for promotion.



• We finally got home around nine and Number Guy and I finally ate (too much) dinner.

So, there's the story of why the Weekly Wednesday Wrap-up is running late this week. It is also a snapshot of how the entire week has run, not that I can remember the details of each day, just that we've been keeping pretty busy this first full week of summer vacation.

WWW - Home edition

We were supposed to be on vacation this week. A good subtitle for this post would be Why We Are Here Instead of There and that's a good place to start the Weekly Wednesday Wrap-up for this week...

We made plans, reservations, even. We packed up our stuff and drove off to the ranch where we have stayed several times in past. This used to be a real family kind of place. The kind of place where room keys were unknown and everyone respected everyone else's property and space and you didn't have to worry about your child walking alone from the barn to your cabin. The place thrived on repeat business and word of mouth recommendations through multiple generations of owners.

Back in the early 1980s, they even survived a major fire which took down the main lodge. During the crisis, guests staying at the site pulled together and helped to remove debris and rebuild.

I don't think that they are going to survive the current plague so easily.

We were awakened repeatedly both Friday and Saturday nights by the drunken and outrageous carousing going on in and around the cabin behind ours. Did I mention that the doors and windows of our cabin were all closed and locked and that I sleep with earplugs? Yeah, they were so loud that when they woke me up, I thought that the party was happening right on our front steps.

I actually opened the front door and peered near-sightedly out into the rain, looking for the source of the commotion. There was nobody on our front porch, so I locked that door and trotted over to the back door. The party was going strong on the porches of the cabins up the hill. As I opened the back door, I heard one person yell for the KY jelly because "it" was "too tight" and "not going to fit".

Fortunately, Neatnik remained sound asleep. I am so not ready for her vocabulary to be expanded in that particular direction.

We can wait until she has achieved at least double digits, if not her legal majority.

Did I remember to say that these people were more than old enough to know better?

Apparently the amount of ethanol available at the bar in the main lodge wasn't sufficient, either: the beer-filled coolers were double-stacked on the porches of those cabins.

Back-to-back nights of intermittent sleep is fairly likely to drive me to the edge. Consecutive nights of interrupted slumber combined with shorted trails rides is virtually guaranteed to ruin my day vacation.

Sunday morning's hour-long ride took precisely 30 minutes.

Even psychiatrists' hours are longer than that!

Number Guy and I discussed the situation and we decided that it was better to come home than to spend the rest of the week being miserable. We paid for the weekend and headed out.

Even though we were dished up a bushel of lemons, we made some lemonade on the way home: we called Number Guy's aunt and uncle who live between here and the ranch and had a nice visit and dinner with them late Sunday afternoon.

So, here we are, back at home and looking into alternate vacation plans for later in the summer.

Have you ever come home early from a vacation? How come?

What's the best family vacation you've ever had? Best place? Most exciting thing you did?

To make this more exciting and to encourage lurkers to add their 2¢ to the kitty, let's make this a contest. Let's say two entries for regaling me with your most successful vacation and two entries for sharing your most sucky vacation. I' give you an extra entry for each blogger you direct here who leaves their vacation stories, with no limit on how many entries you can earn. Ask them to say you sent them. They, in turn, can refer other bloggers to earn themselves extra entries, too.

We are right in the middle of June, so let's say the contest will run for a month or so with the winner(s?) being chosen by random number 'round about the 14th of July.

Have at it!

In which trek reviews Revenge Served Cold

Rebecca over at The Cadence Group asked me to read and review Revenge Served Cold, the newly-released second installment in the Anne Marshall series by Jackie Fullerton. Now that I have completed reading the book, here are my thoughts.

Revenge Served Cold is a legal thriller served with a paranormal twist. Protagonist Anne Marshall is a court reporter by day and a law student by night. Shaken, not stirred, into her busy schedule is her moon-lighting career as a murder investigator. The supernatural flavor of the series is added by the frequent appearances of the ghost of Anne's father, James, who is her co-conspiritor in crime fighting.

Anne and James have their hands full in this case: Kathy Spence is accused of running down her law professor husband, Elliot, and with Elliot's blood all over the front-end of Kathy's car, the circumstantial evidence looks pretty convincing. Except that both James and Anne feel that the evidence is just too "pat". If Kathy did run down Elliot, why would she park the car only a couple of blocks from home, in plain sight? And how could Kathy have managed to drive the car anyway?

