Doctor Sleep

To say I am a fan of Stephen King might be putting it too mildly. I own nearly all of his works. Not all, but most. I'm not a total 'homer' though. There are some books of his that I have picked up and have not been able to get through. They just were unable to 'hook' me.

I love the hook. That moment when you are reading a book and you become immersed in the experience. That moment when you start contemplating losing sleep just to get another chapter or two in. You start looking for those open moments in your day so you can get back to reading.

That hasn't been the case with most of his recent work. Blaze, Under the Dome and 11/22/63 are among some of my favorite King works. Doctor Sleep continues that string of really good reads. However I won't go so far as to say it is among my favorites. I try to keep that list on the shorter end.

This book did not end the way I expected it to. I was surprised that it didn't go in the normal vein of a typical King clustermug. Instead this book ended exactly the way I wanted it to. I won't go into too many details as it would be really easy to ruin the outcome.

If I were to voice my one complaint about the book, and it didn't really strike me until I started writing this. I would have to say that the character development wasn't as in depth as we've seen from previous works. We get to know Dan even more. And we get to know Abra pretty well. But everyone else is kept on the fringe when it comes to really feeling them. This includes the 'bad guys' which, for some, may feel like a shortcoming.

Of course I recommend this book. If you are any kind of King or Horror fan and you haven't read this book already, do yourself a favor and pick it up. King does bring back the supernatural and gore so be prepared for that (if you are a King novice).

Saving Mr. Banks

For the past week I have been in Florida helping mom. She needed some things done around the house and was having some minor surgery so I came down for a few weeks to be with her.

It has been just over 6 months since my dad passed away. Being in this house has been odd (hard?) because I really expect him to be here. Just waiting for him to come in from the lanai or the garage after a smoke. Pick up the remote, change the channels incessantly because no mere show can keep his attention longer than 5 minutes.

Mom has a few movies that I haven't seen yet so I went through them and watched one last night. Saving Mr. Banks was the one I chose. Talk about evoking some serious emotions... I was sitting here in dad's chair, watching the movie and tears are just streaming down my face.

There are two stories that run concurrently throughout the film. Eventually they tie together and that's when the heart strings are really pulled. Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks are two of the great actors of our time and their performances simply shine throughout. Paul Giamatti has a smaller role but was also great in this one. Even Colin Farrell (whom I'm not a fan of) was really good.

You can go here for a full synopsis of the movie. This one goes in the "strongly recommended" category.

Recipe - Strawberry Vanilla Pancakes (or breakfast for dinner)

I have to say I'm a pretty big fan of Allrecipes.com. I have found quite a few recipes over the past couple of years. Many that we have tried and most have been successful. This recipe is fantastic and now one of my personal favorites.

1 cup all purpose flour
2 tbs brown sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 egg
1 cup milk
2 tbs vegetable oil
2 tbs* vanilla extract
1 cup chopped fresh strawberries

Note the asterisk (*) with the vanilla. This is a LOT of vanilla. We have never made this recipe with the full amount called for. In the three times we have made this so far, we cut between a third to half of the vanilla out of the mix.

This also makes for a nice base pancake if you omit the fruit altogether.

Strawberries and other fruit are readily available these days at the supermarket which makes cooking these easy and inexpensive. The other nice thing about this one is that you most likely have most (if not all) of what you need to make them already in your kitchen.

When I fell in love with these was the other day when we substituted in fresh blueberries for the strawberries. Holy Cow, the blueberries were exploding with every bite! Possibly some of the best pancakes I have ever had. We (remember, I'm cooking with my wife so whenever I say "we" I mean her as well) plan on trying this with peaches sometime soon. On top of just adding the peaches to the mix, we plan on cooking some peaches in a sauce pan to make a peach topping to put on the pancakes. When that happens, I might report back here to let you know how it goes.

Do you have any favorite dinner, err, breakfast recipes?

February 5th

It'll be 3 months tomorrow that my dad passed away from lung cancer.

Yesterday was World Cancer Awareness day. I saw quite a few people on Facebook changing their profile pictures to a purple hue to acknowledge that day. I read on USAToday that the number of cancer cases is going to grow exponentially in the next 20 years. Doesn't that feel rather depressing?

I have been impacted personally by two types of cancer. Breast cancer and lung cancer. Looking back over the past 40+ years and seeing how many people I know and have known that have been impacted by breast cancer is staggering. The vast differences in ages that it impacts unbelievable. Now I have lost two family members to lung cancer. There is plenty we can do to mitigate our risks to these two types of cancers. Get checked out regularly, including self exams (breast cancer) and QUIT FUCKING SMOKING (lung cancer).

Yesterday I was on an airplane heading down to Florida to be with mom. My brothers and I are here so she doesn't have to be alone.

Today is my dad's birthday. He would have been 68.