Good morning. Yesterday was a dreary wet day, gloomy and overcast, cold and windy. A perfect day to read and write. Today…. looks to be a little different.
I was on the deck at 6:30 am this morning and the air was not unpleasant. I am thinking it is going to be a gorgeous day which in my Saturday world means: bike rides, fresh air, and probably a little more reading as weekends that are not over booked are rare and will get rarer as the weeks go on… bike rides, cabin weekends, and events will soon fill up my luxurious low-key Saturdays.
This morning for Saturday Snapshots (*waves at Alyce*) I thought I would show you some pictures of my world from the back deck this morning.
Let me set the scene…. this is Brainerd Minnesota. Currently the temp is 42 degrees. (Yesterday it didn’t even touch 42 degrees).
Taken from the back deck... the yard swing.
My reading swing on the deck. Still a little early in the year for me to be in it but once that sun warms up - I will be there!
The back yard.
The tree in the deck. When we expanded the deck in 1997, I told Al the tree had to stay. So... the deck was built around the tree. And that little guy in the pic... that is Sam.
Earlier this week, I posted a pic of this "maybe ours" dog. A girl in my book club had found him about a week ago and brought him to Book Club on Tuesday. We decided on Thursday morning that he could stay. We are calling him Sam.
Stop over to Alyce’s At Home With Books to find more pictures posted for Saturday Snapshots.
Tonight we are going to dinner with friends. That will be nice. As for this morning and afternoon I am going to spend a little time writing a review, read a little and hopefully a bike ride.
Good morning! Happy Friday The 13th! 😯 I know right? I feel like I need to rent a spooky movie or something!
Today is my day off and it looks gloomy out there. The weather may sabotage my bike ride plan for the day… but that may mean that I will be inside reading instead which… makes me smile.
When asked the question… uh, Sheila… if you were sent to live on a deserted island for five years and you could only take along with you 5 books, what would those books be? While I would no doubt sweat this decision… I can guarantee you there would be at least one Harry Potter book in this mix.
SO…. that said…
yesterday Shelf Awareness revealed that J K Rowling (master mind of all that is Harry Potter) is releasing a new book called The Casual Vacancy. This books sounds as though it will have none of the magic that bought Harry a permanent residence in my heart, however… it is JK Rowling, and that makes me interested.
Publisher Little, Brown called the novel a “blackly comic, thought-provoking and constantly surprising” tale of what happens in the English village of Pagford after parish council member Barry Fairweather dies unexpectedly. “Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty facade is a town at war.”
according to Little Brown Publishing
I quickly popped on-line and pre-ordered this book that is due to release in late September. While currently the hard cover is sitting at a hefty $21, I believe it will go down in price before release.
My question is, do you pre-order books from favorite authors? Would you pre-order this one?
**I also need to announce the winner of the gift card for the Easter Egg Hunt that took place during the Monday What Are You Reading meme! Thank you to all who participated! I was really pleasantly surprised of how many of you went egg hunting. I had a lot of emails saying that you really enjoyed doing this… enough so, that I will probably do it again in the future. 😀
The criteria was that you had to 1) find 3 of the 4 hidden eggs and email me where they were AND 2) you had to comment on each of these blog posts that had the Easter Egg in order to qualify. (a couple of you forgot that part!). That said, using random.org, the winner of the $25 Amazon Gift Card is:
Happy Wednesday all, hopefully this day finds you well rested and ready to tackle whatever is to come. Yesterday was second Tuesday of the month which for the past 11 years has meant something awesome to me….
Book Club!
Have I gushed recently about my book club? Probably. Am I about to again? Probably.
So last night eighteen of us gathered in my home to discuss the 19th Wife. We laughed, if only we could have had one more… 😛
I absolutely loved our discussion surrounding this book on Polygamy, the mix of truth and fiction together made for an interesting topic and these girls really did their homework. If you are looking for a great discussion book for your group I would recommend this one.
I was hoping that after all was said and done last night I would sit down and write the review and Bookies thoughts on the 19th Wife for the blog today. However, after I had worked yesterday came home, cooked and cleaned and then cleaned up after everyone left around 8:30… I had little energy to do anything but answer a few email.
Watch for it tomorrow. 😀
Oh… and I did mention a dog didn’t I.
