Breaking Dawn Cover Art

Here it is peoples! Don't forget to go stalk your local Barnes & Nobles/Borders/Books-A-Million/wherever to read the first chapter of BD in the special edition of Eclipse that was just released TODAY! To read an exerpt of said chapter, click HERE!

Good Riddance...

It's over... finally. I just finished Ender's Game. I'm sorry to say I am not to be added to the millions (I'm sure) of fans of this book. It started off better than I expected, and I was actually kinda starting to like it there for a while... But then it got repetitive, too repetitive. It was like beating a dead horse into a second life and then killing it again, ressurrecting it into it's 3rd life and then killing it once more. Not my kind of book, sorry... I tried, right?

Phew, now I can concentrate on reading The Host- woohoo!

5 down, 1 more to go!

Today I got my 5th Lupron shot which means I'm officially down to my LAST one next month, wooooooooooooohoooooooooooooooo!!!
My ticker is even excited for me, apparently, because it's changed from a monthly countdown to one in DAYS!

That's all. :)

Is that a rain cloud following me?

Ever feel like you're stuck with one of those cartoonish rain clouds following you around and raining only on you? Yeah, thats me right about now... I've had the most rotten luck these past few days. First of all, my car got backed into on Thursday, grrr... Some girl driving a huge GMC Yukon wasn't paying attention and rammed into my poor little Focus in the parking lot of a store. The front fender is now dented and cracked right below my headlight, lovely. Her insurance will be paying for the repairs and a rental car in the meanwhile but the inconvenience is a pain. Then this morning I woke up and was about to let the dogs out when I realized that our gate in the backyard was wide open!!! I ran upstairs to wake Ben up and see if maybe he'd left it like that last night... He said no, of course, and "Is there anything missing?" So we both run back downstairs and sure enough, my bike was gone. Someone actually jumped our 6' some inch fence and opened the gate from the inside, argh!!! We had to call the police and they came to file a report etc. We don't expect anything to show up, but felt it should be reported anyhow, just in case this thief/thieves have been hitting other homes around us as well... We will be padlocking our gate now as well as adding a deadbolt to our sliding back door. This isn't supposed to happen here!!! I grew up in NYC, this is the kind of stuff you expect there, but here? Ugh... I hope whoever stole my bike gets a flat tire, falls off, and breaks their arm or something... that should teach them! Grrr...

Another Baby Shower Cake!

Here is my newest creation, a clotheline themed cake for a baby shower my sister-in-law was hosting for a friend. This cake was extremely fun to make and I got to try out some more new techniques and it even forced me to get a little inventive! I'd originally planned on coloring the dowels up top (that make up the poles for the clothesline)brown with a marker but then I couldn't find the brown one so I decided to try to cover the things in fondant (like you would with modeling chocolate). After a few tries they turned out pretty cool! This is all starting to get a lot easier with practice, and what once used to take me 2 days to complete, I was able to do in one afternoon/evening! The only thing is that we're left with SO much cake at home... after all the trimming and leveling is done I have mounds and mounds of leftover cake and I just can't even stand to look at it, blegh! ;)

This is the cake's car ride over. Yes, on the floorboard of my car, lol. Some day if I actually get really good at this and start making bigger cakes this probably won't work so well... But for now it'll do!

The finished product once I hung the onesie and made sure nothing had fallen off during the very bumpy ride... courtesy of crappy Oklahoma roads.

My favorite part of the cake. I was so tickled when I found those itty bitty little clothespins!

So anyway... tada!!! :) I think I'll get some dummy cakes soon so I can work on bigger things, like elegant gumpaste flowers, etc.

Hooray for Kristi!

Once again, another Dancing With The Stars season has come to an end. This was a great season, with some really talented stars! Kristi Yamaguchi, an Olympic gold medalist, was the winner this year. She was absolutely fantastic all season long, and finally reclaimed the title for the ladies! (After 5 season of all male champs)

Now I just need AI to wrap up (well, it does tonight I guess) so I can be done with these addictive shows and reclaim my evenings. Maybe now I can finish up Ender's Game or do something worthwhile with mt time like start up going to the gym again!

Done!

We just finished New Moon... thank goodness! I do have to admit though... while the horrible parts were worse this time around, the good parts were that much better too. So all in all, not as torturous as I expected... as a whole.

On to Eclipse!

From horrible to horrible x's Infinity!

