Kindle Love

Lisa gifted me her old Kindle at Christmas since she got a new one.

I have to say I never thought I would be a Kindle fan.

I love books.  I love the feel of them.  I love the smell of them(is that weird?)

 I love going to the library and picking them out.  I even love the look of a stack of books on my nightstand.

What I don't love is storing them.  We live in a small place.  Each time I read a book I would begin the agonizing process of deciding what to do with it.  For the books I bought  at library book sales(for .50 cents each), should I donate them back to the library?  Should I put the word out to my friends and see if anyone wanted to read them?  Freecyle?  And for the ones I actually checked out, I almost never got them back on time.  Sometimes they would sit on the back seat of my car for weeks, forgetting every single time I drove by the Library to return them.

Plus, I love to reread books.   If I accidentally gave a way a book that I really loved I had to go back to the library and check it out again.

With the Kindle, they are all in there, just waiting to be read(re-read).

I have read 14  books in the last 4 and a half months(although this pales in comparison to some of my blogger friends.  I am in awe of the number of books they read per week).

But I think I only read one or two more than that in the entire year before that, so it's a huge improvement over that.


I only wish their book sharing system was better.  Almost none of the books I want to share are shareable, and a lot of my friends I want to share with are in Canada and it doesn't allow that either.

Here are the books I have read since Christmas:

What the Night Knows  Dean Koontz
I have been reading Dean Koontz for years. In fact, I have read every one of his books. Love me a good spooky book.

House Rules      by Jodi Piccoult

Handle With Care    by Jodi Piccoult
I went on a Jodi Piccoult reading spree at Christmas time.  Now I have had my fill and probably won't read anything by her for awhile.

Rescue      by Anita Shreve.   I love most of Anita Shreve's books.  This one was kind of so-so for me.

The Help  by Kathryn Stockett  I LOVED this book but it made me really think and feel incredibly sad.

Little Bee   Chris Cleave

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire, and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsen

Riding Lessons and Flying Changes, both by Sara Gruen, who wrote Water for Elephants (one of my favorite books).  These were not as good as that one but I enjoyed them, especially since I competed in equestrian events as a kid.

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Neffeneger  (This one is pretty good as far as spooky goes too)

These are some books that I loved so much the first time that I went back and re-read them again:

Water for Elephants            Sara Gruen      I can't wait to see the movie

Time Traveller's Wife          Audrey Neffeneger        One of my most favorite books
Lovely Bones                      Alice Sebold

I am also thinking about going back and reading some of the books that I truly loved as a child, like Judy Blume and Madeleine L'Engle and Beverly Cleary.

Oh, and all of the Little House on the Prairie books too.

Right now I am in the middle of Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

So that's what I have been doing in my spare time.  Reading on my Kindle.

What are you reading?

This is Spring Fling Day 26

Thankful Thursday on a Friday

Did you notice I skipped Thankful Thursday yesterday? No? I did. Some days I just can't do it. That sounds awful but it's true. Some days are like that. Today I am feeling more thankful.

I saw this quote on FB a while back:

"Perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in a while, so that we can see life with a clear view again." – Alex Tan

That was definitely true for me yesterday.

Today is a new day.

--I am thankful for egg salad. Been eating quite a bit of it the last few days. Yum.

--I am thankful for my husband. He takes amazing care of me.

--I am thankful that I woke up this morning. It's better than the alternative. (Sometimes this one is all I got).

--Yesterday my kidney doctor told me that my kidney disease is stable. Not in remission, but at least stable. Good news.

--It's Friday. Need I say more?





 Everyone who has been affected by the weather in the South have been in my thoughts. 



Spring Fling Day 25. Only 5 more days people!

IthinkIcanIthinkIcanIthinkIcan.

Summer Lovin'

At my job we see our patients every five-six weeks. That means every day when we check people out and make their next appointment we are looking at the calendar five to six weeks ahead. In a way it's like living in constant anticipation of the future (for me anyway-at my last job at a day care center we were so busy and worn out we barely knew what the date was that day, let alone 6 weeks in the future).

Anyway, this week when we schedule out 6 weeks it brings us to the first week of June, which is almost summertime.

Summer! Man. Wasn't it just Christmas?

Inevitably, as we start to schedule our patients during these summer months we are told many times

"Oh, I can't make his/her appointment now. I'll have to call you back after I look at his/her schedule".

Schedule? In the summertime? When I was a kid we didn't have a schedule. Our schedule was to sleep late, and watch too much t.v. and spend the day immersed in some sort of body of water, whether it was the pool in our backyard or the beach where my Mom would takes us several times a week just to get us out of the house to keep us from killing each other.

The families that I work with now regale us with their hectic summer schedules of travelling sports, summer camps and riding lessons. Some of them have several family vacations to schedule around as well. Trips to Hawaii, or France, or cruises to the Caribbean. (Yes, I work in a very affluent area).

In fact, it is harder to schedule our patients in the summertime than it is during the school year. It was the opposite when I was growing up.

