Wednesday

1. The Lost recap. I saved it on the tivo for Harlan, just in case he decides he wants to watch the new season along with me. Next week! It’s coming!

2. Having two months worth of selections chosen at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fantasyfavorites and both titles I have on my tbr!

3. Knowing my Virtual Villagers are still alive. I don’t check on them too often, and once they scared me by being down to something like 30 in population, but they’re back up there now. Whew! (for those who don’t know, this is a game I’ve been playing for ages)

See more progress on: list three things every day that made me happy

Friday

I’m earlier than usual!

1. A Clay Aiken free show! http://soundcheck.walmart.com/clayaiken.html

2 Books! From PBS Strangewood by Christopher Golden..from S&S Just Between Us by Cathy Kelly..a free promo at work called The Sweet Potato Queens Big Ass First Novel.

3. Davy Jones singing a kids song at http://www.workman.com/boynton/

4. My copy of Ice Dragon by George RR Martin finally came in at work! It came home with me, too!

See more progress on: list three things every day that made me happy

Tuesday

1. Watching the birds. I’ve got two feeders out back (one of them is a nice one my father in law made for me) and it’s nice to see the birds happy.

2. Sim City. I got on a tangent with a city that was actually doing really well and forgot about everything else for a few hours.

3. Discovering a new bud on my miniature rose bush. It’s in my sewing room and I’ve had some trouble keeping it going when it’s hot out, but it’s doing great now.

See more progress on: list three things every day that made me happy

Monday

The day has been filled already!

1. A picture of a new niece! Grace Elizabeth was born September 5th.

2. A shopping day with my sister. It was so fun!

3. Finding SEVERAL dresses I really wanted. I usually only find one. Course, I only bought one of them. But it’s enough to know I could have gotten both. The Dress Barn had phenomenal prices!

4. A small piece of raspberry caramel.

5. Harlan cooking supper. I didn’t have to cook today!

6. Driving with the top down!

7. Realizing that I’ve maintained being a size 8 for over a year now. It makes me feel good to know I’m not gaining, even if I’m not losing.

8. Reading things at 43T. It’s so gratifying to meet new people and find so many great things being accomplished here.

See more progress on: list three things every day that made me happy

Thursday

1. Having Ben Barnes speak at the store and selling out of all his books. We could have sold twice as many!

2. Getting to ignore the work needing to be done while our author was there. The crowd was just too big to be able to stock anything and oddly enough, there were no phone calls!

3. Getting two more DMC 699 floss. I thought I was going to run out and Walmart had just two left. I think I’ll have enough for my project now.

4. Finding a skirt I like on clearance for $5.

See more progress on: list three things every day that made me happy

Criminy Jickets: Garterlac Dishcloth

What a great find this place is! Check it out!

Criminy Jickets: Garterlac Dishcloth

Friday

1. New t-shirts at work! This time it’s for a September music promotion. It’s fun to be able to wear t-shirts and jeans to work and looks neat when we’re all wearing the same thing.

2. New calendars in at work! It took me a while to get the stand pulled out and get them set up. I got myself a new Josephine Wall calendar with magnets with her artwork. I love them.

3. Watching episodes of Rome that I missed seeing on HBO. I really like this show and I hope it has a good second season.

See more progress on: list three things every day that made me happy

Monday

1. Finishing my game of Virtual Villagers. The golden child is funny to watch. And he definitely likes to party. And chase butterflies. Very cool.

2. Knowing I have enough on my gift card to get the first season of Rome (the HBO series) that recently came out. I may do that.

3. Having a great time with podiobooks.com. There are a few on there worth listening to. I recommend Shadowmagic. It’s the same guy that did the voice on Red Dwarf for the talking toaster. (I LOVE Red Dwarf.)

4. Changing the sheets on the bed.

See more progress on: list three things every day that made me happy

Triads

Triads are old sayings.

The first triad:

Three followers of wisdom:
imagination
purpose
endeavor

As wisdom grows in your heart, so too your powers of imagination, sense of purpose and mission in the world and your ability to work hard and achieve your goals.

See more progress on: take a class

Sunday

1. Spending the day with Harlan.

2. Having dinner at Chili’s, even though it seemed as if they were rushing us through. It wasn’t busy, though, so it might have just been me.

3. Watching some rented movies together and not having to worry about getting up in the morning. I fell asleep during the last one. Darn. But it was still fun. We don’t do that often any more. Not together, anyway.

See more progress on: list three things every day that made me happy

Thursday

I fell asleep last night before adding anything here. Now I’m trying to remember the day! Isn’t that awful?

1. Getting a good report from the higher ups on their inspection of the store at work. Yay!

2. Getting permission to start the book club for the store and give customers 20% off of whatever book I choose for that month.

3. Getting the magazines of what’s coming out from one of the publishers I’ve reviewed for. They sent the fall and winter selections for me to look at. I can choose from those for review copies if I wish!

See more progress on: list three things every day that made me happy

Sunny days

1. Finding out I gave everyone a laugh by goofing up on the store intercom today. They couldn’t believe I actually said “what am I thinking?” out loud in the middle of it all.

2. Being able to watch a tv show on my iPod at lunch. Since it’s too hot to leave a book in the car, this is the next best thing.

