what I'm not doing...and what I'm doing instead...

Holy freakin' crap! I am alone. I have approximately 1 1/4 hours all to myself here. Completely alone. Can't remember when this last happened. *happy sigh*

Yep, Rich is taking his vertebrate zoology class off on a field trip, so he picked up Gray and Annie to go along, and I have a little over an hour before I have to go pick up Maxidoodle.

So. I should be emailing Chris. I should be emailing Ana. I should finally be catching up on blog reading/commenting. Heck, all these things are even fun things.

And then there's the not quite so fun things. I should be working on school stuff since I could probably accomplish six times as much with no one here to interrupt every three minutes. I definitely should be doing our taxes. I should be making a list of of the practical shit we'll need to do in the next couple weeks as we move into our new house (you know, the utilities, school registration, etc.). I should be doing a load of laundry.

But instead I'm sitting here giddy over the fact that Once Upon a Time VI has started. Yep, Mr. Awesome Challenge Host/Mr. Great Guy/Carl has officially put smiles on faces around the world yet again.

I love this banner. Love. Love. Love. All the beautiful artwork that Carl is using is by Melissa Nucera. As a cool (to me) aside, I noticed, while I was drooling over all the beautiful artwork at her Etsy shop, that's she lives in Rich's hometown. (Yeah...I'm rambling...what's new...)

So, yes. Once Upon a Time. In its sixth year! Which means it was six years ago that I was meeting some of the people who have become my dearest, most loved friends. :D Oops, I guess that means it was actually five years ago that the first OUaT challenge began...right? Oh, whatever. Anyway Carl, the wonderful "bringer together of people" that he is, again wants us to remember to focus on having fun and sharing that fun with others. Seriously, how can this be beat--fantasy, folktales, fairy tales, mythology, old friends, new friends, growing wish lists...yeah, sort of heavenly, wouldn't you say?

As in the past, Carl has a variety of ways to join in the fun. I think I'm wimping out and just committing myself to The Journey...this way anything above and beyond that first book gives me a false sense of accomplishment. :P

Sad fact: Our books are in storage. Happy fact: I was to the library today.

And from the library, I picked out one book to fit neatly into each subcategory. For fairy tales, there's Cloaked in Red by Vivian Vande Velde, who, incidentally, is a local author that Annie has met a few times. This book is a collection of short stories all based on "Little Red Riding Hood." For fantasy, I picked up Flora Segunda by Ysabeau S. Wilce, a book I actually own (thanks to Ana and Kelly) but haven't yet read. For folktales, The Girl Who Married A Lion and Other Tales From Africa, which is a collection of folktales from Zimbabwe and Botswana retold by Alexander McCall Smith. And for mythology, there's Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis by Ali Smith (another book first brought to my attention by Ana!)...this is the third time I've checked this book out, let's hope this time I actually get around to reading it.

When we finally get to move into our new house and get all our lovely books out of storage, I will likely make a whopping big pile of books to tantalize me through the rest of OUaT. And I'm probably post all about it here. Which is probably not necessary. But since this is my blog, I can do whatever the fuck I want, right? (Including just gratuitously throwing out the word "fuck" apparently.)

Well, that hour+ sure flew by. Time to just wish you all a HAPPY SPRING!!!! And a HAPPY ONCE UPON A TIME!!!!

Thanks yet again, Carl. :D