Saturday Seven

1. I know all my faithful readers were disappointed that I didn't write a Friday Five post last week or yesterday. I wrote this yesterday, I just forgot to publish it. Last week, I was busy all morning at work and then I headed to Austin and did not access the Internet until I returned on Sunday. What was I doing in Austin? Planting a garden! I'll post pictures soon to prove I actually gardened. I returned with three green pepper plants and one jalapeno plant. We'll see if I can grow produce. I also hung out with two of my high school friends, the true purpose of the visit.
   
   
2. Rain, rain and more rain! It looks like the sky might open any moment and flood us. Wednesday night it hailed. Sunday we had tornadoes and heavy rain. Parts of the city are still flooded. Hopefully it lets up enough for me to mow this weekend. The height of our grass is embarrassing, especially the weeds.
   
   
3. I haven't read since I wrote all those posts about reading. I guess I've moved past the all-I-want-do-do-is-read wave. Non-fiction will do that to you. And this weekend I've got three Netflix movies to watch and ship back, so I won't be doing a lot of reading.
   
   
4. I have to fill out a self evaluation for work today. I recently offended my boss, so I'm not excited about the timing of this eval. He's accepted my apology, told me it's not a problem, but I still feel guilty. I doubt it will affect my eval, but I still don't want something negative looming over our recent interactions.
   
   
5. I have conflicted feelings about Wednesday's episode of LOST. I thought it was a good overall episode, if you factor out all the issues relating to Nikki and Paulo. I trust the writers and producers of this show, but I don't know why they introduced these characters earlier this season, tried to pretend they'd been on the island the whole time, and then "killed" them. Fans were upset at their presence and Wednesday's episode didn't do anything to change that. I'd heard that this episode would be a "game changer" and these characters would become legends in the LOST-verse. Not sure this episode achieved either of those goals. Yes, two people were buried alive, but there weren't characters we cared about or were emotionally invested in. I hear rumors that next season LOST will follow 24's path, and start the season in January and run all-new episodes through May. I'm behind that idea 100 percent. It's worked for 24. And did you notice how the premier of 24 was such an event? You couldn't read any TV-related blogs or news sources without reading about 24 and Keifer Sutherland.
   
   
6. I mowed my front yard this morning. I don't think I have mowed since high school. And due to all the rain and lack of a personal lawn mower, the grass and weeds were high. The mower stalled out too many times to count and didn't restart easily at all. I'm not sure I'll be able to move my right arm tomorrow. I didn't even get to the back yard. However, I'm borrowing a more powerful mower tomorrow, so hopefully I won't pull my shoulder out of socket.
   
   
7. It's Final Four weekend! I'm babysitting tonight, but I'll have the games on in the background. I should get going. I don't want to be late.
   

My Library

You might notice a new feature on the sidebar of my blog. I discovered the website LibraryThing today. It hasn't been a busy day at work, my boss is out of town, it's rainy and I'm just not motivated to work. I was reading the Arts & Entertainment section of The Guardian when I came upon an article about this website.

LibraryThing is essentially an online book catalog, complete with recommendations and a social networking capabilities. It's free and there is no registration, so I thought I would try it out. I started adding books I've read this year. I have to keep a list anyway or I'll forget what I've read, so why not do it online and share it with others. You can connect with people that have similar interests and even leave comments. I don't expect to leave comments with strangers, but my friend and I are about to read a book together, and if she sets up a LibraryThing account, we can comment back and forth. The ability to express a response to a book as it comes to me instead of hoping I remember it for when we talk about the book might come in handy for forgetful ol' me. You can also export your data to Excel or even your cell phone for access anywhere. You can review books as well. I haven't done that yet. You can even see how many LibraryThing users have your books in their libraries. I'm sure there are more features I haven't discovered yet.

That might not sound interesting to you, but if it does, check out my library from the link on the sidebar and set up your own account. Then send me the link!

Books

Like most of you readers out there, I'm always reading something or about to start a new book. I've always loved to read, ever since I was a kid, as mentioned in a previous post. My reading habits come in waves. I'll go a few months where I read instead of eating or sneak in a read during lunch or anytime I have a spare five minutes and stay up late reading. I finish a book and immediately start another one. Immediately. At other times, I read once or twice a week, and then when I finish a book, it takes me a few weeks to start a new one.

Right now all I want to do is read. I read three books in four days over spring break, and when I came back home I finished a library book I accidentally left behind. I chose to finish reading that book instead of watching Grey's Anatomy with my roommate. (By now you should know I'm a TV junkie as well.) As soon as I finished that book I jumped into another one and read it in two days. Yesterday I went to Barnes & Noble and bought two books with my birthday gift card. I came home, started to read, and finished the book three-ish hours later. And then I picked up the second book I bought. All I want to do right now is read. I always ride this wave as long as it lasts because the day will inevitably come when I won't want to pick up a book for a week or more.

So are the rest of you readers manic like me or do you read more consistently throughout the year?

Friday Five: Spring Break

It does not feel like a Friday. Here are five things I did on my spring break.

1. Visited friends in Mt. Pleasant. Highlights: delicious southwest chicken quiche and cheesecake at local places, fruit pizza and playing games.
   
   
2. Read three books in four days. It was so nice to relax and not worry about time for a week. The books: These Three Remain, the third book in the Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman series; Bridge to Terabithia, one of my favorite books as a child, as indicated in a previous post; and Under the Tuscan Sun, an impromptu read because it was the only book on my mom's bookshelf I was interested in. She is an avid reader as well, but we have completely different tastes.
   