His name is….. well, I don’t know.
My friend Kerri sent me a picture of him a couple of days ago. Abandoned in her neighborhood seems to be the answer. she’s called the police, all the animal hospitals and no one has turned in a missing dog. She’s had him since last Thursday but already has a dog, a cat, and a day care, and does not want another dog.
I told her in so many words…. no. With the loss of Elmo last October, Bailey (our shih tsu) has not been the same. I didn’t want him to think “what is this? A replacement program???”
Yet…
she could not find the dog a home. I told her the dog could come with her to book club. If the dog did not freak Bailey out, it could stay over night…. no promises.
Long story short… the dog is still here. He knows how to work a room, laying down not bothering anyone… house broken… we will see. I have a friend who may be interested in him if it is not us. Bailey is neutral right now… not freaking out, but not hanging out either. We will see what happens when I leave the two together in the house ll day while I am at work.
As you know I have been planning to go to BEA however, my roommate of the past two years will not be attending this year and I have been roommate searching. For a few days there I was even considering not attending, which really bothered me as it is something I look forward to all year.
Over the past week a few people came forward with possible opportunities I was looking into. Then thanks to Twitter, I discovered Gail also did not have a roommate this year, hers was also not attending. I had met Gail last year at the BBC. We started chatting and emailing and as of yesterday morning we are booked! 😀
Seriously – just typing those words is such a relief!
SO lat night I finished the BEA registration that had started and stopped over the past few weeks. That felt good too! 😀
The final piece was to book a flight and I had been watching Orbitz and knew there were plenty to choose from. Last night I made three attempts to book a flight and each time after I filled everything out and hit submit…
it would come up with a message that said sometimes seats get booked quickly and that one in so longer available. 😯
This happened two more times and I logged on to my credit card account to see what was happening there. Sure enough, every time I tried to book a flight my card put that into a reserve hold on those dollars. At that point I stopped thinking my credit card company is going to lock up the card thinking it is fraud… three attempts for flights.
So anyway…. that is frustrating.
I will try again in a few days, or if I have time this afternoon I may call Orbitz and just let them know what is happening and find out how do I actually find a flight that exists.
Anyhoo.. thats what is happening here. I can still bask in the fact that I am for sure going to BEA. I am excited and now planning out what I want to do there.
Hope your Tuesday is lovely. I have book club here tonight and I am excited for what is sure to be an interesting review of The 19th Wife. (Review, discussion, and food we had with the review will all be posted tomorrow)
Oh, and those participating in the Monday meme and the egg hunt – remember to qualify you must also comment on those blogs that had the eggs. I am seeing entrants who have not done that part. 😀
I hope this Sunday morning finds you well… and happy and well you know… GOOD.
I had a pretty sweet week and even got the road bike out on the trail this week 3 times for a total of 68 miles (that makes me SO happy!) I am hoping that maybe I will get out there again yet today and Monday and make it to 100 by Tuesday night (that would be one week since I started riding this year). That will be a hard sell though as I have Monday night and Tuesday night commitments that will leave me only a little window of time to bike.
One thing I did not get a lot of time to do this past week is read and that annoys me. I almost put up a tweet that said “Really Sheila, how about you try to actually read a book?”
Seems like with the additional bike riding this week the reading fell to the way side, and the fresh air, knocked me out in the evenings. Seriously – that’s embarrassing. Friday night I came home around 6 pm after riding 36 miles, ate dinner, sat in the recliner to read and promptly passed out. I woke at ten, and went to bed. What am I? Five??? 😯
I did get a few goodies in the mail this week:
Some pretty exciting reads and a movie to review, We Bought A Zoo.
Today we will go to church this morning, and then out to Easter brunch. It’s just Al and I today without Justin being able to come home as he works and Brad in the Navy. For us it will be a low key day and that is alright. I have over 200 pages to go in our book club read, The Nineteenth Wife for our review on Tuesday.
