Weekly Recap 4

He might be almost three, but he really is still my baby! Today was an extravaganza of chocolate, candy, more chocolate, and some chocolate. It's almost 6 and he's just not finishing up his nap.

For Easter we dyed eggs. This is early in the game, before he just dunked them all in every color and stained his fingers a muddy brown color. I only boiled 10 eggs, so the whole event took roughly 37 seconds. He loved doing it, but since I'm the only one in the house who eats hard boiled eggs, I wasn't willing to make more. This morning the Easter Bunny showed up and from across the room he could see that his basket contained WILL TURNER. This almost fills out his pirate collection- we are only missing the "girl pirate."

This week I finished off one book- Moneyball, reviewed here on Wednesday. Yesterday I read the first half of 1-2-3 Magic which I am planning to review in parts. I picked Heat Stroke back up and got another chapter into it. While I do enjoy it a lot while I am reading it this one is really easy for me to put down and not be interested in going back to. I felt the same way about the first in the series. My husband's birthday is today, and I finished filling out the Dresden file books for him, so I'm thinking I might go onto those instead of picking up the next Rachel Caine when I make it through this one.

In baby preparedness- we got almost everything that didn't belong in the nursery out of the nursery this weekend. The furniture is in place. The curtains are hung (AND IRONED!) Still need to buy a mattress so we can make the bed, wash the bedding on the day bed, and finish the sewing. I have the quilt top almost done, just need to decide on a border and I can start quilting. We also need to bring up the teeny baby clothes and wash them, but it can be done after the monkey's party. I just want the room itself done.

Speaking of the monkey's party- anyone know what pirates eat?

TBR Day- Moneyball by Michael Lewis

One day last weekend while I was confined to my chair by the weight of a lethargic almost-three-year-old I was faced with the problem of having no book within reach. My laptop was here, but I'd already read all of the internets. So I did the unthinkable, I asked my husband to choose a book for me. I should have known better. My husband reads as much as I do, but our tastes very rarely overlap. He has a strong preference for non-fiction, specifically relating to WWII, Mt. Everest, business, and baseball. He is often saying things like, "you should read this one, it's really good!" and I say, "Sure dear, one day." Well, that day finally came.

The book he handed me was Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis. Now, we have entire shelves devoted to baseball. We watch a lot of games. It is hard to live in this house and NOT pick up on some of the names and facts. So this book didn't come as a complete and total shock. I'd heard bits and pieces of it before. Regardless, it's sat on the shelf for a couple of years while I said "Sure dear, one day."

The short version of what the books is about is: it's about how the Oakland As continue to win despite having the second lowest payroll in MLB. The long version is: oh my god there are some SERIOUS baseball geeks out there (and I'm married to one of them.) See, Oakland realized that if they didn't do something different that they didn't stand a chance against teams like the Yankees who have huge bankrolls. There was no way they were going to be able to buy star power. They had to find a way to work with what they could afford and still have a winning team.

They start by not listening to the scouts. They needed an all new way. They hired Harvard grads and stock traders and analysts who knew how to read the numbers. They didn't go with "wow, he looks great" but rather "THIS stat is the one that directly correlates to wins. Who can do THAT?" When they lost s great player they carefully determined how to go about replacing what he really meant to the team. There are entire chapters devoted to single players (ie Jason Giambi). It talks about why pitching isn't the most important factor, as I believed. There is a chapter devoted to Bill James, who is near unto a god at my house.

I wasn't surprised that I found this interesting. I mean, it's hard to live with baseball as much as I do and not be a little interested. I was surprised to find it entertaining. It's really easy to read (except when it's NOT because it does go a little over my head in places.) My only complaint is that occasionally there was a sentence in need of an editor. I don't claim to be the world's best at grammar- I can't use a comma correctly to save my life- but there were way too many instances where the sentence was missing something vital- like the verb- or where the clauses didn't match up or something. (Please note this lovely sentence I have crafted to describe my complaint!) Overall, thumbs up. If you (or someone you love) is obsessed with baseball I'd recommend reading this one.

Quilt Giveaway!

The Old Red Barn Co. is giving away a quilt! Go leave a comment and see if you win.

Weekly Recap 3

Geez! I can't even blog ONCE a week? I might as well throw in the towel and go home.

So what happened to keep me away? Work was insane- no free time there to sneak in blogging. My head cold didn't fully go away until Monday. Then on Thursday I went to get the monkey only to discover that he was sick. AND WAS HE EVER! On Saturday we took him to the doctor only to find he has Influenza A, an ear infection, AND strep throat. So that pretty much wiped out the weekend. He's on the mend now, thankfully.

