Books – Page 6 – Lisa Holcomb

Kindle cover

I don’t think I posted about this, but I got a 2nd generation Kindle for my birthday, slightly used, but in great condition (and very inexpensive, as well). I’m so excited about it! I had books downloaded and was reading (and fending off children who wanted to borrow it) within an hour of getting it.

The only problem with it? No cover. Just the Kindle and the cord came in the mail. With three kids and my propensity to just shove things in my bag and move on, the poor Kindle doesn’t stand much of a chance in it’s nakedness.

The answer? Well, I made a cover. I started with a little bag a friend had made me years ago that just happened to be nearly the right size for the Kindle. I also had a couple flat pieces of styrofoam from one of David’s gifts, a piece of super-soft cashmere fleece leftover from baby blanket making(it was $20/yard, long story there), a bit of velcro leftover from another project, a lost button, and some ribbon off a gift. Total cost: $0 My favorite kind of project.

So after a bit of time with my handy-dandy scissors and some liquid stitch, here it is:

The inside:

The outside:

All laced up and ready to go:

I do have a “real” case on order from ebay…the kind that makes the Kindle feel like a book with a booklight attached. I’m sure it’ll be nice, but it won’t arrive for a week or more and this case is just sooo soft.

Books, health, I Really Do Cook, My Own Personal Weirdness

Day One: Food, Fitness, & Faith

During the spring campout a church a few of us ladies were chatting (while making lunches for the kids) about how we were all in need of a little help with our waistlines. Most of us had gained 40 or more pounds since our weddings (although one had gained a lot less, she was a lot closer to her wedding than the rest of us as well) and we had all tried lots of diets or exercise plans and not had them work.

Well, one of the ladies had a new plan: God, by way of the Sam’s Club book counter:

Food, Fitness, and Faith for Women: A 21 Day Journey to a New You

We all agreed that God had been the one thing really lacking in our past plans, so we got hold of the book and we set a start date and now that day is here.

The book is pretty simple and slim on details: you find your own diet and exercise plan, something doctor approved, and then this book provides the Scripture and encouragement and opportunity to journal daily. A little paragraph about health, a lot of quotes from the Bible and elsewhere, and then a journaling prompt.

Here’s how today went:

I did really good in the morning: got up, read the chapter, made myself a little plaque with the main quote from the book to put up in my kitchen, worked out, ate a reasonable breakfast & skipped snacking.

Afternoon wasn’t bad either: a decent lunch, then skipped the afternoon snack because I was having a high calorie dinner, walked a fair distance to the car & back.

Evening though, well, some of you know that I went back home after the play. Nick didn’t go back to work (surprise!), but had been preparing a special dinner.. So I did not do well in the evening after all that work the rest of the day. *sigh*

But that’s okay! The book didn’t really have any goal for today other than make a list of healthy choices you’d like to follow and unhealthy ones you’d like to drop and an admonition to look at portion sizes, which I totally did.

My healthy habits list:

Eat less bad for me things
Drink more H20
Exercise at least 5 days a week

Bad habits to change:

Eating junk just for something to do
Drinking caffeine & alcohol
Not exercising because “I don’t have time.”

Books

Books 2011

Books 1-5 posted about here.

There were a couple other books I read before the Kage Baker ones, but it’s been so long that a) I can’t remember and b) I’ve already returned that batch to Steph. That’s the way it goes sometimes.

The Sons of Heaven (The Company): The Last Book. Oh how I cried. I was really sad to be finished with this series and it seemed to end so quickly in this book, all the pieces coming together beautifully.

Not Less Than Gods (The Company Series): I actually read this one last, as that was where it was in the pile. It was a good book, but my heart wasn’t in it at that point.

The Anvil of the World: Kage Baker writes fantasy! Who knew!? I’ve had this book in my pile for ages, never realizing it was Kage Baker until Steph mentioned she had the rest of those books. I was a bit confused at first because I really thought for a while that they were in space, not on land, but once I got over that I really enjoyed the characters and storylines in this book, although I did think it felt a bit more like a long line of short stories than one whole novel.

The House of the Stag: I really think this one should have been first in the series, though I did not enjoy it as much as Anvil. It was harder to get into, with a lot more anguish and suffering than I usually enjoy in books, although I did come to enjoy the backstory of the world.

10.

The Bird of the River: this book follows different characters than the two before it, but we get a few cameos and overall I liked it better than the first couple books.