   
3. Stuffed myself at Simply Fondue. I ate with a few of my DFW friends for my birthday last night. We spent three hours at the restaurant and it was delicious! My favorite part of the evening was when the waitress asked everyone to put a marshmallows on their skier, and then light the chocolate fondue on fire so we could roast marshmallows. One of our chocolate flavors was S'mores, so it was perfect.
   
   
4. Played tennis! Janie and I always play tennis when I'm in the area. We played for an hour and played pretty well. The cute guys playing next to us were checking us out for sure.
   
   
5. Went shopping. I didn't actually get the essentials I set out for, but I did pick up a pair of flip-flops with green straps and a $45 pair of pants for $15. I found a lamp that met all my criteria at Kirkland's but I decided to shop around before I bought it. When I got around to going back, the lamp was gone. But I found the lamp at the Kirkland's at the Parks mall, so I bought that. And I picked up another spice "rack" at the Container Store. I also brought home a bubble bath ball and shampoo bar at Lush. Love that store!
   

Tonight I'm going to see Cirque Dreams. I don't know that much about it, but I am excited.

Music and Lyrics

Does it drive anyone else crazy when you hear a popular song on the radio with bad grammar? The new Nelly Furtado song came on - "Say it Right" - and when it got to the chorus, I just rolled my eyes. This is why:

Oh you don't mean nothing at all to me
No you don't mean nothing at all to me
Do you got what it takes to set me free

It's much harder to notice bad grammar in music because we don't give the lyrics our full attention.
But it's out there and people sing along and then repeat the grammar mistake in their own
conversations. I don't want to hear any more double negatives in conversation than I have to.

On a different subject, I read the book Bridge to Terabithia last night. This was one of my favorite
books in elementary school. I think I read it in fifth grade, but I'm not really sure. We read it
out loud as a class. I generally borrow books from the library, but occasionally I'll decide a book is
worth a purchase. Books you loved as a child belong in that category. Outside of school, I think my
favorite book was The Girl with the Silver Eyes. Anyone else read that as a child. I need to own
that book. I read it again in high school when my senior English teacher suggested I discover why
I loved it so much. The main character was different from her peers and never fully belonged. She
had silver eyes and paranormal abilities. In the end she finds out there are people like her and she
finally feels like she belongs. I was always a shy kid and could relate to not fitting in with the masses.

What books did you love as a kid and why? 

Friday Five: Saturday Edition

I was actually busy at work on Friday and then I headed out of town, so no time to blog. But here is the list of five things I am looking forward to this week.

1. Spring Break! It's great to get this paid vacation as a working adult. After 28 years, I can only remember one instance of having to go to school or work on my birthday due to the timing of SB, and that was in seventh grade, when I took the TAAS test instead. My birthday must have fallen on a Monday or Friday.
   
   
2. Road trip to Mt. Pleasant to visit friends I made in my current city of residence.
   
   
3. Using my own computer to access the Internet at my parents' house. They finally have a home network. Their old computer ran Windows 98, so you can just guess how slow it was.
   
   
4. Shopping! I have a list of essential spring clothing items that I haven't been able to find, and I figure if I can't find them in DFW, I must be the only one that considers them essential. Well, essential at an affordable price.
   
   
5. Fondue. I've never eating at a fondue place before, but I'm going there for my birthday. Yay!

That's all. Time to hit the road. Enjoy your spring breaks or work weeks!

Tagged

1. Grab the book closest to you.
2. Open to page 123, go down to the fourth sentence
3. Post the text of the following three sentences.
4. Name the author and book title.
5. Tag three other people to do the same
Dialogue with a supporter - be that face to face or through other routes - should be based on an understanding of the motivation of that individual supporter.
- The Zen of Fundraising by Ken Burnett

I was just handed the new book for our book study at work, so I thought I'd respond to this tag of Christina and Elisa. When I first read Christina's blog, I picked up the book I was reading and the fourth sentence was a paragraph long. I didn't feel like typing it up.

I can't get blogger to un-italicize this post. Annoying!

That's all I got!

Friday Five

I've had a hard time deciding what to blog about today. But I can't break my streak of Friday Five posts, so here goes.

1. If you read Rachel's blog you know I had a fun trip Fort Worth last weekend. We love our St. Patrick's Day!
   
2. My friend and I are still working out during lunch on Wednesdays, and I still love it! The woman in charge of the fitness center where I work if offering a toning class during lunch on Mondays that I am going to try next week. It's only 40 minutes and on campus, so the time I take for lunch shouldn't overflow like on Wednesdays. We'll see.
3. Does anyone else go through phases when you are extremely sloppy? For no reason whatsoever, you never get around to hanging up your laundry or unloading the dishwasher or organizing your desk or making your bed? I'm in that rut right now. My goal is to get out of it this weekend. I'm driving myself crazy.
4. Next week I'm participating in a wellness screening. I did it two years ago and was super healthy. But I'd been very consistent with exercise and healthy eating for three months leading up to. I'm worried that when I compare my wellness screenings, I am going to be less healthy. Not a lot, but I've been in a fast food-eating rut as well. My ruts are all connected. At least I've been exercising regularly.
5. I haven't been able to get into the last couple of books I've read. I gave up on the last one because the characters didn't draw me in. I'm forcing myself to finish the one I'm reading right now. Up next is Children of Men. I saw that movie, and can't usually go backwards, but I am going to give it a try. I actually want to finish this book so I can start Children of Men.