October 2017 – Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

A sudden change of plans

I was supposed to test for my first degree black belt tonight. Was. Unfortunately, a driver who was supposed to be paying attention to the road, and presumably wasn’t, rear-ended me on Tuesday, leaving me in a rental car and with a mild concussion. Per doctor’s orders, I’ve missed a couple days of work and have to avoid extreme physical activities and contact sports for at least a week. A black belt test certainly qualifies as both.

But enough whining, there will be another opportunity in the spring to test for my black belt. I was lucky to walk away from the accident. And my Camry, Roheryn, has been all about luck, from the moment I won him at a Cubs game in 2012.

My Camry, Roheryn, on his first and last days with me. — Roheryn, on his first and last days.

I entered a sweepstakes through the local Toyota dealership, winning a pair of tickets to a Cubs game and a spot as a finalist to win a Toyota Camry. On the day of the game, one of the finalists didn’t show up, bring my changes of winning to 1 in 5. We were each given a baseball with a number on it, and most of us had the player who was drawing the winning ball sign that one. Then he reached into a bag and picked one of the five balls in there; the number matched mine and happened to be his jersey number.

We took this car on our big road trip in 2013, visiting national monuments and parks on an eleven day drive. I drove this car to each of the out-of-state regional karate tournaments we’ve gone to, and loaded unseemly amounts of cargo from trips to Menard’s and other stores into the trunk and back seat.

Apparently the good luck was mine. Everything that’s supposed to happen in a car accident to protect the people inside did – the back window shattered appropriately, two airbags went off (did you know there’s a foot airbag?), and the back and front crumpled up rather than letting the other vehicles injure me.

I hope my next car is lucky too. Preferably without an accident.

Thoughts on Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

I read a biography! That or it was woefully mishelved at Goodwill. I’m inclined to believe the latter, I don’t think Abraham Lincoln was actually a vampire hunter.

It’s a fascinating concept, taking an extraordinary man and adding a supernatural twist to his life. The author, Seth Grahame-Smith, clearly researched Lincoln’s life extensively in order to add a vampire element to every tragedy in Lincoln’s life, beginning with his mother’s death when he was nine.

The vampire mythos has also evolved: young vampires experience severe damage in direct sunlight, but older vampires can endure some time outside with appropriate equipment (clothing, parasols, etc.). They do not, I note, sparkle. They also play an integral in the Civil War, with opportunistic vampires viewing slavery as an easy food source. Lincoln’s view of slavery is directly tied to his hatred of vampires, and the Emancipation Proclamation was a strategic move meant to cripple the vamipres’ easy food source.

Despite a minor in history, I don’t read many biographies. I am tempted to pick up an authentic biography of Abraham Lincoln to see how much reality fed into this book. Meanwhile, I will look into the author’s other books… Pride and Prejudice and Zombies sounds interesting.

Visiting the Blue Box Café

I don’t recall when I first heard about the Blue Box Café (BBC, because that’s a great acronym in context); it seems like it opened ages ago, I kept wanting to go. With a late Saturday afternoon free, we ended up there for an early dinner recently. For anyone not familiar with the source material, “Blue Box” refers to Doctor Who’s TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space), a machine capable of traveling through time and space that is permanently disguised as a British police box.

Me, a TARDIS door, and some Doctor Who clothing.

There’s nothing particularly fancy on the menu, though some of the items bear Whovian names; what we tried was delightful. The attention-getters are the decor and merchandise, all Doctor Who-related. In addition to the usual collectables (K-9 bobblehead!) for sale, there was a book about the show by a Midwest author, and several pieces on the walls were fan creations. And who can resist taking a photo by the Blue Box mock-up? As we left, employees were setting up for an evening of live music – be sure to check their event schedule before you go!

I normally chat with my companions at meals, but we were both distracted by an episode of Doctor Who that was playing on the televisions. We eventually pulled ourselves away mid-episode (we have seen it before), stopping outside to admire the Blue Box bench before heading home.

Thoughts on Phantom Limbs

Sometimes you discover a book and wonder why you didn’t read it sooner. In the case of Phantom Limbs, I know why, yet I wish I had read it a year ago so I could justify re-reading already.

Last year, a couple weeks before I was scheduled to close on my house, we went to BookCon. As you may guess from the name, they were books involved – in large quantities, and mostly free. With an impending move, almost all of them were promptly packed, where they stayed until I bought (& assembled) bookcases in the fall. At that point, Phantom Limbs was sorted onto the shelf with other G authors, where it stayed until this summer when I went looking for a book I could put down. (Cause I couldn’t write a black belt essay in the bath.)

Oops!

As it turns out, it wasn’t that type of book. It’s more of a stay up late, read snippets at every opportunity type.

After the sudden death of his younger brother, followed by his best friend moving out of state, Otis turned to swimming as a distraction from his grief. He is driven to compete by Dara, an amputee whose own tragedy prevents her from competing at her former level. In the midst of training (Dara is convinced he can make it to the Olympics if he just pushes harder), Meg comes back, and the two of them work to rekindle their friendship while addressing their unresolved issues from Mason’s death.

What makes this book memorable is the level of depth Paula Garner puts into each character. Each of them has issues that are being dealt with – or deliberately ignored – that the others can help them with. They make mistakes, just like any teenager, that seem like the right choice at the time. And there are limits to what they can fix. Most importantly, the main characters evolve throughout the story.