Disclaimer

For those of you that have been reading my blog for quite a while, you may very well be a bit sick of hearing about Neil Gaiman. Well, it’s been a while since I talked about him, so just shut up. That’s all. Oh, and this was sparked in part because I’m reading his The View from the Cheap Seats right now and am loving the chance to hear his thoughts on a variety of subject matter. I highly recommend it, especially if you are a fan of Neil Gaiman. Or of reading in general.

Dear Mr. Gaiman,

I’m not sure when or where I first heard about you. I know at some point, I ended up buying a copy of American Gods and reading it, but I never finished it. In all honesty, I still haven’t. I do, however, know when I started paying attention. In 2013, you released a book called The Ocean at the End of the Lane. I think it was your first new novel in a while. You did a book signing tour for it, claiming it would be your last book signing tour ever. I kind of hope that’s not true, just because at that point I didn’t really know much about you, and when you were signing my books I was just a bit too starstruck to even know what to say to you.

I probably should have posted this about a week or so ago, but I’m just now getting to it. Honestly, I think I was a little bit too ambitious at the film festival this year. I took Friday, the first day of movies at the fest, off of work and made plans to see SEVEN movies. And I did. I saw all seven of them. It was less each day. I saw five on Saturday, five again on Sunday, and then I skipped the weeknights just to recover from my weekend! It really was a good weekend, though… I had a blast seeing what were mostly great movies. I was joined for most of the fest by my friend Haley and also by Michelle for a couple of movies. And then the following week I ended up getting sick, which I’m still recovering from. At any rate, I’m finally taking the opportunity to sit down and write about my experience. I thought I’d do my recap first, and then follow up with some blog post reviews of my faves. How’s that sound? So here we go… the fifteen movies I saw at Phoenix Film Festival 2016, along with their ratings. (I’m using a 4-star rating system, since that’s what they used for the audience votes during the fest.)

Well, first of all, I’m sorry for not posting about this sooner, but if you know me, you saw the pictures and posts about it on Facebook and Instagram, at least. But I felt it deserved a blog post as well. See, the story actually starts at the end of 2012. I had considered volunteering for a dog rescue when we moved to Arizona earlier that year, and so I had added a few of the local ones on Facebook, specifically dachshund rescues. Well, they are always posting pictures of the dogs they have available for adoption… and one day I fell in love. Happy Tails Dachshund Rescue posted a photo of a dog named Charlie Brown, named just because his paperwork from Animal Control only said “brown dog”. So I ended up taking Sophie (our other dog) to meet him, and Ricky agreed, so Charlie soon became a part of our family. And life has never been the same!