stupid computers

I hate computers sometimes. Even though I'm a helpdesk agent, I still make stupid mistakes. I moved our router and cable modem from the old office to the new office. The two machines that connect wirelessly are working without any problems. The pc that is directly connected to the router won't pick up a flipping ip address. It is configured with dhcp. Half the time it says that there is an ip conflict, but the ip it is picking up is 0.0.0.0. I tried "chatting" with the cable people, and that was COMPLETELY useless. I think even their chats follow a flipping script. I just need someone who knows what they are talking about to read what I tell them and then make some USEFUL suggestions. Why would it work in one room, but not the other? The only thing that I can think of is that in the move, I damaged the network card. But if that is the case, why is it even detecting that there is a network. I've rebooted half a dozen times, hoping it would pick something up. I connected my pc directly into the cable modem and it still didn't pick up anything. I want a new computer. But there are a lot of other things that I want more. And I need to be grateful. And I am. I'm just frustrated. This is the part of tech support that I hate. When it makes no flipping sense.

whewwwww

So I just had 30 minutes of anger/fear/frustration/agony. I was working on Chris' new computer on the budget. I had all the numbers for the past 6 weeks that I had to put into our budget excel sheet. I finally got it all in (after about an hour), and I was getting ready to email it to myself so that I would have it at work. But I couldn't find the files. Anywhere. I did a search. I looked everywhere that I could think of. I even looked in the temp files. But I couldn't find anything. The new laptop has Vista, so I wasn't as familiar with how to move around easily. We had a bunch of people over for worship practice, so I came out of the office complaining loudly. I work at a Helpdesk for goodness sake. I'm supposed to be able to fix this crap. After griping and complaining to Chris for 5 minutes, I thought of something else, so I came back, and low and behold, I found them. I had inadvertently saved them in the temp file, inside of a zipped file. I had looked there before, but I wasn't searching for the newest file extention for Excel. Stupid Rookie mistake. Unfortunately it was compounded by not being familiar with Vista. I could have sworn that I saved it in the documents folder. I'm just glad that I found them.

How NOT to Re-Organize Your Favorites

So I got a little carried away last week. I had been having a hard time finding a link that I know that I had in my favorites list. I had gotten pretty far behind in organizing my favorites. I hadn't really developed a consistent way of organzing them. So I had the BRIGHT (read: horrible) idea to put all of my links in ONE folder called Personal, and check each and every link to make sure that it was still valid and that I still wanted it, and to then go BACK through and find a consistent way of organizing. I started with 374 links. Holy Cow. Let's just say that this wasn't one of my better ideas. It took forever! I quickly gave up on the idea of going through the entire list twice, and started organizing as I went through. I'm finally done. But it took over a week to do it. And it wasn't nearly as satisfying as I thought it would be.

Someone suggested that I use StumbleUpon as a way to manage my favorites. I'm not as into using social networking sites as others. I have facebook, but I don't use it often. StumbleUpon just seems . . . nosy. If I have a link to share, I put it here. Any other ideas?

Gourmet Popcorn

Since we have been following the Core version of Weight Watchers, we have been having popcorn more and more often. A few months ago, we bought an air popper, and a big bag of generic popcorn. Popcorn is popcorn, right? I also have high blood pressure, so I have to be very careful of how much salt I have. We were noticing that we were having to put quite a bit of salt on the popcorn to make it tasty. And the hulls were getting stuck in my teeth (A LOT). So I thought I would look up gourmet popcorn and see what I could find. It didn't take long before I found a few places that sold in online, and I was SOOO surprised at the different kinds. The main site that caught my attention was Riehle's Select Gourmet Popcorn. They had a sampler pack where you could get 2 (4 oz) pkgs of all 13 kinds of popcorn that they have. A 4 oz packet is exactly how much will go in one batch in the air popper. It wasn't too badly priced. I ordered it on like a Wednesday, and it came on Friday. :)

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Sorry the picture is kind of washed out. I couldn't figure out what setting to use on the camera. This is one of each of the kinds of popcorn that we were sent. I'll try and do periodic updates on how they do. So far we have had the Baby Blue, Baby Yellow and Sunburst. The Baby Blue and Baby Yellow were very tasty. When it popped, each kernel made a very small popcorn. They were very "delicate" for lack of a better word. They kind of just melted in your mouth. Quite tasty. The Sunburst was good, but nothing about it really seemed to stand out. Chris said we would have to try one right after the other to really get a good comparison. I'm most excited for the dark red popcorns and the one called Candy Stripe. It looks like a peppermint candy before it is popped. It is supposed to be kind of sweet.

