Garden Update

Well it's been a little over a month and the garden is doing quite well. The tomatoes are huge and so is the corn. I have a "corn field" now. I tell my cats they better be good or I will wish them into it!

The two cats in the photos are Marmalade (orange) and Calicoon (calico). They don't technically belong to us, but they both showed up one day a decided not to leave.

Review: Malice

Well this makes book number eight. All in all not too shabby for two months worth of reading. After reading this book I realized there are actually other writers out there, besides James Patterson, who write a mean thriller. In fact there are writer's out there who actually write them better! This is one such writer. Malice was about a man whose wife died twelve years prior. He is now seeing her in weird places. He even receives recent photographs of his wife and a copy of her death certificate with a big red question mark drawn on it. He is then lured back to Los Angeles to try and make sense of everything that is going on. In attempts to learn more about his dead wife, he begins talking to some of her close friends; however, one by one someone is murdering them.

All in all I great book. I took it camping and couldn't put it down. One thing I liked about the story is that it was slow moving, but not so slow that you lost interest. It was slow enough to make you want more. It was kind of like Lost. you would find out one or two things, but then three or four new things would pop up. I would rate it a very enjoyable read.

For my next choice, I picked Drood, by Dan Simmons. This one is going to be a challenge. It is nearly 800 pages. It is a historical mystery about the last five years of Charles Dicken's life. So far I have only read 35 pages, but I am enjoying it. So it might be a few days before I post another book review.

Review: Dead Lucky

For a change of pace I choose this autobiography and I'm really glad I did. I never put much thought into the subject of climbing Mount Everest until I read this book. In 2006 Lincoln Hall, of Australia, set out to film the climb of a young boy trying to be the youngest person to successfully summit Mount Everest. Lincoln had tried to summit one other time in 1986 but he was forced to turn back. This time he did successfully make it to the top, but he suffered severe cerebral edema and was left for dead just below the summit. His family was notified of his unfortunate fate and he was listed as another life taken by Everest that season. Somehow he was able to survive the night and was discovered alive by other climbers. With the help of the Sherpas, Hall was able to get down the mountain and recover. He did sustain a large amount of frostbite, but other than that, he was fine.

As I read, I keep thinking what would make a person want to climb this mountain? It takes about two months to do so and costs over $25,000. The permit alone is $10,000. Plus the risk factors are through the roof. I think I'll just stick to running.

With a little less than a month to go in the reading challenge, I feel like reading another thriller, so I am going to go with Malice, by Lisa Jackson. She's a best selling author that I have never read and the story looks interesting. We will see.

To Save a Mockingbird

About two months ago one of the neighborhood cats got a hold of a Mockingbird. Luckily Jim happened to see it and was able to scary the cat away before it killed the bird. He found a little box and put the bird in it. It looked like he had a broken wing and there was some blood on his chest. Jim called around trying to find a place to take it, but it was Sunday and no one was open. Luckily my parents were down visiting and they were able to take the bird home to a lady who could fix him.



The official diagnosis was a broken wing and a large puncture wound to his chest. The bird doctor set the wing and pumped the bird full of antibiotics. She really didn't think he was going to make it. Well my dad called me yesterday with great news. The bird survived! He is able to fly and everything. Over the past few months the doctor had gotten other young mockingbirds and put them all together so they could be a family. So all of them were being released in Folsom today. I'm so happy!

A New Do

I LOVE my new haircut! Hope you do too. Here are the before and after photos. The before shots were self-taken so I am aware they are a little dopey looking.

Certain Girls: The Review

I can't believe how many books I have read during the Spring Reading Challenge. I finished my sixth one tonight. Once again I enjoyed it tremendously. Thrillers are normally my genre of choice, but ever since I started trying different selections, I realized how much I like the plain old traditional novel. "Certain Girls" was a delight to read. I had never heard of Jennifer Weiner prior to picking this book off of the library shelf. She has written other books I will most definitely read in the future. This book was written in a very interesting way. It is about a mother and her 13 year old daughter. It is written in the first person, but from the mother and daughter's prospective. The first chapter is written from the mother's view. The second chapter is written from the daughter's. It then alternates between the two. Overall, I liked reading the story from the daughter's perspective more than her mom's. I found I could relate to the daughter more, as I am not yet a mother. Two thumbs up I give it!

For my seventh book, I chose a biography. It's called "Dead Lucky: Life After Death on Mount Everest." Written by Lincoln Hall, it is his account of climbing Mount Everest. The book jacket describes it as "A gripping , almost unbelievable story of survival." I figure you can't go wrong with that...right?

False Memory: A Smoking Review

Book number 5 has been completed! This book was 627 pages and I finished it in 8 days. For me, that's a record. I think this is one of the longest books, with the exception of Harry Potter, that I have ever read. All I can say is OMG! I loved it! I have never read anything by Dean Knootz before. This book was recommended to me by a friend. I think I actually might like Dean Knootz more than James Patterson.

I'm not really going to say much as to what the book is about for fear of spoiling something. When I first picked it up and started reading, I was like this book is alright, nothing was really grabbing me. But then it just took off and I couldn't put it down. I've been reading about three hours a day for the past two days just to finish it. Now I admit, it's not a super realistic story, but hey it was realistic enough. Need a big book to pass time on a flight? Take this one!

Since my past three books were thrillers for the most part, I went to the library today and picked out three new selections. My next read will be "Certain Girls," by Jennifer Weiner. I didn't know this at the time, but she wrote the book "In Her Shoes" which was made into a movie staring Cameron Diaz. Hopefully this will be a nice change of pace.