Category: Sunday Wrap-Up

Oh my, I am so bad. I have been reading. Just not a whole lot. But the end is finally in sight in the book I’m reading. And of course now it starts to get really good. Last night I read 50 pages and wanted to keep going, but my eyes were closing faster than I could read. Such is life I guess.

It was a rather interesting week for us, to be honest. We met hubby’s brother’s new girlfriend. They were only an hour late meeting up. Being late is my *biggest* pet peeve. It doesn’t make a very good first impression to be that late. 10-15 minutes, I can understand – you get stuck in traffic, you get a late start because you forgot something, etc. But an hour? And the excuse? She was getting her hair done and was late getting back from that. Please. She had all day to get her hair done. And then his brother’s cavalier attitude like they’ve done nothing wrong. Oh no, nothing at all, nope, you’re just an hour late and have made 4 other people be inconvenienced. But there’s nothing wrong with that, right? His brother has the baby-of-the-family can-do-no-wrong syndrome. I really shouldn’t have gotten started, it just irks me the more I think about it. And while she seems nice, I don’t want to get too invested in getting to know her. The last one he had (which was my personal favorite), yeah, I got too attached to her as a friend and then when she dumped him I lost a friend because she went back to her ex-boyfriend and felt it was better to cut ties with everyone associated with him. I can feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about everything, so I’m moving on now.

A couple of weeks ago we ordered new carpet for the entire upstairs. We are talking 1000+ square feet of it. Luckily they will move all of our big furniture. However, this does not include bookshelves with books on them. So I’ve been having to think about what the heck I’m going to do with all these books. I figure if I tackle it in small doses, it will be easier to get through. So last night I decided I would start with the books that I have listed on trade sites (Paperbackswap and Bookmooch). I was able to keep them in the same room, just put then on a shelf in the closet in that room. But oh my goodness. I have way too many books. I like to keep a good inventory on PBS because that ups my chances of having books requested from me and it also helps with the Box-of-Books feature. I did start a nice pile of books that I want to donate to my library. Soon I’m going to start tackling the 3 other bookcases. Eek. Yes, I did say *three*. And one of them is absolutely filled to the max. I’m talking books just stacked haphazardly because there’s not enough room. I am going to be making a major purge, I do believe. I say that and then nothing happens. But honestly, I have so many books, some of which no longer interest me. I really need to just donate a lot to the library, because if I just list them on PBS or Bookmooch, that won’t actually be getting them out of the house very quickly. And it sucks because the guy that I used to give a lot of my books to (the ones that wouldn’t move very fast on PBS), well he’s had a very bad stroke.

I tell Nathan that I’m a hoarder or books. I swear I like to own them more than I like to read them. Because as many books as I have, I think I could go my entire life without ever having to buy/acquire another book. Actually sometime last year I calculated up all my books and divided it by the average number of books I read in a year and decided that I could go something like the next 7 years without having to bring another book in the house. Insane, if you ask me. But I guess there could be a lot worse things to be addicted to 🙂

Well I think that’s all I’ve got for today. I will have a Mailbox Monday post coming up tomorrow. Other than that, I hope to get through the last of the book that I’m reading and get a review of it posted. I’m thoroughly enjoying it, I just don’t seem to have the time or the energy to read anymore. So I’m soooooo slow. Ugh. I hope everyone has a good up-coming week!!

Well it’s been very quiet here at the blog the last couple of weeks. I’ve just had other things on my mind lately.

First of all, I’ve been really struggling with that pesky thing called … morning sickness 🙂 It’s still very early on, but I can’t keep it to myself anymore! I had to tell! I went to the doctor on 10/17 … we have a due date of June 4, 2012. (Told you, it’s still very early). I go back to the doctor on 11/14 and I can’t wait! So excited!