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Does anyone out there have any gourmet popcorn preferences? We definitely have to do the air popped, otherwise, it loses its effectiveness as a healthy snack.

New Blog Template

So I made some changes. Obviously. Ultimately, I would like to design my own blogger template, but until I figure that out, we will have this. I'm not in love with how large the 100+ Reading Challenge Text is. I'm trying to figure out how to change that. Let me know what you think! :)

**Edited to add . . . I figured out how to make the sidebar text a different color (it was black) and a smaller size. I forgot how much I liked programming (at least at the begining). It was kind of exciting figuring out how to change the settings. How LAME does that make me! Oh well, I'm not ashamed!

Stephenie Meyer Mini-Challenge

I'm joining another book challenge. I'm telling you, I'm addicted. Plus it makes it fun! And it gives me something to blog about. I've been hearing about Stephenie Meyer for awhile, and just haven't had a chance to read any of her books. This particular challenge is a "mini-challenge" where you only need to read two of her books between June 1, 2008 and January 30, 2009. I think I'm going to read all of her books:

* Twilight
* New Moon
* Eclipse
* Breaking Dawn (available in Aug '08)
* The Host (not in the Twilight Series)

The nice thing is, my main challenge, the 100+ Reading Challenge is broad enough, that I can count all of these books as well. It just helps give me some more suggestions.

BTW, I'm really finding some FANTASTIC blogs out there. Makes me ashamed. I'm going to try and ramp up my book reviews. My favorites that I found yesterday are:

• Becky's Book Reviews
• The Hidden Side of a Leaf
• Reading Adventures
• The Bookworm

EW Top 100 New Classics

I found the following list on another blogger's website of the top 100 New Classics. Entertainment Weekly put the list together here. The ones I have read are in purple, and the ones I plan to read are in red.

1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World's Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators' Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)

Okay, now that I have actually highlighted the ones I have read (painfully few) and the ones I want to read, I realize how pathetic it is. Oh well. I love lists, and this will just be a future reference if I ever run out of stuff to read again. The whole reason I started looking at the NY Times Best Seller Lists, and discovered reading challenges was because I felt like I didn't have anything left to read, and I was tired of re-reading my favorites. I realize now how naive and shallow that statement was. Thankfully, my eyes have been opened to a whole new world of reading. It will be a LONG time before I ever say/think that again.

How was your weekend?

Chris and I had a very productive and fun weekend. Friday night I made some progress on the office, and Chris studied for the GRE. Then we headed into Lexington for some hang out time at Shooters with some friends.

Saturday we had a wedding to go to in Wilmore. It was a beautiful wedding, and a nice reception. She did something for wedding favors that I had never seen before. Her colors were red and white. She had a tablescape set up with probably 15+ kinds of red and white candies in different containers. Each person got a small cellophane bag, and got to pick the candies that they wanted. That evening we went to go see Get Smart with Steve Carell. I don't remember ever watching Get Smart when I was a kid, but I was familar with the premise. I had seen some bad reviews of the movie, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that I enjoyed the movie. Steve Carell was hilarious, and perfect for that role. I would classify this as one of my favorite movies, but I didn't feel like I wasted my movie ticket either.

After church on Sunday, a friend from church came over and helped me finish organizing the office. That night I babysat for Bri for awhile, and then hung out with Christina and Amber. Like I said, we had a very full weekend!

Book Challenge Updates:
I'm a little stalled on my reading challenges. We are really enjoying listening to Pillars of the Earth, but there are 32 cds in the unabridged audio book, and we are only on 14. I'm also enjoying the Last Jihad by Joel Rosenburg (I think), I just haven't had much time to read this week with everything that is going on. I should have brought my book to work, because I have a dr. appt this afternoon, and that is always a great time to catch up, but of course I forgot it. I will either pilfer a magazine from somewhere, or start one of the ebooks that I have on my computer.

The CORE diet with weight watchers, is going really really well. I had a few lapses this weekend, but that was more due to poor planning. I'm feeling SOOO good physically when I follow it. And not really hungry at all. And the results on the scale are helping a lot too. I'll try and post my White Chili recipe that I make this week. All the ingredients are CORE!

I have a blog planned for this week on our Gourmet Popcorn Experiment. Stay Tuned!

Coming Together

The new office is really coming together. Chris has worked very hard to get the desks put together. We had the cable guy come yesterday to "Fix" the cable outlet in our room so we can move our router in there. Chris got some of his stuff put away on his desk, and it is really looking nice. I think it is going to work well. Now we just have to find time/money to get up to Ikea to get the book shelves.

