The Drowned Cities

2013, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Young Adult /

It took awhile for us to figure out which book The Drowned Cities was the sequel to because Tool was the only character from the first book that was in this book. At first I wasn’t sure that was going to be a good thing but I settled into the story and ended up pretty happy with how it all turned out. I do hope we pick up Tool’s story again — it would be pretty interesting to see if the Half-Man can turn the Drowned Cities around when the Full-Men couldn’t.

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Never Take a 14 Year Old To the Chicago Pet Expo

2 Comments / Animal Issues, Family Funk /

Damn Jenna for tagging me in an instagram photo of the $1 discount for the Chicago Pet Expo. If she hadn’t done that, we’d have never known about the damn event.

And if we’d never known about the damn event, we wouldn’t have taken Elizabeth with us to the Chicago Pet Expo.

But we did and it was crazysauce.

Elly decided Skeeter needed a green bow tie and was sure we’d find one there. She ran from booth to booth (think BlogHer Expo hall full of pet stuff and random animals wandering around) looking for a green bow tie. She saw a lot, all of them on the rescue animals at the booths but none to buy. She was annoyed.

She also wanted to take home just about every dog, cat, tortoise, goat, pig and ferret she saw. And she saw a lot of them. The only animals she didn’t want were the shih tzus, the bulldogs, and the meechis.

We ate (expensive) bad food. We spent a ton of money on dog treats and dog toys. TW petted some Saint Bernards and I probably promised her that our next dog would be a Saint Bernard. She also got the name of someone who cleans dog poop from yards. Hah. I have cleaning ladies and she has dog poop scoopers?

We had fun but it was crazy, really crazy. (And Skeeter is happy with the first toy we brought her, the Crinkit is holding up really well — better than any toy we’ve gotten her in the past three months!.) She’s also determined to get into Prince J’s bedroom where she knows I put the rest of the toys and treats. Darn dog is too smart for her own good.)

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Instagram Love

2 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day /

On Sunday, I finally sat down and created an instagram photo album of photos from 2012 and it was a pain but the book arrived and it makes me happy. It makes RJ happy, too. I don’t know about anyone else but who cares about anyone else, right?

I also ordered some stickers from Prinstagram and those are fabulous, too. I can’t wait to use them in my JMP tag book and who knows where else.

While I was wandering around, I decided to order some magnets from Stickygram. Those arrived today and I love, love, love them. I’m a bit of a magnet-aholic and I couldn’t help myself, I had to order.

I love instagram not just because it’s fun to take photos and share them with my social media streams but also because I can use my instagram shots so easily in other places.

My favorites are:

– Postagram
– Printstagram
– Shutterfly
– Stickygram

Are there others I should try?

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Looking Forward

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Day to Day /

Joy gave me this little calendar thing and it’s never set at the right date, unless a child has recently come along and fixed it (which is rare) but I love it anyway — it makes me smile because it makes me think of Joy. It also causes me to stop and take a minute to figure out what day it really is, which can be very useful at times.

It’s been a rough month. Hell, it’s been a rough year. And I have a cold (obviously). Rather than be all down in the dumps about everything, I decided to do something to cheer myself up.

I changed the calendar to March 23, the day TW and I head off on our mini vacation. Now, every time I look at my little block calendar, I’ll smile even more.

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Gone Green

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Health and Wellness /

I’m sick. Too sick to type anything that’s very interesting, which is too bad because I actually have a wee blogging calendar and I was supposed to write something really interesting today. If I was good, I’d write it anyway and you’d never know I was sick at all.

But I’m not good. I’m sick, sick, sick, sick.

Do you remember the Dr. Seuss book…. Silly Sammy Slick Sipped Six Sodas and Got Sick, Sick, Sick? That was one of my favorite pages in that book and while I did not sip six sodas to get sick, I have been sipping more soda than usual because coffee tastes like ass and food doesn’t taste much better so a can of orange soda here, a can of dr pepper there, some bottled lipton tea, some hot ginger tea from time to time. And a ton of water.

I’m hydrating but that’s not helping much.

At least the stuff that occasionally drips out of my nose isn’t green. And I’m not coughing up much of anything and what’s there is definitely not green.

I have started feeling green around the gills today, though. That queasy feeling on day three of the flu? Not going to barf anything (green or otherwise) but I’m definitely feeling green and not in the new, spring green sort of way, either. Maybe I’ll go eat something and I’ll feel better? I can always hope, right?