11-17.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians :
I read all five of the first series of Olympian books, plus the Demigod Files and the Ultimate Guide books all in one fail swoop, mainly because my eldest child was checking them out from the school library. I read the first one ahead of him to make sure it was okay, then raced to keep up. It was the first series we read at the same time together and we really enjoyed being able to share it. I enjoyed what the author did with bringing the gods & goddesses up to modern day. I think in some ways it would be much better to read the guide books first, though, so you know more about what the characters and creatures are first (and pronunciation guides for the kiddos, too, as David was mispronouncing things left and right.)

18. Mr. Chatworth (I think) – some weird book about a giant dog. It looked interesting from the description, but once I found out that this menacing guy everyone was so scared of was a giant dog, I couldn’t read any further.

19-21.

The Callahan Chronicals: I really enjoyed the first couple books in the Callahan series, but petered out after the second one. Since I have the omnibus, I feel compelled to read the third one just for completions sake, but I’ll wait until I hit another book lull for that. That being said, I did enjoy the first couple books. I love the idea of Callahan’s Bar and it’s helpful band of sometimes-not-so-merry drinkers.

22.

The Time Travelers (The Gideon Trilogy): I really enjoyed this first book. The story was interesting, the kids were realistic (which becomes drastically more important once you have kids), and I loved all the historic detail.

23.

The Time Thief (The Gideon Trilogy): also a very enjoyable book, but there were a few problems with head-jumping pov’s. I didn’t feel like there was quite the same level of historical detail in this one, either. Still very interesting series and I love that the author pulls no punches with the characters.

Around the House, Books, Computers and Internet, Crafts, Everywhere But Home, Family Time, Friend Time, Parenting, What I Love

Spring Break

This last week was our spring break from school. I’ve already told you about Monday and Tuesday, so I’ll start today’s story with Wednesday. We didn’t make any big plans for Wednesday, since that was the day that we were swapping out D for B at Nana & Pa’s house, but it turned out to be a big day anyway. My parents came up to town and told us that they’d decided not to make us wait for a month to get our new van (which is their old one), they were going to sign it over to us right now. 🙂 And so we began our day long journey to get the car retitled, re-registered, and in all ways made our own. We ended up visiting the registry twice, once with just me and my dad and once with both of us, my mom, and two of the kids as well. By the end of the day we’d gotten it done. G and I spent the rest of the afternoon emptying out our old van, then vacuuming it out, scrubbing it down inside and out, then cleaning all the windows we could reach, all so Nick could start driving it as soon as he came home. (D spent the afternoon catching up on three days worth of Animal Crossing.)

Thursday morning we visited with my parents a bit, then went home very quickly for D’s early playdate with his best friend C. They had a great time playing video games, riding bikes & skates, and wrestling on the trampoline.

While the kids were playing, I once again worked on some jewelry (a post on all of that coming soon). That afternoon my mom watched the kids so my dad and I could also go out and check out a netbook at Best Buy, which they did not have in stock, and to buy a camera, which they did have. We spent some time updating his regular laptop and getting it set up with the camera software and then learning the new cameras ways before going home for the evening.

B came home just before dinner, bearing sundaes from McDonald’s. My in-laws got a tour of the new van and all it’s shininess before they left.

Friday morning B’s friend A came over for a playdate. I made some more jewelry. They spent quite a bit of time playing the Wii, but we also had a picnic in the backyard, since the weather was beautiful for it. We experimented with playing baseball/tee ball in the yard.

After he went home, Nick and the kids and I went out to the bookstore to get the kids their celebration books for having great report cards (and we may have picked up a couple things for ourselves as well. maybe. possibly. what? we never ever do! Leviathon & Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld and Good Eats: the Middle Years.). D got the second Percy Jackson book, B got three Magic Treehouse books (#20, #21, and a research guide about Knights and Castles), and G got two Barbie books (one 3 Musketeers and one Fairies) and an audio book about the movie Toy Story. Then we headed out to tour the big new exciting store in town: our local markets version of Whole Foods.

It’s called “Fresh” and wow, was it packed with people. It’s a beautiful store, filled with lots of things our regular stores don’t carry: lots of organic, whole grain products and a huge array of cheeses, meats, and ready-to-eat foods (for which there is a balcony seating area outside).

