How I Spent My Weekend

I've never done well with insect bites- mosquito bites itch for weeks, spiders cause huge welts and swelling, and I'm too afraid of bees to get anywhere near them (I'm not in anaphylactic territory, but I still would rather not tempt fate). It never occurred to me that flying ants were every bit as evil, until one stung me (yes stung- they're like teeny little wasps... nasty buggers) eight times a few days ago as I was scooping hundreds of them out of my swimming pool. The stings stung (duh), but they didn't start itching until the next day. So I did what I usually do with bites- slathered on the benadryl cream. By that evening, it was clear that the cream had no power over Flying Ant Venom, whose welts not only itched terribly, but were growing steadily. So it was time to crack out the benadryl tablets.

Have I mentioned that benadryl tablets put me to sleep?

I spent all day Saturday in a recliner, dopey and dozing. When I wasn't dozing, I read. It's amazing how much you can read when you don't do anything else during your conscious moments. An hour here, a couple of hours there, a stretch later, all interspersed with naps and trying to ignore the fierce itching...

I finished Club Dead, Charlaine Harris's 3rd Sookie Stackhouse book. I like the series (though I enjoy the HBO version more- it's more... filled out... or something), and I liked this book, though I'm not sure I bought Bill's defection. However, it does seem to set Sookie and Eric up for adventures, which will be interesting.

Still in the fantastical universe, but in the G-rated zone, I read #3 in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series, The Titan's Curse. It was every bit as good as the first two books, and this one will go to Voracious Reader, just like the others. I really like Percy, Annabeth, and Grover.

And then for a total change in mood and subject matter, I read Jeff Lindsay's Darkly Dreaming Dexter. I've seen the first two seasons of the HBO adaptation and really liked it (though it took awhile for my brain to transition Michael C. Hall from Six Feet Under to Dexter). The first season followed the book pretty closely, up until the end. I undertstand that the filmed version diverges from the written stories from that point, but I plan to continue with both. There's a little more onstage gore in the books, and Dexter is less... well... not lovable- that's not possible- maybe he's less human in the books than he is onscreen. At any rate, I enjoyed the book.

I'm continuing on with #4 in the Percy Jackson series, and Sookie's next adventure, Dead to the World. But I'm no longer itchy, and I've stopped taking benadryl, which means I'm awake for more than a couple of hours at a stretch. I have a workshop to prepare for this weekend, so I'll be knitting and watching the rest of Season 1, True Blood, instead of reading today. I should finish the samples for the All Day Fair Isle Class that I'm teaching at NCFF on Saturday (link to the right). I'll post pics tomorrow.