It is raining so hard that I can't even see the ferry I can clearly hear going by. Good thing Steve's flight when out before this rain hit. Not that I was glad to be up at 5:45 this morning though. He is in Seattle all week at a conference. He said he was looking forward to a few days of cooler weather. It has been sweltering down here with heat, humidity, and a grittiness in the air that is causing sinus problems.

Spent yesterday watching football and working on a Christmas advent calendar for Ally. Not much choice in TV viewing as we have the NFL channel and Steve has the TV on that pretty much all weekend. Watched a great Chiefs game - Steve is from KC so we try to watch those games. The Texans game wasn't televised, but since they got beat I guess it didn't matter. Also saw the end of the emotional Saints game. We watched the Texans beat the Saints in a preseason game in New Orleans the first year the Texans played. I can't imagine that the Saints won't ever play in that stadium again.

On the not intended for teens reading front I am just about finished with Swan Adamson's Confessions of a Pregnant Princess, the sequel to My Three Husbands. These are fun beach reads, but I would not give them to a teenager. Venus is only 25 and has gone through three loser husbands and is now in Rome at the insistence of the rich Italian prince who has fallen for her. Old enough to be her father, Marcello may not be the man of her dreams, but the men she thought were right were certainly wrong! Venus is a basket case, but a lovable basket case as are her "two dads" and her space case mom.

On the quality side - I finally bought a copy of John Green's Looking for Alaska because it was such a popular topic of discussion on YALSA-BK. It is stunning! I couldn't put it down until I found out if Miles made any progress in his search for the Great Perhaps as he enters the Alabama private school his father had attended. My heart went out to him and his love for Alaska, but then again, all the guys were in love with her. She drew them to her like bees to honey, even the Alaska who could be quite bitchy and mean tempered at times. The relationship between Miles and his roommate Chip is a co-dependency to a degree, but they help each other grow and mature as they deal with life with and without Alaska. I also learned a lot of great last words from famous people. What a well written debut novel. I am hoping we will see more from this young author. This guy can write! Gritty, true upper level YA - we need more novels like this.

Houghton Mifflin has republished the 1912 edition of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas with illustrations by Jessie Willcox Smith. These are the style of illustrations I remember from my own copy of this book as a child. Wish I had kept it since I now collect copies of this book. I am waiting for the first book version to come out that states that Clement C. Moore did not actually write the poem even though that was what the guests assumed when it was read aloud to his children. I did research on the issue of the poem's authorship back in the early 90s and that's when I began to collect copies. I do have number of them now!