The Books

Ok, so... since many of you mentioned looking into the books that I mentioned in my last post (The Sword of Truth series), I thought that I would give you a little more info as well as my take (cause I know how much my opinion means to all of you ;)).

First, there are some things that you should know before we begin...

1. There are twelve books in the series.
2. I have only read the first three (I'm waiting for the next six to come from amazon)
3. They are considered sci-fi/fantasy, but fall mostly in the fantasy realm (wizards, magic and such)

Now that we have that established, let's begin :) I suppose I should start at the beginning. I first discovered them while being entertained by a new tv series. It's called Legend of the Seeker, and  it's based off of these books. Let me just stop right there and say that if you are interested in the books, you should consider checking out at least the pilot episode of LotS first (you can watch it on their website). It's not true to the books in many ways, but it will determine whether you will enjoy the story. So I began watching the series (which I immediately fell in love with), and when I saw that it was based off of a book, I knew  needed to read it. So during one of my book shopping sprees, I ordered the first three (they come in boxed sets of threes). I devoured them. Though I can't say that they are great works of literary prowess, the language is rich and descriptive, the story is wonderful and imaginitive, and they're just enoyable :) There's intrigue, adventure, battles for the fate of the world, and (of course) love. If you enjoy a good fantasy every now and again, I would definitely say you should check em out :)

One last thing that I should mention... thus far, I have only seen the first three and the very last three in stores. You'll probably need to order the rest. Also, they tend to take amazon a day or two more than for other books, so you might want to plan ahead.

Thus endeth my spiel. Let me know if you pick em up. I very much want your opinions :)

Much Ado

It's finally snowing :) I so love snow.

Other than that excitement, my life has been rather peaceful as of late. I'm finally starting to really settle into my work schedule, and Josh seems to be as acclimated to a night schedule as one can be.

There's been such little excitement around here that the highlight of my weekend was the fact that I made cupcakes on Saturday. They turned out lovely :) 

Tonight we're going to sign the lease for our townhouse. We won't start moving anything until March, but Aladin (the nurse who owns the place) is leaving for Japan next week, so we need to get all the details squared away :)

Meanwhile, I've been completely enchanted by The Sword of Truth series. I'm waiting on the next books to arrive, and the wait is driving me crazy!

Anyway... thus endeth one of my more random posts. Have a lovely January day :)
 

What to do...?

I have today and tomorrow off of work due to MLK day and the inauguration. With the base on near lock-down, and the district being a madhouse, I will most likely while away the hours holed up in our little home with the puppies. Hopefully I won't set anything else on fire. I hope y'all have a lovely MLK day :)

Hello, my name is Lauren...

...and I am a walking disaster.



So... we've had my car back for a few days now (and I love it! I somehow forgot how much I love driving that car :))... And apparently something within me decided that it had been too long since I had last wreaked havoc. So this morning, I may have accidentally set the teapot on fire when I turned on the wrong burner to hard-boil some eggs. Don't worry, I put the flames out before they hurt anything else.I'm just glad we don't have gas burners still or this could've been way worse.

Anybody know how to clean melted plastic off of a burner?

An Update... and then some

Well, I can now officially say that I am an employee of the Journal of Orthopedic and Sports Physical Therapy (I'll pause to let y'all cheer ;)). Though I certainly give myself abundant stress while job hunting, it's amazing how I am always taken care of. This is the second job which has been flung in my face (figuratively speaking), and I'm enjoying the serendipity of it all :) In addition to my excitement over employment, I also find myself with a little adventure coming in the near future. The Journal's annual board meeting/convention is coming up and my boss has insisted that I accompany them... to Las Vegas. So, in less than a month, I shall be traversing the country with my new co-workers. I'm sure an anecdote or two will come of it :)

All else in life is going mostly smoothly around here. As of Friday night, Josh is officially on night schedule for the next three months. While I know that we will find our rhythm soon, the shift from day to night is always something of a challenge (especially now that I have a 45 minute commute to get home each evening :)

I have been filling this weekend with much planning and plotting for the townhouse which we will move into this spring (I know I have time, but I'm all about planning ;)). By this I mean (mostly) I have been sorting through picture deciding which ones I want prints of. In doing this, I have stumbled upon some gems which I'd forgotten about. Including this one...

