Hundred Days of Happy Day Two

A small thing today, but my lunches at work are really short: just thirty minutes. I'm learning how to bring quick things that let me get a goodly amount of reading on in that time, as well as get a healthy-ish meal that staves off the hangry. Today, it was a Santa Fe Chicken salad dupe, a Coke, and Attachments by Rainbow Rowell.

This prompted my decision to do the 100 Happy Days Challenge

My 17.5-year old cat, Calamity Jane. She's old, strange, and willful as hell. I love her more than I knew was possible when I got her all those years ago.  I was reading this morning, and she came and stretched out over my arm, between me and my book.

Isn't she cute?

As she's gotten older, she gotten really insistent about being able to sit right on me or my husband, even in summer time. The only thing that makes an acceptable substitute for sitting on her people is the heated cat bed we bought her for wintertime, and sometimes she still prefers a quilt-covered human lap to the sheer bliss that is the cat bed.

She's been with me since just a couple weeks after I got my first place alone. I've had her now almost as long as I hadn't had her. She's outlived two other cats I got not long after I got her, and she really loves being an only kitty. I promised I wouldn't get any other cats until she's gone. I can't imagine a life without her in it. 

I'm glad she's healthy for her age; she's a huge part of my daily happiness.

Me, in one photo.

Red shoes!

So, I hate having my photo taken. The prevalence of the phone as a cultural presence makes this awkward, but I am AWESOME at dodging the pocket phones of friends and family. To be honest, I don't have much of an explanation for it. I'm not in denial about what I look like: I'm zaftig but kind of nice looking despite it, I guess. Decent haircut and passable makeup, most of the time, which is all that most of us can do to look all right in the moment.

I'd look better if I were thinner, and I'm working on that, but GOD I hate having my picture taken. I go all tense and weird when the camera comes out, and it shows every time. But I was walking in Lawrence, KS, the other night, on our way to see my friend Dave who was visiting from Boston, and I snapped this photo of my feet. No weird tense face, just red Chucks and boyfriend jeans. My feet, which I kinda like, in shoes and out of shoes. This is my newest pair of shoes, and they're still a little stiff and shiny.

I can't say I'll be posting my face anytime soon, but I DO love this shot. It probably tells you more about me than just about anything other than a shot of my face.

Spotted at Target

At first, I had a hard time believing that this book existed. I cannot imagine anything more lazy (and shrewd, to be honest) than piggybacking your chick lit on the coattails of a popular television show, no matter how much or little your book pays homage to that show. I know this isn't precisely a new phenomenon, but it seems to be reaching new lows. I read The Jane Austen Bookclub, but didn't feel like it was as blatantly a co-opting of the works of Austen.

That said? Later today at Half Price Books, I saw a book where Mr. Darcy is a vampire...and one where Austen herself is a vampire. There's a whole sub-genre dedicated to inserting zombies in classic literature, or turning beloved literary or historical figures into vampire-hunters. Once was clever, but now it just reeks of commercialism and cynicism.

I know the generally accepted wisdom it that there is nothing new under the sun, but couldn't people try just a little bit harder to draft original content for the public's consumption? Are people's tastes really so narrow as this? That they cannot resist a book tie-in that isn't even really a tie-in?

And don't even get me started on this:  

This is the back of a "revision" of Pride and Prejudice that adds sex scenes to the original text. In terms of sheer commercialism and cynicism, I cannot imagine anything worse than this. But I am certain the bar is out there, just waiting to be lowered.