I've been trying to catch up on all my "filing". I've decided that I keep far too much paperwork. I've tried to get a sense of how long you are supposed to keep bills and paperwork and such. Everyone seems to have a much different opinion. I've tried to come up with an easy medium. So the last few nights, I have spent the evening with our paper shredder. I hate that shredder. It seems to get jammed every 4-5 papers or so. I remember the time when I thought feeding papers into the shredder was sOOO much fun (yes, i'm a dork, but we are talking about when I was a kid), and now it just seems tedious. So how long do you all keep your "filing" stuff?

Right now we are trying to work on our summer schedules. We were joking with friends of ours that their honeymoon (that they just got back from) would be the last major vacation that they take for awhile. The rest of their "vacation time" will be spend visiting family. It seems like after you do that, you are either out of time and/or money. :) We have a family reunion/vacation scheduled for mid July to visit with my side of the family. My grandparents, great aunt and great grandma are coming up from Florida, and my second cousin and her (new) husband are coming from VA. My whole immediately family should be there as well. We are going to meet in the "middle" and hang out at my brothers house in NC. Crazy times. We are also trying to figure out when we can visit with Chris' parents when they are back in the states. Plus, Chris starts school in late Aug. Plus we have youth activities with Church. The next thing you know, all our weekends are taken up. Who said summer was supposed to be relaxing?

boring update

so, there really isn't anything exciting or even interesting to update you all. It took me 1.5 hours to do my grocery shopping and to pick up my perscriptions tonight. That was just a tad bit ridiculous. And didn't really leave me much time to do anything else with my night.

We are watching Jim Gaffigan - Beyond the Pale right now. That man is hilarious.

I've started a new project. Goes hand and hand with moving the offices. I'm currently reorganizing my filing system, and then I'm going to start a home inventory program. Let's see how long THAT takes. :)

Have a good night everyone.

Happy Father's Day!

Hope that all you Dad's out there had a good father's day. We have been getting the office ready to put in the new furniture. :) We picked it up from Office Max today (we had to use the non-air conditioned truck). Then we cleared most everything out of the office, and put it in the foyer and living room. Chris doesn't quite understand why you have to create a bigger mess in order to organize and/or re-arrange things. It makes him crazy to have stuff all spread out and in your face. He doesn't mind if things are messy, as long as he can't see it. Denial can be a wonderful thing. :P

I think the office is going to look fantastic. I took some (really bad) before pictures, so once we get everything arranged, I may put up before and after shots. We are kind of doing it in two phases. Right now we have moved all of the stuff out, and we are going to put up the desks and get our office stuff put away. Next we need to purchase all our extra shelving. I think a trip to Lowes and Ikea is in the planning. :) So it will be a little while before it is completely done. I'm thinking by mid-July we should be good to go. Well before school starts.

The book challenge is going well. I'm still busy trying to add all my books to Good Reads, but after I finish that, I think I will start doing reviews. Question for you all. I have the Good Reads widget on the right-hand side of my blog. Would you rather it list the books that I am currently reading, or the ones that I have just finished reading, with my rating listed?

I don't want to jinx it, but right now I'm LOVING the Core program for Weight Watchers. It took a few days to adjust (stupid carb addiction), but now I feel great. I don't feel like I'm focusing on my food as much, and I'm definitely feeling more satisfied throughout the day. And with the extra weekly allowance points, I have the freedom to splurge in moderation. So far, I'm down 4 lbs in 3 days. I have definitely broken through the plateau! I'm hoping to stick with Core for at least the next month. Chris may switch back to flex, because it makes him a litte crazy to feel like he can't have certain foods (even though he wouldn't normally eat them). Anyhow, I was very apprehensive about trying Core, but now I'm very glad that I did

New Office Furniture

We went to buy office furniture today.

Chris and I both got the same desk. The main difference is that he got the L desk with the hutch, and I just got the L desk. We are going to pick them up tomorrow after church.

Right now, I've been playing with the layout of the office trying to figure out how to make it all work. Hopefully I will be working from home soon. That is part of the motivation in getting the new combined office setup. We talked about trying to share a desk, but between each having our own computers, and all of our stuff, and possibly needing them at the same time, we just didn't think it was feasible. If I'm working from home, I definitely need my own space without other stuff as well. The set we bought was on sale, so that was nice. We still need to buy a few more things from the office, but I'm glad that we found the big stuff first!

