Good morning!

*takes a large sip of coffee and wipes mouth with back of hand*

I LOVE LOVE LOVE chatting with all of you!  You are like an addiction to me…. I read your comments, I laugh out loud, or think about what brilliant thing you said and then I respond back.  I love the community of blogging and when I comment to you, it is like having a conversation about one of my favorite all time topics:

Books.

Yet occasionally, I will post something that I just let ride without my input.  This happened yesterday when I posted about the controversy currently surrounding the changes to the Huck Finn book.  I wanted to share my thoughts and hear yours as well and I am enjoying seeing the comments come in but I have no more to say about it myself.

Note that this is a rare occurrence…. mainly because “man, I do love to chat with you!”  Blogging to me is so community oriented.  I love the books you recommend to me, the thoughts you share, and I look forward to hearing from you.

I am on a crazy day today – work, work out, 5:00 meeting and a class at 6:30 – 8:00 pm tonight.  I will not touch back to home base until around 8:30 tonight and even thinking about that makes me tired!

I have a post up later today I am pretty excited about so hope you will be able to stop back and know that when I get a chance I will be responding to your comments 🙂  I believe I am naturally chatty…

and caffeinated.  😀

Good morning.

This morning as I am thinking about how I do my weekdays, I thought I would share with you from a bookish perspective of how a typical morning goes for me…

Ready?

Grab your coffee cup and let’s go!

6:00 am:  I am up and I spend about 30 minutes with a wonderful devotional book I was given from Christmas.

6:30 as I plan my attack (pick out clothes, brush teeth, shower, make up hair, etc….) I am dodging stray bullets and rolling down steps with Lulu as I listen to the craziness that is Stephanie Plums everyday life (IPOD:  Finger Lickin’ Fifteen by Janet Evanovich)

7:10 I am in the kitchen and while the coffee is brewing and I am settling in for a quick email check I am getting in a dose of information from a dog’s perspective (Kitchen CD Player: The Art Of Racing In The Rain by Garth Stein)

7:40 I am out the door and driving to work while Diana is worried about her mom who has just been wrapped in a shower curtain and taken to the hospital with complications from her polio that has left her paralyzed from the neck down (car CD player:  We Are All Welcome Here by Elizabeth Berg)

Book lovers rejoice – there are always ways to get your “reading” in!

I am curious, do you multi task with your books and/or audio?  I would love to hear how!

Ok… I have to be quick this morning… I have Church in about twenty minutes and after that I really must get home and read.

Our book club – The bookies meets on Tuesday of this week.  We are reading The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton  and I am really excited because I have wanted to read this one… it is 552 pages…

and…

I started it last night.

OK – SHHHHHH!!!!!!  Keep you voices down!

I know – I know…..

I should have started it earlier, I should have been working on it all month and finished early…

but…

I didn’t.

Now here I am on the eve of the eve of the eve of our Book Club and I am going to have to power read the next two days.

*gulp*

I have a big awards event tonight I am helping with and tomorrow I work a short day but have a meeting at 2 pm and a group meeting at 6:30 pm.  Reading this book is going to be hit and miss for time…. but…

I must do it.

I want to do it.

Can I do it???

Has this ever happened to you?

Were you ever supposed to have a book read for a book meeting or for a discussion of some sort and had to scramble at the last days?

Good morning.

Nope -this post title is not a book…. however I can imagine it being a cozy mystery …

No instead this would be the true tale of the last day of my coffee pot.  You are probably imaging something really tragic – like a crash upon the floor, but no – there was no warning and it was rather…. well…

peaceful.

Here is what happened.

I was at my house with my friend and author Sarah Lindberg.  We were going over website stuff and before she had arrived, at 8:00 am I had made a pot of coffee.  Having drank most of it (*sheepishly guilty*) before she arrived at ten I prepped a second pot after pouring her the last of the current pot.

We worked on the website for about an hour when I asked her if she would like a second cup of coffee, she said yes, so I got up to fill her cup and that is when I noticed that my coffee pot, had not prepared the pot as I had asked.  I tried again… there was clearly power to the pot, but no action… I even moved the pot to another plug-in and still…

nothing.

Sarah and I then each had a cup of tea, and after she left I looked at the coffee pot again.

It was just done for.

