Keepers, Bloggers, Repair Men And The A-Team

I'm thinking that this will be the week where I finally get my sea legs back from all the holiday madness. Things seem to be settling back into a routine now. Of course this doesn't mean my thoughts are any less cluttered. Here's the latest rattling around in my brain. (Scary, I know)

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First up, for you observant types who may have scrolled down my blog's sidebar this weekend, yes, I have cataloged and added a widget for the Bat Cave Keeper Stash. Gotta say, it's more books than I thought - with the total clocking in at 74. Now granted, not every book I've kept over the years is a bonafide Grade A read for yours truly. I "keep" books for various reasons. Maybe it's a favorite author and I have an autographed copy? Or in the case of Nevada Nights by Ruth Ryan Langan, it's an autographed copy of the first romance novel I ever read. Not one I would recommend to readers, but yeah - I kept it because I'm a Nostalgia Ho.

If you're curious, and have time to kill - you can see my whole list of Kept Books here.

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The So. Cal. Bloggers got together on Saturday and we hit a couple of used bookstores in Renee's neck of the wood. I came home with a small, but healthy pile of new additions to the Bat Cave TBR. I stole some books from Lori - who is, I'm convinced, my Category Reading Ho Twin separated at birth. We agree so often on Harlequins, it's kinda scary. Notable additions from the bookstores include a copy of Joe's Wife by Cheryl St. John, which I wanted to replace since I got rid of my copy years ago. I also picked up a couple of books by Julia Justiss and Jessica Hart - two authors I "discovered" last year and wanted to read more of.

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The Bat Cave has been overrun with repair men the last couple of weeks. Some of you may recall that we had a small computer meltdown before Christmas. I finally threw up my hands and called in a professional. The good news? I did a great job of cleaning up the computer on my own - so all the icky viruses were gone. The bad news? We were dangerously low on memory. It cost a chunk of change to have the geek come out and upgrade us, but damn - worth every penny.

Then Our Wubby started acting up. This would be our living room TV. Thank goodness we bought the service plan, although turns out the darn thing was still under warranty. According to our repair guy, it was just our dumb luck to have a part go bad. He was in my living room 15 minutes, replaced the part, good as new.

The lesson here? Kids, if college ain't for you - seriously think of going into repair work. Dumb ass people like me will always need plumbers, electricians and people to fix their electronics and we're willing to pay just short of highway robbery to have someone do it for us. Oh, who am I kidding? Sometimes we'll even pay highway robbery.

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When I first heard they were making a movie version of the cheesy 1980s TV show The A-Team I rolled my eyes. I loved that show as a kid, but admittedly it had plot holes you could drive a truck through. These guys are wanted by the federal government? Yet they drive around in a tricked-out conversion van with a big scary dude rockin' a mohawk and enough gold chains to feed a third world country for a year. Yeah, way to remain inconspicuous. And in the immortal words of my Lil' Sis: "I love how everyday people can always seem to find them when they need help. Is The A-Team in the phone book?"

Hardy har har.

Anyway, the trailer leaked last week and it's now officially up over at YouTube. Gotta say, this looks like it's not going to totally suck. I couldn't really see Liam Neeson as Hannibal (I can now) and was totally flummoxed on ideas for who would play the Mr. T character. Turns out they went to the UFC and got Quinton "Rampage" Jackson - who definitely looks the part. But the best bit of news?

Bradley Cooper as Faceman. Seriously. Best casting ever.



We've got the tricked out van, stuff blowing up and Bradley Cooper shirtless. That's really enough for me. And why yes? I really am this shallow. Thanks for asking.