We went to Equus Run Vineyard tonight with a few of Chris' friends from work. There was a catered dinner, and a theather group put on a production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. It was a little hot, but it got better as the night wore on. At least it didn't rain. It was nice to get to put a face to all the names that I have been hearing. I'm pathetic at trying to understand Shakespeare. I usually just gather what is going on by the actions, and not necessarily by the words. Chris, of course, was quoting the play right along with the actors. I think once he gets done with school, and we get settled back down, he may do theater. He would be fantastic at it.

Eating Clean Works

I came across a post on the Weight Watchers forums about "Clean Eating". I had never heard of it before, so I did a search and came up with this website. Even though the website has only been around for 6 months or so, it had a lot of very helpful (but not preachy) posts. I would definitely reccomend checking it out. The two pieces of advice that I will be taking away from this site are take flaxseed oil supplements and fish oil supplements.

There is also a Clean Eating magazine here.

**Edited to Add - This is basically a diet about eating sensibily and not eating junk. I'm mainly interested in it for the recipes that will also apply to the Core diet for WW.

Weight Watchers: CORE

Chris and I have both been following Weight Watchers. He has his meeting at work over lunch on Mondays. Mine is in the evening's at a local church. I only recently started going back to meetings. I tried to do it on my own to no avail. Anyhow, we decided to switch to core. Today was our first day. It does feel very similar to the low-carb diets we have tried in the past (and had good success with). Basically, out of a certain food list (mostly whole foods, fat-free foods) you can eat as much as you need to feel satisfied. You can have any vegetable or fruit you want. Dairy has to be of the fat-free variety. Low fat meats. Whole Grains (1 a day). The nice thing with WW is that the give you 35 weekly points that you can use on whatever you want. So they opens up the flexibility quite a bit. I'm really hoping to see some decent movement on the scales by switching.

One of my favorite new things that I have discovered in the past few months are "Green Smoothies". The basic concept is a smoothie made with Greens. Sounds disgusting, but it is surprisingly good. I haven't tried many varieties, but right now, this is my FAVORITE!

Green Smoothie

2 handfuls spinach
1 cup water
1 banana
1 apple
1 cup ice

Basically, you take two big handfuls of washed spinach (I usually use the bagged kinds) and put it in the bottom of your blender. Add the water. Put on the lid of the blender, and choose the liquify option, and run until the spinach is liquified. Add the banana (the riper the better), and blend till smooth. Add the apple (cored, but not peeled. Cut into slices) and blend till smooth. This makes about 2 big glasses.

This takes me about 5 minutes to make in the morning. For about 2 weeks, I made one of these every morning. I have fallen out of the habit, but I thought since we were switching to Core, it would be good to get back into it. I truly felt like I had a lot more energy. There are tons of different combinations out there. Just do a Google search for "green smoothies". You'll be surprised what you find. :)

Cicadas (and other stuff)

We have a large infestation of cicadas in our area of KY. I has been getting worse and worse over the last few weeks. Today, Chris and I noticed that our trees in the front yard are completely COVERED. Disgusting. Plus they are so flipping loud. I tried to take a nap this afternoon, and it was just too loud. Chris has a new trick. He will catch a cicada and put it in his mouth (alive) and wait for it to make its sound. It is SOOOO freaky. He also put about 5 of them in his mouth at once, and then did the whole Mummy thing where he opens his mouth and they all fly out. BLECH! He is even a little creeped out right now, since there are SOOO many of them.

We are both feeling better (pain wise). Chris has been a litte woozy lately, but I think it may just be something he ate or dehydration. It is so flipping hot/humid here. I know that it is probably hotter in other places, but I HATE hot weather. With a passion. I just feel miserable in hot weather.

I'm stalled on my books. I'm having a hard time getting into my current book. Partly because I have too much other stuff going on, and also because I read so much last week.

We went to look at furniture this weekend. I think we have it narrowed down to one or two choices. I'm excited. But we are determined to pay cash for it, so we will have to wait for a little while. But it won't be too much longer!

Prince Caspian

Chris and I went to see the Chronicles of Narnia Prince Caspian tonight. It was a very good movie, but it did depart from the book A LOT. Way more than I wanted. I understand some of it, because the way the book is written, it would be very hard to create a movie that followed the same path. So they would have had to change it some. But they added a few elements that didn't happen at all. They did some rearranging, so even though some of the storyline departed from the book, it still incorporated isolated events that DID happen in the movie (I would give you an example, but I don't want to ruin it for people who haven't see it yet). Definitely worth going to see, just keep more of an open mind. It is very well done, and the actors were phenomanal. I LOVE Georgie Henley (the girl who plays Lucy). It will be sad to not see Peter and Susan in the next movie. I hope that the studios do make the last book, and that they are able to use the same actors. I wonder if they will wait until the kids are older to make The Horse and His Boy. Or if they will just use other actors.

