Category: update

Boy, ask and ye shall receive. Thanks to everyone who commented and emailed with book suggestions. I have decided on:

• Water for Elephants: A Novel
• Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod

If I’m bored to tears with these, I will ridicule your choices on this public forum. Wait, that’s probably not a good way to make people feel comfortable providing feedback in the future. I will only send you private messages of disgust.

Snow is coming tomorrow. The baby is coming who knows when. Soon! I hope. Come on out little baby nephew. The champagne ain’t gettin’ any colder.

Here are the two types of phone calls I generally receive from my friends on the West Coast:

a) “Hi, are you near the internet?” this one starts out.  Then the person needs me to look up directions or some other internety thing. Generally I am near the internet so I guess this is why these calls are made.

b) “Hi, I’m in a book store, what should I get?” the second one goes.  Then I am expected to name the title of an amazing book in under sixty seconds, which I am generally able to do because I am near the internet and can look in my LibraryThing account or old book database for something to recommend.

Now you people know who you are and I am not saying I don’t enjoy these phone calls. I wouldn’t deliver such services if I wasn’t interested in repeat business.

That said, I need a little something in return.  Since I am obviously already quite near the internet right now, what I need is a book recommendation.  I don’t like taking library books on an airplane so I am going to purchase something to read, preferably a paperback, to take home for the holidays.  What is that something going to be? (hint: use the above links to confirm what I have/have not read).

Go.

And that means me. I have realized that many kindly souls have left remarks on my site and I haven’t responded or commented at all.

I enjoy reading comments and I intend to start leaving my own mark on the comments sections. So look out, ’cause I’m liable to retort back to your retorts.

Also, this High Maintenance Machine makes me chortle every time I think of it.

The Look

To continue this bits and pieces post, the poll on frequency of updates is at a close 8 to 6 in favor of twice a week.  So I guess I’ll go with a two times and occasional three times weekly schedule.

Gift giving. I am making good progress and I just thought I’d highlight some of my strategies. While yesterday was officially Cyber Monday, the deals online continue and you can’t beat the crowd levels. Here’s a couple deals I’ve seen:

• L.L. Bean free shipping until Christmas (important to those of us who get snow)
• PayPal is giving 20% cash back at some stores if you use a PayPal account

If you are shopping online, be sure to check out RetailMeNot before submitting your order. There have certainly been coupon sites before, but this one is easier to use and you can read success (or failure) stories from others attempts to use a coupon code. I’ve gotten free shipping and money hacked off my order.

Happy shopping and may the order confirmations and shipping notices pour in.

I used to be able to watch armloads of movies and read piles of books. It seems that lately I cannot focus on any one thing at a time. I watch a show while futzing around on my computer. I have to pause movies in the middle to take a break. I read a few pages of a book and then move on to something else.

This is a bit disturbing.

This long weekend has been a little different, though. It could be due to my many hours spent lounging around the house. Perhaps the long stretch of time off has relaxed me into my former state of mind. I do think the holiday has helped, but I also must credit Dexter.

It’s an amazing Showtime series about a serial killer who only kills bad guys. I found it an intriguing premise, but the show has proved to be of high quality all around. Even the opening sequence has me watching every time. I downloaded it from iTunes (Dexter, Season 1), but the first season is also on DVD. Michael C. Hall (formerly of Six Feet Under) does a real bang up job.

The poll results are clear.  The winner is:

Auntie Annie

I agree with this choice.  Now we’ll see what the nephew has to say about it.

Anybody get any good deals this weekend?

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone stuffs themselves and enjoys a nice day off. I have many things to be thankful for and I won’t bore you with the details, but if you’re reading this you’re most likely one of those things.

As I was walking from the bus to work this morning I saw a few little flurries.

Now I’m no fan of New England weather in general.  The unbearable heat and humidity is probably tops on my list of things I dislike about this region.

Snow on the other hand, I like.  I don’t have a car so I don’t have to worry about driving in inclement weather.  I am also not required to shovel any snow.  So I’m left with only the positives.

Maybe little nephew and I can go skiing together.  In fact, my very own aunt taught me my skiing skills.

At first the soy jerky tasted bad.  Like a strange fake chocolate taste.

Then I started to like it.  Especially if I chewed it at the back of my mouth.

It’s spicy.  So sometimes it bites back.  But many minutes after I eat it.

I still like it, though.

I did make a promise to post every darn day this month, so here I am, on day one of my beautiful three day weekend, tied to a computer.

Everyone might already know about Woot, the site that puts a different product up for sale every day for that day only (purportedly each product is an amazing deal).  Well, perhaps that same everyone might not know about the offshoot peddling original t-shirt designs. 

So check out Woot Shirt for a $10 American Apparel shirt (free shipping) with a different design each day. You can even submit your own design and vote on others in the weekly design competition, called The Derby.