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The First Book by a Favorite Author: If We Shadows by D.E. Atwood

Born female, all Jordan wants is to slip under the radar and live the last year of high school as a boy. His parents and siblings support him, but he’d rather be recognized for his acting and musical talents than his gender issues.

When Shakespeare’s Puck gives him three magical potions—true sight, true seeming, and true love—Jordan discovers being true to himself isn’t as simple as he thought.

Jordan must navigate the confusion of first love, a controversial role in the fall musical, and his transgender identity, while fairy magic creates a net of complications over everything he does. In order to unweave the spells laid over his friends—his supportive older brother, James, his playwright friend, Pepper, and Maria, another transgender student—Jordan needs to understand exactly how far he’ll go to reach his goals of finding true love, true sight, and true seeming.

I first stated the book a while ago, but after a chapter got distracted with other things. This weekend I decided to pick it up again and just devoured it. The characters are well thought out and developed. Very deep and the reader is able to get into all of their heads. The pacing was great and the conflict built in a well developed fashion. The topic isn’t something I understand, personally, but I feel this book gave me a good look into how gender questioning affects people. At first I felt that the magic aspect was unnecessary and distracted from the story. I wanted to understand these characters as real people and see how the same basic story could be told without that aspect. But it was close enough to magic realism that it all worked out, story-wise, at the end. Overall a great book, top notch. But I’d expect nothing less from this author.

Rating: A+

2014 Reading Bingo

A book with more than 500 Pages Storm of Swords	A Forgotten Classic	A Book that Became a Movie The Maze Runner	A Book Published this Year Battle of Will	A Book with a Number in the Title
A Book Written by Someone Under Thirty	A Book with Non-Human Characters Shards of Time	A Funny Book	A Book by a Female Author	A Book with a Mystery Carnal Sacraments
A Book with a One-Word Title Coraline	A Book of Short Stories	Free Square	A Book Set on a Different Continent	A Book of Non Fiction
The First Book by a Favorite Author If We Shadows	A book you Heard About Online Meeting on Mars	A Best-Selling Book	A Book Based on a True Story	A Book at the Bottom of your To Be Read Pile A Light In The Dark
A Book Your Friend Loves The Graveyard Book	A Book that Scares You	A Book that is More Than 10 Years Old Ender's Game	The Second Book in a Series Ghost Train to New Orleans	A Book with a Blue Cover

Links in the table go to the reviews for that book. The cover links to the Amazon page.

Got through Black Friday at B&N. Not bad. I was at the Nook desk all, day, but only had an 8 hour shift, which was nice. The initial rush at 5am (which I was there for) was pretty anti-climatic. We sold three Nooks. But it picked up through the day, keeping us busy. Customers were pretty nice all day, no crabby ones. Worked Saturday and Sunday as well. Long weekend, was happy to get back to work on Monday, at least I get to sit at my full time job.

The porch has been decorated and we got the tree up this weekend as well. I drove up to Plover on Saturday before work and met mom for lunch. Nice having Christmas things up, last year we didn't since we had moved in right on Thanksgiving and it was just too much.

Thanksgiving meal was fun as always. B had it, we provided potatoes (made in the crock pot, so easy), stuffing, pumpkin muffins and a cake. Went home kind of early, as Paul was feeling sick.

Coming up weekend will be my company holiday party, which was good last year, so here's hoping.

Our friends Egon and Shannon got married over the weekend. Had a nice, if cold, service on the beach at one of the smaller parks in Madison. Then lots of talking and game playing all Saturday night. Learned how to play Touch of Evil, which was fun. We did get started a bit late.

Also got the website I've been working on for my cousin launched. And after a bunch of really negative comments on facebook, I have some more work to do. I don't understand being so nasty and negative about a wedding/bakery website. I mean, really? Did they see the old one? It played a midi file! That pissed me off for the day, and then I had a long shift at B&N. That second job is not relaxing like the watch shop used to be. I miss that. At B&N I'm on my feet the entire time. And while there was some training, now we are at the learn by fire stage.

I feel it's gonna be a long week. And I might be catching Paul's cold. Hope not.

Current Mood: annoyed

So sore today. But in a good way. I got to play volleyball last night. Worked out my schedule so I was free to sub on a team for a friend. Got there a bit early (I wasn't positive on the time) and subbed on another team for the first match. I did really well in that first match, for how long I've not done any physical activity at all. Second match didn't go as well, but I think that was because I've not played with those people as much as I had with the first team. Skills are still there, but some of them are pretty rusty. I'm clearly not ready to be a setter again yet.

Not sure if I'll be able to play this summer though. I was really hoping and looking forward to it, but they moved the games to Friday nights, and normally I work at the mall then. We'll see if I can swap a night.

