Sunday, August 14, 2011

Twelve things I love

In no particular order or genre:

  1. Pizza Hut Thin & Crispy Chicken Supreme Pizza - My favorite pizza. Chicken breast, red onions, green peppers, and mushrooms.

  2. Adam Lambert. I never watched American Idol, and only discovered him after the show was over. There's just something about him. He's adorable, of course, but it's also his personality. He's (or at least he seems to be) sunny, happy, and helpful, just a nice young man. Okay, a make-up wearing, glammed up young man, but he seems to be pretty together, and has a great voice and stage presence.

  3. The way Aveda Shampure smells. Unfortunately, it isn't moisturizing enough for my hair, but Bob uses it, so I get to smell it by proxy.

  4. O.P.I. nail oil. I have the driest cuticles on the planet, so I use this stuff constantly. It improves the look of my nails instantly.

  5. Chris Grabenstein's John Ceepak series. I'm halfway through this (so far) six book series about an Iraq war veteran who is a policeman in a Jersey shore beach town. He lives by a code of ethics, will not lie nor tolerate lying, and quotes Bruce Springsteen lyrics when he's stressed. I'm currently reading Hell Hole, the fourth installment.

  6. Seanan McGuire's October Daye series. I can't wait for the next installment, "One Salt Sea" next month. October "Toby" Daye is part fae, part human, she spent 14 years as a fish after being spelled. She's understandably reluctant to get involved with magic again, but she keeps getting pulled into circumstances where her help is needed. She's sort of a flawed knight errant; she keeps getting into trouble, but she never gives up.

  7. My Built NY neoprene iPad sleeve. It's actually a sleeve for a small laptop, but I felt like the iPad sleeve that they make was too small. I got it for an unbelievable price--less than $6.00 plus shipping.

  8. Oikos Greek Yogurt. I love the chocolate and caramel flavors--dessert that's actually good for you.

  9. Clinique 3-step system (bar soap, clarifying lotion, moisturizing lotion). I've used Clinique for probably 30 years, and can't imagine putting anything else on my face.

  10. Vera Bradley bags. I know that the Vera Bradley bags aren't really stylish except on college campuses or with grandmas, but I love them. My current pattern is Simply Violet, a deep purple background with ivory paisleys. It's discontinued, so I was able to buy a few pieces at a discount. It's less busy than some of their patterns, and the dark color seems easier to keep clean.

  11. Design Seeds. LOVE this site. What a great idea.

  12. Kindle app on iPad. Love the iPad, and love the Kindle app, although now that they aren't allowed to sell books from within the app, it's less fun. And I love how, if I end up standing in line somewhere like the post office, and decide to read a little bit on the Kindle app on my iPhone, it syncs up to where I stopped reading on the iPad.

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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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Thursday, June 16, 2011

Lots of reading and a little drama

Here's an interesting article from Kristine Kathryn Rusch about bookstores. I remember when I could go to a big chain bookstore and find an author's complete backlist, and I remember when that started to not be the case. It used to be that you could go to B&N or Borders and count on finding pretty much anything you wanted, but no more. It happened to B&N first, but now it's happened to Borders as well.

I used to spend hours at the bookstores--it was one of my weekend rituals to go to Borders and spend a couple of hours looking at books, discovering new writers and being reminded of favorite "old" ones. Now the big bookstores are more giftshops and less bookstores, and unless you want one of the half dozen current bestsellers, it's a pretty sad experience. I don't even go to the bookstores anymore. I do all of my book shopping on Amazon, both electronic and paper. It's not that I necessarily prefer it that way, but it seems like it's now the only way. After a few trips to the brick-and-mortar bookstore and walking away empty handed, I just gave up on it.

My local library is now offering ebooks; they only have a handful, but I'm sure that will increase. I enjoy reading on the iPad so much that I've pretty much stopped going to the library, also, except for checking out craft books and things like that. I find that I'm not much interested in reading fiction in paper anymore. It's so much easier to have my entire library on the iPad or Kindle, and not have to worry about returning a book.

I imagine I'm spending more on books now than I used to, but at some point I decided that was okay. I don't have a lot of indulgences, and I tend to think of books as necessities anyway.

My booklist for this year is testament to the fact that I've been reading more than ever -- at mid-June, it's up to 62 books.

Part of the reason for that is that I hurt my back toward the end of May. It was one of those things where I didn't do anything in particular--I was taking a shower actually--but I just suddenly got an excruciating pain in my lower back. It was all I could do to hobble out of the shower and gingerly lower myself onto the bed, then just lie there trying to figure out what to do. It was mid-afternoon on the Sunday before Labor Day, and Bob was working until 7:00. I figured if nothing else, he'd be back then.

Fortunately, I had the iPad upstairs next to the bed, and my phone, so I just tried to stay as still as possible, read, sleep, and wait for Bob to get home. He called when he got off and started home, like he always does, and I told him what had happened, and asked him if he could bring me something to eat. He brought tacos, and I was able to sit up and eat them, but I definitely wasn't going anywhere.