Of course…. I did have to (I had to!) go out yesterday afternoon and purchase a new coffee pot.  I am not trying to be insensitive here… but really…. the coffee must brew on.

Today, Wendy and I are doing a day trip to St. Cloud.  We are going to shop a little, have lunch, stop at Barnes and Noble and maybe take in a movie.  I am sooooooo looking forward to a little friend time!  😀

Have a LOVELY day!

GOOD MORNING!!!!  Guess what?  It is my day off!  (* happy happy happy dance!!!*)

I love what I do but honestly….

I am tired out this week.

Last night I had a gathering to go to that was in Aitkin Minnesota.  It is normally about a 40 minute drive but with the snowy conditions we were about an hour +.  I arrived back home last night at 9:30 pm.

Todays meandering is brought to you by “TOOMUCHCAFFEINEATTOOEARLYANHOUR”….

What I would like to talk about today – is where are they?  Oh don’t pretend you don’t know what I am talking about!  Bookish people come on…. give it up.

Confess.

Tell me…

Where are the books?

Ok ok.. I know the places they should be… I would say it is safe to say that most of us have at least one book shelf or a book box or something… but what I want to know is the down right occasionally embarrassing stuff…  take a moment… if you are at home scan around the area you are currently in.  If you are not at home close your eyes (not while typing – that could be dangerous!) and think… where are the books…… where are the books….

Here’s mine:

My books (besides the book shelves) are:

On my kitchen table (currently 9)

on a stand by my kitchen table (currently 7)

Kitchen counter (currently 3)

Downstairs by recliner ( currently 11)

Downstairs coffee table ( currently 2)

On my nightstand (currently 1)

On the reading chair table (currently 9)

Front room rocking chair table (currently 1)

Bathroom (proudly – none)

Oh that feels so good!  😀  I am not counting the reading room at all whats on the shelves, whats next to the shelves, the BEA box still (STILL!!!) in the corner, my grandmothers step stool that is covered with books….

really as I type here… I should give that room some attention and do a little organizing.

With my day off I will be meeting with a friend and author in a couple of hours here to talk website design – for her, not me.   Then I need to go and pick up a book at the library that I have in, and go to the award store in town to get the Bookies Book of the year plaque updated to reveal our book of the year next Tuesday at book club.  (You will have to wait to hear who won!)

Other than that – I am hoping to read today… in fact right now I have a little over an hour to sink into a book and that means – yes my friends…. there will be reviews.  😀

Good morning! Happy Thursday!

I have mentioned in recent posts that every winter I usually pick a TV show that I have enjoyed and spend the winter evenings watching all the seasons. Last year it was all the Gilmore Girls seasons (one of my all time favorite tv shows!) and this winter Chance and I have been working our way through the LOST episodes.

If you have been a fan of LOST you certainly know about the numbers.

4       8       15       16      23       42

These numbers are a big part of  LOST right from the beginning and they all have to do with the character of Hurley playing these numbers in the lottery and winning big.  However – the numbers are supposed to be cursed and all these bad things start happening to Hurley and his family (a house fire, a family member dies, a business is purchased and then blows up…)

Yesterday afternoon I heard about the Lottery numbers that recently were drawn through the MEGA MILLIONS lotto and the numbers winning Tuesday nights jackpot of $355 million were:

4       8       15       25       47

and the mega ball:  42

😯

I know right?  The funny – or not so funny thing about the numbers being so close to the LOST numbers is that people who played these numbers really did not think about how many other people also played the LOST numbers.

Final answer:  41,763 had those numbers in their tickets, giving each winner:

$150.00  😯

Still… a win is a win I guess.  😀

Sorry if I “lost” all you non LOST watcher readers out there with this post.  I just thought this was too good to pass on chatting about.

Hope everyone’s day is wonderful.  You may have noticed that I have been sadly short on book reviews this week.  I am bummed by that but the honest truth is that I have had a meeting every night this week (including tonight…) and with work all day I have had minimal reading time.  I have a couple of books close and I plan to break through this dry spell going into tomorrow (can you say “DAY OFF?”  WOO WOO!)  and through the weekend.

*Note that I never finished watching the episodes while they were on TV so PLEASE do not give me ant spoilers in the comments – I am currently on Season 4.

Good Morning.  Current temperature…. 5 degrees.

It’s practically a heat wave from some of the 20 below days we have had of recent.

