Crime Fiction at its Finest.

It's been a couple weeks since I finished this book, but I definitely wanted to share it with you as a "must-read" if you're a book worm...who is into thrillers or crime mysteries or sex or sexual deviance because this book definitely has all of that and more.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo centers around two main characters, Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. Salander is a young Private Investigator often hired to dig up dirt on high-profile executives. Blomkvist is a veteran financial reporter who was recently found guilty of libel and sentenced to three months in prison. The two characters cross paths when Blomkvist is hired by a very rich, very old business man to investigate the disappearance of his niece over 40 years ago.

This is also the first book in the trilogy written by Stieg Larsson, referred to as the "Millenium series". The book was originally written in Swedish and translated into English. At first, it's a little difficult to get past all the Swedish names and locations, but you eventually get used to it since the story is so engaging. We follow Blomkvist as he and Salander uncover the ugly truth behind one of Sweden's most powerful families. There's a healthy dose of crime and sex in the story, which definitely grabbed my attention, but the way the story is written just grabs hold of you and refuses to let go. Every page seemed to raise more questions about the mystery at hand, but also gave you just enough clues to keep you satisfied until you reach the end of the book.

An interesting tid-bit about Stieg Larsson...these books were written to express his disgust for sex crimes and violence against women. Apparently, he had witnessed the gang rape of young girl (also named Lisbeth) when he was a teen, but failed to stop the crime. He spent the rest of his life living in guilt from that experience and it essentially became the inspiration for this series.

I would highly recommend reading this book, especially since it's being made into an American movie (the Swedish adaptation was released in 2009). Rooney Mara plays Salander and Daniel Craig plays Blomkvist in the American adaptation, which is set to be released in December of this year. I'm hoping to read the second book this month so you can bet I'll be posting my reviews of that in a couple weeks. As a tiny warning, I read part of this book while I was in Tampa...alone...in a hotel room...very late at night...it pretty much freaked me out.

Losing My Bearings

Yesterday, I concluded  two things: 1) I am probably not cut out to be an FBI agent or do any type of work that would require discretion or guarding of top-secret information and 2) I think God likes sending my signs because it's comic relief. Why, you ask? Well because I've been leaving important crap everywhere.

Yesterday morning, I got to work and realized that my work laptop was not in the van I was driving. After shitting a brick and triple-checking the van, I tried to remember when I last had it with me. The day before (this past Wednesday), I was in Downtown LA at Ernst & Young Plaza doing a vanpool outreach event. I had brought my laptop with me just in case potential vanpoolers wanted to take a look at our new ridesharing online community. I wasn't even going to demo the website, but the client had requested it so I brought the laptop. Turns out, there wasn't an electrical outlet for me to use so I packed the laptop under my table. Ironically, I didn't want to leave it in the van because someone might take it since the van was on display and all kinds of people were going to be crawling in and out of it.  Long story short, someone came up to me while I was closing up shop and we started talking about public transportation. After our talk, I quickly grabbed everything else I could see and jammed out of there. I didn't even know I had left my laptop under the table until the next morning! Once I finally realized what I had done, I called my contact at the building and a couple hours later, they located my laptop and I was able to pick it up yesterday afternoon.

I thought my absent-mindedness was done for the day...but it wasn't...

Yesterday night, after getting my laptop back, I headed home and decided to join my mom and brother for the nightly Mass at our church. Everything was great: I paid attention to the readings and homily, thanked God for all my blessings, and asked for a shitload of new blessings (hahaha...NOT kidding). Feeling good about spending some quality time at church, we all headed home to get dinner started. Once I had parked my car in the garage and turned the engine off, I realized that my purse wasn't in the car. Where was it??? Back at church, under the freakin' pew. I let my mom and brother out of the car and zoomed over to church to find my purse waiting for me where I had left it.

I sat down in the empty church and just took a minute to breathe. I looked at all the pictures of the Saints surrounding me and then looked at Jesus on the crucifix (btw, my Jesus has INSANE abs! Does yours?!). Somehow, I think me losing my shit and finding it again was a sign. Of what? Not sure, exactly, but God probably wants me to calm the fuck down and refocus my energy because I'm too preoccupied on a particularly negative aspect (read: work) of my life and it's only temporary.

Got it...Messaged received....Copy that.

God sure does work in strange ways, but I'm thankful for it and it reminds me not to take things so seriously.

P.S. I HAVE been taking pictures for the blog, but getting the pictures from camera to blog is another story. I'll get pictures up this month ;)