One activity we get a lot of grief about parents having to schedule around is Summer School. A lot of our patients (teenagers) require summer school. It seems to me like kids need a lot of extra help when it comes to their education these days. Some of them need it just to pass the grade they are finishing and others take it to give them a little extra edge for their SAT scores, or the upcoming school year. Whatever the reason, we see many of our patients having to attend summer school.

Last year due to budget cuts summer school in several school districts in our area was cancelled. This caused an uproar and a panic for many of our parents, as they tried to find an alternative to help their child with their academic needs.

Most of them that I spoke with went with either a private tutor that came to their home, or a tutoring center.

I didn't do that well in school as a child and I think I would have really benefitted from one of these types of programs, although I'm sure I would have been none too pleased about having to go to "school" in the summertime!

Those of you with school age kids, do you do anything to help give your kids a leg up on the upcoming school year? If so, what is it?



Spring Fling Day 24. I can see the finish line now!

Wordless Wednesday

That about sums it up.

This is Spring Fling Day something or other.  Hopefully I will be back with better content tomorrow.

Easter Eggs

We had a friend over on Sunday to dye some Easter Eggs. I bought a themed kit this year.  It came with stickers, "hair", and pipe cleaners to make little egg monsters. They were really cute and fun to make.

Even Joe got in on the action this year.  He tried the melted crayon method that M3 showed on her blog. I think his egg turned out beautiful!

Ready to do some dyeing

Little Monsters

Steffanie's monsters were the cutest

A fun time was had by all.


Spring Fling Day 22

Breakfast of Champions

My breakfast this morning:

That's  just the kind of morning I've  had.

Mondays.  Sigh.






Spring Fling Day 21.  I'm running out of steam here.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to those who celebrate.  

I went to church last night so as to skip the crowds this morning.  It's not quite the same as getting up on Easter and attending but the service was the same (which was awesome as usual.  I have been going back to my old church and now I remember why I went there in the first place.  I have missed it).

This is probably cheating because I have nothing of substance to go with it, but this is Day 20 of Spring Fling.   I'm running low on material here.  I had a friend over yesterday and we dyed eggs so at least I'll have something for later in the week.  I think this is harder because I don't have kids.  Kids come with a whole slew of blog material all on their own.  If I start posting things daily about my dog, someone please smack me because that would be a sign that I've surely lost my mind.  :0

So much for Earth Day

Yesterday was Earth Day.  Did you do something to help save the earth yesterday?

Yeah me neither.

I did however, get my free cup of coffee at Starbucks.  Twice.  Don't judge.

I did notice something yesterday that was kind of the antithesis of Earth  Day.

I get my prescription medications from Cost.  Co.  I take a lot of prescription meds and I have not found another pharmacy that can even touch the prices I get there.

So yesterday I sent Joe to pick up my medications from Cost.  Co.

He come back with these:

You're probably thinking, "Yeah, o.k., those are pill bottles, so what's the problem?"




The problem is that my medications from Cost. Co in the past have always looked like this:

Do you see a problem here?

They almost doubled the size of their pill bottles!  Here's what it looks like inside:

What a waste!

When Joe asked them why they changed their bottles, they said they were getting their medication from a different supplier now.  

Ohhhhhh...........o.k.  Well then it's fine for you to pollute the environment with larger pill bottles then?

That's ridiculous.  I'm sure these are recyclable, but still, what's the point? 

 Not only are these wasteful they are a pain for me to store.  I used to keep all of my meds in a small plastic basket but now only a third of them fit in it.  I guess I'll have to get a larger one now.

What a pain.  And so much for Earth Day.

Day 19

Fun Easter Idea

I was persuing one of my favorite websites a few days ago and I saw the coolest thing to do for Easter.

First I picked up a package of Jumbo Easter Eggs at the drugstore:

Then I picked up some small treats to put in them:

In this case, some small candies (sour of course-do you know me at all?), some silly bandz, stickers and tiny litte easter stampers.

I put the loot into the eggs.

Then I put some tiny little labels on them. You could do this with your computer but I wanted mine hand written.  Add some stamps.   I put one .98 cent stamp on each one, plus two forever stamps. 

You could put less, depending on their weight.  Here is the post that describes how she did hers.

Then the fun part. Putting them in the mail.  Yes, you read right.  Mail.  As in drop them in the mailbox, just like that.  Too cool!

I'm pretty sure the man standing behind me at the mail box thought I was crazy.  Especially since they didn't fit at first and I had to physically push them into the slot.  Heh.

The postage for these cost almost as much as the eggs and treats, but how fun are these going to be for the recipients to get in the mail?

5 little girls who are special to me (and one boy) will be getting these in the mail soon.

Oh, FYI-for those receiving these for their little ones-you're going to  need a razor blade, or a box cutter, or possibly the jaws of life to get those suckers open.  I may have used just a wee bit too much packing tape on them so they wouldn't open up during transit.  Good luck with that!  :0



Spring Fling Day 18.  Slowly but surely.

Thankful Thursday

--I am thankful for  Easter candy.