This morning…. I thought I would give you a little dose of Minnesota.

Throughout the last month as I have been reading some of the blog posts out there I have seen posts about biking, or enjoying the cooler temps of 60 and 70 degrees…. on one post I even read that the blogger went to the beach for Christmas.

The beach.

I do love to think of where you are all reading this post from… sitting in your homes or offices all over the world.  Grasp that thought for a moment.  Doesn’t that just blow you away?

Here is a little piece of my Minnesota around this time of year.  We heat our home with wood, but not a fireplace in our home.  What we have is a wood stove that sits out behind our home and in front of our business.  The wood stove heats water that runs through pipes and heats our home and our business with hot water.  For us it is cost efficient as my husband owns an excavating company and we get much of the wood for free when we clear  lots for new homes.

This time of year when it is really cold like it has been lately it is a lot of work to keep the stove temperature up.  My hubby goes to bed around 8 pm (I know – he keeps such odd hours!) and fills the stove then.  I am usually up until about midnight and before I go to bed I go and fill it again so the temperature stays nice and warm until Al (hubby) gets up at around 5 am (hey I told you he kept odd hours) and fills it and goes to work.

Here is the visual for all you readers out there of me filling the stove at midnight:

• First I put on a heavy winter coat, gloves, and hubby’s boots (mine are too darn cute to wear to the wood stove!)

• Next I drive down to the stove (yes, I drive!  Its cold and dark and the headlights help me see the woodpile!)

• I then proceed to grab wood off the pile (the pieces I can lift) and toss them into the mouth of this huge wood stove

• If I am lucky I do not singe my hair…. but usually… I do singe my hair.  (So annoying)

• Once I am done I drive back to the house smelling like a piece of beef jerky

There you have it.  My life is not all the warm lovely pictures of me in my home with a book…. nope the reality this time of year is big coat, big man boots, red nose, singed hair….odd smoky smell that seems to be…me

(I bet now you know why I LOVE LOVE LOVE summer so much!)

SO for giggles…. if you comment on this post tell me where you are at this morning.  (State or country and actual spot you are commenting from:  IE.  Chicago:  home office)

In my case that answer would be:  Minnesota:  kitchen table

Good Morning!
*waving crazily with a scary big smile on my face*

Yesterday morning when I wrote my meandering I was whelmed. Ok…. let’s be honest… I was OVER whelmed. I looked at everything I had going on for the day and found myself wondering how I was going to do everything I planned to do that – and do it well.  Then as the day rolled on, a snow storm rolled in – that canceled my work out at the gym, and my 6 PM meeting, allowing me to bump up my dinner with my son adding more time for us to spend together and taking a little off of me for the evening.

This morning as I sit here with COFFEE CUP after a wonderful good night of plenty of sleep and I look back on this past week I cant help but feel blessed to be a part of it all.

• Both boys (BOTH BOYS) were home for Christmas!

• On Christmas day Chance, Justin, and I stayed up until 2 a.m. playing Sequence…. addicting game!

• My 14-year-old puppy who has doggy dementia (yup – it’s an actual disease for dogs) since this summer, is still with us and doing well.

• Chance and I have been spending our evenings watching episodes of LOST like they are popcorn and loving our time hanging out together.

• I had a wonderful lunch with Dawn yesterday – which was not on the original crazy agenda – but I am so glad we were able to do that – good food and good company!

• A couple of days ago I went and seen friends of ours adopt a little guy at the court-house.  It was AMAZING and I am so glad I went.

• Last night having dinner with Brad before he headed for the airport at 3 am this morning was PRICELESS.  We had fajitas, talked, and laughed.  He may not be back from the navy now until August of 2011.

• I love my job.  I really do….I love the people I work with and what I do.

• Al and I will probably go out to a nice dinner tonight to close out 2010 and welcome 2011 with all the mystique and wonder that it will bring with it.

And that is just a week… I can’t even contemplate the entire year of good things that have come our way.

This afternoon I will be posting what I believe were the best books I read in 2010.  I look forward to expanding that list in 2011 and really stretching myself in my reading.  I have not had time to plan out resolutions yet but I will.

If you are off and making plans for this historical moment of the ending of 2010 and the ringing in of 2011, I hope you have a wonderful time, stay safe and if I do not see you in the blogosphere yet today, I hope to see you often in 2011.