As for other exciting news – it looks like I have a roommate for BEA! WOO HOO!!!!! More on that soon, waiting on a confirmation but a hotel was found… and it looks good and just looking at it today made me all giddy inside knowing that BEA is coming and finally (FINALLY) it feels like it is coming together. 😀
Good morning! Happy Saturday. I have coffee brewing and outside, it looks a little gloomy out and that for once, is actually ok… I have some indoor things that need to be done and have been neglected as the weather has been pretty awesome this week and I have been biking! 😀
Yes the 2012 maiden bike voyage happened on Tuesday of this week and it was a glorious 14 miles! On my way back to my car I seen something BIG in a tree:
Mmm hmmmmm… WHAT is that?
At this point, I determine it is a beaver. There is some wetland near the bike trail in parts and I was near that now. In fact as a couple of rollerbladers passed by while I was taking pictures I pointed out the beaver in the tree. They were not as impressed as I was, they smiled politely and kept on blading.
It was kind of cool, his little paw would reach out for some of the leaves and I watched him for about ten minutes. He started to climb down and I thought I would video that but he sensed my presence and FROZE and finally I waved him good-bye and good luck getting out of the tree, and moved on.
Coming home Wednesday evening I had this vision close to my house.
That’s common, but I still like to look at them. That night our dog Bailey was going nuts around 3 in the morning. He was on the bed with us and staring out our big bay window we have in the bedroom. Of course it was pitch black aside and I had no idea what he was seeing so I got up and went and stood by the deck doors that look over out back yard. I could see two large darker shapes so I stepped out on to the deck and it was two deer. I wondered if they were the same deer…
Now back to the other thing in the tree. On Friday my awesome friend Amy (awesome as she agrees to do CRAZY things with me!) and I decide to go on a bike ride to the town of Nisswa, a 36 mile loop. It’s a straight stretch on the trail and she will be doing some rides with me later this year so this is good training. About a mile in, I see out friend in a tree again. We stop, try to decide what it is, and eventually I start calling it a Bechuck (beaver woodchuck combo) and eventually that lead to Bebird (beaver bird combo).
When I got home last night I Googled if beavers could climb trees. You probably already know this, the answer is no. (I flash back to Tuesday when I told those rollerblading girls it was a beaver in the tree… no wonder they kept on blading… they probably thought I had something stronger in my water bottle than water. 😳
The verdict is….
a groundhog.
According to wikepedia: Ground hogs (also known as woodchucks) will climb trees for escape.
So there you are boys and girls. Out wildlife lesson for today. 😀 For more fun pictures around the world be sure to pop over and see Alyce with her awesome Saturday Snapshots meme. I love to see what people ate taking pictures of!
My day is going to consist of some household duties,blog visiting, a couple calls to friends, audio books, and some reading. I have a few books going that I need to finish, one being the 19th Wife that is our book club read and we are discussing this coming Tuesday.
Thankfully our weekend here is pretty quiet. College son has to work so will not be coming home for Easter. That is a huge bummer… but we understand. I don’t mind quiet holidays, my life seems to go extreme so often that time to just hang is always welcome. 😀
How about you? Any awesome plans for the weekend? Fun traditions?
Oh! One more thing – This weeks Monday What Are You Reading is going to have a special bonus to it. I thought we would have a little fun since we are celebrating Easter! Really, you are going to want to participate so be sure to plan on connecting what you are reading this week if you are a regular to the meme, and if you are new to it, stop on by Sunday evening and check out what I am talking about. 😀
Yes I am here, just a little late this morning. I have been up since 6 am, but I have been reading emails I was too tired to get to last night, chatting it up a bit this morning with bookish peeps on Twitter, and cautiously looking into Pinterest.
Why the caution?
Any one that reads Book Journey on a regular basis knows I have no trouble at all filling up my time. I love to read, to blog, my job, hanging with friends, rollerblading, biking, the gym, volunteering with teen and the homeless, movies, and really…. honestly…
I was afraid (and still am a little) that Pinterest would become a time suck I just could not afford unless I gave up sleeping, which as hard as I like to run…. I do look forward to hitting the pillow at night to re-energize.
Friends invited me to join it, talked about it, I hear it’s praises on the blogs, but for me…. Pinterest was off the table.
And then… (gah… I am really starting to not like those two words…)
Jay at Joy’s Book Blog had a Pinterest Challenge for Bloggiesta. Not one to back down from a challenge I checked it out. What Joy talks about is how to use your blog with Pinterest… in other words, I could connect books on Pinterest that would draw attention to Book Journey.
