Marilee J. Layman

Even though I'm breathing better, it's still exhausting me. I stayed up late reading last night so when the alarm went off at 11am, I just turned it off and went back to sleep. I was surprised to wake up at 1:41pm, though. That was a bit more extra sleep than I expected.

I've been out to get the mail today, which not only had the DVD of Monsters, Inc., but the August Asimov's.

Harvey Milk's right-hand man, Cleve Jones, has announced a march on Washington on 10/11 for GLBT rights.

Early on in this DVD, the skinny blonde stepmother says to her dark plump stepdaughter, "Have you lost weight?" in that way that skinny people think is good. When the stepdaughter answered vehemently, "Not a bit," I knew I'd like this movie.

There's also the father, a younger daughter/half-sister, a couple where the husband is a writer and the wife a vocal teacher, plus a lot of young men.

The father is an emotionally abusive narcisistic famous writer who has never heard his older daughter sing. He calls her his "big girl" and when she shows up at the house, tells her she should have come earlier so they wouldn't have had to get a babysitter. The daughter has discovered that every boy who "likes" her really wants a route to her father.

It turns out that the couple also really likes the father's work and they're surprised to find out that the wife is the vocal teacher of the daughter and when they all get together, the weave of their lives starts to pull and tear.

I liked this a lot, and not just because the daughter is dealing with being plump.

Note that the DVD choices have a Language category and not a Subtitles category and I got English sub-titles from the Language category. It's in French, which is one of my better extra languages.

I reviewed the first book, and I must say that I may have been too US-centric when complaining about the Rockies at the Pacific Ocean. Czerneda is Canadian and there is a WorldGov in the books, plus the Hecate Strait actually exists. The second review.

This book starts out with the emotional romantic stuff and then moves on to space, aliens, disasters, and science. Our protagonist, Mac, is still trying to find the bad aliens, and she does. She has become a leader in the effort and also has a lot more danger. She's given up on the hair. In the end, there's romance with Trojanowski and a clear plug for another trilogy. I liked the science/space part of this and not the romance part, so it's hard to make a recommendation for the trilogy. I liked about half of them, but not in a single book way, in a parts from each way. If you decide to read these, note that the rough page length, in order, is 350, 450, and 550.