Fullerton dishes up a lot of action. Anne's dad slips in and out, providing her with information to help solve the mystery. Unlike some other paranormal stories I've read, being a ghost does not render James omniscient and I liked that. Nothing more annoying than a know-it-all phantom.

Anne herself is convinced that Kathy didn't kill her husband. Ms Marshall pours her heart into proving Kathy's innocence, recruiting her friends and college colleagues and since no murder mystery would be complete without an element of danger, Fullerton delivers a dessert of terror towards the end.

My only complaint is that I knew exactly who did what, why they did it, and how they made it happen by page twenty-six. Not too much suspense there.

Still, it was an enjoyable read which moved along at a comfortable clip and I enjoyed it enough to go back for the series opener, Piercing the Veil.

In which trek introduces the WWW

If you have a child or ever were a child, you can appreciate that summers can be busy times. Sure, you can opt to kick back, refuse to sign up for any activities, and basically embark upon a completely lazy sort of summer. This wouldn't work here at chez trek, however, and I am pretty sure that it doesn't work for most American families these days.

Given the scheduling changes which strike us at the end of the school year and my recent lack of blogging inspiration, I've decided to scale back blog posting to a regularly scheduled weekly post; I am calling it the Weekly Wednesday Wrap-up, or WWW. Most likely these posts will assume bullet point format but, hey, you never want to assume things, right?

What sorts of things might appear in the proposed bullet lists? Reading, School at Home reports, thrifty scores, fitness stuff, crafting - basically whatever happened in the preceding week is fair game. With that in mind, let us wrap-up the past week...

• Even though school is nearly over for this year, we are still collecting Box Tops for Education. I think that Neatnik's school might have met their goal for the 2009-2010 school year. I sure hope so, anyway.



• Thank you once again to everyone who sent us Box Tops!



• I saw the most lovely prickly pear cactus flowers yesterday morning. Their stunning yellow blossoms just shrieked summer.



• No, I didn't have my camera with me. I was busy schlepping library books back to their place of origin.



Opuntia engelmannii


• Went back this morning, with my camera.



• I decided to ride my bike to the library this morning, so I stopped, dismounted, and lined up the prettiest flower, just for you.



• Since we were just speaking of books, I have a bit of 411 to share with the parents of elementary school-aged children. Back in February, Neatnik's school participated once again in the Six Flags Read to Succeed program.



• Once again, I have been shanghaied into purchasing a ticket to the amusement park strictly for the pleasure of their company and to support my reading child.



• Once again, it is time to start looking for discount ticket promotions.



• Other companies are also encouraging youth reading with incentive programs this summer.



• Barnes and Noble is giving away a free book to any child who reads eight books.



• Ditto for Borders but the child has to read ten books in their Double Dog Dare challenge.



• One nice thing about the free book lists: even though the child gets to picks just one book to bring home for free, the rest of the list serves as a resource for new authors/series for the elementary school set.



• Double win.



• TD Bank is coughing up the big bucks this summer: if your child reads ten books, TD will deposit ten bucks into their youth savings account.



• I heard that McDonald's is offering a free Happy Meal for reading five books but I haven't seen the coupons yet. Our library usually gets them later in June so I have to keep an eye on the reference desk in the children's department.



• No, I am not letting Neatnik double-dip: each book read goes on one incentive form each.



• Our county library is sponsoring an adult summer reading challenge as well as the annual children's program.



• Well, of course we are signed up already.



• Time to research additional new authors... again... anyone??



• An outbreak of contact dermatitis due to close proximity to poison ivy vines looks like a blistered, festering mass of contagious, oozing, suppurating, leprous flesh.



• Especially when slathered with a generous coating of calamine lotion.



• Neatnik brought home a flyer from a local tae kwon do school last week. The instructor did a bullying seminar at her school.



• We have been shopping for a replacement activity for ballet. Tae kwon do may very well be it. Neatnik has completed four trial classes and is still talking about earning a yellow belt.



• They have a six-week summer program and adult classes and they will honor my previously earned rank as well.



• Ooh!



• School is almost finished. The kids are merely marking time at this stage of the game.



• At least two or three rounds of Vacation Bible School are already on the docket as well as a week of drama camp.



• I took TazzMom on a thrift shop crawl last Thursday morning. We each brought home some pre-loved duds so it was definitely a win.



• While searching for some badge information on the Brownie Girl Scout web site, I came across a link to the American Volkssport Association. They offer a Walk-Together Program, in which the Brownies can earn a patch.