So when I haven’t been stuck on the couch or in bed trying my hardest not to move a muscle, I’ve been asleep. So my reading has definitely suffered. I haven’t finished a book since October 8th. I picked up a James Patterson (who is my go-to author when I need something mindless) and honestly couldn’t get into the book. So then I just didn’t read, at all, for like 5 days straight. Then I got the notification that I had Gregg Olsen’s “Envy” on hold at the library. I immediately went to get it and started it and then another 4 days went by before I picked it up again. I will finish this book because now I’m far enough in that I’m interested to see what unfolds, but it might take a while because my mind seems to be elsewhere. Imagine that!

I’ve got a mailbox full of books this past week, so definitely keep an eye out for my Mailbox Monday.

Other than that I might be hit or miss and I apologize for that. But I am still here and will update as I can.

Happy reading and have a great week everyone!

You know, where you’ve done absolutely nothing but lay in bed and moan and complain.

No reading. No laundry. No cleaning. No cooking. Nothing. I’ve been useless this whole past week.

And unfortunately, it’s not likely to let up as it’s not exactly an illness that will be cured instantly. It could end tomorrow or it could be another, um…. 5-7 weeks. Read into that as you will 🙂 But for a small hint: I have a doctor appointment tomorrow that I’m actually looking forward to! And that’s all I’m going to say on this since it’s incredibly early, but I’m just so darned excited!

So what have I been doing? Watching baseball! We are huge Cardinals fans so it’s been lots of fun!! My dad’s company buys season tickets every year, so I’m really hoping to be able to go to a World Series game! My husband and I were actually at the game they won the World Series in 2006 – talk about an awesome experience! I would love to be able to go to another World Series!! Although I’m not sure I want to face the Rangers, they’re pretty dang good this year.

Honestly, I didn’t even receive a single solitary book in the mail this past week, so you won’t be seeing a Mailbox Monday post tomorrow. However, my mailbox will soon be bulging because I’ve got like four Paperbackswap Box-of-Books trades going right now. *Embarrassing* because I have no self-control! Although, it’s really not my fault. My subscription was up for renewal and when you renew your name is prominent on the front page, leading to a lot of offers. That’s what I keep telling myself 🙂

Although I haven’t been reading anything this past week, I am excited that I finally got the email that I have a book on hold at the library – Envy by Gregg Olsen. I am a huge Olsen fan, I’ve read all of his adult fiction books (none of his true crime books though, I really should read those too) and I was a little unsure when I saw he had taken a step into the YA realm, but after seeing what the book blurb was, I immediately put myself on the waitlist. I hope it lives up to the expectation I have of it.

Speaking of adult fiction authors who are all of a sudden dipping into the YA genre. I’ve been really kind of curious about this recent trend. While I know this could be an entire post by itself, I only want to briefly touch on it. Harlan Coben, Gregg Olsen, John Grisham (I believe), James Patterson, the list goes on and on. Oh and I think I saw where Philip Margolin is coming out with a YA book co-written by his daughter. I just don’t get it. I don’t understand why all these authors are expanding to the YA market. It’s not necessarily that I have an issue with it, I just don’t see why all of a sudden it seems to be the cool thing to do. I mean I’m guilty of reading Coben’s Shelter, which I loved. And obviously I’m going to be reading Gregg Olsen’s Envy. I’m just not sure I understand why these successful adult fiction authors are changing directions into YA. Obviously they’re not giving up their original genres completely (or at least I hope they’re not!). Are these books just that much easier to write? Is that why they’re starting to dip into that market? I know that the YA market is booming, but is it really doing that much better than the adult fiction market? Has anyone else wondered about this lately, or is it just me? I’m just kind of curious.

Well, I think that’s probably all that I have for you guys right now. I’m off to watch the Cardinals (who are up 4-0 in the 1st!! Although there’s still a lot of baseball to play). Hope everyone has a good up-coming week and happy reading!

