The Friday 56 -- Mountain Wild

A weekly meme hosted by Storytime with Tonya and Friends.
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions on your blog or (if you don't have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog. * Post a link along with your post back to this blog. * Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.


This week's book is Mountain Wild by Stacey Kayne. It's a western historical romance I picked up at the library book sale for 50 cents. It was by the computer so I could list it on Bookmooch.

"With that, she took a bite."

Friday Morning

I took my camera when I went out to get the paper. Have a look.

There's a driveway in there somewhere, I swear.

You'd never guess that Dad beat all the snow off the oleander yesterday evening. And at the top of the photo is a live oak branch just waiting to fall into the street. I just hope it doesn't hit a car.

This is the street we generally use to get out of our neighborhood. Hope a lot of the snow has fallen off by this afternoon when I go to work.

Here's what left of a tree in my neighbor's front yard. Luckily the branches fell across the lawn, and not on our garage or their house.

See more snow pix on my flickrpage.

It's Snowing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We woke up this morning to a world of white. It was coming straight down, lightly but steadily. It thickened up for a while, but when I went out to take pictures it had lightened up a little. Even on the sidewalk it was still just snow, not ice, so walking was easy.

There was no one around -- in 15 minutes I saw exactly two cars go by. It was almost eerily quiet -- no dogs, no people, no traffic. The only thing I heard was a bird high up in a tree.

It's a winter wonderland.

Update: it's snowed for over 15 hours. We have about 6" of snow over the Metroplex, which shatters the old record for this date of 1"+. The streets haven't been too bad since there's been enough traffic to keep it slushy, but tomorrow morning will be a different story.

Our neighbors are trying to clear their driveway -- they couldn't get up the slope tonight. As I was watching Mac use a flat rake to scrape the icy bottom layer, a small branch fell off a tree across the street. My neighbor promptly moved both cars several yards down the street to a treeless spot.

It's Super Bowl Sunday . . . . and I don't care.

Millions of people across the country are preparing to hunker down in front of their tvs tonight to watch the Super Bowl. Some will be having big parties, some will watch with just their families, but all of them will be rooting for the Saints or the Colts, and groaning every time their team gets a penalty.

Me? I don't give a rat's ass about who wins some stupid football game. It was never my favorite sport, and after Jerry Jones fired Tom Landry, it lacked any appeal at all. Okay, if forced to choose I'd watch football over curling (which is about as exciting as watching paint dry), but only if I can turn the sound off.

So tonight while everyone's cheering and groaning and spilling food on the carpet, I'll be under a blanket working on an afghan and watching something from Netflix.

And counting the days until the Olympics.

Aggie Pride Meets a Kitty with a Camera

My latest commission involved a couple of quilt squares for a member of the Dallas County Aggie Moms. Due to various problems, she needed the squares tout de suite, as her contribution to a memory quilt was already late.

On one of the squares she wanted a pair of Aggie boots. She'd found a good photo on Wikipedia, but had no idea how to get them embroidered. I have a digitizing program that will convert artwork to embroidery designs, but no way to remove all the extraneous elements of the photo. My solution? I called on CameraforKitty!

Kitty's a friend of mine on Etsy who goes by many names there, and she's a wizard with Photoshop and a lot more. I sent her the photo of the boots, and she removed the background and the excess reflections with lightning-speed. Thanks to her, I was able to get the embroidery done quickly, and my customer loved the results!

Gig 'em Aggies!

Check out Kitty's other shops: The Jewelry :Ninja and The Plushie Foundry.

Addendum: Blogger is having issues, so I was unable to post pix of the squares. Here are the links to them on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ladybuggz/4274100411/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/ladybuggz/4269626453/.

The Friday 56 -- At All Costs

A weekly meme hosted by Storytime with Tonya and Friends.
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions on your blog or (if you don't have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog. * Post a link along with your post back to this blog. * Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

This week's book is At All Costs, the final book in David Weber's Honor Harrington series. It was part of my Christmas giftcard purchases.

"For that matter, she really ought to have traded in the double planets of her commodore's insignia even in the RMN."

A Mountain of Books

Every Christmas I get giftcards for HalfPrice Books from my relatives, sometimes as many as three or four. This year I got one, last year I got three, the year before I got at least two, etc. I try to use up as much as I can at the after-Christmas sale, but there's always some left over for another day.

I keep the unused cards in my good purse (I use it to go book shopping because it's small and compact), and over time they build up. Every time I reach into the inner pocket, I have to push aside giftcards: HalfPrice giftcard, lipstick, rosary, another HalfPrice giftcard, barrette, old candy, *bad words* yet another HalfPrice giftcard, aha! pen! When I went to the sale this year, I had an apparent $75 in giftcards in my purse. Turns out one was half-used, but I still had at least $65 in there.

Lots of years I kind of strike out on getting wished-for books -- I tend to want books that other people want to hang onto. LOL But this year I hit the bulls-eye -- I came home with seven of the books on my list! Of course, this means I need to find another series of books to fall in love with, but that's never been a problem for me. :o)

Here's this year's Christmas haul.

You might notice that there are more than seven books in this mountain. The three on top are a gift from my brother. The others are my bookstore finds. As you can tell, I've got a crush on David Weber's Honor Harrington series. Between these and the ones I already had, I now possess all but one of the main series rubs hands in glee and can now concentrate on the anthologies and spinoffs.

The only downside to all this largesse?

It cost less than $28, so I still have over $40 rattling around in my purse!!