• Our troop leader has already given me the green light to run walk with it. I really hope that we can make this happen!



• Spending an hour or so on a Sunday afternoon re-sizing three t-shirts is a good use of one's time.



• Especially when you start with a babydoll tee and only have to adjust the width of the body.



• Run out of tailor's chalk while sewing? Never fear: the white chalk your kid uses on her blackboard pinch hits very well.



• Ever bought something at the store and immediately upon returning home find a coupon for the sale that starts tomorrow?



• Call the store and ask them to honor the coupon. Often they won't even require you to bring the merchandise back with you - just the original receipt and your coupon.



• An inch of anything sounds like a tiny bit of whatever you are measuring.



• Unless you are measuring rainfall predicted for Wednesday afternoon.



• Better break out the umbrellas for Brownies today...

Until next Wednesday...

In which change is in the air

With the summer truly upon us, I'm thinking about some major summertime changes on the blog. Check back on Wednesday, when the new format is scheduled to debut.

Hope Monday treats you right.

Hot town

I don't know how it happens. I really don't.

There I was at the beginning of a new week and I managed to cobble together three halfway coherent posts by Wednesday evening. Having worked up a respectable head of steam like that, one might think that the inspiration was flowing freely and that additional posts would follow, tripping along smoothly, one right after the other.

One might think that but then one would be mistaken. Seriously mistaken.

Instead of a proliferation of posts, the wool and the word suffered severe syllable shortage for nearly a week.

It's embarrassing, that.

Let's see if I can redeem myself with some Tuesday Evening Bullet Posting...

• FiOS Follow-up. Last Wednesday evening, Number Guy and I sat down with the laptop and the new television remote in order that we might program a favorites list for the new service. I kept telling him, "We don't get that channel." Then he would respond with, "Yes, we do. See?" I would look and I would see that instead of a black screen with an invitation to upgrade our service, there would be people and color and movement and sound.



• A quick phone call to the provider provided us with a very unexpected answer: the triple play package in our area includes the second tier of channel subscriptions, not the lowly tier one assortment which we thought we were purchasing.



• How wonderful: eighty additional channels through which to click.



• Have I ever mentioned how infrequently I turn on the television?



• Last programming I perused was part of last Wednesday's Mets game.



• Really, really.



• I did use the television to watch a good movie I checked out of the library.



• The installation technician used our old component cables to hook up our new system.



• Why, yes, we *do* have a high-definition television to go with our new high-definition fibery input.



• An additional phone conversation with the provider resulted in an HDMI cable being mailed promptly.



• Number Guy had two parades this past weekend. Neatnik went with him to Saturday's march.



• I went to the chiropractor.



• We are definitely not signing up for co-ed softball next summer.



• I am old enough to have given birth to half of our teammates.



• Even if I started after my own undergraduate graduation.



• Back when I was their age, I could shake off the incidental aches and pains, twists and turns.



• These days, not so much.



• Hence the chiropractor, whose vacation to Tahiti via private jet we are financing.



• Him and all thirty-eight of his closest friends and relatives...



• I seem to remember being very busy towards the end of last week, but now I am having a hard time recollecting the details.



• Must be a side-effect of the spinal damage.



• I do seem to recall selling a heap of 50/50 tickets for Neatnik's school over the weekend.



• Didn't win any jackpots myself.



• Not that I was expecting any.



• We simply write off 50/50 fees as charitable donations.



• The added bonus of selling said tickets in ninety-degree heat we silently endure and hope that the current atmospheric electrical activity will break the oppressive humidity soon.



• Yesterday, Number Guy had another parade. Since this one required a 7:30 departure, Neatnik did not attend. Instead, she and I took a nice walk, experimented with food coloring, and worked on some Brownie badge requirements.



• Were you aware that Brownies are called Little Wings in Chile?



• I don't think they come with hot sauce nor bleu cheese dressing, though.



• While Neatnik is going to continue in scouts next term, we are not planning on additional ballet lessons.



• She stuck with it for a whole school year and we are proud of her sticking with it.



• We have been interviewing gymnastics schools for the past couple of weeks and this evening, we also visited a tae kwon do school.



• Tough parental decisions.



• Which activity is best for your child?



• Where is the best place to send her?



• How much is this going to cost each month?!

So, as the school year begins its process of winding down, the planning for summer occupation is in full swing.

I think I could use a vacation right about now... or failing that, a nice big cup of soft vanilla ice cream.