Best 50 Shades of Grey review EVER

For THE BEST review of Fifty Shades of Grey, please visit this.  It's amazing.  The GIFs alone are hilarious.  She does a far better job at reviewing the book than I did today.

*warning- you may want to read this at home if your work computer picks up swear words*

Nook books

I have continued to read a bunch of books on my Nook.  All ratings out of a possible 5 stars.

A World I Never Made by James LePore (free Nook book)

2 stars

An American father is summoned to Paris to claim the body of his estranged daughter, who has committed suicide.  However, it is not his daughter’s body and the father is convinced that she is in trouble.  After about a day the father falls in love with a police detective (ridiculous).  Thank goodness this was a free Nook Book because the love story is hokey and the book is about a clichéd as one could get.

Bring on the Blessings by Beverly Jenkins (free Nook book)

2 stars

A rich recently divorced ex-social worker buys a failing town on the Internet to try to turn it around.  She not only wants to save the town, but also create a community for troubled foster kids.  The characters were silly, the plot was obvious, and the writing was awful.  I can’t believe that it gets such great reviews on Goodreads.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith

4 stars

After stumbling upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, the author pens a biography of Abraham Lincoln using historical facts and describing how vampires played a role in Lincoln’s life.  Maybe I am not doing the book justice with that one sentence synopsis, but I was impressed that the author did so much research into Lincoln’s life while intertwining the whole vampire hunter aspect into the book. 

Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James

2 stars

So my coworker happened to bring the first two books on our trip down to DC so I asked to borrow the first one to see what all of the hype was about.  Let’s just say that I wasn’t impressed.  The writing was really awful.  I mean, I get that this 21 year old girl is naïve, but saying stuff like “then he touched me down there” is ridiculous.  My coworker was seriously gaga over the whole story and Christian Grey (she is really excited about the C.G. adult toy line coming out) whereas I want nothing to do with it.  I will not be reading the next two books.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

3 stars

A “humorous” memoir of the author’s early 20s when he loses both of his parents to cancer in the span of five weeks and inherits his 8-year-old brother.  At times a great book, at times a confusing book.  I loved the references to the northern suburbs of Chicago, but I thought that sometimes he was trying to be too funny and too out there.  He is a talented writer, but I don’t think his style of writing is for me.

Summer of Fire by Linda Jacobs (free Nook book)

3 stars

A fictional tale of Claire Chance, a firefighter and single mother, who after losing her mentor and co-worker in a roof collapse, heads to Yellowstone in 1998 to battle the fires in the National Park.  The author used real fire reports from 1998 for the story which was a nice touch.  The book was entertaining enough- I think that it was helped by the fact that when I went to Yellowstone back in 2006, I could still see the fire damage.

212 (Ellie Hatcher #3) by Alafair Burke (free Nook book)

3 stars

Standard detective novel where plot twists are not tied up until late in the book after a series of murders that can’t be connected.  Entertaining enough for a free book, but I’m not sure that I will pay to read any of this author’s other novels.

Birdman by Mo Hayder (free Nook book)

3 stars

Five bodies, all young women, all ritualistically murdered and dumped in a wasteland.  In his first case Detective Jack Caffery has to find the sexual serial killer before he kills again.  I have to admit- this book was pretty gruesome.  It’s also set in London and had a bunch of lingo that I couldn’t quite catch onto because the acronyms are not ones that we use here in the States. 

So, not the best crop of books these past few months.  I did save a lot of money by mainly reading free Friday Nook books thought....  At least my current book (Dark Places by Gillian Flynn) seems to be bucking the trend.  Have you read any good books recently that you can recommend?

Moving in

I feel like every post for the past couple of weeks and for the immediate future is going to start out with “I’m exhausted” or “Things are really hectic” or something of the like.  Because it truly is hectic up in these parts!

·         Friday we spent one last night at my parent’s condo before getting up early to meet the movers at the new house.

Saturday was a circus show of people in our house.  The movers dropped off all of our furniture.  Our electrician showed up early with two guys to bang out the can lights we put in the living room.  

Our new can lights in the living room look great!  Check out the Miami Vice paint colors- can't wait until those are gone.  :-)

·         Thank goodness the electrician did show up because all of our kitchen appliances showed up on Saturday too.  However, the guys that were supposed to deliver and install everything didn’t want to do more work than necessary, so right now we only have a working oven.  But the only reason that it is working is because the electrician was a rock star, not because these guys did anything.  The new washer, dryer, fridge, cooktop, and microwave/hood combo all are sitting around, doing nothing.  It’s a bit frustrating.

