Visitors since 10/1/2010
It was reading night at Brian's school tonight. Several classrooms were set up with readers - teachers and athletes from the university. There was a classroom set up with fifth graders - Brian and other fifth graders signed up in shifts to read "The Ugly Duckling".
Wednesday, August 25, Day 235 -
During a lull at tonight's baseball game, I wandered over to the city pool, struck by the emptiness there. A sign of transition away from summer.
Thursday, August 26, Day 236 -
Must read books! The third installment of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has been sitting on the kitchen island for at least two weeks. No time to read. And Jill was nice enough to pick up the newly released Mockingjay today. I think I'll read Mockingjay first, as it will probably be the easier read. With a 3 day weekend coming soon, it actually might get done!
Friday, August 27, Day 237 -
George slept over tonight, and the boys set up in the basement.
Saturday, August 28. Day 238 -
Erica and Jen at the local corn festival. Jen's cheerleading team was selling draft root beer and cheering on the crowd. Lots of fun!
The time is quickly approaching, so I checked out some travel books at the library. I only plan to browse through the books and print some highlights off the Internet (ie - not taking the books with us on the trip - too bulky).
Next on the agenda - some packing and last minute details.
Our monthly book club night, held at Lisa's beautiful home. This month's book - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a book I read on my iPhone, a first for me. I had downloaded the Barnes and Noble eReader a long time ago, but never actually read anything on it. I enjoyed having the book available at all times and read it while we were on vacation.
I now have the sequel, The Girl Who Played With Fire on my phone, too. I'll read it over the next several weeks.
I finally started and completed my first Blurb Photo book. I signed up on Blurb several months ago after seeing some of their gorgeous books on the various blogs I peruse. I signed up and downloaded the software. And did nothing.
I think that was a month or two ago.
This past week, I received an email with a 15% discount code. I guess I'm a sucker for a sale, because I finally opened up the software and started creating a book featuring the pictures I took during last month's trip to London. I knew I had to act fast, because the discount code is only valid for a week.
Fortunately, the Blurb BookSmart software is really easy to use, with lots of useful layout templates. You can even modify the standard templates and save them as your own. I created a 40 page, 11"x13" book in about six hours. I uploaded it and ordered.
This may be the solution to getting my daily pictures out of electronic format. I've lost my desire to scrapbook and don't want to get heavy into the Digital Scrapbooking thing (although this may be considered similar). I haven't printed out pictures since last August and well, I've taken several hundred (maybe even a thousand) since then. Blurb has an option to "slurp" my blog entries into a book, so I may check that out next.
This badge will preview the first 15 pages of the book. I'll report back once I receive it!
During my first experience hosting Book Club, I prepared Rum Cake [do a search of Rum Cake, and you'll get a bunch of Rum Cake related posts]. Now when I host, I get the inquiry - "You're making Rum Cake, right?".
Just as Heather always serves strawberries and angel food cake, Jill makes Bacon-Bacon dip, I will always make Rum Cake.
And Heather makes the initial cut into it while Kellie watches.
We discussed The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Well, Heather, Jill and Shelley gave us the overall outline of the book while Kellie and I gave our opinions [neither of us read the book and after the discussion, I'm not sure I want to - very depressing book].
Kellie hosted our monthly book club meeting tonight and she ordered a red velvet cake, custom decorated in the image of the book's cover:
My Little Red Book, edited by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, is a collection of short stories, revolving around the first periods from women around the world, of current and past generations. Many funny, some sad, some happy, stories all women can relate to, especially those with daughters.
And contrary to popular belief, we DO discuss the books during our meetings, and tonight's discussion proved to be most interesting, educational at times and quite "colorful". With the lively discussions, the time passed so quickly - we didn't leave until after midnight.
If you have a young daughter, the book is a must read and a great conversation prompt when your daughter starts to grow up.
A follow up picture from Friday's post - the cover of The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. 
Even though I've had this book for 20 years, I'm pretty sure it really belongs to my sister, Teresa.
Of course, how could we go through this weekend without some mention of the highly anticipated opening of the New Moon movie? Well, here is my [boring] contribution to the countless blogs devoted to all things New Moon and The Twilight Saga.
We have this hanging in our kitchen, along with the kids' art work and other random print outs.
