Years ago, when my demonspawn were little, I picked up a slim (but delightful & comprehensive) volume titled Spellcraft: A Primer for the Young Magician. It’s still the best book I’ve seen for young Pagans, and considering that I’ve been actively pursuing excellent books on Wicca for 15 years, that’s saying a lot.

So when I saw a new book by Lilith McLelland (and no, I don’t just like the author for her name *grin*), of course I had to get a copy. Out of the Shadows: Myths and Truths of Modern Wicca is – by far! – the best book on what Wicca is…and, possibly more importantly, what it isn’t.

I love the author’s honest & friendly (but no-nonsense!) tone throughout the book. I love how much truth it contains, without being the least bit sugar-coated or “politically (or Paganly) correct.” Normally when I get a new non-fiction book, I whip out my highlighter and start marking out bits that I find particularly important or memorable or otherwise meriting my future attention. I couldn’t do that with this book, or I would have highlighted at least 3/4 of it.

It’s written for Wiccans, but I would also recommend it to any non-Pagan who was looking for information on Wicca. (Along with “So Your Kid’s A Witch” – pardon me, that’s the in-joke name for Scott Cunningham’s The Truth About Witchcraft Today, the gentle-but-informative book we give our parents when they freak out about our religion.)

I really, really wish I’d had this book when I was new to Wicca – although thankfully, I did not commit any of the 3 cardinal mistakes that new Wiccans often make. (My granny didn’t teach me about any faith. The only Books of Shadows I’ve owned were hand-written by me, unless you count the last half of Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scott Cunningham. And I have never been, nor wanted to be, a shaman.)

Hopefully she’ll write more books. I’m far more interested in what this intelligent, practical, and responsible Wiccan author has to say than 95% of the rest of the Pagan authors out there.

Lilith McLelland

Hopefully my Irish gaelic doesn’t suck too badly. Of course, tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day! That means green beer, and where there are Irish and beer, there’s music!

What’s your favorite drinking song, Irish or otherwise?

It may be a cliche, but I love Finnegan’s Wake. (Though I’m perhaps a quarter Irish, if that, I’ll be terribly disappointed if my friends don’t throw me a rowdy Irish wake.) Okay, I admit it…I also love Denis Leary’s Traditional Irish Folk Song. *snicker*

And here’s a bit of Irish wisdom…

If Irish coffee has alcohol in it, why doesn’t Irish stew? …Because stew, by definition, is made up of leftovers and the Irish never have alcohol left over, silly!

Since the beginning of the year (when I spent ALL my Neopoints on stuff for my purple gallery *grin*), I’ve been trying to get the packrat avatar on Neopets.

(Why? Uh…for the same reason anyone tries to get anything on Neopets – it’s just something you don’t have yet!)

I’m 95% of the way there…yes, only another 50 unique items before I get it. *sigh* I’ve already bought all the cheap stuff (under 100 Neopoints) that’s available, and quite a lot of stuff that’s not cheap but was interesting, and this last 50 might get pretty darned spendy. Then again, I’ll be making a fortune by selling all this crap after I get my avatar!

(Yes, it’s terribly silly for a 35-year-old woman to be playing at a virtual pet website…and for almost 2 years, to boot…but it’s good, clean, mindless fun – and you can’t really find that even on TV anymore!)

T-Shirt Hell has a new & amusing t-shirt for the techie crowd out there. I giggled, anyway:

If I can build a computer…

Of course, it’s not necessarily true. Some techie types just aren’t that talented with their hands…because, you know, not everything is Plug-n-Play, guys. *laugh*

My first all-day-at-work trial of my iPod went swimmingly! I had 300 songs on the cute little silver box when I left for work this morning, and I stuck it on shuffle. Not only did I not hear the same song twice (which is good), but I really enjoyed the random goodness that was piped into my ears.

This evening, I found 4 CDs of .mp3’s that Robert burned for me a while back, and stuck several dozen more songs on the iPod. And I went ahead & bought about 8 downloads from iTunes. Not to mention realizing that – in all the excitement – I’d actually forgotten to rip songs off my Evanescence CD and my Pat Benatar CDs. (I know, it’s sacrilege.) But now I have 426 songs, and I’m barely nudging at 1.5 GB (out of 4 GB space).

