my opinion matters

My podcast no longer exists. I was using the Opinion app to record and publish my podcast, and they are closing down the app, which is a huge bummer because all of the other free options for hosting are, for lack of a better word, crappy. So I'm over it for now and will try to blog more. Speaking of which, I have now quit The Orville , Me Myself & I , and The Good Doctor . I have picked up Mom , inexplicably, and am watching all the old seasons of Will & Grace . The new one was funny but just not relevant anymore. I worry that's what will happen with new Roseanne  too, and that bums me out. I just want a really awesome show that is funny and dramatic and interesting. I want another LOST  that doesn't make horrible mistakes and end up in purgatory. I want another Terra Nova  that doesn't get canceled after one season. I want a new Gilmore Girls , Friday Night Lights  Season 1, Frasier , or something that actually makes me excited to watch it every we

I just updated the RSS feed for My Opinion Matters, so I’m hoping that means it auto updates to iTunes and Google Play. It would have to, right? Because otherwise that’s way too time intensive for every person who has a podcast in the world.   I recorded my parents this week, so this week’s episode is full of laughter and people talking over top of each other. Classic Budzek.   I’m enjoying having a podcast so far, but I feel like it could very easily be about the same thing every week — Survivor, Trump, etc. So I’ll have to find something else to talk about. It’s shocking that I made it two WHOLE episodes without talking about The West Wing , so that will have to be rectified. I blame Trump — since he won the election, thinking about Bartlet makes me sad.   Anyway, things are crazy at work right now — busy, not crazy. Crazy busy, I guess. And I started to learn to bake!!! So that’s really exciting for me. So far I’ve made a chocolate cake and icing, and a coffee cake from

I have a new podcast called My Opinion Matters and I am super excited to share it. I have been recording the second episode this week, hoping to post it soon to my RSS feed and iTunes. I have also submitted it to Google Play, so that link will be coming soon as well. You can subscribe above at the top or at the right of this page. Thanks so much!

Once in awhile, you get to read a piece of literature that makes you stop and think about the world in a completely different way. Maybe it was the story of a culture you didn’t know about before, or a thriller with a character you just can’t forget, or a fantasy/sci-fi novel that transported you into a different world. this cover has multiple meanings and they are all Jason. Maybe you read Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. Of course, the cover art is amazing, and really makes you want to pick it up. Whatever, people judge by the cover — don’t care if you’re supposed to or not — we do. Reading the dust jacket, it seems like an okay story that might be interesting. The dust jacket doesn’t even begin to cover it. Ha, cover it. I crack myself up. At the beginning, it seems as though you’re really a thriller that will undoubtedly turn into something ridiculous or unbelievable. However, as the story begins to unfold and you actually find yourself interested in physics concepts you never

Written by Clare Mackintosh,  I See You  starts like every other psychological thriller I’ve read lately. Vague character details? Check. Swapping narrators? Check. Tone changes in italics? Check. So I figured it would be similar in tone and in narrative. I was still looking forward to the read, but didn’t expect much. Not my copy. Found this picture on google. Same cover art, though. I was wrong. The writing and character development was so intensely realistic and I actually had a nightmare about it last night, and I had only read the first fourth of the book. I know that sounds bad, but it’s actually a really good sign that the book is engaging and feels like real life. I don’t live in London, so other than some of the wording and processes that don’t necessarily make sense to a Midwestern girl from Ohio, I felt like I could be the main character. The dueling narrators didn’t bother me like it has before — I think because they were telling two distinct but connected stori

Dressing yourself is wicked difficult. I know that sounds juvenile, but deciding what to wear every day is the worst. Boys have it easier, and so does everyone who wears a uniform to work. I recognize that is not a popular opinion, but I miss wearing a uniform — decisions are already made for you. It’s because of this difficulty that most of my closet is full of black and grey. Dr. Malcolm from Jurassic Park (the book, not the movie), was right when he said,  “In any case, I wear only two colors, black and gray…These colors are appropriate for any occasion…I believe my life has value, and I don’t want to waste it thinking about clothing. I don’t want to think about what I will wear in the morning. Truly, can you imagine anything more boring than fashion? Professional sports, perhaps. Grown men swatting little balls, while the rest of the world pays money to applaud. But, on the whole, I find fashion even more tedious than sports.” However, I recognize that in the corporate wo

G o see this movie. Right now. Like, leave work if you have to. And it might be better if you leave work and see it during the day because it is scary. Daniel Kaluuya is incredible. The write-up of this film is as follows from IMDB: “A young African American man visits his European American girlfriend’s family estate where he learns that many of its residents, who are black, have gone missing, and he soon learns the horrible truth when another frantic African-American warns him to “get out”. He soon learns this is easier said than done.” I think I would change some things and write it this way: “A young black man visit’s his white girlfriend’s family, and they are crazy. More craziness ensues.” I’m not big on scary movies in general — when I saw  The Babadook , I had to stop watching because I was so scared I started hysterically crying. And trust, that is not an overstatement. My poor boyfriend never got to watch the rest. Get Out  is a genius piece of art. And yes, I c