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Weird Al: The Book

2013, Books in Bed, Non-Fiction /

I have no idea why I brought Weird Al: The Book home from the library. It jumped into the bag, all on its own. I’m not really a very big Weird Al fan. I find his parodies amusing enough. And I was totally on his side with the whole Lady Gaga thing. But I have never bought one of his albums or cds, though I did mean to buy Perform This Way because of the whole controversy and because he was donating the money to GaGa’s cause. I should go do that before I forget again.

I might like Weird Al more, after reading the book. Smart guy. Nice guy. Amusing guy. Interesting guy.

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Digital Scrapbooks and Photo Books Can Suckit

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Pet Peeves /

Hmph. Hmph. Hmph.

I love the idea of digital scrapbooks and photo books but I’m really bad at making them. Bad at taking the time to make them AND bad at the actual making of them when I do make time for them.

I made JMP a little tag book type photo book for Christmas. It turned out pretty OK but it was a royal pain in the butt. And not because the site I used had bad tools, they don’t. They have good tools.

I tried making a Blurb book a couple of months ago and cursed them before I made it past the first step. I blamed them but really, it was probably me and my impatient self.

I’ve tried Shutterfly a half dozen times and always given up after about a half hour of frustration.

Yea, it’s me, alright.

I want to just click the pictures and have them all appear neatly organized with no cutesy bubbles around them or headers or funky text boxes. I don’t have time for those funky text boxes and clip arty things.

I did finally finish a book on Shutterfly today made from my 2012 Instagram photos. It was hell. Pure hell. But it was free (except for shipping) and I’m pretty sure when the book arrives, I’m going to love it.

But I don’t think I’m going to do it again, unless I have another free coupon code. I think I’m going to just go over to printstagram and print out the photos I want to use and then drop the suckers into an old fashioned photo album. I just can’t handle the frustration of trying to create a pretty album with all of those pretty templates.

Sheesh.

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Speaking From Among the Bones

2013, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction /

I really enjoyed Speaking From Among the Bones — Flavia is fabulous, as usual. But, I’m a little troubled by the direction this is taking.

The house is in jeopardy, as usual.

Flavia learns more about her mother. Confusing things. Good things. Interesting things.

Flavia solves the crime.

Something happens that might save the house, but instead it just helps the family hold on a little longer.

Book ends.

At least that’s pretty much the formula we saw in the first four books. This one, a little different. All of those things happen except…. we don’t find out what happens to the thing that could save the house (but probably won’t.) Instead, we get a much, much, much bigger cliffhanger. The cliffhanger of cliffhangers.

And I don’t think I like it.

Certainly I was ready for that thing to begin to occur, but I don’t like the messing of the formula of the series. I don’t like the thing that occurred to have occurred as a cliffhanger. Unnecessary. Unwelcome. Nope, didn’t like it. But yea, I’m dying for the next book.

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For the Love of Green

4 Comments / Daily Dose, Memes and Quizzes /

(and Jenna)

So. Tired.

I thought I was going to write a post for today’s #17DaysofGreen. That’s not happening. Well it is, since I’m typing this post right now but no, I thought I was going to write a real post. One that I thought about and put a lot of effort into. Or at least some effort. At just before 4pm, I found myself staring at my inbox. Just staring at it. Not reading it. Not thinking about answering anything in it. Just staring. Watching it load new email after new email. At that point, I realized I was not going to be writing that post after all. I don’t have any real words left in me.

So I took a break to fold laundry and clean the kitchen and eat dinner with the family and then I wandered around trying to think of something green to photograph. There’s lot of green stuff in the house but nothing grabbed me. I was all “meh” about everything. The only thing that remotely caught my interest was the dead green grinch toy Skeeter chewed up before Christmas. I feel like the Grinch, chewed up and spit out and crumpled on the damn floor.

Since words won’t work and photos won’t work but I committed to #17daysofgreen and I do love Jenna (I also own her, but that’s another story) I decided on something I could do. Something I’ve actually enjoyed this week. Something I hope you’ll click and enjoy.

Links of Green

* Look at this green tartan backdrop from Salty Pineapple. It’s beautiful. Really beautiful. And this simple idea for making your own backdrop is fabulous. Anybody could do this. I love that. And the green, isn’t it pretty?

* Isn’t the Pangolin beautiful?

* I’m a sucker for a beautiful door and this is one of the best I’ve seen recently, Brooklyn Green Door.

* This picture of KarenLynnn’s made me happy yesterday today. It actually made me happy again today, too. (See, today was so long, that I thought the flowers were yesterday. Sigh.) All of her pictures make me happy.

I hope you like these as much as I did.

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