What did I get done? A good bit on the baby's room, mostly in terms of large furniture moving. I cut up the pieces of the baby's quilt. I sewed one little bag. I finished no books.

Last Monday Catherine at everyday life as lyric poetry posted a great post about babies growing up and becoming independent. It really struck a chord with me and I kept it in my reader all week because I couldn't bring myself to think about it enough to go comment. Perhaps it's the pregnancy hormones, but the idea that my sweet monkey boy won't need me to carry him or snuggle him or help him soon makes me sad. They aren't supposed to grow up! Yesterday we got invitations to send for his 3rd birthday party. How is this possible? I know, I have another one on the way so baby time is not over at my house, but it will be soon for the Monkey. And it makes me a bit sad.

And one little note that I feel compelled to post about- a lot of blogs that I read are switching to partial feeds for various reasons, some of them legit. This is fine. But I just need to say that if you have a partial feed, and you don't say anything interesting or anything AT ALL about what the post it about in that partial feed- I don't go read it. I'm sorry. I understand why you'd chose to do it, but please, grab some attention with those first sentences. I'm sure I'm not the only reader who feels this way.

Weekly Recap 2

Anyone else notice that I didn't post anything in the meantime? So what was I doing to take my attention away from here? Good question! I was sick for much of it. I had some kinda of sinus thing that definately would have keep me out of work, except that my counterpart was on vacation. By Friday night I was in bed crying about how much it hurt. Thankfully, on Saturday it began to clear up and I thought I might live.

Bookswise- I didn't read much. If it was quiet enough to read it was quiet enough to sleep and so I did. I did review Iron Kissed on the other blog, go check it out. I really loved it. I also finished up a romance novel re-read of In the Midnight Rain by Ruth Wind. This is one of my very favorite books and happily, it held up. It's got a little mystery (not too hard to figure out), the blues, a sexy broken hero, and a nice little falling in love. I am still reading the other books I was last week, and miracle of miracles, have not started anything else.

I am 31 weeks pregnant and my due date is less than two months away (May 10). My son's 3rd birthday is April 7th. My self-imposed goal for baby readiness was his birthday party. I want the nursery to be DONE at that point. So what did we do this weekend? The basement. On Friday night my husband and two year old ripped out all the old nasty carpet while I laid in bed whimpering. On Saturday we swept and mopped the bare concrete and then put all the furniture back where it was. We have one large rug in the couch/tv end of the room, and a smaller rug on the sewing end. The rest is bare, unpainted, concrete. Amazingly, it looks much much better.

This morning my husband went and built two big platforms for the box springs on our bed. Whoever designed it thinking that two little metal supports was enough on a king sized bed was crazy. It was the creakiest, shiftiest thing. So he built these big boxes and we replaced it. It's so much better. I don't feel like it's gonna collapse every time I roll over. We celebrated by taking a nice long family nap.

I did manage to iron all the pieces of the baby's quilt. I wish my library book would come in so that I could start sewing. I have a bunch of sewing projects planned for the near future. Now that the basement is ok to hang out in, perhaps I'll get some done?

Weekly Recap

Like that title? Sounds like this is something I do every week, doesn't it? Perhaps I should- every Monday I challenge myself to blog twice that week and every Sunday night I'm sitting here thinking of what to blog to meet my goal. Of TWICE. Sheesh. So here's a bit of random goodness.

The only book I finished this week was Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs. It was AWESOME. Full review forthcoming. I read bits of three others- In the Midnight Rain by Ruth Wind (on old favorite romance, very bluesy, I love it), Heat Stroke by Rachel Caine (Weather Warden book 2), and The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism by Karen Armstrong (I'm not very far into this one, but so far it's very readable.)

My in-laws were all in town this weekend and we took most of the kids to the park. It was 72' out, on March 1st, in SOUTH DAKOTA. I did not take my camera, but my brother-in-law did and I convinced him to take a picture of my roundness. I am not really smiling (in fact, I am kinda scowling) because I am looking into the sun, but otherwise I like this one. This is at 30-31 weeks, 2 months to go!

We cleaned some more crap out of the guest room/nursery and I'll be able to hang the curtains this week. I need to start on the baby quilt but have been waiting and waiting for my interlibrary loan book with the pattern to come in. Anyone reading have Modern Quilt Workshop and want to drop me a line so I can get started? (bookslistslife AT gmail DOT com)

Hope everyone else had a great weekend.