Catch-Up Purge

Starting right around September 15th, I've been a bit of a space cadet in terms of this blog. While I might have been here and posting for a portion of that time between then and now, I wasn't really because my brain was pulled in so many different directions. For the last two weeks of September I was on vacation and totally MIA from blogging. How I needed that. Literally the day after I landed (technically as I didn't get home until very early Saturday morning on October 2nd), I went to look at an apartment and got it. For the majority of the month of October, I've been moving into my new place and figuring out how to fill it. It's a much larger task than what it looks like, especially when it's your first place and you're going from just living in a bedroom to needing to fill an entire apartment. How essential things like Windex become!

By the time I "officially" moved in on November 1st, I was pretty much done moving. I just had to wait for AT&T to hook up my phone and internet. A dick, fuck and a screw later, wading through several different stories from several different AT&T departments and a slight tangent on the phone to someone (I really am very nice on the phone to customer service, don't shoot the messenger and all, but after hours on the phone and days without my service, I'm pretty much going to break, especially with 6 different people asking me the same damn questions), I finally get my internet connection today. A week late. So much for setting up a transfer date in advance. In that time I've amassed a bit of a backlog of stuff. I posted my CSN review that's been sitting since September earlier today. On top of that I have a guest post, a pending official movie tie in (fingers crossed) to post, not to mention a small stack of reviews because, well, my brain was too fried to do much else after cleaning and moving and organizing except to read. So read I did. Small stack for review. Hopefully I can get that stuff out in a timely manner.

I am still going to stick to my suspension of Book Wars. As I said before, I appreciated the input in the survey I did when I considered removing it the first time. But seeing as how that survey participation didn't translate to post participation, I didn't want to exert the energy in maintaining it, especially during the last month. What with the holidays coming up, and my soldier boy hopefully on his way back home this week, I'm not about to dredge it back up. Ask me again in the new year and I might consider resurrecting it. Or maybe I'll have an idea for something completely different by then. Who knows?

I'll start my normal memes (Freaky Friday, 80s Awesomeness! and Things I've Learned from Books) back up this weekend, along with my Added to the Pile post that I've been saving. Yes, my TBR pile just keeps growing, much to my conflicted chagrining happiness. I. Can't. Resist. Well, yeah, I can, but lately I've been getting requests from the same publicists who know my tastes and they just keep hitting it right! How can I resist? Anyway, I'm hoping to get back into my own jive within the next week. I'm still getting over my internet shock.

I have a couple of winners to announce for contests that expired during my AT&T-induced black-out phase.

The copy of Vampires: The Occult Truth by Konstantinos went to -

Vicki S.!!!

And a copy of Wanted Undead or Alive: Vampire Hunters and Other Kick-Ass Enemies of Evil by Jonathan Maberry and Janice Gable Bashman went to -

Amber Vargo!!!

Congratulations to both of you! And a big thank you to everyone who entered! I have a short stack of books to give away not only for the upcoming holidays but just as a trickle down for my reviews so keep on the look out for those. I don't like keeping things hanging around so those will probably come up sooner rather than later.

Other than that, I think that's it. My own book blogging self should normal out soon. I'm still getting used to my new place, not to mention my new computer set-up. Since I'm running everything through my computer, and my TV screen = my computer screen, right now I'm sitting in front of my TV with a wireless keyboard in my lap on a pub height chair. It's strange. But I see myself getting used to this pretty quickly.

And just a quick big thank you to everyone that participated in my Ban This! event in September and my Bites Hearts Halloween and Scared Sh*itless Reading Challenge last month. I wish I was around to promote it more but it is what it is. Thank you to those for getting the word out about it all. Hopefully next year I'll be able to be more vocal about my own events!