It has been awhile! I have finished a few books and I need to get better at discussing them. We are in full swing of speech season with tournaments each weekend so some of my personal reading takes a backseat...sadly...
This weekend the Titan Talkers competed in Minden, which was a 2 1/2 hour drive, which isn't so bad but it meant we had to leave school at 4:45 am, and so I left at 4:15 from my house. Nice early morning, although my husband coming home an hour and a half before I had to get up to start the day made it hard to actually get any sleep. The Minden tournament was excellent as many performers made finals and we won the tournament. Very exciting for the team!!
Last weekend my brother came up for a visit and brought his 8 month (ish) old chocolate lab pointer mix, Remington. Remy and Dart ( also a chocolate lab mix- but smaller than Remy already) love playing and got a bit too rough inside the house. Somehow Dart got a small cut on his ear and it bled like crazy. We eventaully got the bleeding stopped and put Dart upstairs to calm down (he still wanted to keep playing). When retreiving him from his/our room I walked into a massacre. Blood spatter covered a wall and there were blood drippings on the carpet. And there sat Dart, an innocent look in his eyes, blood dripping from his ear. Apparently the bleeding only stopped until Dart decided to shake. It honsestly looked like there was a murder due to the blood spatter. We didn't realize how much dog ears bleed and should have kept applying pressure. After a second incident with the same results, we realized what we were trying just didn't work. Using the internet to look up remedies to fix the bleeding, we saw that superglue is often used to stop the wound. While carefully attempting to close the small wound, we accidentally dripped some on the side of his ear. Apparently we didn't get it in the right spot though and the bleeding continued. The next remedy we saw involved dipping the ear in corn starch or baby powder to stop up the bleeding. Tried that, didn't work either. Now Dart has superglue with baby powder stuck to it on his ear and still bleeding. This is all on Saturday. We finally resort to sticking a bandaid on his ear (looked like an eartag used on livestock) which makes it rhough the night, for the most part. Come Sunday, we finally take him in to the emergency vet. I felt like a terrible parent having to explain the superglue/poweder residue but they didn't seem too surprised (they must have seen it all!). Dart received an excellent head wrap (to apply pressure to the ear and allow it to scab without him shaking it off) and 24 hours later, no more bleeding. But he does have to live with a bald spot and a wounded ego from the photos taken with the head wrap.
Most recently, I read the book This Dark Endeavor by Kenneth Oppel.
This is considered a "prequel" to Frankenstein. Normally I am not a big fan of books that someone starts to build off of another's series but I thought I would give it a shot. I was pleasantly surprised. The book follows young Victor Frankenstein, his twin brother Kondrad, their cousin Elizabeth and friend Henry. They are all around the age of 16. This group of friends comes acorss a secret room in their chateu that is a "dark library." They are forbidden to ever visit this room as the dark alcecmy that is covered in these books is considered illegal. But when Konrad falls ill with a mysterious illness that confound even the doctors, Victor takes it upson himself to seek a cure. He comes across a recipe for the Elixer of Life. The recipe is written in a secret language so he, Elizabeth, and Henry naturally start an adventure to find someone who can decode the language and create the recipe. They find an old alchemist in town who is willing to help them. Each ingredient the recipe requires gets harder and harder to acquire and eventaully Konrad gets better, for the time being. However, Victor wishes to finish the recipe. I don't like telling too much of the story because it is never fun to read a spoiler. The writing itself was good, it is aimed at a YA audience but I didn't enjoy seeing some vocabulary words I have taught in the past. The adventure is exciting and keeps your attention and their is a bit or romance intermingled as well. Knowing the story of Frankenstein made me keep wondering if we would see Victor slip from thrill seeking youth to mad scientist. There is another book out, that I haven't got to yet but the end of This Dark Endeavor gives a reason for why he would want to reanimate the dead. If you like the original, you may like the prequel.
