Book Review: The Husband

Book review: The Husband by Dean Koontz

I read my first Dean Koontz book when I was 16 after seeing Stephen King mention him in his book The Tommyknockers. I’ve been hooked ever since.

Unlike King, you never know what you’re going to get with Koontz. It could be a fast paced thriller, a poignant love story or a light-hearted comedy. Sometimes there are even a few clunkers; I can count on one hand the books I didn’t like by Koontz, but I suppose those are good odds considering the volume of his work.

Luckily, The Husband isn’t a clunker. It moves right along and grabs your attention up front. The only flaw is the patented Dean Koontz character ™. This is the character that is just too darn perfect to be a real person. They never get cranky or bad wind or throwing up drunk. They’re always gourmets and wine connoisseurs and never eat junk food unless forced (such as being chased by crazed killers). They have absolutely impeccable taste in clothes and decorating. The main character, Mitch Rafferty, is such a character. His only “flaw” of course is a virtue: he loves his wife so darn much that he’d just about lay down and die, right then and there if she was gone. So imagine how panicky he is when a total stranger calls him up and demands 2 million dollars for the safe return of his precious wife. He is a simple gardener and of course doesn’t have that kind of money. There is no question about going to the police, these people mean business, which they prove with a well-placed bullet.

After this, it’s pretty much non-stop, and with a twist halfway in that I totally didn’t see coming. The main theme of course is hope and unconditional love, even in the face of adversary and sometimes down-right evil. Giving up hope is not an option. Otherwise you might has well just... well, lay down and die right then and there. Despite his being perfect, Mitch is a likable character and you feel yourself actually worried for the guy at times. The Husband is a good read with an interesting story. Although not as deep as the Odd Thomas books, it still manages to convey it's message without being preachy or schmaltzy. An excellent read.

Rambling thoughts on Thankfulness

Thanksgiving, a purely secular holiday, is a time when we pause to reflect on all the things we are thankful for. This is impossible without acknowledging something or Someone other than ourselves for the things we appreciate in life. Being thankful is realizing a debt we owe, an act of humility. Humility is impossible without God.
In the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, after the reading of the Sacred Scriptures, we reply "Deo Gratias-Thanks Be to God" Thanks Be to Him Who humbled Himself out of love for His creatures to become one of these very same creatures! For just this act alone, we could never Thank Him enough, but He still wanted to prove to us the depth of His love by Redeeming us with His own Precious Blood. And still He wasn't finished. In order to be completely and utterly united with us, He gave His very own Flesh to be our Food, so that we could be intimately united with Him everyday if we so wished: Eucharist, which means "Thanksgiving". Every time we receive Our Lord in Holy Communion we should be making a profound act of Thanksgiving.
"Thank You O Lord, for these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty" ~Traditional Prayer before Meals

Too many blogs

I have 2 blogs: this one and the one over at Yahoo! 360 . I barely keep up with either one. There must be some way to merge the two, so if I update one the other is automatically updated. The thing is, I'm such a complete and total idiot when it comes to computers and things like that. I guess I can always copy/paste. I know how to do that at least.

Cool Hallowe'en site

Miss Mary's Victorian Halloween

Celebrate Halloween the way Gramma (or Great-Gramma) used to!

My Cat Has More Friends Than Me

I signed Spooky kitty up with his very own webpage over at Catster. With in perhaps 8 hours he had a total of 35 friends and now has 41 friends. I'm sure his cuteness contributed to his popularity.

Last Day of Summer

Tomorrow is the last day of summer vacation. For some reason I always feel a little sad even though I prefer fall and winter to summer. We had a good summer: went to a baseball game, went to the Corn Roast at our old parish, launched the rocket. The only thing I regret is not taking the boys up to the playground more.

I hate the way time seems to just zip by, I feel a panicky sort of feeling, and out of control feeling, that time is being wasted or not used to it's adavatage and that I'll have regrets and then regret the regrets. It's a vicious cycle.

I love you egg

Well.....Duh

Dead Baby Found in Abortion Clinic

How Hot?

The temperature outside is, at the moment, around 93* F (34* C). The heat index, which factors in the humidity, is 100* F(38* C). The last time I remember it being so hot was the summer of 1995. I was in Navy Boot Camp in Great Lakes, IL. Marching around in the heat, wearing long-sleeved dungarees, t-shirt, boondocker boots. I can't believe I survived it. Just now I went to the bank, and felt faint. I must be getting old or something.

Go Nuts! Lugnuts!

Tonight Travis and I went to see our Lansing Lugnuts play against the Burlington Bees. It was very hot and humid today, 87 *F at game time. The Lugnuts got an early lead but by the 8th inning were behind 3-2. But in the 9th they managed to rally back and win the game 4-3. Go Nuts! Every year our parish Men's Club buys group tickets at a discount and also we take a bus to the stadium. This is great, because I hate driving in traffic. We didn't go last year for some reason. It makes me feel guilty if we don't do something fun during the summer. Next week is our Annual Corn Roast, which we also missed last year. This summer has been much better. We had our rocket launch on July 4th, although we lost the rocket. I promised Travis I'd buy him another one. We saw one that actually takes a picture while it is up in the air, so he wants that one.