·         Needless to say, we are kind of bleeding money right now because without a working kitchen and fridge, we can’t make any meals.  I’m trying my best to eat healthy every time we go somewhere, but even the healthy options have more calories than something we would make at home.

·         I originally thought that we were going to be unpacking most of Sunday, but the electricians need access to all of the sockets and lights this week, so we had the movers put most of the furniture in the center of rooms so that the entire house can be rewired and all sockets changed from two prong to three prong.  Instead, CP and I did some landscaping.  I’ll wait to show you the after pictures because we have the before pictures on our nice camera with no internet, but the whole day was cathartic, taking the chainsaw to huge overgrown bushes and ripping out overgrown ivy. 

·         Our neighbors loved the new landscaping (even though we had to leave the stumps)- especially our next door neighbor because we had a very large bush in our front yard that blocked our view of the sidewalk.  We have kids and dogs on either side of us and certainly didn’t want to be known as the new people that ran over someone’s dog or kid!

·         Speaking of our new neighbors, so far everyone has been very nice and no one cut down any trees before we moved in!   One neighbor brought us a bottle of wine and an orchid, another one brought us homemade cookies.  Score!  The houses in our neighborhood are a bit closer together than in CT so I suspect that we will be hearing people on both sides a bit more.

·         No internet or cable any time soon in our house because cable wires have never been run to the house (I’m totally missing True Blood and my Real Housewives shows!).  So far Comcast is a bunch of idiots (why are all cable companies so hard to deal with?).

·         I’ll leave you with my random thought of the day.  CP and I went to both Home Depot and Lowe’s this weekend.  I went to the bathroom in both stores and in yet another Home Depot, I notice there is something wrong in the bathroom (the store in CT always had something wrong/dripping/falling off/etc. in the bathroom).  This time it was a leaky u-tube below one of the faucets so someone stuck a bucket underneath to catch the water.  Shouldn’t a store manager think to themselves that because they are a HOME IMPROVEMENT STORE and supposedly have people experienced enough to answer your questions that they should and could find someone to fix the leak?  It’s not like they are lacking the tools available- they are only feet away!  On the other hand, I noticed no problem in the Lowe’s bathroom.  Guess which one CP and I will probably frequent more for all of our home improvement items??

Did you have a busy weekend?

New job

Four days into my new job and so far I am enjoying myself.  Well, technically it is not a new job as I have the same title, simply in a different location.  Anyway, the “newness” might wear off in two-three months like always- I’ll just have to see if this place can keep my brain entertained and occupied.

My boss so far seems nice and happy that I am here.  Yesterday we had a meeting with a director and she called me a “subject matter expert.”  Ha!  I mean, I gave presentations about the subject in CT, but I wouldn’t call myself an SME by any means.  No matter because yesterday it was decided that I would sit on a panel at a two-day conference and speak in front of 200 people.  Yikes.  That makes me excited and nervous at the same time.  I hope I can live up the SME title!!

Can I just tell you how much I love working in a big city again?  The energy, the people walking around, the noises.  I love them all!  All of the “cities” in CT never really had that so I definitely have missed it.  Even though we didn’t want to move to downtown Chicago (CP more than me), at least I get to experience the city during the week.  It’s nice to have a bunch of lunch options.  It’s nice that I will get to walk 1/2 mile every morning from the train station to my office, and then back that afternoon.  I may not be so happy about the walk come January when it is freezing out, but I’m hoping that my North Face jacket makes it bearable!  I’m not that far from my parent’s office so I could have lunch with them if I felt like it one day.  

I think that living a train ride away from the city (without having to drive to the station) is going to provide a nice balance.  A yard for the dogs/our garden with some privacy from our neighbors and a big enough house for our stuff on the weekends/weeknights versus the busy, loud, and crowded city during the workday.  My total commute (even with the 1/2 mile walk) will be about 45 minutes.  Not the fantastic 10 minute commute I had in CT, but that is the price we are paying to be in the middle of our two jobs with a decent sized yard, good schools, etc.

My new office has a gym in the basement that for now is free (score!).  My building also allows people to walk the stairs so instead of taking the elevator up or down one or two flights, I have been hoofing it.  I am thinking about doing the Hustle up the Hancock race which is an awesome stair race (94 floors up the John Hancock building) that I did with friends back in 2005 when I lived here.  My mom even said that she might be willing to do it with me!  My office is on one of the top floors of my building so I could train during my lunch hour or after work.  :-)

So things are going well here, despite all of the chaos.  I’m ready for a busy day tomorrow dealing with the movers, along with the delivery of our new fridge and all new appliances.  The cooktop won’t get hooked up just yet because we need the counters in, but hopefully they can get installed sometime in the next few weeks.  In the meantime we will at least have an oven and a microwave.  Sunday we are going to be in UNPACKING H*LL.  Wish us luck.  :-)

I made it!

