Bookish and Not-So-Bookish Thoughts is a weekly blogging event hosted by Bookishly Boisterous. It allows book bloggers (and non-book bloggers) to write about pretty much anything, bookish or otherwise (i.e. share exciting plans for the weekend, rants on things they've encountered during the week, etc.).
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1) The Disney Cruise was absolutely amazing! My only complaint: it was too short. Hahaha! Be forewarned...the "Disney Depression" is far WORSE coming off the boat than just leaving the parks. My entire family agrees. We are now trying to figure out how/when we can go again to ward off this awful depression.
2) The major highlight of the trip for me was swimming with the dolphins. I have wanted to do this since the beginning of time and as you can see from my picture, I'm slightly excited. Everyone else just smiled "normally" for their picture , but I was so crazy-excited that I'm laughing mouth-wide-open and "click" there's the picture. Love it though!
3) Pirate Night was good fun and especially enjoyed by Ethan and Captain Jack Sparrow.
4) And now for some bookish topics...I've read only 7 books so far this summer...none of them being the academic ones I planned to so I need to get started on those. I'm also still WAY behind on my Goodreads goal...what gives...this may be the first year I don't reach my goal and I didn't even raise it from last year. My favorite so far of the summer was "Me Before You" by JoJo Moyes...just finished it and LOVED it. Can't wait for the sequel in September!
5) We are into the true "summer-weather" here lately, with high chance of rain almost every afternoon. Part of me doesn't mind it so much, but then some days when I need want to go somewhere, well, it's a big drag. This week has been a week of doing very little....partially because there's really not much to do, besides going to the YMCA and the other part is that we are waiting for payday...which is TODAY - yahoo!! So today will will celebrate Payday by going to see the movie Pixels...of course, this is Ethan's pick, I could totally live without seeing it so I'm setting my expectations really low and hopefully it will at least be entertaining, I mean it does have Adam Sandler in it and I do love him!!
6) I have been reading two books at a time lately...mainly because my son keeps swiping my iPad so I need a "real" book and then I read my e-book at night after he has gone to bed. Last night, I finished reading "Summer Secrets" by Jane Green. I thought it was pretty good, her books are always a quick & easy read with good characters and a (fairly) realistic story. I read this as part of my work book club that we do for fun in the summer. We only read one book and meet once...which is fine since everyone is traveling and busy. We will meet in early August to discuss it. I am also reading "Serafina & The Black Cloak" which is a Disney Hyperion published book. I heard about it from my weekly Shelf Awareness emails and loved the description. It's a YA book of course and one I can totally see it being made into a movie, though I don't know if it will be. The story takes place at the Biltmore Mansion in Asheville, NC and though I live only 1 hour from there, I've never been, so it's been interesting to hear about the mansion in the story.
7) Our lan(d)? line has not worked at home for over a month now. Good thing not many people call us there. AT&T has been here to look at it. Couldn't fix it. Blamed our alarm company. We decided to switch to AT&T Digital Life for our alarm as well as some other features (that my security-crazed husband wanted) :) and so after all of that was installed, I figured the phone should work....reset the modem, but no luck!!! It took another week to finally get contact with an AT&T rep and now a tech is headed out tomorrow afternoon. Seriously, I don't care to even have the home phone line since it's mostly telemarketers anyway, but you know, we are in a "bundle" package and if we drop the phone, our Internet rate goes way up...it's stupid really, but whatever. Anything to save $1, right?
8) Yesterday, we had an indoor/crafty day. We had gone to the pool Monday and Tuesday and frankly, I was all "pooled out" and since Ethan would get some swim time in after Bible Study last night, it was a good day to stay inside. We made another batch of "flubber", painted some Monster Rocks & Ethan painted my portrait (my favorite!).
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| Don't you love my red hair bow? :) |
9) My latest hair dilemma is trying to figure out how or what kind of headband I can wear for my running races...I know, not a crisis, but still, there are pictures taken during and after the WDW Princess 1/2 and I'd like to look slightly decent in them. This is the problem with short hair. All those gals with long hair have it easy for races, just pull it back into a ponytail and maybe wear a visor - poof - looking good! Short hair unfortunately doesn't work that way. Oh and I can't wear a hat because it makes me crazy HOT, so that's not an option. *bummer* I'm thinking of purchasing a HippieRunner headband and seeing how it works out...I just don't know. I've been trolling Pinterest for shorthair/headband wearers...this tomboy may have to enlist the help of my hairstylist. #runnergirlproblems #shorthairproblems
10) Somewhat out of the blue I decided to give up drinking Diet Dr. Pepper for the rest of the month. I just wanted to see if I would feel any differently w/o it. I drink it purely for the taste, the caffeine does nothing for me. I don't drink coffee or tea so this is my typical morning drink. The other reason I decided to try this is that I was sick and tired of people telling me how bad diet soda is for us. Ok, really, I don't think regular soda is any better - pure sugar - but then I suppose it depends on what you want to avoid. I was raised on diet soda and going to a restaurant and ordering water with my dinner is just not an option for me. I also don't want/like iced tea or lemonade - again, for flavor and sugar. So I went 5 days without drinking Diet Dr. Pepper and since I felt no changes of any kind, did not acquire any super human powers, I went back to it. I wasn't even craving it, I was just sick of drinking something else instead. I did consume a whole lot of Grape Crystal Light, which according to WW is the same as water....though it still has artificial sweetener in it. Either way, I'm not training to be some ultra athlete and I ran my 3 other 1/2 marathons while consuming Diet Dr. Pepper and lived to talk about it, so back to my old ways I go. I am considering however, only drinking it on M-W-F or T-Th once the school year begins again. And then with the $$ I'll save from not buying them, I will put in a box to save for the Disney trip. #winning
10) Somewhat out of the blue I decided to give up drinking Diet Dr. Pepper for the rest of the month. I just wanted to see if I would feel any differently w/o it. I drink it purely for the taste, the caffeine does nothing for me. I don't drink coffee or tea so this is my typical morning drink. The other reason I decided to try this is that I was sick and tired of people telling me how bad diet soda is for us. Ok, really, I don't think regular soda is any better - pure sugar - but then I suppose it depends on what you want to avoid. I was raised on diet soda and going to a restaurant and ordering water with my dinner is just not an option for me. I also don't want/like iced tea or lemonade - again, for flavor and sugar. So I went 5 days without drinking Diet Dr. Pepper and since I felt no changes of any kind, did not acquire any super human powers, I went back to it. I wasn't even craving it, I was just sick of drinking something else instead. I did consume a whole lot of Grape Crystal Light, which according to WW is the same as water....though it still has artificial sweetener in it. Either way, I'm not training to be some ultra athlete and I ran my 3 other 1/2 marathons while consuming Diet Dr. Pepper and lived to talk about it, so back to my old ways I go. I am considering however, only drinking it on M-W-F or T-Th once the school year begins again. And then with the $$ I'll save from not buying them, I will put in a box to save for the Disney trip. #winning