Perfectionism and Starting Over

I joined Flylady about a year ago and the difference in how my apartment looks is quite drastic. (From trashed to presentable, everyday). Flylady's theory for why our houses become such messes is "perfectionism" We feel we can't do it "right" so we don't do it at all. What does this have to do with anything? Well, I seriously considered deleting all my posts and "starting over" this blog. Because of my perfectionism. I didn't write in the blog enough times, therefore let's trash the whole thing and start over. So I'll apply the FlyLady rule of "just jump in where you are!"

Can't Take It Anymore

I really don't know if I can continue to attend the Novus Ordo Mass anymore; at least not in this diocese. After suffering through "innovations" and people yakking it up in the Sanctuary after Mass; one guy even had his cell phone out-- his cell phone! In the sanctuary! My son and I stayed after to offer reparation to Jesus for the way He is treated before Mass, during Mass and especially after Mass. Then I watched Sunday Mass on EWTN. Why can't our Mass be like that? It doesn't look that hard. Actually, it's really simple: follow the rubrics! So, then I watch a Traditional Latin Mass online, streaming video. No room for "innovations" there. I may just have to start attending the Indult Tridentine Mass 60 miles away. My observations on the 2: The "Old" Mass is undoubtedly Catholic. The "New" Mass is very Protestant, which was the point I think. I became Catholic to be Catholic, not "Roman Protestant". My car is old and decrepit, and I used to use it as an excuse not to go to the TLM; but now I'll just have to trust in God. He will take care of me. (And my car too)

You scored as Traditional Catholic. You look at the great piety and holiness of the Church before the Second Vatican Council and the decay of belief and practice since then, and see that much of the decline is due to failed reforms based on the "Spirit of the Council". You regret the loss of vast numbers of Religious and Ordained clergy and the widely diverging celebrations of the Mass of Pope Paul VI, which often don't even seem to be Catholic anymore. You are helping to rebuild this past culture in one of the many new Traditional Latin Mass communities or attend Eastern Catholic Divine Liturgy. You seek refuge from the world of pornography, recreational drugs, violence, and materialism. You are an articulate, confident, committed, and intelligent Catholic. But do you support legitimate reform of the Church, and are you willing to submit to the directives of the Second Vatican Council? Will you cooperate responsibly with others who are not part of the Traditional community? Traditional Catholic 98% Radical Catholic 55% New Catholic 45% Neo-Conservative Catholic 38% Evangelical Catholic 31% Lukewarm Catholic 14% Liberal Catholic 7% What is your style of American Catholicism? created with QuizFarm.com

Perhaps more activity

Originally, I was only going to post things Catholic here, but since I almost never post, this is obviously a bad idea. So whoever reads this will have to suffer through my thoughts on such things as:

• potty training & poopy diapers
• migraine headaches and their causes
• the exciting and fascinating world of Holy Card collecting

• being single with kids
• weight loss attempts
• my views on things I know little or nothing about

So fair warning.

Is this necessary?

I'm not funny like Jeff Miller nor smart like Jimmy Akin. I don't have even one tenth of the logic that Dave Armstrong has. So why yet another neo-con catholic blog? For one thing, I'm not sure I'm a "neo-conservative catholic". I'm much more sympathetic to the Traditionalist movement than most neo-cons, but I don't fit in with the Trads either because I think the Novus Ordo is a perfectly valid Mass (when done correctly) and actually happy with Pope Benedict XVI. There must be other Catholics like me, aren't there? Hello?

Blog Name change

I changed the name of this blog to reflect my current feelings of the Church today. The "spirit" of Vatican II is leading souls on the path to perdition. 2,000 years of Church tradition and history are being tossed out the window in favor of the last 40. This makes no sense. Today over on The Curt Jester is a link to a parish called St. Maximilian Kolbe. St. Max is possibly my favorite saint, and yet I somehow doubt he would even recognize this as a Catholic Church. I barely recognize it as Catholic. Although it's not nearly as bad as St Joan of Arc in Minneapolis Then on the other side you have Novus Ordo Watch which goes the other extreme in tossing out the last 40 years, and claims that the New Order of the Mass isn't even Catholic, that they are the true Catholics, and that there hasn't been a Pope since 1958 (sedevacantism). Here I am caught in the middle, although I'd cut off my right arm rather than go to a "Mass" at SJA. The Bishops and the Vatican are real quick to squash any Traditionalist movements, yet Richard McBrien and Joan Chittister are still blathering away, pretending to represent the Catholic faith. It's depressing.

stupid

What does this mean? You are 85% stupid. This means...

Get help. School is cool you know! You should check it out.

First Day of School

Today was the first day of school for my 3rd grader. Where the heck did the summer go? I feel a bit guilty, it seems we accomplished nothing during summer vacation. I usually look forward to the end of summer, myself, but feel the need to make it special for my son. Guilt guilt guilt guilt. Yuck.

OMG, I have a blog

I totally forgot I started this thing. Yep, keeping right on the ball there.

my first blog

The first post of this blog, which is for us Papists (and non-papists).