--I am thankful people are still ordering things (mostly necklaces) from me on Etsy.

--I am thankful that Joe has started making the necklaces for me while I am at work, and then I just finish them up (the personalization on the back and the making of the cords) when I get home.  We make a great team!

--I am thankful for for finding my motivation (finally!)  We have been walking 3 days this week so far and I am feeling better because of it already.

--I am thankful for my Kindle.  I haven't read this much since I was a kid.  I am spending most of my time on the weekends reading instead of watching t.v. these days.  I even find myself going to bed early so I can read for an hour before I go to bed.  Loving it!


Spring Fling Day 17

Wordless Wednesday

Taken Sunday, April 17, 2011

I love where I live.    :)



This is Day 16 of Spring Fling.  I honestly can't believe I have hung in here that long.  It's fun though!

Oven Roasted BBQ Chicken

After looking up online how expensive the food was at Angel's stadium, we decided to bring our own food.  I made up some really easy pasta salad and we brought some strawberries and water from the store.

We were going to pick up some fried chicken to bring along with us but I had 5 pounds of chicken legs in the freezer that needed to be cooked up so I decided to make BBQ chicken legs to bring along.

I didn't want to fire up the grill, so I went online and looked for an easy oven baked bbq chicken recipe and I came across this one.

It was sooooo yummy.  I pretty much copied the post(and pictures) word for word from The Hungry Mouse website.    I would just link to them but I wanted to have it here so that I can easily find it again(I hope I don't get in trouble for that).

You will need:

4 chicken leg quarters(I used drumsticks)
kosher salt
spray canola oil
3/4 – 1 cup barbecue sauce
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped(we skipped the cilantro since we were going to be eating them cold)

Preheat Oven to 375 degress

Grab your chicken quarters(or drumsticks in my case). Rinse, pat dry and sprinkle with salt.  

Prepare a baking sheet with foil and a baking rack

Now you are going to sear your chicken legs

Spray a non-stick pan with canola oil and heat on high heat.  When the pan is hot, drop in a few of the chicken quarters, skin side down.

When the skin is browned, transfer chicken to prepared pan.

After chicken is seared, transfer to prepared baking pan.

Brush with your favorite BBQ sauce, coating all sides.

Place in oven and bake for 15 minutes

After 15 minutes remove chicken from oven and coat all sides of chicken with more BBQ sauce.

Place back in oven and cook an additional 30-35 minutes.  Total cooking time will be 45-50 minutes.

Serve and enjoy!  

We had these cold at the game and they were so juicy and good!  

We will be making these for dinner again soon.

This is day 15 of Spring Fling. Halfway there-Yahoo!

5 Things I am Loving Right Now

I saw this on another blog and since I am seriously lacking in blog content  I decided to play along.  


Here are 5 things that I am loving right now:


1.  This ring: 

 I got it from Avon and it is so pretty.


2.  This body spray:

It's by Victoria's Secret and it's called Very Sexy Now.


I was given this by a patient at Christmas time and I put it in my medicine cabinet and never used it. The other day I saw it in there and I decided to try it. It smells so good!


Joe even commented on it yesterday.  He said I smelled good and asked me what I was wearing.


I told him and he was like "It's called Very Sexy Now?"  "Does that mean you won't smell very sexy later?"


The man should have been a comedian.




3.  I am  loving this soap:

It's from Lush and it's called "Karma" and I love, love, love it.  

Here is a description of the scent from a product review: 

The scent is fundamentally combination of orange, patchouli, pine, lavender, lemongrass, elemi (and a few more) but it swirls and changes as you use it, or on different occasions. 

At Christmas (again.  what's with me just using all this stuff I got at Christmas?),this lovely
blogger gave me a gift certificate to Lush and this is one of the things I bought with it.  Love!

4.  I'm also loving this C.D.

DeAnn and I got a copy when we saw her in concert a couple months ago but I totally forgot about it until she was playing it in the car the other day so I pulled mine out and started listening to it in the car  on the way home.  It's so good!

  

Thai food.

 I had never tried Thai food until about a year ago.  We don't eat out that much and Joe loves Chinese food so if we had takeout, that's what we picked up.  DeAnn and I found a very reasonable Thai place near our work and we have gone there a couple of times and it is so yummy!  They have the best Pad Thai there.  So.  Good.  And have you ever tried Thai iced tea  (Cha Yen)? Oh my gosh you HAVE to.  Yum.  Last week we went there and we had Sticky Rice with Mangos (Khao niao mamuang) for dessert.  I have to tell  you, I was very skeptical about it.  I don't like coconut and I am not even that fond of mangos and who eats rice for dessert?  I was not on board.  Until I ate it.  Oh.  My.  Word.  Talk about yummy!  I can't even describe how yummy it was.  The sweetness of the coconut milk with the rice and the tartness of the mango.....you just have to try it to understand. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Those are 5 things I am loving right now.

What things are you loving right now?  Let me know if you play along!






This is Day 14 of Spring Fling.  This is hard.  My life is simply not that interesting!