No more debt and thoughts on writers

William and I are embarking on a plan to get out of debt with the help of the Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. We've made a budget so far (although we remembered yesterday we left out our club memberships) and have talked a lot about how we're going to do this. It's all laid out pretty clearly in the book, but we have little adjustments we want to make, hopefully not deleterious ones. It will be great to reduce and eliminate our debt so we can start our marriage on the right foot. And then stay out of trouble by getting rid of our credit cards. It may delay our buying a house as we plan to dedicate a large amount of money to getting rid of the debt, instead of saving it for a down payment. Once we get rid of the credit card debt we can start saving (more) for the house.

It's getting close to the time, relatively, when we'll be taking off for CA. We got our plane tickets, a gift from Christie and her grandmother Virginia, so we're set to go. It's too bad we'll completely miss my parents and Uncle Carl and Aunt Linda, who will be there just before us, but I guess it's our honeymoon so it won't be so bad to be alone! Mom is figuring out her wardrobe for the cruise they'll be taking to Alaska with friends Carol and Joe Lawrence. As my parents have never been on a cruise and there are two formal nights, it's something of an adventure planning out all the cruise-wear and fancier clothing. They're going to Alaska, for gosh sake, even though it will be in the summer, so it's hard to know exactly what to bring. Of course most of the time they'll be on the ship, with four excursions on land. They're going to what seem to me exotic places like Victoria and Ketchikan.

As of Monday I'll be off the sleep medicine completely. Last night I slept really well. It's so refreshing to get good sleep. I can't imagine 1/2 a mg is making much difference so I think I'll be okay, even though I have nights where I'm up at 4 in the morning. I'm reading the new Elizabeth George, Careless in Red, which is different from her earlier books. It's from many, many different people's point of view and sometimes it's frustrating when you want to get back to the thread of the main character and there is not so much of him. There are some characters whose thoughts or lives are more interesting than others. She uses contractions to indicate speech rhythms, which is annoying to me. I'd rather she stick to word order to show pattern of speech or regionalisms. She does that, too, so I think the contractions, such as "D'you know what I'm talking about?" are superfluous. They're just distracting. She never used to do that. She's written many wonderful books so I don't know where this new technique is coming from. It's just like I hate it when authors have dialog with no quotation marks, as in, "He said what are you doing. She told him it wasn't any of his business." I can see using it very sparingly, but for a good chunk of the dialog, no. That is another new technique George is using. I'm still into the story and am eager to find out what happens to Lynley, her main character, but I feel like I'm wading through some stuff to get there.

Stephanie Meyer, the author of the trilogy of books about a girl and her boyfriend, a humane vampire, has written a new adult sci-fi book called The Host. It's number one on the bestseller list. Two of her other books are also on the bestseller list. Is that some kind of record? Her first book was written and published in five months. I have to admit I'm a little jealous, but she deserves her success. Her books are really good.