Sunday, July 24, 2011

What I did on my summer vacation

I took a week off from work last week, with absolutely no plans other than to "sleep late and go to lunch." I almost never use all of my vacation time, except when I end up in the hospital, so I decided to just take a week even though I didn't have any place to go. I just wanted some time to hang out, take care of a few things at home, and have some time with no obligations.

I packed up a bunch of books and sold them to Half Price Books ($62 worth), packed up a box to send back to Amazon (if you check on the book page, there are certain books that they will accept, and pay you in gift cards--I had a little over $20 worth), visited a couple of bead stores, got my oil changed, and that's pretty much it, except a lot of reading and sleeping late.

On Monday I drove out to Martin City to visit a wholesale bead shop, and on Tuesday I drove downtown for a working lunch, and afterwards wandered around Crown Center for awhile, but for the most part I stayed close to home. I checked out the new Trader Joe's, I fixed a broken drawer on my dresser. I had lunch at Chili's, Chipotle, Noodles & Company, and Sweet Tomatoes. I stayed up late and rented two movies from iTunes ("Unknown" and "The Lincoln Lawyer," both of which I enjoyed). I read seven books:

  • You're Next - Greg Hurwitz
  • Moon Child - J. R. Rain
  • A Small Fortune - Audrey Braun
  • When Will There Be Good News? - Kate Atkinson
  • Started Early, Took My Dog - Kate Atkinson
  • In The Dead - Jesse Petersen
  • Rock'n'Roll is Undead - Rose Pressey

And I played a LOT of Pocket Frogs.





It was a good week.

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Wednesday, July 06, 2011

Wheezy

Since sometime last winter, I've had a cough that just won't go away, along with wheezing that comes and goes, but is loud enough for Bob to hear, and which sometimes keeps me awake at night. I kept thinking it would get better eventually, but it just didn't, so I went to the doctor. He gave me a chest x-ray and two courses of antibiotics that didn't do anything, so I went back, and he gave me a breathing treatment and steroids, and it worked! It got better for a couple of weeks, then came back.

I called for another appointment last week, and he didn't have anything available until the end of the month, so I made an appointment with a physician's assistant and saw her yesterday. She asked me about asthma, which I have never had, but my mother does.

So I've got another batch of steroids, a different antibiotic, and an inhaler. I asked her if she thought it was asthma, and she said, "I think there's an asthmatic component to it," whatever that means. We'll see, I guess. She said if this doesn't work, then I need to see a specialist. It's exhausting. I really hope it works.

I looked at Oprah's Summer Reading List yesterday, but out of a couple dozen books, there were maybe only two that held any interest to me at all. I know I've said this before, but I read for relaxation, for enjoyment, and I read almost exclusively fiction. I don't apologize for the books that I read, and I'm not defensive about it. In the limited free time that I have available, if I'm going to sit down and read, I want to read something fun. One of my fondest memories is on one of our trips to Mexico, I toted along Stephen King's Cell, which had just come out, and spent several afternoons by the pool reading it, and it was perfect.

"Fun," for me, means fiction in several genres--paranormal mostly, some thrillers and police procedurals, some "women's fiction," maybe a little "chick lit." I also like short story anthologies, mostly paranormal. Here's my summer reading list:

Read so far since June:

On the "to read" list (queued up in the Kindle app):

New and Upcoming Releases from my wishlist:

Geez.

So, I've read 77 books so far in 2011. If I read all of the books on this list (47), that would end up 124, but I'm sure I'll come up with some new ones between now and the end of the year, and I probably won't read all of the anthologies, I just like to have them to dip into in odd moments.

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