What's New...

Well, here we are in February already. It's hard to believe. I've come a long way in a short month of 2008.

For starters, I've already read 15 books this year. I know, I know, I was going to take it easy. But it's like an addiction. I can't seem to slow down. I don't know what to do with myself any more when I don't have a book in my hand. I've, of course, stopped and started several books, which haven't counted towards my total. But unfortunately it hasn't done much to clear off my bookshelves. My books keep on coming from PaperbackSwap and friends loaning books to me. And of course, when people hear you're a reader, they immediately have to recommend books to you! So... Yeah. I've been making a list and posting reviews for what I've read on GoodReads.com, my new book-related web addiction, so check me out over there.

Fortunately, I suppose, I've decided to close my BookMooch.com account. The site sucks. The minute someone requests your book, you get a credit for it, and if it's never marked "received", you as the sender can mark it lost. So you don't actually have to mail a book at all. I've spent the last week trying to clean up the account, because tons of books I've requested have either never been replied to or have never been sent. So I cancelled all my old requests, put in a pile of new requests and am trying to spend down my credits. If all goes well, which I'm not counting on, I should be over and out within the next couple of weeks. I still have 4 credits left, but I plan to donate them to charity on there. I had 26 credits, so I've done a good job using them, but still, there is a lot of junk to clean up.

On PaperbackSwap, I have 22 credits and should, by the end of the week, have nearly 30. It's a far superior site, and I've signed up for its sister site, SwapADVD, and gotten 2 DVD's so far of movies that I totally enjoyed and haven't seen in a while. I've sent out a number of DVD's and it's been fun. Last night Michael and I had movie night for the first time in quite a long time and we snuggled up and watched "That Old Feeling" together. It was great.

Work is the same. Family is the same. My sister and I are speaking again after going 8 days without speaking--this is the first time in a long time we've had that kind of argument, but I think we both just needed a break, and we were able to understand each other a bit better, so that's all good. Lent has started, I haven't given anything up. While I've been so sick in January, I started drinking soda again because the bubbles felt good going up my nose, but hopefully I'll be able to stop shortly. We bought some for our Superbowl party and as soon as it is gone, we've agreed not to buy any more.

Plan for today is the book sale, and then starting on the spring cleaning. Baseboards need a good cleaning. Ugh, what a job. And the tiles in the bathroom. Yuck. But I have one of those steam shark cleaners and I've never used it, so I'm going to play with that today.

The writing club is going strong. We've actually met someone new in Fredericksburg and she stopped by to say hello and meet us while we were meeting over there. A casualty of the club was my laptop adapter, which I left over at the coffee shop and is now long gone, sadly. A new one is on its way which will allow me to charge the new battery which will hopefully last longer than 45 minutes. I've started copying and pasting my 2 books together into one cohesive novel, but it's all VERY confusing. We have 2 different back up hard drives with files, and then I have 6 or 8 files open at once and I'm ready to tear my hair out. But it has to be done so I "don't have a stinky product" as Christopher Guest once said.

And of course, NKOTB is still getting back together :-)

Happy Saturday everyone!