I’ll try to make this quick….

Last week the moving process went fairly well.  CP and I had some fights because he didn’t understand why I had to run around town doing errands and packing up stuff in advance, things that were stressing me out.  Ummm hello who wants some random guy packing up your underwear, toiletries (especially the ones that scream I’M INFERTILE), and other potentially embarrassing items?  Not to mention we were told we could save money if we packed some things in advance.  CP thought that I was making things harder on myself, but I saved us some money by returning boxes to U-Haul, by selling a few items on Craigslist, and donating items to the Salvation Army.  Right now, we need to save money so to me it was worth it.  But yeah, I was a bit on edge last week.

I have to say that I am most likely moving-spoiled now.  Having other people pack up our house and then move everything into a truck that they drive across the country for us?  LOVED IT.  Especially because the day that they packed up the truck it was 90 degrees out.  It was a little boring watching other people do the work (it made me want to jump in and help), but instead I sat in the AC and that wasn’t half bad.

After the walkthrough on Thursday night, I finished cleaning the house and set out for central PA with the dogs.  The dogs had been in doggie daycare all day and were thankfully exhausted.  We got into our hotel around 1:30am (I unfortunately got a later start than I wanted to), I threw on a Sleep Machine App so that Buster wouldn’t hear people in other rooms and bark, and slept for about 3.5 hours….until the person above me woke up and started stomping around at 5:30am.  Sigh.  That woke up Buster who didn’t bark, but did start to pace around the room.  I threw on the Sleep Machine App again and fitfully slept for another hour before deciding that it was time to wake up and get on the road.

Friday was spent driving in the car.  It took me about 10 hours, but that was probably because I stopped a bit too often.  Starbucks Refereshers and various NPR’s Freakonomics Podcasts kept me awake and entertained throughout the drive.  It was scalding hot every time I stopped so I would take the dogs for short walks at the rest stops but nothing too long because there wasn’t much shade to speak of.  The closing on our CT house went well that afternoon and CP and I were officially homeless.

The rest of the weekend was spent at my parent’s second home in Southwestern MI.  Buster got to meet my Dad for the first time (and bark at him as he likes to do to strangers, but then later snuggle) and the dogs got to run around the large yard.  They will be heading back there this weekend with my parents so that they are not in the movers' way when they drop off the furniture.

Monday morning CP and I dropped the dogs off at a nearby boarding facility (where they so far seem to be okay despite it being a new place for them) and headed to our closing for our new house.  The seller is still crazy, but everything worked out and we now are IL homeowners (pictures coming soon)! 

Yesterday CP left for a work trip and I had my first day of work at my new office.  Everyone here seems really nice and happy that I transferred to the office.  It’s nice to work in a big city again!  This week I’m staying with my parents in the city while the hardwood floors in our new house get refinished and stained a different color before our furniture arrives.  Saturday our new appliances and all of our furniture get delivered.  Then next week the electrician and the HVAC guy will be working in the house.  It’s getting hard to juggle everything!!

What has been going on with you guys?  I have been trying to keep up with my Google Reader, but I’m still a bit behind.

Excited to see CP

(Scheduled post)

If all goes according to plan, the dogs and I will be pulling in to my parent's place tonight and all three of us will once again be in the same state as CP!

Buster has been quite confused and wondering why he hasn't seen CP in a while.

Fuzzy Britches is REALLY EXCITED whenever she hears CP's name.  She can't wait to reunite with him (this is the longest they have ever been apart)!

YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY!

Almost wordless Wednesday

 My last picture post from CT....

It's hard to believe that our house went from looking like this just two years ago with two dead trees in the front yard....

....complete with large, overgrown bushes (the azaleas are pretty, but not well-maintained).....

...to this.  The front features more flowers now that the trees are gone and it gets full sun.  (The large bush on the left will turn purple soon- I'm sad I'm going to miss it!)

I love our daylilies!  So pretty.

The herbs are more like bushes after they thrived in our winter garden.  In the back the yellow squash are looking good, along with the chinese kale and chinese broccoli.

The spinach bolted a while ago, but the swiss chard is doing great.  The garlic still has a way to go.  (Please ignore the  weeds that I haven't had time to tend to.)

Tons of green tomatoes- but so far they have turned!  So sad that I am going to miss out on fresh tomatoes from the garden.  In front the eggplant is flowering and the buyers should have jalapenos pretty soon.

After ripping out the bolted lettuce, the sugar snap peas, and the green pole beans, the yellow wax beans continue to thrive and produce!

We will definitely miss this view- our favorite walking/running path in our town!