Put on Your Dancing Shoes

I found this cover weeks ago and - this may sound terrible - I like it in spite of myself. Yes, it's a bit country-pop. Really, something about the feel of it vaguely reminds me of Provo and the mountain west in general...but in a good way. There's something quaint and charming about this guy and his one-man cover of some Whitney Houston.

Otherwise, this past week and a half, I've been keeping true to my New Year's goal to read new books despite being at home with Ethan all day. It keeps me from watching too many back episodes of random shows on Netflix. I'd been slowly picking my way through the Complete Illustrated Short Stories of Sherlock Holmes, but after about 5 cases in a row, I needed to give Dr. Watson a rest for a bit before diving back in. Thankfully, Sebastian had just made his way through 1/4 of one of his Christmas presents: the first four books of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. The first book, Game of Thrones, is brilliant. Martin has a huge and well-rounded cast of characters, and manages to keep up very well with nearly 10 or 11 character viewpoints to tell his tale. That scope of perspective only gets bigger in book two, A Clash of Kings.


I'll be honest, in my own small way, I'm a fantasy nerd. Don't expect me to dress up and play D&D or anything any time soon (or ever, for that matter), but I can appreciate the imagination that goes into creating worlds for series like Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings, or Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar series. So since the nerd stigma of the genre didn't turn me away, I had no qualms about diving into Martin's 900+-page opus. Nine days later and I'm nearly done with about 1800-pages of epic storytelling. If only my weight loss goals were as easy to keep on top of, I'd be back to pre-baby weight by now!

In the meantime, it's time to whip up some mac & cheese for dinner tonight. I have ingredients in my fridge to use up before the weekend comes...