Tonight is <;j user="exarian">'s birthday party. Should be fun. I do have to work a 6am Sunday morning, but it's not like I've not done that before. This will be my last ad set at Best Buy. :)

Current Mood: sore

Had a nice lunch today. Last two days have been crazy busy and this morning was full of demos and meetings. But on lunch I went and got my hair cut, with Mitch. Haven't seen him in ages, it was nice. Then I got a quick lunch at Red, a sushi place off of the Capitol Square. They had a 2 roll lunch deal for $9, and the food was great.

D&D tonight, hopefully. And this weekend I get to finally go see Blythe do roller derby.

Current Mood: good

Christmas was low key, as I was hoping. I got to read a lot, watched some movies. Christmas night we went over to Blythe's to hangout, drink wine and play games. I was hoping to talk to my mom or my sister, but we just couldn't make that happen. Pity.

Gonna be a weird week at work, not a lot of people here, so I will be jumping around a lot helping where needed. Case in point, spent the day today assembling books for a late rush order.

I'm hoping to still get to see the Hobbit this week, but we will see,

Current Mood: tired

It was a long weekend, I'm quiet happy to be back in the office sitting down.

On Thanksgiving we picked up the UHaul truck and with Ben's help got all of the furniture we think we want to keep over to the apartment. Took us one trip, about 2.5 hours, which was nice. Then Paul and I unpacked and organized, until we went over to

exairian's for TDay dinner. Trevor's parents were over also, and it was a really nice dinner and time.

Black Friday was crazy. I didn't have to start until 9am, which was nice to get to skip the crazies. But it was a 12 hour day and pretty disorganized. I also didn't have to help restock, another plus.

Saturday was actually worse, because I was so tired from Friday, and still had a 9 hour shift. The food Best Buy had catered in was great though. After work we went over to Blythe and Trevor's again, this time for drinking with Wendy and Drew, who are up for a bit. Nice to see them, but I over did it on the gin.

Sunday was rough, as I'm pretty sure I was still drunk when I got into work. And that moved over to a hangover. Also they had me at the front of the store for a while being a greater. Not the best of situations. I spent most of the day as a dedicated cashier in our department, which isn't bad, really.

This week looks a bit busier at Omnipress, and I'm hoping that I can get over to the house and clean, as it is not in any shape to be shown to buyers.

Next weekend is the Omnipress holiday party, which sounds great. I'm hoping Best Buy doesn't change their mind about letting me out early enough to go to it.

Current Mood: exhausted

Work continues to be slow. My next project isn't due to start up until Dec. 1. So I am still helping the other departments. The InDesign job is caught up, but there might be another round of corrections next week. At one point, I had to insert a 3 page footnote. Law text is crazy.

One of my projects that is just warping up was horribly negative last year, mostly due to the client's speakers being slow. But this year I'm just slightly positive! Super stoked about that. And they didn't raise the price, so I was just more awesome.

My back has been hurting for over a week now. I think a rib along side my shoulder blade is out, and it hurts to laugh, pick things up and breathe. I went to the Chiro, but that didn't help much. Just have to wait for it to fix itself.

Tuesday is my Best Buy intro session. Gonna be interesting trying to work a half day, vote and make that.

We applied for an apartment that we looked at yesterday. It's at the top of our price range, but has everything we want. And I actually lived there with

exairian and

spamcola year's ago. It's also the place I lived when I met

graeae and

channonyarrow, and where I lived when

channonyarrow came to visit me. It's a different building, but same complex.

We lowered the price on the house a bit, and right away more people called to come see the place. Maybe we'll have an offer soon. I just want this all to be over.

Current Mood: sore

First, happy birthday to my man. I wish I could spoil him as much as he deserves.

Second, I don't think I've actually talked about the current D&D game much, if at all. It's fun. I'm not DMing, I'm playing.

exarian's husband is running it. He had this game going for a few months, and at some point with hanging out with them Paul and I mentioned that we'd be game to play. His group had shrunk a bit with one guy, Ben, off to do military training for a while, so we joined a month ago or so. It's nice to play at a table again and not be running it. It's fun to play with with Dana and Shawn again. It's been a blast playing with Tony for the first time. And I love seeing Paul get into the group with smack talk and joking.

I re-speced a character that I had been playing online before this game. It's a Swarm Druid, and he's pretty fun to play. It dose take some finesse with his abilities to control the enemies and not damage party members. But it just takes some planning, which is a nice change for D&D.

Current Mood: good

I've been trying to read more, but work has been busy (and causing me to neglect the one game I'm in, which I feel bad about). The little reading I have been doing has been on my tablet, which is nice. Though I do see that stack of physical books and feel a bit guilty. I'll get to them, when I have time to read and don't need to carry them around (Inheritance by Paloni is huge!).

Now that I have the tablet, I've been finally able to check out the books I have in the huge back log of free one's I've picked up. A lot are crap. But as I said when I "bought" it, if it's free and bad, all I've wasted is the click of the mouse.

