Canada is really gunning hard to attract the disillusioned liberals to their frozen utopia (or maybe they're just gunning for human rights, but yanks may be a consequence of their actions). I'm already concerned about the oncoming Midwestern winter, so I can't even entertain the idea of a run for the border.

That reminds me-- contrary to what I just said, I am superpsyched about going to the Winter Carnival in St Paul in January. They have ice palaces! They have cool winter activities! They have a King Boreas who gets crowned and then overthrown at the end of the festival! I can't wait!

Hoorah! Someone is standing up for the rights of non-parents. I've often said they should have "grownup showings" of kids movies. So I like SpongeBob, should I have to sit in a crowd of squiriming kids to enjoy my movie? I think a 7pm cutoff is a little extreme, but I've endured a woman bringing her baby to a 10pm showing of The Hours, so I think somebody needs to start setting limits.

I don't think the picture quite captures the fabulosity of my christmas craftiness, but I'm so proud of my glitter-kitty tree that it's on display for the world to see (just above here, yeah-- the header).

(note- just the tree is my creation, the kitties and sign are actually gift tags that I got from the greatest stationery store EVER-- RSVP. I told you Iowa City was the cutest.)

I finished the fourth Gregory Maguire book (not his fourth, my fourth in order of reading), Lost. It's similar in style to his other books, and still fanciful, but it's not another fairytale-redux. I'll quote what I told my mother about it:

The plot is really odd. A woman goes to London to work on her new book about a woman who's mildly obsessed with the Jack the Ripper mystery, but then the writer herself seems to be a little obsessed with Jack the Ripper AND with Scrooge, which her family believes Dickens based on their great-great-great-grandfather, AND with her cousin who disappeared from town just as she arrived. Totally weird. At different times, it's a mystery and a ghost story and a love story and a tragedy. Really odd. My main problem with him is his tendency to have everyone pissing themselves, and talking about people going to the bathroom (in the fairytale books-- why did he have to mention when people used the chamberpots??). He has a serious bodily-fluids obsession.

This concludes my campaign against Wicked. It may or may not be a good Broadway production, but it's not a very good book. If you want to sample the Gregory Maguire goodness, please start with Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister or Lost or even Mirror, Mirror. Just save Wicked for last. Maybe if I reread it, I would enjoy it more since I have a better feel for the style. The question I have for myself is-- why did I follow up a book I didn't like by reading the author's entire collection?