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A couple of days ago I finished reading Jean Plaidy’s Rose Without a Thorn, a historical novel about Katherine Howard (5^th wife of Henry VIII—beheaded) and I’ve just started Cornelia Funke’s Inkdeath, the 3^rd and final novel in her Inkworld trilogy. Inkdeath is going to take me a while to read. It’s 663 pages long and even though it’s a young adult novel the prose is dense and rich like liqueur.

Funke’s Inkworld series is all about books and reading. One of the characters, Fenoglio, is an author who is magically transported into his own book. However another character, Orpheus, has the ability to rewrite Fenoglio’s book and alter the reality therein.

Fenoglio wonders, “…was there any worse fate than having to watch something else twist your own words, adding colorful touches—in very bad taste—to the world you’d made?” Reading this I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt as a writer of fan fiction. Like Orpheus, I delight in messing about with other people’s imagined worlds and adding lurid elements to their stories. I’ve always considered it quite a creative enterprise however Fenoglio’s dilemma does make me look at it from another perspective.

One thing I can take some consolation in is the fact that nothing in the Inkworld series is clean cut. Fenoglio, with his sense of authorship towards the world around him, is a very ambiguous character not nearly so much in control of the world he created as he would like to be.

When I finish Inkdeath, I’ve decided that I’m going to reread Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. I read it for the first time back in the fall of 2004 but I really plowed through it, I’d like to go back and do a more leisurely reading taking in more of the details.

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About two weeks ago I watched an episode of the television show Criminal Minds for the first time.

I usually avoid police procedural show but I was interested because rock star Gavin Rossdale was guest-starring as a sort of strung-out vampire rock star (not that I’m exactly a Gavin Rossdale fan, but I liked him well enough in Constantine).

Watching the show I ended up being pretty impressed by androgynous boy genius Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler) so yesterday when I saw there were reruns showing on several channels I ended up watching a couple episodes.

When not ogling Matthew Gray Gubler’s cheekbones, I was pleased to discover that Mandy Patinkin was on the earlier episodes of the show. I’ve had a thing for Mandy Patinkin for about 20 years—when I was in high school I listened obsessively to his recording of the musical Evita. Patinkin was gone in more recent episodes of the show, but I found myself surprised and unexpectedly pleased by another character, an FBI computer technician called Penelope Garcia (Kristen Vangsness).

Now I’ve always loved support staff type characters, from secretaries Marilyn (Northern Exposure) and Elaine (Ally McBeal) to sour techie Chloe (24) but in addition to her behind-the-scenes sort of position the thing about Garcia that really endeared her to me was that she was a female character on a mainstream television show who was not skinny. She was cute and sexy and curvy and plump and voluptuous. I don’t follow a lot of television shows but I honestly can’t think of the last time I saw a not skinny female character. Probably teenaged Sara Rue on Popular (she ended up slimming down for her own show Less Than Perfect).

I’ve watched a grand total of 3 ¾ episodes of Criminal Minds, so for all I know Garcia might be a totally stereotypical “overweight” character who does nothing but provide comic relief talk about diets but I don’t think so. It seemed to me like there was some sort of romantic thing going on between her and FBI agent, Morgan, and generally she seemed like someone who was really competent and well regarded by her peers. I’m really curious now to watch more of the show and she how she’s handled.

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Tomorrow my grandmother, parents and I are going to be having Thanksgiving dinner at a neighbor’s house. 

Given my food issues Thanksgiving is always a little uncomfortable for me but oddly I’m not feeling my usual degree of anxiety this year.  I think it helps that I haven’t had to spend the last week dealing with the insanity of holiday crowds at an urban supermarket.  Also I don’t have to work on the holiday itself so I’ll have time to relax and do anything I need to do before hand instead of rushing to work at 7:00 a.m. then having to get to a celebration right afterwards like I have the past few years. 

Yesterday I went to the dentist for the first time in 12 years (I know it’s been 12 years because the last time I went was right before my little brother graduated from college which would make it 1997).  

It’s almost unforgivably irresponsible to let that much time lapse between dental visits. I have lots of excuses.   I hate going to the dentist.   Because I was bulimic in high school I had to suffer through some extensive dental work when I was in my late teens and early 20’s.  Frankly, it was traumatic.  Also I haven’t had dental insurance since 1998 and I don’t like paying out of pocket to be subjected to pain. 

Before I went for my appointment I was absolutely horrified that my teeth would be in such bad shape I’d need hours of expensive dental work to save them (I have recurring nightmares about losing my teeth).  Luckily my teeth were in pretty good shape considering the amount of time it’s been.  I’ll need a filling but that’s it.  Obviously I’m not looking forward to my follow-up appointment after Christmas but it’s a huge relief to know that my teeth are more or less okay.

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I went to the supermarket yesterday.  There were fairly long lines with the pre-Thanksgiving crowd and the cashiers were hauling whole turkeys over the scanners. 

I was very grateful not to be working in a supermarket anymore. 

In fact, the market was always open on Thanksgiving and I started working there in September of 2006 so this is going to be the first Thanksgiving since 2005 where I won’t have to go to work.