We amazingly managed not to lose any children, nor to knock down any displays, though we did pick up a lot of stuff that was knocked down by the little old lady near us, as she had a large purse and was trying not to hit my kids with it, and since we were behind her in the herd (seriously, it was so packed that you pretty much followed the same people all through the store) we did the picking up. We eventually made it back home and Nick and the kids tidied up there while I went over to help my dad with his new netbook, which he’d picked up that morning. I did all my computer magic over the course of a couple hours and got him hooked up with all his software and file needs and headed back home to start reading my book. Bwahaha. Nick went over and spent the evening hanging out with my dad.

Saturday we hung out with my parents again in the morning before we left for church. The kids climbed ropes and played on the swings. Nick and D and Dad played chess. It was a good morning. We went to church, listened to our new pastor (who was a fabulous speaker, lots of discussion of Greek words, loved it), and then kids had snacks while my m-i-l and I practiced our duet on the big piano (which has keys that are very hard to press compared to my piano at home). We headed home, I changed clothes, and headed out for Girls Night Out. Nick and the kids stayed home and did whatever boys do when their mama is away (hung from the ceiling? shot themselves out into space in rockets? who knows! It was Boys Night In!). I had a lovely time with my lady friends and this time we managed to get a photo of all of us together (something we’ve never managed in the two years we’ve been meeting).

Came home and couldn’t sleep, as I am always excited after a night out, so I stayed up late finishing the book I was reading (the second Percy Jackson book; trying to keep up with D), never realizing that the clocks hadn’t already been set ahead for daylights savings time.

Yesterday we all got up unreasonably early. The day turned out to be one of those ones were everything goes wrong. G ran into my room yelling that D was throwing up from atop his bunk bed, B was asleep below, mercifully, or there’d have been extra mess. I got up, cleaned up the mess, got the boy into the bathroom, then looked at the clock: 5:45am. My husband, who was mysteriously in the kitchen and not at work (he’s been working a lot of overtime lately), hugged me and told me he’d reset all the clocks already so I didn’t have to. I tried to go back to bed, but couldn’t since I had a snuggly, wiggly boy (G) in there with me. So we all got up, ate breakfast, then sat around reading until it was time to leave for the last basketball practice of the season. David and I stayed home because of his icky tummy. He played more Wii and I wandered here and there doing chores and trying to finish up another necklace. The laundry that I thought was clean was mysteriously dirty, the necklace that I “finished” I turned out to have left a bead out of.

After the other kids came back home, we tried to go to the zoo and got verbally assaulted by the director of said zoo for bringing in a check that wasn’t signed by me — it was a gift membership from my in-laws, which I had filled out paperwork for and brought in with me, but he refused to listen one word I said, no matter how polite I was. It was a disaster all around, so I decided to take my children elsewhere. We got to the frozen custard place and discovered that my two-for-one coupons had been left in the hallway when we were swapping stuff around between the vans earlier in the week, but by then I decided to just make the best of it and we paid full price. The custard was perfect and by the time I’d finished venting to my husband, my best friend, and finally to my mother-in-law (who is going up to talk to the zoo about their communication skills today) I was feeling much better. We had a movie night with the kids, watching an old Valerie Bertinelli movie about a robot dog, which they loved. The movie ran late, so the kids ran late getting into baths and storytime, so it was nearly 9:45pm before they went to bed. I made their lunches last night and set out clothes for them so they could sleep in this morning and it’s just now time to get them up so that’s the end of this post.

Around the House, Books, Crafts, Family Time, Lifelong learning, My Own Personal Weirdness, Parenting

Happy President’s Day

We’ve had quite a day here. My eldest son hit a golf ball with a baseball bat and it went straight through the kids bedroom window. The glass company said they’d be here in less than 2 hours, but it took many phone calls and 7 hours for them to get here. Delightful, really. I made a list of good things about all this in my head all day long, to counteract the screaming, hysterical woman in my head. Such fun.

So anyways, since it was President’s Day and I’m a theme-loving kind of gal, we had a whole day of fun planned.

First we played Animal Crossing. We like taking care of our little town and I think it’s good that this game teaches them to take care of the environment with the recycling center and to pull all the weeds and take care of planting all around and not just in their own little places. It’s fun!

Then, for second breakfast, we had what I like to call “The Color of Money Muffins” which were green muffins with multicolored sprinkles inside to mimic the dollars that Presidents adorn. They were chocolate orange flavored. Yumm.

The kids played outside, which is when the glass thing happened.

After cleaning up all the glass and moving around furniture and cleaning up all the toys we found under said furniture, we made George Washington-style hats to wear around the rest of the day and also made cherry trees out of craft paper and yet more of the little red pom-poms leftover from Christmas.

