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Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Hello, October!

I so love the month of October!  We started out seriously rainy, but this week has been pretty gorgeous.  It's my favorite kind of fall weather where it's cool in the mornings, but sunny and moderate in the day.  Perfection.  :-)  I can't believe we're already a week in!

Work has been pretty busy lately!  I guess that's a good thing, though.  Yesterday was a bit of a stressy one, but I got out of the office for lunch with my friend, A, which helped.  I recently was given a Blackberry for work purposes, which is interesting.  I don't love having two devices to lug around, but until our IT Dept. can figure out how to make friends with Android this is my lot in life. I'm not a superfan of the BB as a device, though.  It just seems so old school and boring and worky, LOL.  It's half touch screen, half keyboard and I haven't had anything more than a touch screen in a few years!

So we got the house 95% decked out for Halloween this past weekend.  We got to combine my decorations with the ones BF got last year, so that was fun!  I just have a couple small things to finish, some tiny pumpkins to buy (decorative, carving ones come later) and then we're done!  We also got discounted tickets to a haunted attraction out our way that we'll be going to one of these weekends.  Love haunted houses!  I hope to go to at least one in addition to going to one of the area pumpkin patches for some seasonal fun.

I ordered a paperback copy of "The Amityville Horror" recently because I have always wanted to read it, and this is definitely the time of year!  I have been on a Kindle sample spree lately and am trying to decide what to read next.  Some of my recent reads include:

Side Effects May Vary-Julie Murphy
YA book about a girl with cancer who thinks she's going to die and thusly undertakes a bucket list of things to do before her death with her childhood BFF.  Problem is it's mostly not a happy, good inducing list, but more of an "I'm going out with a (nasty) bang" list. Then she finds out she's in remission and has to deal with the aftermath of everything she wrought in that year!  I really enjoyed this book actually.  Good twist on the super trendy kid with cancer book that's been everywhere lately.

Why Not Me?-Mindy Kaling
LOVE Mindy Kaling.  She's funny as always and is just so relatable in so many ways!  I'm also a huge fan of her show "The Mindy Project", which I subscribed to Hulu to watch this season.  Totally worth it!

If I Could Turn Back Time-Beth Harbison
I enjoy this author and her love of time travel related storylines.  It probably wasn't my favorite book of hers, but it was definitely enjoyable


Books on my Kindle waiting to be read include:

Everything, Everything-Nicola Yoon
A Head Full of Ghosts-Paul Tremblay

This is apart from the previously mentioned slew of samples and the paperback copy of The Amityville Horror.  So many books to read!!  :-)

We saw "The Martian" this weekend.  I truly loved this book and I really enjoyed the movie. I thought Matt Damon did a good job!  BF and I went and took J and I think everyone really liked it.

In other news, I desperately need to book my Christmas travel, but the fares are outrageous and are for non-direct flights to boot.  Sigh.  This is THE week to book, so I need to get it done, but it's just hard to reconcile $600 dollars or more for a non-direct flight to NEBRASKA IN THE WINTER. It's such a racket!  Luckily my grandfather is going to buy the ticket using his miles and that should bring my cost down to a more reasonable $300 or so.  I do wish I could spend Christmas with BF sometime, but I can barely rationalize a ticket to Omaha, so asking him to get two for himself and J is out of the question.  I've always gone home for Christmas, and with my grandfather's health not being so awesome anymore, I'll likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future.  Oh well.  At least BF has J for Christmas this year so I don't have to feel extra bad about leaving him totally solo for the day!

It's almost time for my fall salon visit for a sprucing.  I'm due for my seasonal highlights/lowlights combo and a cut, and I've scheduled that for a week from Friday.  Love those days!  Beyond that, I'm currently looking forward to a concert I'm going to on Sunday night this weekend with my friend, A. We saw Andrew Belle for the first time a couple years ago and he's finally back in town, so we're going again.  He puts on a great live show and I LOVE his album.  Should be a fun night, even if it does mean having to watch the season premiere of "The Walking Dead" on DVR Monday night instead of Sunday.  ;-)

Time to wrap this up and get focused on my workload for the day.  Happy Wednesday!