I spent the whole day Monday in bed, and decided to stay home from work on Tuesday also. By Wednesday I was functional, but still not 100%. We had planned to go down to the Lake of the Ozarks that next weekend, and I was taking Friday off, and by Thursday I was feeling pretty good, so we went ahead with the plans. We drove down on Thursday night, getting in pretty late, and went to bed. On Friday morning when I woke up, I could barely get out of bed. I don't know if it was the long drive down or the hard bed, but the pain was back.

I ended up sleeping on the couch the rest of the weekend; I don't know if the bed was the problem or not, but I was afraid to risk it.

I'm still being pretty careful of my back, but it seems to be okay now.

Bob's out of town this week on his annual fishing trip to Minnesota, and I've been trying to take good care of myself and get a lot of rest. Dinah and I have just been hanging out in the evenings, and going to bed early to read or play Scrabble online.

I hadn't expected to hear from Bob all week--there isn't any cell reception where he is--but he called on Monday to say that he was on the way to the emergency room. He had been trying to take a hook out of a fish, the fish jerked, and he drove the hook through one of his fingers. I'm sure that's not the first time it's happened, but this time it was bad enough that his doctor friend who is with him didn't want to risk taking it out himself, and said he needed to go to the hospital. So they were driving in to town to get it taken care of.

After seeing a doctor and getting the hook removed, he said they were going to go buy him a rubber glove so that he could continue fishing. It was, after all, only the second day of the trip.

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Tuesday, May 10, 2011

A couple of days off

Ever since my cancer scares a few years ago, I've been religious about my annual "woman's issues" appointments. Every year in the spring, I make my ob-gyn appointment and my mammogram appointment for sometime around the first of May. My doctors are close to where I live, and since I work so far away, I make both appointments for the same day, and take the whole day off. Also, it feels kind of yucky to go back to work after either one of those things . . .

So yesterday, Monday, was my doctors' appointments day. The ob-gyn was at noon, and the mammogram was at 1:45. On Sunday night it was really nice to know that I didn't have to get up and go to work the next morning, even though the reason for it wasn't exactly exciting. I really love my doctor. I didn't start going to him until after my surgery--he was the surgeon in the practice where I had been going for a long time, and my regular nurse-midwife had some health issues and took some time off around the same time.

I went to the surgeon for the after-surgery appointments, and when the time came for my regular appointments, I just stuck with him. So while not exactly pleasant, the appointments aren't bad, and it's always nice to see and talk with him. And the mammogram isn't usually bad, either. I go to an imaging center, and they're always very kind, and make it as pleasant as possible.

This year when I scheduled my day off, I decided I could really use some actual time off, i.e., time that wasn't spent at the doctor's office, so I took an additional two days of vacation. I wanted to do a little bit of sewing, maybe clean out a drawer or two (probably not going to happen), just have a little more time to myself. So yesterday when I left the imaging center, I thought, now I'm free for two days!

I haven't exactly taken the time off completely -- I've been checking email and coordinating stuff from afar, corresponding with clients and being sure that things are done -- but as Bob said, I can do it in my pajamas.

I can't tell you how much I love the iPad! I, along with one of the other guys at work, have been trying as hard as I can to get completely paperless at the office. I no longer carry a notebook and pen to meetings, I carry the iPad. And a stylus, if I remember. It's not as seamless, or as easy, as paper and pen, but I feel like I need to do it.

The other things I've been doing with it are playing "Words With Friends" constantly with one of my nieces, playing Scrabble with people at work, and reading. A LOT of reading. The ease of using the Kindle app on the iPad is, of course, a blessing and a curse. When I was out at my parents' house on Mother's Day, I took the iPad along so I could show my folks some photographs. My brother and sister-in-law came by while I was there, and we got into a discussion of books and ereaders. My sister-in-law is a big reader, too, and gets most of her books from the library, as did I until I started using the Kindle.

I don't know I if she would like an ereader or not--she wasn't sure about it--but I love it. With the Kindle, or the Kindle app, you can download a preview of a book--usually a couple of chapters--to see if it's something that you want to buy. If it isn't, just delete it, and you've spent nothing but a little bit of time. If you want to continue reading it, you just click the "buy this book" link, and within seconds, you can just keep on reading. And, of course, buy the rest of a series, or the rest of an author's backlist, in most cases.

I still use SwagBucks as my search engine, and earn Amazon gift cards that way--I've been doing it a little less than a year, and have earned $275, which buys a lot of eBooks! I also pay attention to the free and bargain ebook blogs, such as Pixel of Ink, and pick up quite a few books that way. You can also get ebook news by signing up for mailing lists from your favorite authors. I got an email this morning that Kim Harrison's first "Avery Madison" book, Once Dead, Twice Shy, was available for a promotional price of $1.99 because the third book in the series is coming out soon.

On Sunday my brother said, "I guess it's only a matter of time before the library has ebooks to lend," and I told him that it has already happened. It took awhile for them to available on the Mac platform, but my library has recently--within the last month or so--started making ebooks available. Once the lending period has passed, the ebook is either removed from your device or you can no longer open it--I'm not sure about that part yet--so no late fees. The selection doesn't seem to be that great so far, but I'm sure that will improve.

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