F irst of all, I’m jealous of anyone who owns this hardback copy because the water on the front of the dust jacket is bumpy and I think that’s cool. I read this on my Kindle Fire, borrowed from the library. Not the same as bumpy water. This picture is not bumpy. FYI. I was worried I was starting to get sick of this psychological thriller genre — it’s definitely popular at the moment and apparently it’s all I’m reading. This book is also super popular with book clubs, which can be sort of a toss up whether or not that’s positive. The one genre I refuse to read is historical fiction, and for some reason lots of book clubs embrace it — read a biography, if you want to know the history of something. But don’t read  The Other Boleyn Girl  and pretend like it really happened. It didn’t. But I digress. And also, I’m going to do my best not to spoil this book, but I want to discuss it in detail, so you have been warned. There may be spoilers ahead. But if you’re anything like me, you

I have been waiting to read Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris, this book for awhile, and it seems to be on every book club list I’ve seen in the past few months. Usually that’s a good sign, but most of the time it also means it’s some sort of melancholy love story that takes place in the 1910s or is a court case from the deep south. Still, the premise sounded interesting, and I like this genre of psychological thrillers from a female perspective. They are fast reads, exciting, and they really hold your attention as long as they’re written well. Thankfully, this is one of those. Boring cover art, good read While this story is told only by one narrator, Grace Angel, the timeline moves from the past to the present each chapter. Most of the time it works because you want to understand the secrets and why Grace and Jack act the way they do in public. However, it in the middle of the book it just gets tedious, and I found myself rushing through the “past” chapters to find out what’s happ

Please make a list of every possession you consider essential to your life. Creepy but awesome There are a lot of ways to answer that question, and ultimately it matters if we mean essential to living, or essential to modern life. For example, I don’t have to have clothes depending on my situation, but because I have a job and I live in Ohio, I have to have clothes. How much I have is up to me, but I definitely have to have something. I would also include a laptop/tablet/phone on that list, because you have to be able to be reachable for work and by family. But I totally get the point, and that’s how The Girl Before begins. Apparently, I have a different perspective than most, because I still believe The Circle is the greatest thing ever and I would totally sign up for it today. While reading The Girl Before , I also found myself craving minimalism and how nice it would be to not have a thousand items cluttering up your space and your life. Plus, a super tech-centric home woul

Every year since I think 2011, I have read 52 books each year. I am probably too proud of this, but I think it's awesome and fun and I get to read a lot of great books and some pretty terrible ones. I don't have any sort of requirement, and count graphic novels too. Here is my current hold list at the library (and yes, I said library — I refuse to pay for books to take up more space in my house — I love books, but I also live in a 700 square foot apartment with my boyfriend and dog and there is no room for the thousands of books I read and own — my Kindle rocks): The Woman in Cabin 10  — Ruth Ware → I’m really digging this psychological “I don’t know what’s happening in this book but somehow I’m still reading it” genre, and   In a Dark, Dark Wood   was surprising good Fatal  — John Lescroart → Periodically, I go through the New York Times’ Bestseller list because I like reading books that people are talking about — for this reason, I read the   Fifty Shades   trilogy, so yo

Last night, I watched Arrival , nominated for Best Picture and a slew of other awards this year. Starring Amy Adams and the guy who plays Hawkeye (unconvincingly as a physicist), it’s basically the story of how Earth will react when aliens come to visit. Although it sounds like it, this is not an action movie, and that’s a surprising twist. In general, the nominees for Best Picture are a collection of some of the most depressing and weird movies that would otherwise never been seen by the general public. And once they upped the possible nominees to 10 films per year, I hoped that would mean more mainstream or palatable movies would start to be nominated. Last year, the big surprise nomination was The Martian , even though it was never going to win. And Spotlight was a great movie and everything, but it’s not exactly an upper. None of the Best Picture nominees really are. And it’s been that way as long as I can remember.   There is an upside to this, of course. If you’re like me

Sometimes you read a book you loved and then almost immediately forget everything you just read. Sometimes you read a book you hated and remember it forever. When I read The Girl on the Train , I had to tell everyone how great it was. It was before I read Gone Girl and realized there is an actual genre of "psychological-thrillers-where-you-have-no-idea-what's-happening-and-then-it-gets-awesome-and-the-ending-is-crazy" - it's a thing. Anyway, the problem became that whenever I tried to tell anyone what it was about, that was the only way I could describe it. I couldn't tell anyone what it was really about because then they would know and the book wouldn't be amazing for them. Not that I don't like spoilers - I do, probably too much - but in this case if I knew the ending ahead of time, I wouldn't have cared as much while I was reading it and trying to figure out what happened. Then, inexplicably, I completely forgot the entire book. I couldn't re