Changes!

For those of you who are fans of the Dresden Files books, there will be a new one coming out in early April! It's called Changes.

In case you haven't been keeping up or missed it, the first four chapters of the book have been published on the internet, and you can read them here! If you've been keeping up with them, just scroll down for chapter four.

I can't believe that he's being generous enough to actually publish the first four chapters free! Of course, once you read them, you want to buy the whole book!

If you look at that first link, Amazon is selling the book for half price! Quite a deal! I plan to buy a copy in a couple of days, when I have the money. Amazon usually has copies ahead of time and mails them so that you get them in time for the release date. It's a good deal!

Being the twelfth book in the series, this is just past the half-way mark. Jim Butcher said that he originally planned twenty one books in the series. Unless he changes that, we've already gotten half of them, and are now starting into the second half. Harry just keeps getting better and better!

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Ghost Whisperer and Medium are not on once again this week! Blame basketball for their lack. There's some good stuff on SyFy tonight, including a new Caprica and a rerun of Warehouse 13.

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It's chilly and rainy here, so I hope you're having better weather than I am. Have a wonderful weekend!

Belated Oscar Notes

I watched the Oscars on Sunday, and noticed something very interesting. There was a woman nominated for best actress, and she looked so familiar, but I couldn't place her. Neil Gaiman tweeted about her, and things finally clicked. His daughter, Maddy was the one who put it all together. Carey Mulligan is the actress who played Sally Sparrow in the Doctor Who episode, Blink, one of my all-time favorite Doctor Whos!

Below, you can see how she looked in Blink, before she got her head mowed.

I love Sandra Bullock, and I'm glad she got an Oscar, but by the time they announced the winner, I was rooting for Carey.

Being a ground-breaking woman's rights person who campaigned by living a life full of things women supposedly weren't able to do, I was also happy to see that a woman got an Oscar for directing.

Some of the other awards seemed to go to the picture rather than the person, though. Maybe that's just me, and I can't really say that I could judge fairly because I didn't see most of the movies that had people nominated for working on them.

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The Legend of the Seeker will be back for a third season, although where it will be shown is still up in the air. Locally, I can watch it on the CW on Sunday nights, but if you're local, or watch it on the CW, you should know that they frequently list a different episode than they actually show (at least on the Comcast digital TV guide).

In the new show that was on last week (and, due to a mix-up, again this week), Zed has frozen some people and is describing them so that his crew can impersonate them. He describes the man as being "formidable." Richard says "He doesn't look like a fighter." and Zed says he's not, he's got a way with the ladies and describes him as "his reputation is not the only thing that preceeds him into a room!"

Lost is on again tonight! As usual, a recap of last week, and then the new episode. The recaps are excellent, because they add notes about things you might have missed.

The season finale for White Collar is also on tonight! It promises to be the best yet, which is saying something!

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Back near the end of last month, I ordered some great yarn from Herrshners. Everything seemed to go through just fine, and I've been running downstairs to check to see if it's arrived every day lately. Well, it's been a while, and I was starting to wonder what happened to the yarn.

At this point, I still don't know what happened, but it apparently didn't go through, and I'm very disappointed! It seemed to go through, and I got a confirmation email from Herrshners (which has since disappeared), and now that I go back and check for the charge from my checking account, it's not there.

I am very, very disappointed!

The worst part of all this is that I had a ball of it left from another project, and started knitting a project which will be a present for someone who reads this blog, so I can't talk about it here. But I've knit all the yarn I have, and have been waiting for the additional yarn.

This particular yarn has been discontinued, and I love the yarn, so I'm sad about that, but it is possible to find it here and there on line. I ordered some today, but it's not as inexpensive as what I originally ordered.

Back to waiting for it!

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I found a fabulous infrared photo of Cassiopeia on line today! You have to check this out!

Please click the link and go to NASAs website to find lots of other neat photos!

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I think today is the warmest day we've had here so far this year. I really need to get off the internet and get outside!

I hope things are going as well for you as they are for me!

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Addition:

Read about the knitting soldiers! His blog is here.

And the most important news of all: the second chapter of Jim Butcher's book Changes is out today! Changes is the latest book in the Dresden Files series and is due out in April.

This and That

What is going on with curling in the Olympics?

The other day, Holly sent me a text message saying that she was surprised that I hadn't commented on the US Olympic uniforms with all their blue with white stars. Well, I would have, if I'd seen any.

First of all, you have to understand my viewpoint of sports. They're great fun to play, and boring as watching paint dry to watch. And this is as it should be, I think.

I'm not completely disinterested in the Olympics, but I've been recording parts of it and fast forwarding through the boring bits, which is most of it. So far, I haven't seen any blue with stars in the uniforms.

So, I tried looking up "US Olympic uniforms" on the internet, and there were dozens of uniforms for every kind of sport you could think of. I saw one uniform with a dark blue top and three tiny (almost invisible from more than a foot away) stars on each shoulder, and I'm still trying to figure out what she's talking about.

But back to curling. I wrote a blog post the other day, and had the TV tuned in to the Olympics. In the middle of the post, I dropped everything and turned to the TV in a panic.

There was a man on TV who was screaming! Not a yell of surprise or disappointment. This was a high pitched, sustained scream such as you would expect to hear from the teenage girl who has just discovered the mauled dead body covered in blood in a horror movie!

I thought that someone else had died in a horrible freak accident!

No. They were curling, and this is apparently a normal part of curling.

From what I can tell, if a man wants to be a curler, he has to be neutered in his early teens, and practice high-pitched, hysterical screaming, or he won't make it.

So, from now on, when the curling starts, I'm turning the TV to something else. I'm tired of thinking that somebody must've gotten run over by the Zamboni!

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I'm feeling a lot better after my fall on Friday, but my shoulder and knee still feel really unhappy about it, plus the bones somewhere in my left foot/ankle feel like they've gotten yanked into a position they shouldn't be in, and it hurts every time I take a step.

I'm still taking it easy.

The long period of under-medication for my thyroid has finally slowed my thinking to a crawl, and I'm really not feeling capable of doing much at all. I want to start knitting that vest, but I just can't make up my mind what I want. I am starting to figure out why nobody has designed a knitted Triquetra Celtic knot, though. I thought it would be easy, but with my mind seizing up like it is, I just can't figure it out.

I'm still waiting to wake up from this daze now that I'm getting the right amount of medicine.

I hadn't planned to do anything at all today, but I read about McCain's horrible bill to outlaw nutritional supplements, and I just have to write something about it, but not in this post.

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NASA has published at least one photo, and information about some brand new galaxies that have been found by the Hubble Telescope.

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The newest Dresden Files book, Changes will be out on the sixth of April! I'm really looking forward to it.

The newest Dresden Files book that's already out, Turn Coat, will be available in paperback on the second of March! This is my all-time favorite series of books!

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Tonight on TV, we have reruns only! They include The Big Bang Theory, Castle and four back-to-back episodes of Ghost Whisperer.

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Here's what seems to be the latest information about Andrew Koenig. He still seems to be missing, and I'm really upset about it. I wish him and his family the best of luck and hope that they will be reunited soon.

Have a great day!

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Addition:

Holly sent me this photo. At first glance, it looks blue, but if you look closely, you can see some lighter spots which I'm guessing might be stars? If so, this is the clearest photo I've seen of them.

It looks nice (probably much better if you see it nearby and in person), but I think I like Coraline's sweater better.