Today is Ugly Pickup Truck Day.

But I strongly advise against greeting anyone with the words "Hello, Ugly Pickup Truck Owner!" Kids, do not try this at home.

almost famous
First off, I'd like to say hi to all of you who dropped by or are dropping by for the first time as a result of the article in yesterday's INQ7. Thanks for coming by, folks! I'd love to mention every one of you, but my tagboard runneth over with new names... (And just in case you're all confused about it, lemme explain that the Isle entries that appear on this blog from time to time are notes from the role-playing game I'm involved in, not chapters from my stillborn--but possibly soon to be revived!--novel.)

To my fellow bloggers: Take a look at my referrals box at the bottom of the sidebar, and you'll see that I've actually received over a hundred hits in the last 24 hours from the INQ7 site. So if any of you are at all interested in promoting your blog a bit, email my friend Joey now. He's like the Grand High Pooh-Bah at INQ7's YOU and Global Nation, but really he's just a nice guy. (He also used to be a terrible flirt, but he's married now, so possibly I shouldn't have said that. Heh.)

no guts, no glory
Today I changed our front doorknob and deadbolt all by my "girly self", as my husband would say. He was all for hiring someone to do the job ("When in doubt, throw money at the problem," is practically our family motto), but I pooh-poohed him, and therefore had to wrestle with all the hardware and figure-outing, nearly locking myself and Sage in the apartment in the process. I managed to get the task done, but honestly, one of these days, my hubris will be the death of me.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I have hubris enough to join the NaNoBloMo (National Novel Blogging Month) thing that everyone else is doing, where you write a 50,000-word novel and post it on a blog in the span of thirty days. I tried this before when I first started blogging (and before anyone else seems to have thought of it, ha!); and, well, you haven't seen my novel in any bookstores, have you? That's because I never finished it. On the other hand, I got a chance to grill my mother at length during our recent U.S. trip, so it might be a good time to take another stab at that 'autobiofictionography' of our family history. We'll see.

bibliophilia: The Queen's Fool
Just to show you how busy I'd been on our trip abroad, I only now finished the novel I'd bought to occupy me on the flight to the States. For someone who can zip through Stephen King's unabridged version of The Stand in under four hours, this is like a slow-reading record. And it's not like it wasn't a good book, mind you.

The Queen's Fool is the story of Hannah Green, a Jewish girl on the run from the Inquisition. Hannah also happens to be gifted with precognition, which quickly gets her embroiled in the intrigues of the English Queen Mary, the bastard Princess Elizabeth, and the conniving Dudley clan. Author Philippa Gregory has apparently written a number of similar alternate history novels, but this is the first one I've managed to grab hold of. The characterization is solid, the premise is interesting, and the melding of fantasy with actual historical events is very well-executed. The pace can be a tad plodding, though, so it's not what I'd call a page-turner. But if you're looking for a read that will engage your mind without necessarily consuming all your attention, this book is a good choice.

Now to get started on the forty pounds or so of books that we brought back!