"Kitty Kitty" by Michele Jaffe

"Kitty Kitty" by Michele Jaffe

This book picks up shortly after "Bad Kitty" leaves off, but now Jas's father has moved them to Venice (yes, in Italy) in order to do research for his book on the history of soap (yes, soap). Although Jas enjoys learning Italian, she misses her friends and her boyfriend who are all still in the United States. She also does a pretty good job of staying out of trouble, until her one friend from Italian class, Arabella, starts acting strange (or stranger than usual) and insists that someone is following her!

The action really starts though when Jasmine's cousin, Alyson, or rather Saphyre as she prefers to go by her fairy name now and Alyson's friend Veronique, or rather Tigers*Eye as Veronique prefers to be called now, arrive in Venice. Their arrival is quickly followed by the discovery of Arabella's body - an apparent suicide, and the arrival of Jasmine's friends from L.A. who surprise her with their visit.

Jasmine, convinced that Arabella was murdered, attempts to unravel the mystery of how she was killed and why with the help of her friends, the evil hench twins, and a charming gonolier.

Overall, even cuter than the first book.

Two weeks left!

Tonight I submitted the fourth part (out of five) of the group project in my web development class. It's actually the final piece of our web site - the last part is a "virtual poster" session we have to put together in which we introduce our web site and our experiences building it to classmates and clients. My turn as group leader is finally over - I was group leader for both the third and fourth parts of this assignment.

Now that this part is turned in, it's hit me that this class is almost done. This semester is almost over. Since I worked a couple of weeks ahead on the individual exercises, all I have left is whatever my portion of this last group assignment is, and one more discussion board post which is due this coming Monday. That's it for this class. Two more weeks and the semester will be over for me.

Between my two classes, all I have left is one 1000-word essay and one discussion summary post (which is already written and just waiting on the OK from my group) for my information policy class, and the discussion board post and my part of the last group assignment in my web class. That's it.

Time sure does fly...I can't believe my first semester is almost complete.

It doesn't seem real. I guess I'll be working on my essay this weekend.

6 Unimportant Things that Make Me Happy

I was "tagged" for this by Good For Travelling, so I'll give it a shot. It was harder than I thought it would be because the first things that I think of that make me happy aren't unimportant (friends, family, school, etc.)

Here are six unimportant things that make me happy:

1. Tivo - I love being able to watch a 30 minute show in 15 minute by fast-forwarding through credits, commercials, and stupid parts. Ditto a 60 minute show in 45 minutes. And I love the little bloop-bloop sound it makes when you fast forward. I also don't feel so bad about watching shows like 17 Kids and Counting, because it only takes 15 minutes out of my day (I can't help it...I'm fascinated by that family!!).
2. Cupcakes - I don't really make or eat cupcakes very often, but there's just something so cute about cupcakes. I love buying cute cupcake papers to have on hand should the occasion arise to make cupcakes. I love to look through my copy of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. (Also, now that I've seen a copy of the book Hello, Cupcake!, I need it! So cute!)
3. Cute lunches - I have a Mimi the Sardine lunch bag that looks more like a cute, green, polka-dotted purse than a lunch bag. I have a Hello Kitty Sigg water bottle that I keep at work. I have cute thermoses, and cute chopsticks, and I at least like to look at pictures of other people's cute lunches. I see a theme emerging here, but I can't help it. Things that are cute make me happy, and that is especially true when food is cute.
   
4. Fall/winter squash - Pumpkin, butternut squash, acorn squash...it's all good. Butternut squash lasagna. Pumpkin carob chip muffins. Steamed acorn squash halves with melted butter and brown sugar. Pumpkin ice cream. It's all so good.
   
5. Herbs growing in the weed patch - This is the first year that I successfully grew a couple of herbs in my "weed patch" in the back yard. The basil (regular and cinnamon basil), cilantro and oregano were a success. Of course, I didn't actually use any of it before we started getting frosts over night, so the basil at least has all turned brown and dead. I think the cilantro might still be going strong though, so there's still time! I'm just happy that I actually managed to get all of the herbs from the farm this year planted outside before they died, and some of them even survived despite the fact that I rarely remembered to water them!
   