I was dreading having to read Chapter 3 in New Moon to Ben. Dreading is probably not even the right word... I'm not sure what is, but let's just say I never ever ever thought I'd find a good enough reason to make myself read that chapter again. It was bad enough (the first time)that it almost stopped me from reading the rest of the book, but somehow I managed to keep going.

Tonight I found myself having to read it out loud to a much exasperated husband. Unbelievably, this was 10 times as hard as the first time. I actually blubbered the whole way through, having to frequently stop to compose myself enough to be understandable.

I sit here wondering what in the world makes this chapter SO excrutiatingly painful and upseting to me? After all, these ARE fictional characters we're talking about... Not real, not my family or friends, not even anyone I could casually call "acquaintances!" So why all the emotional upheaval? Why is this striking such a chord?

Stephenie Meyer is a genious... that is my answer. She has been more than successfully able to capture the HORROR of having to stand idly by, watching as your own right to control your life is taken away from you... to have decisions made FOR you, against your will, in YOUR "own best interest." She is able to wrench up the unexplicable despair and helpessness that accompanies having your life turned into your own personal hell, knowing that there is nothing you can do to stop it.

I don't think I'll ever want to read this chapter ever again. As far as I'm concerned this whole entire book is just a necessary evil, born of pure necessity to create and advance a secondary plotline. I hate it... I will read it again for Ben, but I will probably never pick it up a third time.

Cute

I recently found a blog about a guy thats reading Twilight and documenting his "research." I thought it was pretty funny, the guy's got a good sense of humor about it all. ;)

See? It CAN be done!

Success... and on to book 2!

Last night Ben finished Twilight! Well, I should rephrase... last night I finished reading Twilight TO him! We sort of fell into this habit of me reading to him to help speed things along and we both enjoyed it, so thats what stuck. Ben had a hard time getting through all the "nauseating lovey-dovey" parts and I often would hear him sigh and look over to see him rolling his eyes and making mock pained looks on his face while I read, but we got through it. It must not have been as bad as he said it was though because guess what we're doing now? Oh yeah baby, onto New Moon! We already got through the first 2 chapters last night! ;)

This is going to a toughie for me... I personally HATED this book, with the exception of the last few chapters. It brings back too many painfully repressed memories of forced breakups that were "for our own good." I know I'm married and thats all long in the past, but still... I can't help but dread having to read this again... To be completely honest, I skipped A LOT while reading it the first time... sometimes pages at a time, because I just couldn't handle being in her head when she was in that much pain. Ugh, not pretty. If I'm going to be reading this out loud though, I suppose I can't do that. *sigh* This is such a depressing book!!!... stupid flea bitten mutt! Grr...

Oh, on a side note: Enders Game... Well, I'm still chugging along. I had a hard time with the middle when it went off on a tangent about a 10 and 12 year old wanting to rule the world *rolling my eyes*... You could stay I almost gave up, but no... I'm still chugging along. Most of my free time now is occupied reading to Ben, so it's going slow, but I'll finish it, I'm determined!

A book for a book!

Since I've been bubbling over with so much excitement for my new 2nd favorite series (Harry will always be #1!), I've (of course) wanted to get Ben in on it so that I'd have someone to be all bubbly and excited with, you know? Weeeeeeell, as you can all imagine he was not too keen on the idea. How do you get a guy to read a vampire love story? Hmmm... *evil grin*

Months and months ago, Ben picked up a new series, courtesy of Clark and Shannon. Its called Ender's Game. Its a very science fiction-ish book (not my favorite kind) and Ben loved it and has been working on the whole series. He tried to get me to read it but I just could NOT get past the first chapter. B-O-R-I-N-G! Really freakishly odd too, and so that was a lost cause and Ben gave up.

Can you see where I'm going with this?;)

Before I actually read Twilight, I never ever EVER in a million years thought I would have enjoyed (much less become obsessed with) a book about vampires. That was just not my style, remember? Yeah, well thankfully for me, I gave in and gave it a shot and was proved wrong! I thought about this for a few days... How many potentially great reads have I been missing out on because of my biased opinions on what I might or might not like? In a last ditch effort to get Ben to read Twilight, I decided to try the "open mind" approach again and we made a deal... I would read Ender's Game if he'd read Twilight! I don't think he thought I was serious until I started reading it every day... then he reluctantly picked up Twilight and began himself.

I think I'm holding up my end of the bargain a lot better than he is but this is actually starting to get a bit enjoyable on my part. I haven't gotten too terribly far yet (for those of you that have read it, I'm at the part where he has just been promoted to Salamader and his commander is being really mean to him) but I have to admit... not too shabby! I keep waiting for it to get impossibly hard to understand or way too weird or whatever, but nope... still pretty interesting!