We went and looked at furniture today. I think we may have narrowed down our options to 2 different choices. We are looking for living room and office furniture right now. We would like to get leather furniture. I had a certain price in mind, but it looks like everything is a little more expensive than I anticipated. But I think that we will be able to get some good stuff if we are smart.

We didn't end up going to the Church Picnic. I had the stuff made, but we got caught up in furniture shopping, and lost track of time. :(

Plan for the Day

1. Study for the GRE (Chris)
2. Laundry (Sarah)
3. Get stuff to make dishes for picnic (sarah)
4. make stuff for picnic (sarah)
5. Go get some furniture ideas (both)
6. Go to Church Picnic (both)

The funny thing about the list above, is that I truly started out with only 3 things on my list. But as I was typing, I started thinking of all the other stuff that I should be doing today. See, that is why I make lists. . . because my thought process is expanded when I actually write stuff down. I have to admit I go a little crazy with my lists sometimes. I'm definitely one of those people that like to cross stuff off the list.

My next two books that I will be reading are by Meg Cabot. (Size 14 and Big Boned). We are currently listening to The Pillars of the Earth, and we are both really liking it. The nice thing about doing this challenge is that I am really expanding the books that I'm reading. I bought Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen last night, so that will probably get read after I finish the library books that I have.

An Additional Reading Challenge

So I'm really liking the idea of the reading challenges that are out there. I technically say that I am starting the 100+ Reading Challenge on April 1st. It comes out to be about 2 books per week. I'm almost caught up (I couldn't remember all of the books that I had read, so it looks like I'm behind).

So I found this other challenge, the Historical Reading Challenge, that I am planning on doing concurrently (I mean at the same time, is that the right word?) I have to read 6 historical fictions books in 6 months. I plan to read the following:

1. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
2. World without End by Ken Follett
3. Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen
4. Into the Wilderness by Sara Donati
5. Calico Palace by Gwen Bristow
6. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

And of course, those will count towards the 100+ Challenge as well . . . I'll probably mark them differently in the long list at the right, to indicate that they are part of the challenge.

Update on the Challenge. I just finished the Harry Potter Series . . . I'm pretty sure that I finished it in less than two weeks. I usually don't start reading it till Halloween Night (as I'm passing out candy, it has turned out to be part of a tradition), but I had run out of books to read, and that is the only thing that sounded appealing. The series is fantastic, and if you haven't had a chance to read the books, I highly, highly, reccomend it. Fantasically written, completely engaging, and totally heart warming.

rental car

So we dropped off the car at the body shop, and picked up our rental car. Chris is in absolute MOPAR heaven . . . it is a Steel-colored ' 07 Dodge Charger. I thought he was finally adjusted to the idea of keeping the corolla for awhile longer, but I have a feeling that this is going to send him over the edge. . . I will admit that it was really nice to drive something new and smooth.

Work is going okay (I'm training a new person), but it is a little difficult to sit upright and still all day. My back/neck seems to be extra tight. So I'm looking forward to this weekend so that I can relax. Chris and I may take an impromptu trip to Louisville . . . just because we can with the rental car (prepaid for a tank of gas - have to make sure and use it.

I am making progress on my 100 book list. I'm on the last book of the Harry Potter Series. I should be able to start going through the books a lot faster once I'm done with that.

It looks like our camping trip will be canceled. All of the sudden it is hotter than Hades here, and if we are both still sore from the accident, sleeping outside on the ground won't help much.

stayed home today

Chris and I were both feeling a little achy, so we stayed home today. We have talked to the insurance agents, and it is going a lot smoother than I anticipated. Thankfully, the other person's insurance will be picking up the tab for a rental car when our car is in the shop getting fixed.

Chris' new computer has been delivered, and it is very pretty. :) I'm a little jealous, but very happy for him. At least one of us has a laptop now. That will make things go a lot smoother when we are out and about (out of town) and need to look stuff up. Plus, it will make schooling so much easier.

Minor Car Accident

ugh. Chris & I got rear-ended on the way to work. The roads were wet, and there was bumper to bumper traffic. Thankfully, I was completely stopped, and far enough away from the car in front of me that I didn't hit them. Our little Corolla held up pretty well, just bent the back bumper. The Jeep that hit us completely lost their bumper, and had some structural damage. Both Chris and I are fine, just a little achy. The seat belt got me across the throat though, so I feel like I have to cough a lot. I'm so VERY thankful that it wasn't worse. I'm just a little shaky and stunned and gun shy (this will make my tendencies to back-seat drive even WORSE).