I am the first of the family to see the movie. Erica will attend later this week with a group of friends, and Scott will go in a couple of weeks (when it is less crowded - and he might take Brian). The theatre was crowded for a Sunday afternoon matinee, the audience comprised of mainly female, mainly tweens.
In a nutshell, the movie covered all of the main parts of the book, although it moved along at a snail's pace. Our group of 30-40 year old women are in the "Team Jacob" camp (and watching the movie confirmed our choice).
We interrupt this blog post for some commentary by Brian: yo my name is potato joe
Pardon the interruption - I stepped away from the computer momentarily.
So, we all enjoyed the movie. I'm sure those who are big fans of the Twilight Saga will enjoy it as well. I just don't want to see so much of Rob Pattinson in the future. 'Nuf said.
I went to see Julie and Julia today. I really enjoyed the movie, especially the Julia parts - you could see how much Julia Child loved France and French food.
I have to admit that I went to this movie by myself (gasp!) - the first time I have ever gone to see a movie by myself. Scott goes by himself regularly, but this was something new to me, and really, only by convenience. Erica had been invited to see GI Joe and both movies were playing at the same time. My other friends had already seen Julie and Julia, and Scott wasn't interested. So by myself I went. I'm not scarred for life because of the experience, either.
So, today's picture is inspired by the movie - my collection of cookbooks and recipes - all kept in this handy cabinet in the kitchen island. I may check out Julia's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, too - maybe it deserves some space here.
I read this one back in June for book club and it comes highly recommended. Erica needed several new books for her English and Language Arts class, so she is reading this one (even though I recommended it). I went out and bought it yesterday.
The best part? The sequel is due out on September 1st - that's next week. I am hoping an electronic version will be available for my Barnes and Noble Reader on my iPhone. Just because I want to read something current on it.
OK, I only got about 10 pictures taken today. I think I was worn out from yesterday's blueberry picking and all the photos I took there!
But here is a quick recap of our July 12th:
Morning:
Breakfast with those blueberries, with vanilla yogurt, sliced peaches and rolled oats. So yummy!
See the time? Even on Sunday we get up pretty early. And my phone has been giving me fits recently - the battery won't stay charged and I bought a replacement battery with the same results. Yeah, the replacement battery might be a dud, too, but at this point the phone is 3 years old and I am thinking about upgrading.... to an iPhone. Erica wants a phone, too, so we spent time on-line checking out different phones / plans, and by the end of day I had a huge headache because of the phone situation.
Rascal was enjoying a morning snooze by the window. It was a beautiful morning, with a cool breeze. Sorry the picture is blurry - but Rascal always gets up when she sees me, so I was lucky to get even this shot.
Hey, it's me again with a self portrait, taken right after I dried my hair. Why do I think of Vanna White when I look at this picture?
It's afternoon now, and Brian decided he wanted to rearrange his room. Brian outlined all the changes and Scott did the heavy lifting. Here is the result:
But, as part of the rearrangement, Brian purged many of the kids' / baby books he had in the bookshelf. I need to sort them and put them in the garage sale pile now.
I practiced violin (something I haven't good about all week long) - I am working on the Franck Violin Sonata in A Major. A nice romantic piece.
A day doesn't pass without some sort of Slip-N-Slide [SNS for short] action. See that strip of matted down and brown grass? That's where the SNS has been used. Brian is setting up a *NEW* SNS (I bought TWO new SNS's today - at the request of my children, who read the Sunday Sale ads, noting many are on sale).
This SNS features a swirling spray of water onto the slide. Note - the arch falls over due to the back pressure of the water. Brian later dubbed this the "Useless SNS". 
The kids gave up on the two new SNS's and spent the rest of the day watching old Harry Potter movies, in preparation for Wednesday's premiere of the Half Blood Prince. We plan to go on Thursday.
So there you go - 10 pictures from our day. Hope yours was great, too!
Erica started reading this today - she was introduced to Percy and The Olympians last summer (I read the first book, too - very entertaining) and has completed all the books in the series. Based on her complete immersion behavior, I expect she'll have it finished tomorrow.
BTW, if you are looking for 172/365, you'll have to go to my Behind the Lens Blog as yesterday's picture fit the POTD weekly theme of [all boy].