3. Getting a hug and a smile from Harlan when he came home from work. It feels good to be valued.

See more progress on: list three things every day that made me happy

Bounty!

Well, Advisory Board sent me a hardcover yesterday called The Expected One and I got the Illuminator from PBS. But I timed things badly on Queen of Swords. I bought that one because I have to lead the discussion on it for a reading group. I did buy it used, though! So does it count? I’m undecided. It’s the first one this month that cost me actual cash. I wonder if I need to start over with this goal.

See more progress on: no new books

Promos

We got a whole bunch of promos in at work. Cale took some and let me choose a few, so I picked two: The Sacred Cut by David Hewson and Imperium by Robert Harris (the one who wrote Pompeii). Imperium is a novel of ancient Rome and looks really good! The other seems to be a murder mystery. I love the perks of my job!

See more progress on: no new books

The Forest Mage

This month of not buying any new books has reaped a bounty of free ones! I just got Robin Hobb’s The Forest Mage, the sequel to Shaman’s Crossing, which of course I don’t have yet, but will need to get. Is it out in paperback yet?

See more progress on: no new books

Bardic course

I had begun a Bardic course through OBOD a long time ago, and then I had kids move into the house and everything got forgotten for a while. Now I’ve decided that I’d like to continue on with it. Since before, they’ve put the entire course on 28 cds! Very cool! I can put them in my iPod and take them with me! I can hardly wait till they get here!

See more progress on: take a class

Oprah group?

I was sure I'd posted something here since the 19th, but I guess not. Maybe I was dreaming about it. Anyway!

I'm undecided on what to do about the Oprah group. Oprah doesn't seem to have any interest in her reading group any more and it's hard to run an Oprah reading group without any books to read and discuss. Then when she switched from classics to modern, many of the more verbal members wandered away, and that makes sense. They joined because they wanted to discuss classics and the group did well then. Course, A Million Little Pieces is a marvelous book, no matter what kind of bad press it's gotten. I'm glad I read it. Night is a marvelous book, too. I'm also glad I read it. But those are the only two books she's chosen in a YEAR. No reading group can survive on only two books in a year.

I've mentioned closing down the group several times and once when I did, we got a lot of chit chat, but no real book discussion going on. I've tried having co-moderators to no avail. It only ends up being a "what have you read" kind of thing and no real book discussion going on. Maybe I'm talking myself into closing it down as I type. I don't know. But I gave myself today as a deadline to decide on what to do with it. Procrastinating won't help. The whole group has had like 17 or 18 messages all month, most of those from me. It's hard to have a discussion with yourself, isn't it?

I don't know. We'll see what happens.

POD-dy Mouth: Random notes to the authors of the last seven POD books I read:

POD-dy Mouth: Random notes to the authors of the last seven POD books I read:

This is so funny! And so true! I've read a few POD books and one of them had such awful spelling that we didn't even put it out on the shelf in the book shop I work in. Yes, the description of the book on the back cover had more than half the words spelled incorrectly. Ewww! Imagine what was inside! But check this post out. It's great fun.

iPods

Well, I've finally gotten a few of my cds put into my iPod and I have to say it was a lot easier than I thought it would be! This is a really marvelous little tool. I can watch television on my lunch break or hear some of my favorite artists sing me a tune. The podcasts are a lot of fun, too. I subscribed to several. There's a poker one from ESPN and Dean Koontz has one and there are several others that are interesting.

The grandkids are supposed to be coming over today and I haven't gotten anything done around here yet. I imagine I should start by getting dressed and getting the dishes done, but it's been so much fun playing first.

On with the day!

Books!

Today has been a day for books! I got home and found a book I had requested to review: THE GLASS BOOKS OF THE DREAM EATERS by Gordon Dahlquist. It looks amazing! At work we had some promos come in. I wanted all three! But I was nice and left the other two and took: DAWN OF EMPIRE by Sam Barone. Interesting sounding historical fiction! It releases in September. Then! The girls in the back room were getting rid of some books and asked if I would like any. I didn't want to be greedy, so I only took two: MAD SHIP by Robin Hobb and ROSE DAUGHTER by Robin McKinley. Not bad for not spending any money, huh?

One of my granddaughters has a birthday on the 17th also and I finally got her a card to stick some money in. It's cute. It's got a picture of a cat blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. I'll mail it in the morning. I hope she gets it in time!

Today was one of those weird days at work. I had a guy looking for some software games for an eight year old. We have some software, not a lot, but I showed him what we had and recommended a couple. He wanted one with math in it. Now tell me there's an eight year old out there that'll just sit and do math problems. I showed him three different games that contain math concepts and he didn't want any of them because they were GAMES. (big sigh) Most kids I know learn more easily if the computer program is in the form of a game. But that's just me. What do I know? Course then he asked if I would order him "the program." I asked him what the name of the program was that he wanted. He didn't know. Any idea of what it might be called? Nope. I kinda need the name of a program in order to order it. I don't think he had an idea what he wanted.

I'm so glad to be home. Normally I love my job. I play in the books. I stock them, I alphabetize them, I pick them up, hunt for them, set up the displays, all that fun stuff. But there were just some weird people out there today.