Good morning Meandering readers!  Hope you day is off to a good start!  Yesterday I was at lunch with a group of fellow office staff and my boss said I was the Queen of conversation links.  Meaning, I can take a piece of conversation and run with it in a different direction.  Could be the multi tasker in me…. could be the coffee…  it is the way I am wired.

Words always have triggered other thoughts for me… either movie quotes, past conversations, or pictures just come to mind. I switch gears quickly – much like my fictional hero, Lorelai from Gilmore Girls.

Hope your day is super fab awesome!  I am still battling poor weather conditions here and even heard there was a chance for snow over the weekend.  Are you kidding me????  SNOW in May?  GAH!

That makes me a little annoyed. 😉

How is your week going?

Hmmmm….. the best laid plans.

I am up super early this morning as I have super pinky sweared my friend Jennifer that I would take the 5:45 am Group Power class with her at the YMCA.  For those of you who have been on the super pinky swear club…. you know that is serious stuff.  🙂

When I agreed to do this on Monday afternoon I was fully awake and energized and of course it sounded like a good idea then… now..

not so much.

Well, the point was that if I took my class this morning instead of the 4:15 time I usually do, then if the weather was decent – I may actually have time to get in a bike ride in the later afternoon.  That is the method behind my madness.

So why am I grumbling about best laid plans?  Yesterday I had big dreams of putting up an afternoon review and then giveaway winners in the evening.  That is not how it went at all.  Instead I did not get my review post ready… had a super busy day at work… ran a couple of errands and caught up with my friend Wendy for rollerblading at 4, home by 5:15 pm… making super, played a game of cribbage with Al, cleaned up after supper, watched Biggest Loser (which I LOVE), answered some emails, worked on my blog book journey map…. and well…. around midnight had to say that’s all folks.

Perhaps today will have a better outlook.  One can only hope 🙂

As for bookish happenings… I am crying my way through Columbine, laughing and enthralled in the audio of House Rules, and deeply involved in the CD’s of Kite Runner.

I am having a lot of fun with the map though and still have a way to go to catching it up for 2010!

I am filled with giddiness….

Good morning everyone!  I am up and ready to leave the house soon for leadership training this morning.  Starting out my day today with Coffee Cup and a bowl of pomegranate oatmeal which is hitting the spot this gloomy Minnesota morning.

Yesterday afternoon I came home to grab a few things for the post office as well as a book I forgot to return to the library.  I was only going to be home a few minutes but as I started prepping everything, one thing lead to another – I swept the kitchen, then mopped…. then dried and folded laundry… caught up on emails…. twittered…. and alas figured I could return the library book today and picked up Titanic 2012 and started reading.

I read until I fell asleep.

When my husband came home from the office and I was prepping for our dinner and movie plans, he asked me where I was going.  “I am not going anywhere until we go out, why?”

He them informed me that the Jeep was running.

I forgot that when I came home – HOURS before…. that I was only going to run in the house and grab the book and the mailing and go again.  I never shut the Jeep off.  It had been running for 4 1/2 hours.

Seriously – I have never done that before.  Getting into it for dinner it was like sitting in a sauna as I had the heat cranked up due to the rainy cooler weather.

Anyway – moving on.  Today is May 1!  That means that I have comment winners for April, as each month, I keep track of all comments on non giveaway posts.  As a thank you to my readers, and a little encouragement to not just read but also to share your thoughts (I do love reading them!) I use Random.Org at the end of each month to:

1.  Give a $20 Gift Certificate to the reader who comments the most throughout the month

2.  I choose two readers/commenters using Random.Org to choose a book out of the prize box (these books are some of my gently used reads that I have either reviewed or picked up at sales when I found them in really good condition.

Here are this months winners:

The two random.org winners are out of 1057 non giveaway comments:

#459  Lisa (Lit and Life)

# 357 Esme (Chocolates and Croissants)

Congratulations – please choose out of the prize box and then email me at journeythroughbooks@gmail.com to let me know what you picked and your address!

My Top Commenter for the month of April is:

and this was close between three commenters…

Library Pat

Pat I will email you your gift card for Amazon later today!

I have to run or I will be late for the meeting!  Have a great day everyone!  The new comment contest starts today and I will be back later with a review!

Good morning!  I am sipping away at my first cup of coffee this morning.  I mentioned yesterday during the morning meandering about a book review format that I was excited to try out.  I did that yesterday starting with my review of Worst Case.

The idea was to make the reviews have a bit more of my personality, a bit of “Book Journey, One persons journey through books and coffee.”  So that is what I did.  I actually had fun doing it.  I added:

• Book Journey traveled to:  ______________________
  
• some type of coffee related tip about the area the book is about
  
• page number or CD count
• Cover thoughts

On my left sidebar you will see a new “Where Have I Been?” map and that I am still working on but it is so far a lot of fun.  On this map that I am making through Google Maps I am charting out where the books I have read this year are from.  What I am finding most interesting about that is how many books I have read this year that are set out of the US.  I have read books centered around London, England, Italy, South Africa…  (I have a lot more to enter yet too)

If you click on the link to see the map zoom it out by using the little bar on the left side of the map and clicking the minus sign.  I have no idea why when you enter it is fully zoomed in so you see nothing.  If you click on the blue pegs, it pops up with the book cover, title, and links back to my review.

So I am off to prepare for my day.  I have a meeting at 8:30 am across town, a recap of the home show we had a month ago.  I am excited to hear how it went overall.  Then I am in my office for the afternoon and probably gym with my friend Heidi after that and tonight, I am making BLT’s and we are watching SURVIVOR!

**  A fun pondering moment coming up in a few hours….

Good Morning!  Coffee Cup and I are sitting here this morning on the verge of what looks to be a beautiful day.  I was just thinking about a discussion going on at a blog I was reading earlier this week about review layouts.  The discussion (and I am so sorry but I do not recall where I seen this at) revolved around if we had a set layout for our reviews.  Such as:  some of us, write our own synopsis of the books we review, or we link to other reviews of the book, or include the page number and/or genre, links to purchase, ratings…  the list goes on and on.

So…. as I look at my new (and hopefully improved) blog name, I tried to think of a more designed review style and actually came up with a few ideas that have me not only excited for this blog, but I think I can apply one of the steps to my book club group as well.

I don’t want to give it all away…. and as in all things, there may be tweaking as I go…. but the new review layout will show up on the review that I am posting later today.  And that is all I am going to say about that.  😉

According to my local weather on Google, today is the last of the nice sunny days for a while.  Looks like rain tomorrow through Friday which hits the bummer scale for me as that means no biking or rollerblading.  It does however mean reading time and that is good as I am so loving the Michael Sullivan series and can not wait to review the first three books of his series.

I leave you with this…. I have been in such a Potter mood lately.  I recently listed to the second book on audio (which I HIGHLY recommend) and since then I have been jonesing for book three.  Must…. stay….. strong….

However – my dear friend Heidi who knows about my Potter addiction, sent me a link to the following video.  I had seen this before but it is still so fun!

Have a great day everyone!