The big news story of the day - Nestle recalls their refrigerated cookie dough due to possible salmonella! When I saw the headline, I thought "Egads! How many tubs of that stuff do we have at home?" - I just bought 2 big tubs (5 lbs each) of cookie dough from Sam's Club two weeks ago.
Lucky for us, it was 10 pounds of Pilsbury brand dough.
But, we had a smaller tub of the Nestle brand dough (almost gone). What to do? What to do?
We plopped the dough on the cookie sheet and baked up 12 yummy cookies. Living Dangerously - that's what we're all about here!
......
I also attended our ladies book club meeting tonight, held at the local wine store / deli / bar / eatery. I enjoyed Pinot noir, cheese and fruit - smoked cheddar and white stilton with mango.
We read and discussed "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins - highly enjoyed and recommended by our group. And if you have a 12 year old or older, they will probably enjoy it, too.
Erica has re-discovered her love for Nancy Drew mysteries. This rediscovery happened last weekend, after two sleepovers (one here, one away) with BFF Kathleen. We requested these from the library and picked them up from the Bookmobile this afternoon.
There are 6 books pictured here as she was already reading the first one. Heck, as I write this blog post, she is about 20 pages from the end of that book!
So, some light reading for our bookworm. We'll have to request 7 more next week.
We are fortunate to have a wonderful library system. In addition to a brand new library building, we are able to request books, magazine, DVDs, and CDs through the website that houses a database of all the local library systems. This means if our city library does not have a particular item, it searches the other libraries in the area. 
Another nice service is the Bookmobile - the Library on Wheels. The Bookmobile stops in several neighborhoods, including ours. We bring the kids and they browse and check out books. When I request an item, I have it sent to the Bookmobile where I pick it up. I don't have to drive out to the library (although it is a nice facility).
I am thankful for these services and resources that enrich our lives.
Compliments of a co-worker, I spent the entire Labor Day weekend sick with this sinus - achy - headache thing. Not sick enough to warrant lazing around in bed all day long, but just sick enough to walk through the day in a haze, not motivated to do anything truly productive. Case in point, I spent a total of two minutes in my Scrapbooking area - enough time for me to realize I was in no mood to create anything.
But I did get a lot of reading done - I joined a neighborhood book club, and September's selection is "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen. I picked it up from the Bookmobile (public library on wheels that comes to our neighborhood every week) on Thursday. Finished it yesterday.
I also made good progress on Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer, so I guess the weekend wasn't a total loss.
And I didn't forget that my little sister, Teresa turned 40 on Sunday!! Here is a picture of the two of us from October, 2007:
. And T, I plan to ship out your Rescue scrubbing pads tomorrow or Thursday (OK, probably Thursday).
I noticed that the ScrapShare Blog roll registered an update from my blog this afternoon - that confused me until I realized that I updated a previous post. I decided not to renew my Imageevent Image hosting account, as I have moved to Flickr. Unfortunately, many of the pictures in this blog are linked to pictures in Imageevent, so I am in the process of un-linking them and re-linking to Blogger. What a pain. My top priority is to edit the posts from my trip to China in 2006 - after those posts are done, I'll prioritize some more. I have a month, so hopefully I'll get it all done.
Last update - Brian's Baseball team lost again tonight, but only by one run, and they were missing two of their strongest players. I feel a win in their near future!
Disclaimer:
I am posting this because Erica is such a Twilight Series Fan, and while I did read the first book, I'm really sort of 'meh' with the whole hype. But, hey, a little hype now and then is quite fun.
5.5 hours until the Premiere party at the local book store, and Erica has holed herself up in her room, reading Eclipse (again! I think she has all three books memorized by now). The party runs from 11pm until midnight and she will be attending with her BFF, Kathleen. (I'll be there, too, keeping my distance, because, both girls would be "totally embarrassed" to be seen with their mother). I just hope I don't fall asleep in one of the reading chairs.
Erica won't actually purchase the book tonight, because Auntie Michele pre-ordered the book through Amazon a couple of months ago as a birthday present. I assume it will arrive Saturday morning and then she will be out of commission until she devours the book.
I, personally, will be finishing up Scott Westerfield's 3rd book in the Uglies series, Specials. I can't convince Erica or Kathleen that they would enjoy these books. Oh, well. Maybe one of their teachers or other friends will recommend the books and they'll listen.
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