The Awesome Power

Book Review: Deadline by John Sandford

3.5 stars

I really understand if you think that rednecks are a southern phenomenon, but allow the Virgil Flowers novels by John Sandford demonstrate to you otherwise.  Rural Minnesota has a ton of them.  I liked this book, but I think part of it was that there was some alternative person in my head (a man) who really liked it while I personally thought it was just okay (though I will say that the school board conspiracy aspect was hilarious and the anti-dog-napper crusaders were well-played).  It was very well done, and I did enjoy reading it, but it's just not quite to my taste...a little too folksy and colorful and quirky and man-centric (that last one is probably the main problem--I feel strongly that this is a book written by a man for men).  The Virgil Flowers series of books (this is only the second one I've read, so I'm extrapolating) are not my thing in a similar way that Elmore Leonard books are not my thing.

Speaking of deadlines...Friday was my deadline for a project that was horrible and stressful all week from a combination of network issues slowing me down to a crawl (I mostly worked on my local hard drive, but getting the files I needed to use off the server was a pain) and people not finishing their parts of the work soon enough.  I was really worried that I'd have to work on the weekend, and for a person who was only (barely) getting through the week by thinking of the glorious work-free Saturday and Sunday to come, that was painful and filled me with dread.  On Friday, I needed something to keep me from killing everyone in the world in a murderous rage. 

So...bunnies, of course.

Day 25: Dressed Down -- Friday, 11/21/14

I took casual Friday a step more casual than usual with my (excellent) Watership Down t-shirt, trouser jeans, and a cardigan made from sweatshirt-like material.  And snazzy boots.  Wearing bunnies cheered me up!  And because school wasn't in session, the network was running at its normal pace, so I was finally able to power through the work at a reasonable speed and finish the project before 4 p.m.!  I felt really elated when I left work at 4:30...until I got to my car (which I had to park at the very farthest end of the parking lot because there was a professional development training session with a lot of people who usually work somewhere else in attendance) and tried to open the door and nothing happened.  What?  I tried again.  Oh shit.  I forgot my purse in my desk again.  But even having to tromp all the way back across the parking lot and upstairs and back to the end of the lot again in the below 10 degree weather was not enough of an annoyance to entirely dim my satisfaction with the fact that I was not working over the weekend.  (My boss is, because he's the one who has to review the work before it's sent on Monday, but that's not my problem.)

Watership Down t-shirt (Out of Print)
Trouser jeans (thrifted, JCP)
*Navy/blue sweatshirt cardigan (thrifted, Rafaella)
Navy ankle boots by Seychelles (Zappos)