14 comments:

  1. I saw the Martian too! It was so good. I never read the book, but made me wish I had read it first.

    It must be so hard to spend Christmas without BF! Last year RJ went back to his hometown and came back for one of our 3 Christmas celebrations on the 26th. This year we will stay here since the wedding is the weekend before. Who knows about next year, I can't imagine not spending it with my family.

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    1. Yes, it's a challenging compromise! With my grandfather in fairly poor health I know I will be going back for Christmas for the time being. My mom did say that "after" they would definitely consider coming out our way for CHristmas, so that may one way we'll get to spend the holidays together at some point. Of course I'm not wishing for that and would rather deal with separate Christmases in the meantime.

      Can't believe how close your wedding is getting! :-)

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  2. I agree that the whole child-with-cancer thing seems very prevalent lately, but if you're not burned out with tear dripping, I can recommend 'Before I Die', by Jenny Downham. It came out in 2007, well before the others, and still remains the only one of the genre I actually cried about, although, to be fair, that just might be because my heart wasn't yet too calloused by over exposure to the genre.

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    1. I'll have to check that one out! Thanks for the rec. Every now and again someone finds a new angle on that plot that actually makes it stand out from the rest.

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  3. Everyone is talking about the Martian! Now if only I could find someone to go to the movie with! Andddd I didn't even know they made Blackberries anymore! I remember years ago when everyone's work phone was a BB but I thought everyone had switched to android. I guess I've been out of corp America too long! The weather this week has been wonderful. I hope the sun sticks around awhile and the cold and rain stay away!

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    1. Yes, BB still exist, sadly. They are decidedly NOT FUN. :-)

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  4. Your post got me intrigued to look at plane tickets to San Diego. Ugh, not as bad as yours, but still not down with spending almost $400, especially when I JUST got a job. But, it is what it is. Maybe Miles won't get the time off so we can't go...

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  5. I wonder when/if Blackberry is going to give up on their silly keyboard and just go full-touchscreen.

    All of the sudden I'm hearing about The Martian book everywhere, and I <3 Mindy Kaling too!

    Your anecdote about Christmas travel prices is making me very scared to look at prices for a pre-holidays December flight... Ahhh, I hope they aren't too bad yet! I can't believe a ticket to Nebraska costs $600!!

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    1. They have a full touchscreen one! Unfortunately for me, the IT guy that ordered my phone mistakenly thought I'd WANT one with the keyboard. :-o WTF, mate? LOL. Luckily I don't have to use it much.

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  6. It's egregious how expensive holiday travel is! Sometimes it just doesn't seem worth it to me. In the future if I have my own family, I might declare Thanksgiving to be the second Saturday in December or something random, where airfare is literally 1/2 the price. I managed to get normal-priced Thanksgiving tickets because I'm arriving the Friday before and leaving the day after Thanksgiving. But it's annoying.

    I'm excited to read Mindy's next book! Have you been watching the new season of Mindy Project?

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    1. Yes, it really is, and it's a frustrating time of year to be stuck traveling, anyway. Unfortunately I'm stuck doing it for the time being! Got my ticket and am trying not to think about how much it was and for such a crappy flight. :-o

      I have been watching the new season of The Mindy Project and I'm really loving it. You?

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  7. Everyone is reading (and seeing) The Martian. I might have to get on that. I just read Mindy Kaling's newest book (I thought I'd like it more than I did, though I did find it enjoyable) and subscribed to Hulu -- though I haven't watched any episodes yet. Happy fall!

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    1. It's an excellent read (and see!). :-) The new season of The Mindy Project is really great and I'm loving it. They definitely get a bit more creative freedom on Hulu vs. Fox.

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