Another thing we did was a game called “Ask the Kids.” The first question: If you could be president for a day what would you do?
D: make some laws, like going green and saving animal habitats.
B: wanted to save the animals, too, by checking if they were okay. for people, he wanted to have floating chairs for all the elderly people, the kind that don’t have to be pushed by anyone and that float high enough that it would be easy for them to get in and out of cars easily.
G: didn’t want to be president. he wanted to be a robber and steal peoples clothes (?!?!?!) or, even BETTER, to be a Jedi and battle the droids.

The second question: What do you think the President of the USA does all day?
D: He stays in his office and works on paper and passes the laws.
B: WORK! He works all day!
G: I don’t know. Maybe he writes to his friends every day.

The third question: Why do we have a president?
D: So we can stay free from other countries. In the beginning people wanted George Washington to be King, but he said “No, I want to be President.”
B: He’s here so we don’t get robbed or anything. He makes laws to help us.
G: (ran off & had to be dragged back) Because someone needs to do some work.

The kids left for a while after all this to hang out with my parents while the glass man came…or didn’t come, as happened for several hours. I crawled around their room with a light, checking for glass in unexpected places (it was still everywhere, despite vacuuming, because we have Berber carpet in that room), and did laundry, and entertained B when he came back because the Lord of the Rings cartoon was too scary.

We were also going to make cherry tarts today, but since we didn’t make it to the grocery, that has to wait until tomorrow, I guess. For storytime tonight we read some of our President books: “Arthur Meets the President” by Marc Brown, “Stand Tall, Abe Lincoln” by Judith St. George & illustrated by Matt Faulkner, and “Sesame Street: I Want to be President” by Michaela Muntean and illustrated by Tom Brannon. We really recommend the Sesame Street one, as it explained the best what a president actually does. The Abe Lincoln one is really good, too, but we’re not done with it yet, as it’s a very long one. The Arthur one is mainly Arthur-ish, but still good.

Anyway, hope everyone else had a great President’s Day! 🙂

Books, Friend Time

From Twitter: 12-1-2010

11:51 am: Small world: the Daily Science Fiction magazine story in my inbox this morning was written by my friend from high school’s brother. Weird! #

From Twitter

Around the House, Books

From Twitter: 11-26-2010

9:06 am: Had a fabulous turkey day yesterday with new friends. Stayed up til 3am reading, then kids up at 4:45am. Now hanging on couch with kiddos & movie.

Books

Books this year

I was really terrible at keeping track of the books I read this year. Here is a not in order, not complete list of some of the things I read:

1. The Girl With the Glass Feet by Ali Shaw

2. The Girl in the Orange Dress by Margot Starbuck

3. All the Lovely Bad Ones by Mary Downing Hahn

4. Anna to the Infinite Power by Mildred Ames

5. Hamlet’s Blackerry by William Powers

6. Pandora’s seed: the unforseen cost of civilization by Spencer Wells

7. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by ???

8. Chains of Ice by Cnristina Dodd

9. Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

10. Kisses and Lies by Lauren Henderson

11. Duainfey by S. Lee & S. Miller

12. The Hotel Under the Sand by Kage Baker

13. The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages

14. White Time by Margo Lanagan

15. Vidalia in Paris by Sasha Watson

16. Total Oblivion, More or Less by Alan Denix

17. The Explosionist by Jenny Davidson

18. The Empress of Mars by Kage Baker

19. Soulless by Gail Carrier

20. Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

21. Mister Monday by Garth Nix

22. Tuesday by Garth Nix

23. Drowned Wednesday by Garth Nix

24. Sir Thursday by Garth Nix

25. Lady Friday by Garth Nix

26. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

27. Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr

28. Kiss Me, Kill Me by Lauren Henderson

29. Village Affairs by Cassandra Chan

30. Trick of the Mind by Cassandra Chan

31. A Spider on the Stairs by Cassandra Chan

32. Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress XXI

33. Adele: Jane Eyre’s Hidden Story by Emma Tenant

34. Jane Eyre

35. Wide Sargasso Sea

36. Drink Down the Moon by Charles de Lint

37. Jack the Giant Killer by Charles de Lint

38. Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse

39. White Picket Fences by ???

40. Scouting the Divine by Margarent Feinberg

41. Lady of Quality by Georgette Heyer

42. How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbaleistier

43. Liar by Justine Larbaleistier

44. The Host by Stephenie Meyer

45. City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

46. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer

47. Three Cups of Tea

48. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

49. Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris

50-56. Books 1-7 of the Buffy Season 8 Omnibus’

