One equal temper of heroic hearts

Sitting in the main branch of the Vigo County Public Library (their WiFi connection outstrips my eensy weensy mobile phone, so they are aces when it comes to, ahem, acquiring the latest episodes of Doctor Who in a timely fashion) and someone's left a book at the table where I'm sitting. I just had to share the title and back cover synopsis:

A Murderous Yarn, by Monica Ferris

"The art of needlecraft requires patience, discipline, and creativity. So, too, does the art of detection. Just ask Betsy Devonshire--who's learning that life in a small-town needlecraft shop can reveal an unexpected knack for knitting...and a hidden talent for unraveling crime.

Heavens to Betsy Devonshire! She never intended to get so caught up in this year's antique car race. But as sponsor of one of the entrants, she can't help but keep a close eye on the outcome--and it's not pretty. One of the drivers never makes it to the finish line. His car is found exploded in flames. Now Betsy and her crafty friends must determine if it was an accident or the work of a jealous competitor. The answer may be in a piece of needlework, but pinning down a suspect won't be easy..."

Unraveling crime. Pinning down a suspect.

I don't know what I love more: the blatant use of knitting-related puns as a selling point, or the fact that the book itself comes with a free cross-stitch pattern of a car's wheel axle.

I have, in my hot little hands, the new Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child novel, Cold Vengeance. I will now proceed to read it until my face falls off.

I also bought this book, completely on a whim (and because when I flipped through it I saw the names Mycroft, Lestrade, and Abberline, all within fifty or so pages of one another. This book is like a Who's Who of 19th century literary personalities!).

Todd is away at the wedding of a mutual friend, so I've taken most of this afternoon and evening as a "mental health experiment," during which time I've pretty much bummed around and done nothing but fix a little dinner, read, and watch movies I've been meaning to push through my queue. I finally gave Hannibal Rising a go, having avoided it in theaters after I read the book. It was about what I expected. I admired Gaspard Ulliel's performance as Hannibal Lecter, but I really didn't need all of that character backstory -- what made the man so damn scary in The Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon was the fact that his absolute nutjobbiness seemed to come out of nowhere. Once you tack on a sad backstory about baby sister's teeth in a stool pit, you start to empathize with him and that takes all of the fun out of it. It has, however, made me consider going back to give Hannibal a re-read. I love that book. It's pure poetry.

I picked up my cap, gown, tassel and hood at the campus bookstore yesterday. Graduation is exactly one month from today. I can't believe it's really almost over.

I love this book so much that I want to go to bed with it and maybe slap it around a little (but only if it's cool with that).

I saw a woman with one of those Kindle wireless reading devices at the doctor's office the other day. I think those things take some of the fun out of reading. Me, I like to be physical with my books. I like to carry them around in my purse, bend back their spines, dog-ear their corners, and write my name on the inside cover. And there's that "book perfume" -- the smell of pages -- that's practically a pheromone. You don't get any of that with a Kindle. Of course, I was among the first in line to pooh-pooh the idea of a physical newspaper in favour of Web-based editions because they were, "so much more convenient." Because I am already pressed for time when I am not looking up videos of a cat opening a jar of peanuts. Right.

msconduct asked me to expand on the Anne Geddes Poster Incident from my last post. The clinic is the walk-in sort, so you can only imagine the odd lot of people in the waiting room at any given time. As such, each exam room is designed to be as neutral looking as possible -- taupe walls, floors the colour of used Wrigley's sticks -- with a couple of pops of colour in the medical posters on the backs of the doors. The room the nurse put me in was obviously used for pediatric consults because there was this giant, sun-faded Anne Geddes poster on the wall. I actually tried to find a picture of it online, but it's probably been discontinued due to the creep factor. The poster features a bunch of babies showcasing letters of the alphabet, some in various stages of undress (the babies, not the letters) lying on top of vegetables. Typical Anne Geddes fare.

I was left alone with it while the nurse went to get the equipment to draw blood and when she came back, I mentioned that I thought Anne Geddes' photography was always a little weird and that I couldn't see how they got the babies to look that docile in the first place. The nurse sort of sighed and shook her head. "I did my downstairs bathroom in Anne Geddes," she told me, "before my husband asked me to redecorate." I asked her why. She hesitated, snapping the end of the tourniquet a couple of times, very uncomfortable. "He told me he could never have a bowel movement when he was in there. He said it was too weird."

True facts.

So, there you go, msconduct. In the end, it all comes down to a poop joke.