Hello World! It's me, Tammy!

It’s the same old story time and again. I sit down and my mind goes blank. I feel like I have literally had nothing to say for the past several months, but at the same time, I feel like I have everything to say. That is just me being delusional. I really haven’t been able to find my voice as much as I’ve tried.

So, I’m back. I would love to be able to say I was in witness protection or on a space mission circling the earth or that I was climbing Mt Everest or fell through a fairie ring. Sadly none of those things are true. Or any other manner of story you or anyone else can concoct.

The truth of the matter is that I injured my back. It was Comic Con. That’s right. Comic Con done me in. The hours and hours of walking on the hard cement floor, carrying pounds of books on my shoulder at any given time, the shuffle, that tedious, torturing zombie shuffle. It broke me.

I won’t go into the sad, pathetic details, but it broke my brain as well as my back. I have thought long and hard about this and I realize that I can’t accept the fact that I’m not as strong as I was.

Strong like bull. Pull plow all day. That’s always been my motto. My psyche was taking this little set back a little hard. I am trying to get into the habit of things again, but I find I lack any kind of motivation. It has made things very hard on me, impossible to get things done. Anything.

So, I haven’t been writing. So what I haven’t been reading or exercising or doing chores. I certainly haven’t wanted to go out in a long time. It’s been rough, but I am working on it.

Here’s what I did:

• I got caught up on a lot of TV viewing.
• I spent a lot of quality time being a soft pillow for my cat.
• At first I was getting some reading done, but I haven’t really been able to read much in 2016.
• I bought a lot of books in the last few months of the year. A lot of them were free or discounted to $3.00 or less on Kindle. They were bargains!
• I have bought only one paperback and 18 eBooks of which 7 were free.
• I have been cleaning out my samples to read on my iPad and deleting books off my wish list that I don’t want. I went from close to 600 samples on my ipad to less than 200 and the majority of titles I deleted deciding I didn’t want or need them.

Here’s what I’ve been watching:

Castle – Love Nathan Fillion! The show happened to be on one night when I was working late and I was hooked. It’s a buddy show for geeks like me! I love the fact that James Patterson and Michael Connelly have been on the show.

Bones – First time I saw an episode, I hated it, but it comes on before the block of Castle on TNT and it slowly reeled me in. I am now watching from the beginning on NetFlix. I just started the 5th Season, but I only recently realized the show is based on a series of books by Kathy Reichs. Thrillers and procedurals are not my thing, at least two read, but the interpersonal relationships have me hooked.

iZombie – I had DVR’d the first season, but didn’t watch it as it aired. I had almost the entire season to watch. The show is based on a DC comic book from the Vertigo line where a doctor gets the Zombie virus, but in order to retain her humanity, she must eat brains. Naturally, she gets a job at the city morgue. The problem is when she eats a brain, she has visions of the last moments of the victim’s life (naturally all the deaths in the morgue are murder victims) and she takes on personality traits of the deceased until she eats a new brain. With her visions, she helps solve the murders of the victims brought to the morgue. We upgraded our DVR, though, so all of the first half of season 2 got erased. I only saw the first episode of this season.

The Librarians – It’s a little campy I know, but a lot of fun. John Larroquette really makes the show.
Once Upon a Time – Look at that! Another curse comes to Storybrook where everyone loses their recent memories. Can’t get enough of Captain Hook, though, and the show keeps me riveted to find out exactly what is going on with every curse cast.

Agents of Shield – By far one of the best TV shows out there. Ties in nicely with Marvel’s Avengers properties. The show just keeps getting better and better and adds a bit more depth the the world of the Avenger’s and the agency of Shield.

Sleepy Hollow – I have loved the first two seasons of the show. They have found a way to make a colonial man in modern times still humorous with what he doesn’t know and to see him learning about the modern world. Oh yeah, and there’s some demons to destroy, but the accent! The third season is not as good as the first two, but I still need to find out where it is going.