I do like talking about books…
I did not do the challenge – I did not have time. But I did ask Joy to hook me up with an invite and she did, and this morning… I registered. Anyhoo… that’s why I am really late this morning 😀
Oh yes, you can plan on seeing these pop up in a post as soon as I find a book to theme them… 😀
I am registered but currently there is nothing on my board. I need to figure out how to do it, does it link back to the blog, etc…. maybe this evening I can look more into that and probably in the next day or two I will put up a link on the sidebar. Until then… yeah.
So let the time suck begin. 😛 If you do not hear from me for a while check Pinterest, I may be pinned to a board. “Help! I’ve been pinned and I can not get free!”
My day today is blog post writing, group power, hopefully a bike ride, reading, cooking, and some sort of low-key plan for hubby and I tonight… like a rented movie.
Questions to you: Do you use Pinterest? If so in what ways? (to look up things? What things?) Inquiring minds (ok, me!) want to know.
Good morning and HAPPY THURSDAY!!!! (Yes, I have had coffee, why do you ask?)
There is a big event coming up that I have yet to really talk about here but have wanted to. It is the 100 year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, April 15, 1912.
Remember when they came out with the movie with Leonardo and Kate? Well I have a story…
Sheila, don’t you have a story for EVERYTHING?
No… No I don’t for instance… I have no stories about frogs. Oh… wait, that’s not true… I do, and it’s a sad one…
Ok…. ummmm…. Unicorns! I have no stories about unicorns. 😛 See? Not everything has a story…
BUT – this one does.
So it’s 1997, I think. I am working at Wal-Mart (yes, yes,…. I was that cool!) and my friends were talking about going to the movie Titanic. AND no way was I going to see a movie about a ship that sank a long time ago. And I am pretty sure I said so in so many words.
NOPE. Not gonna happen.
But, as seems to happen to me often, the chatter, the discussion around the movie, the excitement, peaked my interest and I went with Hubby one night and …
LOVED IT. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
Seriously, from the moment she is being lowered off the ship in the life boat and jumps back on the ship, I had to go to the bathroom sooooooo bad but refused to miss a moment. (I may have injured my bladder during that movie, just saying!) AND I had cried so much I actually left the theater with a headache.
I went on to see the movie another 5 times in the theater. And yes I know, it is over 3 hours long and yes, I know I probably should not tell people how many times I went to it. But, its out there now, and I know that over 18 hours of my life in the 90’s was spent in a small town movie theater watching Titanic. 😯 I kept going, because I became an evangelist for the movie (oh you know the type….. talking it up, persuading you to go, offering to go with you even….) I brought people to the theater. I sat with groups as small as 3, and as large as 12 (*waves to co-workers and assistant manager who said she would NEVER waste her time on the movie… and then did. With me. :razz:)
At that point I became obsessed with knowing more about Titanic. I read books (don’t, be shocked… occasionally I do read), I watched movies, and I found my way a few years later to the Titanic exhibit when it was in Florida – which was amazing and heartbreaking all together.
Now that you have the back story – here is modern day, today in fact…. now in fact… and here is what is happening that I know about.
My friend Reagan (if you have not met her you must, she is a hoot), is having a challenge:
Stop over and check it out. It’s completely doable and you may learn something about Titanic in the process.
AND
Kelly At The Written Word and I have been conversing about her upcoming Titanic week and we are working out a thing… details to come, but in the meantime here is the link to what she has going on:
Titanic 3D hits the theaters tomorrow, April 6th. I am not excited about the 3D part… in fact, I think that might just irritate me a bit just because of the subject matter and while it is a fictitious movie, it is based on actual events. However, after watching the trailer this morning and tearing up… I will be going to see Titanic in the theater again because it still affects me so much I am surprised. I guess I could then count that as 7 times I seen it in the theater….
If you know of any other Titanic happenings please let me know here, and I can add them to this post.
How about you, did you see the movie it the Theater? Would you go see it again, why or why not?
After the BIG Book Journey facelift a few of you commented that the coffee cup was missing, part of my trademark blog icon since pretty much day one. Yes, as I think back, I did talk about COFFEE CUP a lot in the mornings…. 😛
I was going to switch things up a bit but your comments gave me pause; and I was impressed that the little right sidebar cup that had graced the blog all of these years was noticed when I pulled it.
