Books, Spam, and Quilt Progress

Let's take these in reverse order from the subject line, just 'cause I'm wacky that way. :-) Quilt Progress I finished the background for all the blocks on the sun quilt today. Yay!! I think I'm happy with the flow of the background pieces, although I may play around with them a bit more before I commit and start sewing one to another. I have a logical reason in my mind for which direction the diagonals are running in each block, but I keep looking at it and wondering if it's the best way or if I've just gotten an idea stuck in my head and am not seeing alternatives. Hhmm.... Either way, tomorrow I plan to start sewing some more sun pieces. Pics to follow soon, I hope! Spam As annoying as it is, I have to admit I sometimes love the subject lines of spam email I receive. Here's the subject of one I got the other day: "Feel yourself living in cloud land! Con temporary system of growing thin." At first glance, that's really nice. I think living in cloud land could be fun. Johnny would probably say I spend a fair amount of time in cloud land already. And a system of growing thin? Sounds good to me, as long as it doesn't involve pesky things like exercise or sensible eating habits. But wait a minute...let's look at that last part again. "Con temporary system of growing thin". Well....at least they're honest. They're trying to con me into trying a temporary system of growing thin. Sigh. Being thin in cloud land was a nice dream while it lasted. Books I just finished "Drive Like Hell" by Dallas Hudgens. It's his first published novel and is getting a lot of buzz. I was curious, so I had it on my Amazon wish list, but hadn't bought it yet. Then I won it! Joshilyn Jackson, whose first novel "Gods in Alabama" is hitting bookstores in two weeks and who writes one of my very favorite blogs, had a trivia contest a couple of weeks ago and I was a winner. Yay me! :-) The prize was to be "two weird things" from Joss's desk, and I was expecting something like an old grocery list and a stack of post-it notes or something. But I mentioned that the day I won was my birthday (it really was!) and Joshilyn pulled Dallas's book off her desk, took it to a book store where he was doing signings, and had him sign it saying "To Deb: this really is the copy from Joshilyn's messy desk" and then she sent it to me and bought herself a replacement copy. How cool is that?!! Thank you, Joshilyn!! I finished it last night and it was good. The story is quite different from my "usual" book, because the main character is a pot-smoking, foul-mouthed, car-crazy teenage boy. And I'm SO not. Well, at least I'm not a boy, or a teenager, and I'm not car-crazy, and I don't smoke pot. Ahem. So I wouldn't have expected to identify with him or care about him so much, but I got sucked right into the story and didn't want to put it down. And at the end, I was left sitting there thinking "but...but...but....what happens NEXT?" I found myself wanting to know what else Luke does with his life. I found myself worrying about him and hoping he'll be ok. He seemed so real to me. I love it when someone writes a book like that. So I'll be hoping to see more books from Dallas Hudgens in the future. I've already pre-ordered Joshilyn's book too. I just KNOW that one is going to be great.