Even though I can’t use Napster or other download sites (not unless I want to download songs, then burn them on CD, then rip them using the iPod software – because Apple doesn’t play well with others), I’m soooo loving this!

Last weekend at Incredibly Expensive Universe (Fry’s), Geoffrey & I got a few new techie things. He picked out a new harddrive and keyboard, and I bought an iPod mini (4 GB, silver casing), and discovered that my computer CD-ROM wasn’t up to the task of grabbing songs off CDs to plunk onto my nifty new toy. It was my Number One Internet Fanboy to the rescue!

So, now that the computer is all new & shiny, I’ve spent the last several hours ripping my favorite songs off my fairly-sizeable CD collection. (I hadn’t realized how many I had, until I collected them all in one place!) Now, instead of having to take a rather unwieldy stack of CDs to work in order to listen to good music, I’ll just be taking my itty-bitty iPod. It’s smaller than a cigarette pack…that just blows my mind.

Technology can be terribly convenient, once you’re trained in how to make it work for you…

I don’t know this guy Adam, but he’s funny! And this about sums up a few of my eldest demonspawn’s friends:

Q: How many emo kids does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: None, they just sit in the dark and cry.

ROFLMAOSTC!!!

My younger demonspawn didn’t want to go to school this week, because her school has been putting the 6th graders through “sex ed.” Now, when the child told me they were doing “sex ed,” I was fine with that. She might not learn a whole lot of new stuff, seeing as I believe sex ed should be an ongoing process starting with infancy & toddlerhood – when parents should teach a child what ALL of their body parts are called – and continuing throughout childhood in showing by example that hugging & snuggling is nice but respecting other people’s comfort limits in doing so, and honestly answering questions with age-appropriate discussions.

But when Anxiety told me the program was called F.L.A.S.H. – Family Life And Sexual Health – I nearly had an aneurism laughing.

Let me get this straight – to “flash” someone, in slang vernacular, means to unexpectedly show them your breasts and/or genitals. And this is the acronym some inane soul chose for a program designed to educate pre-teens about sex.

BWA HA HA HA HA! That just kills me.

Last night while my Number One Internet Fanboy and I were at our local Tower (he was looking for a new anime release), I spotted something that looked intruiging – the New York City Ballet Workout. It was even on sale.

I’m a sucker for ballet. When I was little, I religiously watched the Nutcracker on TV every Christmas. As a teenager, I had ballet posters all over my bedroom walls (many of which I used as decoration into my mid-twenties). When I was 15, I bought a pair of barely-used pointe shoes – which miraculously fit perfectly! – at a garage sale for the sheer joy of trying them on (and to have them hanging on my wall, as yet more ballet decoration). My first live-in boyfriend – a guy whose idea of a fun time was watching Cheech & Chong videos, or going elk hunting – made me deliriously happy when he surprised me with tickets to an OBT performance.

And, although my body far more resembles Marilyn Monroe than Gelsey Kirkland, and my thighs are a bit too lush (what a great word!) for me to actually manage a proper first position, I had a blast doing the workout today. For all that most of it focused on balance, stretching, and very precise strength moves, it was a hell of a lot of exertion. I sweat-soaked my shirt even before I got to the part of the workout where you’re actually on your feet!

But I felt pretty doing it. Even though I know darned well that my pliés are rickety and my port de bras are droopy, and I spend about 80% of my concentration on posture & balance (so I don’t fall over!), I still felt pretty. Hopefully someday I’ll get through the whole workout without wanting to collapse afterward…and then I’ll buy the New York City Ballet Workout 2!

Everyone just loved their class song from their graduation, right? Tell me all about it.

What song was your graduating class song, and why did you like it or hate it?

I tested out of high school so I was lucky enough to miss that graduation. My junior high graduating class song was that misbegotten inanity of a Muppets song, The Rainbow Connection. Yes, truly sad, in a horrific way. It’s probably un-American, but I have never appreciated the Muppets.