Wow, what a week it has been here in our household. As those of you who follow my blog already know, Nathan had his gallbladder taken out on Tuesday. Let me just start by saying that I hope I never have to go through that, because I don’t think I would survive it. I’m too big of a baby!! So I stayed home all week taking care of him. This included waking up every 4 hours throughout the night the first few nights to give him his pain medication. And of course this was not an easy take the pill and go back to sleep deal. No, he had to eat something when he took the pill to keep the nausea at bay. So it was about a 30 minute deal every time. It wasn’t the end of the world, but I sure was glad to get a full night’s sleep on Friday night.

Needless to say, I haven’t gotten very much reading done this week. He has needed help getting up and down, to the bathroom and back, and the first night he couldn’t even lift his arm to feed himself. Apparently when you have your gallbladder taken out  laparoscopically, they pump you full of gas to expand things so they can see and this gas will eventually travel up your arm and settle in your shoulder, causing quite a bit of shoulder pain. So he had to deal with that and his stomach area where the actual incisions were made.

Like I said, it’s been a fun week 🙂 Here’s to hoping next week is better! He thinks he’s going to be able to go into work, but I highly doubt that. However, I can’t stay home another week, so at least he’s at a spot in his recovery where he doesn’t need 24/7 care.

So here’s what (little) happened here on the blog this week:

• I shared my slim mailbox.
• I explained why I was going to be MIA for a little bit.

And I posted one review:

• State of the Union by Brad Thor

Wow. October already. I can’t believe it. I have no clue where this year has gone. The years just keep flying by. I guess everyone feels this way, I’m just so not used to it. I never experienced it until I was out of college, which has been longer than I can even think possible! Anyway, it’s been a crazy last few weeks for us. As most of you know, the hubs had a surgery consultation about having his gallbladder removed. We are scheduled for 6:30am on Tuesday morning, so this coming week is going to be tough on our household. I will be taking off work at least Tuesday and Wednesday and probably Thursday and Friday if I need to in order to play nurse. I figure by Friday he’ll want me (and the dog … I take my dog to work, lol) out of the house. So there probably won’t be much going on here at the blog in the coming week. I’ve been working on getting my review index formatted in a way that better suits me (check it out, it’s makes me feel good because I learned some new HTML!) plus I’ve started up two new side blogs (Series Obsessed and Link Obsessed) to keep track of all the series that I read as well as a blog that’s just going to focus on my lists. I haven’t linked the list blog yet, I just started it. Oh and I also added a nifty jump to on my Acquired & Read in 2011 lists. I’m proud of that too. So I’ve been pretty busy with formatting things the way I want them and I will probably put in way too much time on those projects in the coming weeks. I’ve been reading, but I find that Brad Thor books are more time-consuming than the other books I read … I have to pay more attention to them, but I am really enjoying this series. So now that I’ve rambled on longer than I should have, here’s what you might have missed this past week on the blog:

• I shared my mailbox – it’s been more controlled lately, definitely a good thing!!
• I participated in WWW Wednesdays.
• I announced the winner of my giveaway.
• I wrapped up my September reads.
• I posted my quarterly reading update.

And two reviews:

• It’s Classified by Nicolle Wallace
• Path of the Assassin by Brad Thor

So that’s about all I’ve got for today. We are going to Nashville to see 3 Doors Down & Theory of a Deadman in concert tonight, that was my birthday gift to Nathan. Buster is at the kennel and the house feels so empty without him 😦

I hope everyone has a great up-coming week! I’m off to read some more out of State of the Union by Brad Thor!

It has been such a long week for me. It hasn’t been very much fun. I spent most of Tuesday at the doctor’s office with my husband. We thought it was his gall bladder, but the tests said that it’s not that. We have a follow-up on Monday, so hopefully we will find out what else could be going on. Then on Friday we had my mother’s birthday party. A few hours with the entire immediate family. I’m sure most people can feel my pain on that, lol. It’s not that bad, but it is very tiring. Oh and through all of this I’m still stuck without a fully functional computer at one location. But, Geek Squad is supposed to be coming between 8 and noon on Tuesday to diagnose and hopefully fix the problem. It’s something with the network, but it’s above our IT guy (who is really my uncle in his spare time). So I was definitely glad for the weekend. But the next two weekends are going to be busy for us. Next weekend we go up to St. Louis to see the Cardinals play the Cubs for my dad and husband’s birthdays. Then the weekend after that we have tickets to a concert in Nashville, which was my gift to Nathan. I need a staycation!!!!!!