56-58. Books 1-3 of the Serenty Graphic Novel Omnibus’

59. The Shepherd’s Tale (Serenty Graphic Novel)

60. White Cat by Holly Black

61. something about a queen by Phillippa Gregory

62-64. Cranford books by Elizabeth Gaskell

65. Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

66. Emma by Jane Austen

(How I came up with this list: 1. Printed lists from the library of books I checked out, 2. Lists I made of books to return to various people, 3. Books my book club remembered reading this year, 4. lists of the years best YA or bestsellers that I remembered reading. Ok, maybe I didn’t read some of this list this particular year. But they’re not showing up on my lists of years pasts and I know that I read them, so it must’ve been this year, right? Hehehehe)

Books, Music

I write 750 words a morning; sometimes they’re for you.*

I got up this morning, wandered through the house, and thought to myself “How is it that it all gets THIS messy in just one day of me not tidying?” Nick said that I do more than I think I do or than maybe he thinks I do around the house. No, the house is never totally clean, but is anyones? I mean, other than those live-alone (or just couples) neat freaks? I really don’t think so.

We spent the morning yesterday playing outside before heading over to the DSP for a play date with Greg’s friend B. DSP has changed themselves up with a lobby over in the front corner near the street while their real lobby is under construction. They have opened up this room in the middle that I always though was a classroom so that we can all easily move between the rooms and I was so interested in that room. At one end is a stage, a real stage with doors going out the sides for entries and such. It had a nifty ceiling and places for projectors and lights. They’d moved some of their displays in there, things that used to be in the hallway and out here, where you can see them, the kids were delighted with them. In the hallway, where they were, you kind of just rushed past them on your way somewhere else. There wasn’t enough light or room to back up and look at them (plus if you were trying to look at them, you were in the way of other people rushing through the hallway).

So anyway, we had a play date. Greg & his friend B. played for a little while before B. had his screaming fit. He screamed through three play areas before B’s mom dragged him out to the car for a time out. I don’t think I’d have lasted that long with a kid screaming and pulling on me. Greg put on a play for me in the theatre area (not the place with the stage, but the little house in the other room) about a mechanic with a dinosaur hat that didn’t fit. It was pretty funny, especially since he was wearing a painter’s smock with cowgirls riding horses on it. B’s mom and B. finally came back in once he’d calmed down. By then Greg and I were in the play car, driving to the “saladbee” place. We still don’t know what that word was supposed to be. Greg’s response: “The place! Where they have the saladbees!” No idea. We played in the ambulance for a while after that and then let the kids roam on their own in the big play area together while we talked about Bible studies and different views on various verses. After that we had some lunch; or rather, the boys had some lunch while B’s mom tried to get B. not to wipe his hands on his clothes and I tried to get Greg to eat some carrots (we both failed in our attempts, sadly). Then the kids played in the toddler area, jumping in and out of that little room until it was time to go.

Greg and I came home and I attempted to eat lunch, but the tomato soup we had was fancy and weird flavored, so Nick ate it. We watched most of an episode of Hawaii 50 before he had to go back to work. By then I was feeling pretty puny, so I sent Greg off to watch a video while I laid down on the couch to rest. Eventually I took my temperature because I was freezing cold and the thermostat told me that the house was hot and it turned out that I had a fever. I think it must have just been the arthritis related fever because I am feeling lots less achy and no fever this morning. I bundled up in a blanket while Greg played outside before we went to get the big kids.

We picked them up, brought them home, and started them practicing their piano music and theory before moving on to David’s piano lesson. Well, it was supposed to be David’s lesson, but the piano teacher had a mostly verbal lesson to give both kids, so she did a bit of David’s lesson, then called both kids over to tell them the story of how the piano came to be. David will have a bit of a lesson this afternoon, as will Ben. I liked how the piano teacher incorporated the Bible into her lesson, telling the kids that in Genesis 4:20, they tell of Jubal and his brother Jabal and how one of them was a master of string and organ. That really got the kids interested. 🙂 I need to find them a map of Italy today so that they can see where the language of music comes from. I’m sure there must be one somewhere on the internet that shows where all the major composers came from.

*ok, so this isn’t really 750 words. It’s not always. A lot of times it’s more than that, but I am trying for 750 words of something every day, just to keep up the habit of writing, if not always the fiction writing. Some mornings, like this morning, my brain is a little too scrambled for fiction. Those mornings are lucky for the blog because then I’ll ramble about daily life instead. Woo hoo for scrambled brains!