Reviews for two that I have read, and completed are here:

Universal Mirror, by my friend Gwen (

helleder) was a great first novel in what I hope is a long running series. The characterization was great, I saw great depth in all of the characters. A very interesting world, with unique rules for magic. Great plot, good pacing, well written throughout. I can't wait for the next one! (Also I did buy this one, but I knew I'd like it and wanted to support her.)

rating: A

Blood is Red, by Scott Sigler (collection of short stories)
While I had heard most of these on Scott's podcast, it was still fun to read them myself. Reading allows one to reread and go back, which is a bit harder in audio. Plus Scott is one of those authors that I like to reread (or realisten) to a lot. They are all good stories, but it definitely helps if the reader is familiar with Scott's full length novels. I'm sure something would be lost if the reader has never heard of him before.

rating: A

Current Mood: content

New Years Eve went well. Becky and Drew got into town an hour or so after Paul got home from work. The four of us went over to

exarian's. Place was packed. Played some "Crimes Against Humanity", kinda like Apples to Apples for adults. I won the first game. Then there was some Rock Band, followed by the ball drop count down, more Rock Band and me and Becky falling asleep on the couch.

Got home around 3ish. Had a hard time sleeping, due to this cold.

I made breakfast for Becky and Drew, we watched The Way of the Warrior on Netflix (it's was entertaining) and then they headed back to Milwaukee. Now I'll clean up the house a bit, watch some TV (I'm thinking Lord of the Ring's marathon), and read. Plenty of time to be productive tomorrow.

Current Mood: sick

New Years Eve went well. Becky and Drew got into town an hour or so after Paul got home from work. The four of us went over to

Current Mood: sick

Christmas was nice. We went to the Twin Cities to visit Paul's family. His mom was awesome and made the same dinner my mom makes on Christmas eve, Swedish meatballs and mashed potatoes. Not quiet as good as my mom's, but delicious and very, very nice of her.

We spent most of the time visiting with his family. The dogs stayed with his sister the first night, letting Paul and I have a night off. They did well. Remy dose not do well in hotel's though, barking at every sound in the hall. He kept me up most of the night.

Yesterday at work was busy, but today was nice and calm. I'm hoping that keeps up for the week.

The house is almost clean, just the bathroom to go. Becky and Drew might stay with us after the New Year's party, so I want the house to not be gross.

I think I found this story off of a podcast site. I didn't want to listen to it, but read it instead. Dudley's Memories and it's sequel Snape's Memories is awesome. Totally worth the read.

Current Mood: cheerful

Current Mood: cheerful

I got to leave almost on time today. I have a half a vacation day left, and my company doesn't let us roll them over, so I decided to take the second half of today off, make it a 4.5 day weekend. This was a good plan when we thought today was going to be slow. But one client has been late on getting me things for like two weeks, so I was sitting around, nothing to do all morning, waiting for an email. At 1pm I bailed and my coworker John said he'd watch my email and get things done. It's nice having a team where we can all cover for each other.

Saturday we will head up to spend Christmas with Paul's family. Tonight and tomorrow are for relaxing, but mostly cleaning. The house really needs it, especially if we are having people stay over on New Years after the party.

Hopefully next week at work it will be slow and I can do some catch up.

Tonight's big chore: Washing both dogs (along with furmination, teeth brushing and ear cleaning)

Current Mood: busy

Current Mood: busy

We had a great time on Saturday at our friend's Jeremy and Chad's house. Other years they have had a ginger bread decorating party, but after a few years of that it seems that new and interesting house ideas are becoming scarce. So this year they made large, like 8 inch long, ginger bread men to decorate. There were 9 people there, some we knew, some we just met. Jeremy is a interior design major, so their house is always amazing. The food was good too. We brought the pugs, and they seemed to have an OK time as well. There were 5 dogs total, which is a lot, but after a hour or so of crazy running around, they all clammed some. Remy spent most of the night next to me or in my lap, he's not too social yet. And JP peed on Jeremy's fabulous tree. They weren't upset, they have a pug too, but I was mortified.

Sunday Paul tried to buy us the cheap HP TouchPads, but the internets denied him. I went and played the last night of volleyball for this season. I played well, had a blast. I think out team ended up 2nd over all.

Good weekend all and all.

Current Mood: good

Current Mood: good

T-day dinner at

exairian's was good. She cooked a damn fine bird. Paul and I then decided to hit Best Buy for the midnight opening of Black Friday. They had a really good deal on a Blue-Ray player and some cheep Blue-Rays. The line to get is was mega long. And the line to check out was just as bad. Got to bed 2am-ish. I was supposed to get into work at 7, so we can all leave early. At 7:10 Paul poked me telling me I was late. Something went wrong with my alarm and I was to tired to get up on my own. Was in by 7:30 though, and still beat a few people in. So I think I'll be fine to leave on time. Then it's off to the mall to work the end of Black Friday.

Gonna be a long day.

Current Mood: exhausted

T-day dinner at

Current Mood: exhausted

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