This past week on the blog:

• I shared my mailbox
• I talked about books I read based on other bloggers’ recommendations for Top Ten Tuesday
• I posted about Patronus’s for the Harry Potter Read-a-Long

I posted three reviews:

1. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
2. The Blue Edge of Midnight by Jonathon King
3. The Guardian by Robbie Cheuvront & Erik Reed

Ten years ago. Today. Wow, doesn’t seem possible, does it? I think it’s best if I don’t even try to put into words what my feelings are. I’m just going to leave my readers with the above picture. (And a plug to enter my giveaway of a 9/11 related book: CLICK HERE!!)

So I know it’s been a little quiet here on the blog. It’s been a very long week for me. Work has been hectic … the 10th is payables day for me, and so I did mine on Friday. And unfortunately my computer at work is not recognizing the network, so I was having to bounce back and forth between the other two bookkeepers’ computers to get my work done. Ugh. Talk about messing me up. I have what I do on payables day down to a science and the no computer issue definitely threw me out of whack. We called Peachtree and they said it was in our DSL router. So next week we’re going to have to call Frontier and get them out there to see what’s going on. The Peachtree guy said he thinks it’s probably a firewall in the router that’s got me blocked, but that it was a little beyond him. Great. Maybe next week we’ll get going again 🙂

In case you missed it, here’s a quick wrap-up of what went on at the blog this past week:

• I shared my mailbox.
• I admitted that I have a serious book problem.
• I announced a book giveaway … please go sign up … I’m going to feel like dirt if NO ONE signs up!

And two reviews:

1. We’re Not Leaving: 9/11 Responders Tell Their Stories of Courage, Sacrifice, and Renewal by Benjamin J. Luft, M.D.
2. The Lions of Lucerne by Brad Thor

So that’s about it. I need to get reading. Plus I have to post my review of the 3rd Harry Potter book, since our next discussion question will be this week. I’m really enjoying this read-a-long! It’s been too long since I’ve read all the books :):) Hope everyone has a great up-coming week!

Ugh. It has been one terrible week. On Tuesday evening we noticed that our air conditioning upstairs wasn’t cooling. I woke up at 3am on Wednesday drenched in sweat, it was 85 degrees in our upstairs. Needless to say, I stayed home from work waiting on the air conditioning dude to come out. He shows up at 9:30 and checks some thing and says, “I think you’re compressor is going out … they usually run $2500.” Say WHAT?! You’re going to tell me that I can buy an entirely new unit for about $5000, but this one PART is going to cost me HALF of that? Puh-lease! I just don’t think so. Then he tells me that we can buy what he called a dry unit for $3200-3500. Okay. Maybe that’s how we’ll go, I thought. Considering our house is only 7 years old, I would not have ever imagined our air conditioning would die this early. And let’s not even talk about the fact that we have a cheap ass brand that is no longer even in business. I don’t really want to even describe my feelings on that. Luckily, we have two units, so our downstairs was comfortable – unfortunately all of our bedrooms and showers are upstairs, so it really didn’t help us all that much. But at least we were cool while sleeping on the couch for two nights. So he comes back a little later on that afternoon and asks if he can go up in our attic, he wanted to check one more thing. Sure, no problem. Up he goes … by this time it’s sweltering up there, I felt so bad for him. (Naturally this happened on the week that it was 100 degrees here in western Kentucky … not last week when it was 80). He comes back down and says that there are some wires that have melted together and that that for sure is causing the problem, and oh yeah, by the way, you’re lucky your house never caught on fire because of those wires. Yeah, that was a good thing to be told. Ugh. So he makes a phone call and finds out that a local supply store has the piece that we need to replace the melted wiring. He will be back the next day to change it out. Well, something happened and he couldn’t come back on Thursday. So it was another night on the couch for us. Then Friday morning my husband stayed home and waited for him. He shows up and in 30 minutes had the wiring changed out and turned our unit back on. *Drum roll please* ….. we have air conditioning again! There’s no telling how much added pressure that caused on our compressor and based on the fact that it’s probably not in the best shape anyway, we will probably be replacing the thing in the near future. I just hope it’s not this  year, we’ve had enough expenses this year … we really don’t need that too. So that’s my week in a nutshell. It was hell. And it makes me wonder why I wanted to be a homeowner. *End rant*