If anything, at least I'll have broadened my literary horizons a bit. I'm not expecting fireworks or anything (after Edward, thats kind of almost impossible) but if I can make it through the whole book I'll be pleasantly surprised! Good luck to me...and to Ben too, I know that getting into a 17 year old girl's mind is probably torture, heehee!

Close Call...

Yesterday we had 2 tornadoes hit Oklahomna City. One of these touched down a mere 1/2 mile from our home. Yeah, thats WAY too close for comfort... Both Ben and I were at work when this happened, so we're ok. I had to hang around at work an extra 30 minutes while the storm passed well enough to our north to where it would be safe for me to go home and check out the damage. I was terrified for our puppies! We keep them inside when we know the weather is going to be rough, but a tornado can get you indoors too, so yeah... I drove home FAST.
I have to say, we were very, very lucky to not have sustained any damage to our home. Just 1/2 a block away a big tree was uprooted and fell on a house, crushing the roof in. There were quite a few snapped limbs around us, but nothing big enough to cause damage. My puppies were all fine, phew!
Here's the kicker though- we weren't even under Tornado Watch! According to all our expert meteorologists, this wasn't supposed to happen. A tornado was on the ground and the sirens hadn't even gone off! So much for Oklahoma having the "best" weathermen, lol. Something very similar to this happened last spring too. I am sorely dissapointed.

Twilight Teaser Trailer!!!

Lookie what I found!!!

WATCH ME!

AHHHHHHHHHH!!!! I'm soooooooooooo excited!!!! Rob Pattinson makes SUCH a great Edward, eeek! Ok, I know, I sound like a 15 year old, I'll shut up now. *blush*

Baby Shower Cake

Tomorrow we're having a maternity lunch/pre-baby shower for one of my co-workers. I thought I'd surprise her with a cake. This was a bit of a challenge, but I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out! I'm having tons of fun trying out new techniques and working with gumpaste!

I give up

As if this could come as a surprise after a week straight of Twilight posts... I confess, I've been sucked in, pardon the pun. ;) I'm now scrounging the web trying to find any and all little tidbits I can about the upcoming move at the end of the year. No "official" trailer yet, maybe in the next few months. For now though, this is the best I've found. I never thought I'd ever say this, but thank you, THANK YOU, MTV!




To my fellow Twilighters, I'm sure you've already seen this, but enjoy it again. For those of you that are as skeptical and cynical as I was about this just a mere week or so ago... I've seen the light! Read it!!! (Then go see the movie in December!)

Oh, and I know, I know... as pointed out to me by Clark earlier, "great" trailers have led to dissapointing movies in the past (Eragon, ahem ahem!)but I'm hoping against hope that this movie will stay pretty true to the book. If they just do this right, these books have the potential to make AMAZING movies!!! Eeek, I can't WAIT!;)

Is it August 2nd yet???

*Sigh* What a week this has been! I started this whole Twilight thing last Friday in the hopes of curing my "post-Harry funk" and instead have only managed to merely replace it with a "post-Twilight funk" instead. Go figure.

I just finished Eclipse and am grateful to at least have been left with some measure of closure... My immediate reactions are these:

*Edward is still my hero.

*Jacob (although I feel slightly bad for him still) really just needs to GO AWAY. Hurry up and "imprint" on someone or something, I dunno... just go away.

*I'm curious as to how "bad" Bella will be. Will this cause an upheaval? Something is BOUND to go wrong in the next book... What else would there to be to write about... *sigh* That makes me uneasy.

*How cool of a movie would this make?! (Eclipse, I mean.) Not to mention terrifying and pretty gruesome... Oh I hope they can keep it PG-13!!!!

*Did I mention Jacob just needs to get lost? (Oh wait, I did.)

*Edward is my hero. :) (Whoops, I keep repeating myself for some reason!)
(I recently read someone express it like this:"Stephenie Meyer really did all the men in the world a great disservice by creating a character SO perfect. Good thing this is all fiction!")

Ok... so now what? Anyone have any good suggestions for another good read? I need to keep myself occupied, August is still a ways away, grrr... Like my new ticker on my sidebar, btw? Heehee...

Resurfacing... just for a sec!

Finished New Moon! It got way better at the end... loved the end, actually! Still don't like Jacob...

I'm about 1/2 way done with Eclipse... so far I'm liking it. Kinda annoyed at Bella and the whole marriage thing, what a dork!

That's all, off to read again, yippee!