MaverChick

I've been a very devoted Mavericks fan this year. D let me sign us up for League Pass as an early Christmas present to myself and we have gotten our moneys worth out of that. I only missed a handful of the Mavericks' games all season.

Ever since the big trade with the Wizards, things have been looking up for the Mavericks. They had a fourteen game winning streak. They gradually climbed up Western Conference standings. But it's been interesting this year. Last year there were more teams in contention. I don't think the final teams had clinched until the very end of the season (similar to how it's playing out this year in the East between the Raptors and the Bulls.) But this year there have been a lot of ties. Take a look at the current Western Conference standings. (The Mavs have two games to go.)

After pasting that in there, I realize it's kind of hard to read at this size. So I'll just tell you, teams 3-5 are tied and teams 6-8 are tied. For posterity's sake, here's how things are looking in the East:

This basketball talk prompted me to go look at my fantasy league. I had forgotten to check in and see how things wrapped up (after the little debacle that I mentioned before).

Third place. I won't complain.

Reading List

I'm a reader. In fact, I was a reader before I could even read. Seriously! I wanted to read so bad that I would hold my parents books in my lap and pretend to read them. (At least half the time they would be upside down.)

I prefer fiction and I tend to gravitate towards lighter reading but I'm not really choosy. I am a fairly fast reader...which can be bad because sometimes I go so quick the content doesn't really settle in. Or if I'm in a hurry to find out what's about to happen, I'll start skimming through the prose. I never skip ahead. In fact, I don't even like to read the blurb on the cover. I don't want to know what's going to happen until I'm supposed to. I almost always finish a book if I start it.

I've gone through several reading droughts: when I was in college, when I first started working, when I had kids. In the last year or so I've started reading again. I'm still hot or cold with it. Sometimes I'll go for weeks...or maybe even months without picking up a book.  Right now I'm on a reading kick.

Last year I read the Twilight books and Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I enjoyed the Twilight books and LOVED the Dark Tower books. While reading the DT books, I went off on a tangent and read The Stand and Salem's Lot. (And Farenheit 451, which is kind of random since it's not an SK book.) There are a couple of other SK books that I want to read now, which were relevant to Dark Tower, so one of these days maybe I'll get around to that.

In the meantime, a few months ago my sister-in-law loaned me a stack of her favorite books. I've really been enjoying them. Thanks Amy!

So anyway, for my purposes as much as anything, I thought I'd list the novels I've read so far this year:

American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris
Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris (a Sookie Stackhouse book)
Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
Gerald's Game by Stephen King (reading)