…And Jetty makes three.
Apr 19th
Ever since Mike and I moved in together (November 2008), I’ve been wanting a small dog, since we live in an apartment. At the beginning of this year we actively started looking for a dog to bring into our home. Mike was being scheduled more night shifts and he didn’t want me to get too lonely while he was working.
We both knew that we wanted to adopt a dog from a shelter or rescue, for two reasons. One, because dogs in pet stores tend to be incredibly expensive and two, the dogs sold in pet stores typically come from puppy mills, cruel facilities that breed dogs in inhumane conditions. Not only did we not want to support any organization that mistreats animals for their own profit, but the puppies that come out of those establishments often have multiple health problems due to rampant inbreeding.
We visited a few rescues and shelters, and finally one rainy Saturday morning we drove out to the Orange County Animal Shelter to look at their dogs. The shelter is not a no-kill shelter, which was one reason we wanted to go there. We wanted to try and give a dog a home before it was slaughtered. Once we got there, I was overwhelmed by all of the faces of the dogs looking back at me. Since it had been raining, they were all wet and pathetic looking, many of them were shivering and bedraggled looking. Jetty was one of them.
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Since when do I like YA?
Feb 13th
For those of you not in the know, YA stands for “Young Adult” novels. You might know of a couple really popular ones, like Harry Potter and Twilight. I didn’t begin reading the Harry Potter series until after the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out, and by that time I was long past being a “young adult,” in fact I was 20 years old. Two weeks later I had the entire series read and I couldn’t wait for the last book, Harry Potter and the Deathy Hallows to come out.
The same thing happened with Twilight, I didn’t start reading the series until the last book, Breaking Dawn came out. I saw the huge display inside a Borders store the day it came out, got curious and bought the first book. 5 days later I had the entire series read. I tend to get into things at the tail end of them :)
Since Twilight, I’ve been reading more YA novels at the recommendations of friends. First was Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games series, which I absolutely LOVED. Once I finished Catching Fire, I was disappointed to learn that the last book wouldn’t be published until August 24th of this year.
Next up was the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, starting with The Lightening Thief, since the movie was due in theatres pretty soon. I was actually reading the books over my Anniversary vacation. I thought they were alright, but very Harry Potter-esque. I didn’t like them as much as I liked The Hunger Games & Catching Fire. And The Lightening Thief movie? Incredibly disappointing! Not faithful to the book at all (what is all this business about Persephone’s pearls?), tons of elements of the movie were completely made up when they didn’t need to be, the book was fine as it was.
Now I’m on to the His Dark Materials series, about 100 pages into The Golden Compass (or Northern Lights as it sometimes called). I never saw the movie, and apparently it wasn’t faithful to the book at all so I’m not planning on it. So far I’m really liking the book. It has a parallel universe to our own, much like The Hunger Games, and I’ve found that I enjoy those novels more.
Feel free to comment if you also enjoy YA novels and have some to recommend to me! :)