Okay, so now that I’m off my soap box, I will quickly recap what went on here at the blog since last week:

• I shared my mailbox. It’s been a lot more controlled the past few weeks, but I still can’t seem to make a dent in my TBR piles….
• I also answered the Musing Mondays question, something that I hadn’t done all year.
• I wrapped up my August reading
• I talked about Polyjuice Potion in the 3rd mini-challenge for the Harry Potter Read-a-Long

And I posted two reviews:

1. Portrait of a Monster: Joran van der Sloot, a Murder in Peru, and the Natalee Holloway Mystery by Lisa Pulitzer & Cole Thompson
2. Private by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro

So there it is. That’s what you missed last week at the blog. Right now I’ve just started reading a review book, We’re Not Leaving, a non-fiction book about the first responders’ experiences in the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years after 9/11. And stay tuned because I’m feeling a giveaway of that book 🙂

It has been one very long and very stressful week for me. I am a bookkeeper for a concrete company. Said company has 8 locations. I am only responsible for my one location, but I have to do it all – payroll, accounts payable, accounts receivable, transactions, you get the point. So this week one of the other bookkeepers went on vacation. Guess who got to keep up her work … yours truly. She only does accounts receivable, but it’s for three locations. So I was having to keep up all of my work and try to keep hers up-to-date as well. Naturally, I failed forgot to do something. And that something was something big. It was a big screw up. I feel terrible. It’s not the end of the world but it caused a lot of hassle for other people. So much so that I’m afraid to show my face at work on Monday. I don’t know what people will say to me. I feel awful and I even cried a little bit yesterday when I realized what I had done.  There is talk within the powers that be in my company that I will take on added responsibilities. Well if I couldn’t keep everything straight in one week, I’m not sure how I would manage to do it on a permanent basis. I guess I would get into a groove eventually, but now it terrifies me to even try it. I don’t need any more screw ups. I am such a perfectionist that it kills me when I do something wrong.

So here’s what happened at the blog, not as much as the last few weeks, but there were a few things:

• I shared my mailbox. Only one book, but I think it will be a good one!
• I participated in WWW Wednesdays …. what was sad was that I copied and pasted one entire section from the previous week’s entry…..
• I had a quick post yesterday about my reading slump …. I hope it doesn’t stick with me for very long.

And two reviews:

• The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K Rowling

It’s been a busy week for me. And this coming week won’t be any better for me either. I like to stay busy, but sometimes I just need a day to do nothing. I need one of those days ASAP, hopefully I can get a little bit of that in today. I’ve still been reading a lot, but I’ve definitely slowed down some. But that’s okay, I’m still very pleased as to where I’m at in my reading. So in case you missed it, here’s what happened here on the blog:

• I shared my bulging mailbox
•  I talked about my favorite book series for Top Ten Tuesday.
• I completed the second mini-challenge for the Harry Potter Read-a-Long
• I talked about what I was reading, what I had read, and what I planned to read on WWW Wednesdays.
• And I lost my temper about how inconsiderate people can be at times.

And three reviews:

• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
• Still Missing by Chevy Stevens
• Connected by Kathryn Gayle