Monthly Archives: July 2009

Reading books

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I just had a discussion with my husband (on the phone, he’s out-of-town) about reading books chronologically or not, and why it should be a certain way. There are differences to authors and series and authors and all the books they write. The gist of it being: how an author intends for their work to be read could mean more to some than others, and in my opinion, for me I like to read things in order of how they were written and published since that goes the route that makes sense, one or two or three books about some subject builds on characters if they are in more than one book, things mean different things when viewed from the beginning to the end, or from the end first then backwards. (Consider the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis. I only like the series read as published, it means so much more. The magic of it is lesser to such a degree when read as they are numbered by the publisher in our current times. This is a very deep topic, I don’t mean to entirely flesh it out in this post, only to reference the idea.)

I started reading The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly recently. I asked my husband if there was anything I could read (he buys books all the time) and he gave me that one, telling me “it’s a stand-alone book” which is a big thing for me to understand if it is or not first, before delving into it.

So I started reading it the other night and found references to a characters past life and just haven’t read much of it, falling asleep fast when I read at night time in bed. The references bugged me, and today I added the book to my sidebar since I hadn’t done so yet, and googled the book to get the authors name since I couldn’t remember it and just wanted to “copy & paste” it, being lazy, I guess you could call it.

I didn’t close the page I opened on the author’s site, and later coming back to my laptop I noticed it and clicked around and read some on his site, and quickly gleaned the information that incensed my emotive base of what I read and why.

The Scarecrow may be a “stand-alone book” –sort of. Not really. The Poet by Michael Connelly from 1996. That was all I had to read about to know I have read too much of The Scarecrow already. In my opinion, that is

New Copper Coil Heatsink

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I was able to get a new heatsink for my desktop computer this past weekend. It’s a beautiful copper coil sort, totally better than the old one that serviced my Athlon 64 processor for so long. The processor is running @ 38 d. Celsius thus far, great for putting it in with the new heatsink just the other day.

The best thing about it is that it can fit onto other processors, so as long as it lives I can switch out my mb to something better and get a better processor and keep using the nice copper coil heatsink.

My Birthday July 18, 2009

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We did go to SC and get some fireworks 1 2 for my birthday, and to pick up milk from the farm yesterday.

I have my birthday cheesecake in the oven. (yes, I am making my own birthday cake, beats having one from a store …)

Frank had me open my presents already. A bunch of scrapbooking stuff from Target, the $1 stuff, but it’s good stuff, a cool throw he found in a store in Greenville, SC the other week, it’s a baseball thing, made of 90% cotton/recycled cotton, remainder virgin acrylic. I’ll have to get a picture taken & uploaded, or find one online …

My big gift was a Wacom intuos 4 graphics tablet. I’ve wanted on for years, and this is a nice one. It’s the S version, a start-up for me (he agreed, planned that already, that this would graduate to the children and I’d get a larger tablet someday.)

So now I need space to work in. More than ever.

Happy Birthday to me!

Best present comes later … setting off the fireworks linked above. Also have several Crackling Jets and Magic Crystals; as well as firecrackers left over from the 4th, which were part of what we bought and got “free” from Phantom with our purchase then, so they are NOT the ones I prefer. I like Black Cat firecrackers.

Fireworks 2009

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On July 4th of this year (2009) we had our 2nd Annual Family Fireworks show, but previous years tradition really started it with fountains only, back a few years more. This year we increased what we did, hand picking each item ourselves, not getting any “pre packaged” things.

We go to Phantom Fireworks off of exit 1 on I-85 in SC. We ended up with 3 boxes that were awesome show enders. We had a bunch of different mortars, and some big and medium fountains, little things, and battery things, and some smaller boxes of things.

In particular the big boxes were Johnny B. Good, and Live Free or Die. Both were $109 and PF has a buy 1 get 1 free deal all the time, so both for the one $109 price. We also got a smaller box that sells for $79 (Motherload) free because of everything we bought added up … and we got firecrackers free, and a battery thing … and a medium small pretty nice little box show thing.

I wrote down in a notebook everything from the packages, and also have the detailed receipt still. This is the first year I’ve gotten this detailed about what we had, to go over it and have history and increase with what we liked and where we want to go from there better next year.

We also had started doing a fountain show on New Years Eve, but only one of them since 2007 was the first year for that, and 2008 we had gone to Michigan to see FIL and weren’t home on NYE. I am hoping we can do a decent mortar, box, and fountain show for this NYE.

My birthday is in a few days (Saturday) and I love fireworks and have wanted to have fireworks of all sorts on my birthday for many years. I finally got Frank to start getting fountain packages at Costco for July 4th in 2006, which started him on the road of actually enjoying what I’ve been wanting to do myself, get mortar and big “cake” shows going.

We had the Pyrotechnics Motherload box this year and WERE going to save it for my birthday, but after we did Live Free or Die, we ran into the house and got the Motherload box and set that off before finishing with Johnny B. Good.

So I knew I wanted something on my birthday still and Frank also kinew and said we’d probably do something, so here is the week. My birthday is on Saturday, we get paid today, and he said this morning

I need to figure out what I can do about getting an appointment in SC before the end of the week.

… which was code for we/I can go to Phantom Fireworks in SC, and I’d like to find a business appt. to make it a business trip which means, two birds with one stone, make the trip economical gas-wise. Old story with him, vacations never happen for the same reason. :rolleyes:

My Kittens

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My newest kitties are 12 weeks old today. I’m keeping the boy and girl (Prince and Princess Aurora) of the feral kitten group born April 20th under our house … the largest two of the kittens. I separated them right before they turned 6 weeks old because the mother cat was starting to bring dead birds to them (they had all moved into the basement a few weeks before with our slow aide in suggestion since they were born) & she was absent from them for many hours a day. These two seemed the most advanced, and still are. They are very sweet, purr a lot, play with each other wonderfully, and our other cats have accepted them for the most part. At first they stayed exclusively in my bathroom, and then I let them out some, and then more. They still do spend the night in the bathroom, and parts of days, always in there if we aren’t home.

The other kittens stay in my daughters bedroom, and the one cat we have that isn’t spayed yet (we found her outside when she was a kitten, we keep her inside) has adopted them, she nurses them (though she hasn’t had any kittens ever, or tomcat service) and does the basic mothering that a cat generally offers her kits. She’s very attached to them, and they to her. They rarely purr, but do play with each other, and are nice. My kittens are purr machines and seem very well ajusted.

Those other 3 kittens need homes still, and we have no one that we’ve found that wants one yet, and shelters are filled up already thus far … We just can’t keep them, but do NOT want to bring them to a kill shelter, the only type that is open to receiving right now.

My two sweeties are laying on the couch together right next to me, stretched out sleeping. I posted a picture today that’s in my PHOTOS category, that I took on May 29th when I had just separated them from their litter/mother. They were so cute and have only gotten cuter.

Link: My two new kittens video on YouTube … avail. in HD