From A Life of Delight

I took this during my last week in Louisiana as proof that I really did live just down the road from a gator farm :)

Anyway... I must be off now to begin making dinner for Josh to take with him tonight as well as begin preparing for meals later in the week (slowly but surely I'm getting the hang of this whole "preparation" thing). I hope you have all had a lovely weekend and may your week be completely delightful :)

The Wall Moved, I Swear.

Ok, so... I know that I'm probably supposed to be writing something about this past year, or my resolutions, or even some basic reflection, but I seem to have more important things to do (it could be true!). I have some good news, and an embarrasing and unfortunate tale. I'll start with the good news.

I got a job!!! And by that I mean, I have been given an unofficial offer for a position pending reference checks etc. Everybody cheer with me now... YAY :D Ok, now as I'm sure that you are all simply dying to know what my new position entails, let me oblige. I'll be with the organization that I've been temping at, so I have a couple weeks of it to know what I'm getting into. Basically, they're a medical journal focused on orthopedics and physical therapy (much more Josh than me, but whatever...). It's non-profit (which I love) and very small (I'll be working in an office with three other people). I'll mostly be doing the random things around the office (stuffing envelopes, verifying subscription lists, updating subscriber information...) as well as basic copy-editing. I'm not necessarily swooning for the job itself, but as a whole, it's a really great opportunity. The people are really nice. It's a fairly relaxed atmosphere. I'll be on salary (yay for paid vacations ;))... And, as an added bonus, I'll never have to wear this again...

From Work

I mean, I'm all about safety and all, but I was never very pumped about that hard hat and those safety glasses ;)

Ok, that's my good news. Now, I need to share with you a story that I am in no way proud of. The only reason this tale is even seeing the light of the blogosphere is because I've found that when I am ashamed of something, it sometimes helps to tell the story to friends. That, and because I don't have to be there to see your reaction in person. Now then, let's start with a little background... Our house on base has a rather small single-car garage. Since my car is newer (and by newer, I mean we bought it brand new 8 months ago), I was designated as the garage-parker. I've a pretty confident garage parker for a while now, so I had no qualms with this set-up. In fact, shortly after we moved here, I mentioned to Josh that he seemed to take the garage parking much slower than I did. His graceful response was that not only did he not have a lot of practice, but also, my car doesn't have collapsable side mirrors like most do, so if he ever accidentally caught one of the edges of the garage, my mirror would be toast. With a nod from me, that was the end of that conversation. I would like to mention here that one of the things that makes it a tight fit is that our trash can lives in the corner right next to the garage, so it typically invades the garage door space by two or three inches. Moving on... It was extremely windy here today (I think Josh said it got up to 50 mph). There was enough wind to move a large trash can. So as I'm pulling into the driveway after work, I noticed that our trash can was much further away from the wall (i.e. taking up much more garage door space) than normal. I could see that it would be a really really tight squeeze to get my car in without hitting either the trash can on one side or the wall on the other, but I was confident. I knew that I could squeeze past without needing to get out to move the trash can. So I went for it. I totally cleared that trash can. The wall, however, jumped out and bit my car. Remember that whole non-collapsable mirror thing. Yeah... I'm now missing my passenger side mirror. The end.

Needless to say, it was not a pleasant night in our little home. I am ashamed. I suppose it's a good thing that I have a job so that I can pay for things like a new mirror for my car :/ 

And now, I must away to bed because I'm getting that feeling like I stopped making sense somewhere around "Ok, so...". Before I go, though, I'd like to make note of the fact that this would be an excellent time to tell me about some of your past accidents which caused major damage. Maybe the time you flooded your parents house when you were there visiting for a week and trying to fix a leak, or the time you broke the spoiler off of your dad's car trying to put a decal on his back window... You've all done that too... right?