6. Making a new recipe that actually works - I can cook well enough to feed myself, and occasionally others, but it is definitely not a natural skill for me. I love browsing recipes in cookbooks or online and finding ones that sound interesting, but when it comes to executing them, I have a 50/50 success rate. Most of them turn out OK, but nothing so delicious I'd ever feel like making them again, some have turned out so horrible that I had to throw them away, and occasionally they actually taste *good*. I had one such success the other weekend with this vegan chili mac.
   

"How to Ditch Your Fairy" by Justine Larbalestier

How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier

This is one of those hard to categorize books. It's definitely YA and definitely fiction, but I'm not sure how else to describe it. I'll go with fantasy, but it's not really fantasy either. It's set in a fictional city called New Avalon where people have invisible fairies giving them "luck" in certain aspects of life (good hair fairy, shopping fairy, loose change fairy, you name it, there's probably a fairy for it).

Charlie has a parking fairy, and she has since birth. Her mom discovered it when she was a few months old; whenever she had Charlie in the car, there was always a perfect parking space to be found, no matter how hard it usually is to find one. Although many would love to have a parking fairy, Charlie hates it. She can't even drive yet. So in an effort to get rid of her parking fairy, she decides to deprive it of any chance of giving her parking luck by walking everywhere.

Unfortunately, this decision to walk everywhere ends up getting her in a lot of trouble at New Avalon Sports High School. She's late all the time which earns her demerits. Once she gets a certain number of demerits, she starts being benched for her games, so she starts doing community service to get rid of the demerits, but that causes her to lose sleep and thus a vicious cycle begins of demerits and community service.

Add to the mix a really cute new boy in school that she likes, who seems to like her back when they're alone, but at school, he's attached to the hip with Fiorenze, a girl with a "boys-her-age-are-all-attracted-to-her" fairy. Turns out, Fiorenze hates her fairy too, so she and Charlie team up to get rid of their fairies. All of this in between full school days, after-school community service, and trying to avoid being kidnapped for her parking abilities!

Overall, it was a cute and funny book.

"Bad Kitty" by Michele Jaffe

In preparation for hopefully being a librarian working with kids and/or teens, I'm going to start keeping track of the YA and "kid" books I read. Maybe this information will be useful in the future for doing book talks or performing reader advisory services. It couldn't hurt to keep track of it, right?

Bad Kitty by Michele Jaffe

I would categorize this book as YA-chick lit-mystery. It's kind of a cross between Scooby Doo and books like Meg Cabot's "Princess Diaries." Actually, it reminded me very much of a YA version of Meg Cabot's Heather Wells series ("Size 12 is Not Fat", etc).

It's the story of Jasmine Callihan, or Jas as her friends call her, a seventeen year-old girl who always seems to find trouble and loves practicing her crime-fighting skills (who knew you could lift fingerprints with smudge-proof eyeshadow?).

While on a family vacation in Las Vegas at the Venetian Hotel, minding her own business by the pool, Jas is attacked by a three-legged cat named Mad Joe, and that is the start of the fun (or trouble)! It turns out Mad Joe belongs to a little boy named Fred whose mother is a famous T.V. star, Fiona Bristol, whose husband, Red Early, is on-the-run for murder.

It's up to Jas and her friends to figure out why Fred is so scared, why his mother is so upset, and who really murdered Len Phillips, all while Jas tries to both spend time with and avoid the mysterious hot guy from the pool, Jack, who witnessed the Mad Joe attack. Is Fiona the actual murderer? Is it really Red? Maybe it's Mad Joe the cat? Or maybe it's Jack, the really hot guy who keeps telling her to stay out of it.

Fans of Veronica Mars, mysteries and Meg Cabot will probably enjoy this book.