WHICH led to this post.
There is a real COFFEE CUP and I thought today I would share his story – AND before you think how could a story about a coffee cup possibly be interesting Sheila?
Well…. I think it is…
A little Minnesota history for you in the mix too. Mink Lake Camp is what I call a little known secret of Grand Marais Minnesota. It is 14 miles up the famous Gunflint Trail. (f you have kids that ever complain about being cold, I have some books I could recommend you about the Gunflint Trail in the early years before they had electricity that will make them never complain of the cold again! Here’s a hint: icicles hanging off bed frames… TRUE STORY. :shock:)
Anyhoo… this is a wilderness camp. No electricity, everything is by oil lamps, beautiful cabins, and breathtaking SILENCE. Yup, cell phones hold no power this far into the wilderness.
In 2007, friends of ours decided to help restore this old camp and a bunch of us went to help out in June of that year. There was a stream through an overgrown area and after some hard work of clearing, we made a rock trail and places to sit and enjoy this space. It became a garden where we planted wild flowers along the stream, and well… its one of my favorite places in the world.
This is Mink Lake as taken from the dock at camp.
One day while I was there, raking out the garden spots, creating benches out of fallen logs… my rake clicked on an item deep in the ground – so deep in fact I had to get a shovel to dig out this item.
It was an old blue coffee cup, in perfect condition – not a chip on it and I loved it. It became my camp cup and that was all I drank my coffee out of. Every June from 2207 – 2010, I would go up to the camp to help and dig through the cupboards until I found where I had stashed this cup I had fondly called “Blue”. Last year my friend Sandi who runs the camp said I should bring him (yes it is a him!) home so he did not get broke at camp.
And I did, where now he sits on a book shelf in the reading room with this memory of finding him over 225 miles away in an overgrown campground called Mink Lake.
"Blue" or COFFEE CUP
And today, as I talk about COFFEE CUP, I brought him out and I am having coffee in him this morning. Can a cup make you smile? Sure! Have I had too much caffeine and off my rocker? Perhaps….. 😉 I am thinking of designing a new blog button using him…
As he looks this morning, on my kitchen table
Anyway – got to run – I have to get ready for work and I am hoping with enough time I can bike to work this morning… but I need at least 15 minutes to do so… and what a surprise – I am pushing it. 😀
Any items in your home you hold dear? That have a story? That to anyone else look like just another whatever… but you know the real story?
Good morning. In care you are wondering what happened around here…
I happened.
Give a girl a Bloggiesta weekend and well..anything can really happen.
I wont bore those of you who have already been here since Saturday afternoon but for those who have not here is the short version of what happened:
1. Went to change from 2 sidebars to one
2. Seemed easier to change who theme to a single sidebar
3. Became a CRAZY BIG project
4. Changed theme.
5. Changed theme again.
(* note: I may change it again, there is one more layout I want to look at so just bear with me while I go but more dynamite.)
Now – like the header, still trying to get used to the pink (not really me but it is not changeable except to powder blue), not sure I like the comment boxes either but I think it is growing on me.
There is the story. 😀
A few of you have asked where Coffee Cup is (used to sit on the upper right sidebar). I was actually going to switch out that blog widget BUT- now I am so impressed that a few of you asked about it and realized it was missing that I think tomorrow morning I am going to introduce you to the real Coffee Cup. To the average reader that may just seem a little C R A Z Y, but hey, first of all don’t judge 😛 and second of all Coffee Cup actually comes with a great story… one so good, I think I will add it to my About Me page after that post goes up tomorrow.
Ok…. moving on… I need to announce winners from the Bloggiesta weekend. Give it up for the winners of my mini challenge, using random.org they are:
$20 Amazon Gift Card: alexia561
$10 Amazon Gift Card: Tanya Patrice
next up… winner of the Descendent movie:
Pinkim35
and last but not least the winner of the YA choose what I read contest and win it for yourself:
Mary Preston
All winners have been notified by email and gift card winners have been sent out this morning. 😀
How super fun! Congrats all! I have work, and hopefully play, and then I want to READ. 😀
Book Journey 