The Muppet Show – Love Miss Piggy as a talk show host. She is very clearly unhinged, turning around every situation so that it is about her. The regular cast of characters are back, all as part of the crew with Kermit as the Producer and as Piggy’s ex-boyfriend. There’s always something going on and always something going wrong.

Doctor Who – Peter Capaldi is back and better than ever. The last season was such a disappointment to me, but this season has been awesome for the most part. It’s a good thing, too, as I got word that Doctor Who will not be airing in 2016 at all. Steven Moffat is leaving the show in 2017 and they want to make the next season coincide with his last season. Good thing I got the DVDs.

Parks and Recreation – An Office-type show where the characters are interviewed and the setting is a Podunk Indiana town. This is usually what we watch when we eat dinner.

Shadowhunters – I know the show has gotten rave reviews and I am really digging on it, but there are still things that just aren’t quite right to me. The movie was terrible, but I still love it. I think the casting was spot on for all but Valentine. Most of the casting for the TV show is perfect, but there are a couple choices I’m not keen on. They’ve made some changes to some details of the story which I assume is in an effort to streamline the show and make it more accessible to the TV medium, but some things I am not happy about. For instance, Clary finds out who her father is in episode 3 or 4, but in the book, she doesn’t find out until almost the end of the book or at least closer to the middle. The Institute is all but deserted in the book, but it is thriving in the TV show and I really just don’t know how I feel about that. Don’t get me wrong, I really like it, but it’s still not 100% there for me.

The Shannara Chronicles – I’ve been waiting patiently for the past couple of years for this to come out. The show is based on the second book of the Shannara trilogy, the Elfstones of Shannara. I have been reading Terry Brooks since college and Terry Brooks is one of my all-time favorite authors. I got to meet him at Comic Con and I even won a ticket to a ticket only cast meet and greet. Fan Girl Squee moment!!! It was Amazing!!!

The Magicians – I’m a little late jumping on The Magicians bandwagon, but from the moment I saw the first trailer I knew I had to watch. I started reading the book, but it is my elevator/bath book, so I don’t get that much time to read it. I’ve only seen the first two episodes, but I am really liking it so far.

Star Wars Rebels – Post Clone Wars/Pre New Hope. The tales of Ezra and his merry band of rebels fighting the good fight and making trouble for the Empire.

Ghost Adventures – The ghost busting team are tools, but I like the history they provide on the haunts. They’ve been hunting for years, though, and they still scream and OMG every time they see something or hear something, probably just to make it more exciting for the viewers.

Expedition Unknown – I want Josh Gates’ job. On second thought, I would not be willing to crawl down a rock tunnel to get to the mummy’s tomb. I’m claustrophobic.

I am not normally a TV watcher. I would watch movies or stream something I’ve seen before as background noise when I work at home, but this is the first time probably since Happy Days was on the air that I have been interested in so many TV shows. We were also watching Penny Dreadful and Into the Badlands which got deleted when we upgraded the DVR. Other shows I would like to catch up on are Arrow, The Flash and DCs Legends of Tomorrow which just started. I’ve got some other things cued up in the NetFlix cue, but I’ve got enough to keep me busy. At least some of the shows are book related. It helps me sleep at night.

It is time to try to motivate myself, though. I can’t be a couch potato for the rest of my life. I have things to do.

• I have to take down the Christmas decorations. Yes, you read correctly. Christmas is still up in my house, but only because the table I need to put the decorations on was covered with the baking stuff I needed to make my mother-in-law’s cookies that were part of her Christmas present. I just made the cookies last night.
• I have to take care of taxes.
• Fold laundry and hang up my work clothes. This is about four months overdue.
• Clean my niece’s room.
• Clean my bedroom, especially my dresser
• Finish cleaning up my iPad Kindle samples. I’d like to get to no more than 10 samples on my device.
• I have packages to mail.
• I have blog posts to write and load.

You know, I’m sure there is so much more I wanted to say, realizing of course that I have said nothing at all. Take it as you will. I will try to get out of my fog and get back to reading and writing, my two favorite pastimes, well, after cuddling with Egg.

So, TTFN and I’m sure we’ll be talking soon.