Part of our visit to my parents’ house overlapped with a visit from my grandmother. My grandmother is very religiously-minded and has a very low tolerance for bad language. I like to think I was tame, but my wife pointed out on our drive home that I still managed to drop a few mild bombs (e.g., what the hell, darn) and whenever I did, my grandmother would visibly flinch. Meanwhile, one of these overlapping evenings she was playing cards with my mother and had a moment of frustration with her choices in discards to which she exclaimed some phrase that was clearly not a swear, but carried all the tone of one. I made a comment along the lines of whether it was really not cursing if the inflection was there to which I got no response from her, but my mom nearly burst into snorting laughter.

On the ride home (which was during the day this time), the kids spend good amounts of the time ‘reading’ – by which I mean the got out theyr Tag books and let their Tag readers read the stories to them. They were entertaining themselves and not complaining, so I can’t fault them on it. Well there was a book that Cricket wanted to read that was one of Grasshopper’s and which was only on his Tag reader, so she asked him nicely if he wanted to switch readers. He responds by looking at her and saying “No,” in a tone suggesting it was a stupid question then turns to the back of the reader where his name tag is affixed and drawls out his name as if reading it slowly to her. Being as he is 3 and can barely recognize all of the letters in his own name, I couldn’t help but find the moment hysterical.

Due to coincidental travel, my sister-in-law had left her cat at our house while we were gone (there are clearly a lot of questions as to the logic there, but bear with me). See she lives about 30 minutes away from us and her parents (who live a mile from us) and she doesn’t have any reliable acquaintances near her who could feed and check on the cat at their own home. But she didn’t want to have to burden her in-laws with another cat in their own house, and since my mother-in-law had already been commissioned to water our plants, it seemed to stand to reason that she could feed the cat while she was there. So we came home from our travels to a paranoid cat. It would spend the majority of its time hiding from all of us and only seemed to eat food at night when we were all sleeping. Cricket wanted to take it for a walk … in its carrier. She seemed rather disappointed when we turned her down.

We also managed to fit in a beach trip this weekend (though it still involved visiting family). The kids had a blast – Cricket spent hours getting knocked over by waves while Grasshopper chose to have no truck with the sea and stuck to digging randomly in the sand. I played in both capacities off and on and eventually resigned to relaxing in a beach chair and reading on my new Nook (book and product reviews coming soon). Being that it was a very sunny day, we were vigilant with sunscreen application – the kids got at least 2 extra coats and I reapplied at least 3 or 4 times. Ironically the kids came out of the day with minor rosiness in a few spots and I ended up lobster red from waist to neck. But I was able to drown my pain in boardwalk food, so it is all good.

Now if only I could find time (and money) for a real vacation ….

What I WILL write about here, though, is this series in general.  I was introduced to it via a combination of having watched and enjoyed the TV series on the SciFi Channel and having gained access to the books through a friend of mine.  The general premise is this:  Harry Dresden is a wizard living in modern day Chicago.  He is a 30-ish, tall, thin guy who was born with innate magical abilities and uses these powers as a supernatural P.I.  Sometimes he works for a client and sometimes he works for the police as a consultant, but generally it seems that a lot of paranormal and magical badness seems to happen around Chicago and he often ends up in the middle of it.

While I did enjoy the TV show, it turns out that it wasn’t all that true to the novels (at least in the details).  It seems they took a lose interpretation and spun things a bit differently.  I was very upset to see the show canceled.  But I am now more of a fan of the books than the show.  What is great about these books is that it takes almost every type of fantasy creature and concept and blend them plausibly into the real world.  And what makes Harry a compelling and interesting character is not how well he handles these situations, but how badly – he is constantly getting in over his head and somehow manages to pull his ass out (or have his ass pulled out) of the fire – often literally.

So far in the 4 1/2 books that I’ve read, I’ve seen Harry face down demons, sorcerers, werewolves, vampires, fairies, ghosts, and all sorts of monsters.  On a VERY high level, Dresden is sort of Harry Potter meets John McClane.  And despite the fact that he often gets through things by the skin of his teeth, I have yet to see the author cross the line of credulity (given normal suspension of disbelief).

So in summary, Harry Dresden rocks and I look forward to reading more.  I will get into more detailed reviews of each book in the near future (and maybe the graphic novels as well when I find time to read them).  But if you enjoy sci-fi/fantasy, magic, vampires, and/or anything created by Joss Whedon, then I think you’d enjoy The Dresden Files.