Book Haul

Notes from Jess: The fairies are at it again.  Thankfully this time they gave my post back a bit faster than last time.  Don't feed the fairies chocolate guys, they like to steal my posts when their tummies are full of chocolate.

I don't know about you but when I travel I have to have a book with me.  It's nothing for me to start a book once we get on the road within a few minutes from our house and have the book completed by the time we arrive at our destination.  In 2012 when I went to New Orleans I was on a charter bus for over 17 hours.  I read three books that day and contemplated starting a fourth but I was just tired and hungry, oh and my Kindle had died.

Since we're getting ready to leave for Wyoming early Tuesday morning I hit up our local bookstore that Ma and I have credit through selling our books to and picked out a few to take with me.  I was short on time so I couldn't just browse away like normal, but I ended up picking up three that looked promising.

Get this, my grand total for the trip to the bookstore was $11.25 (including tax).  Warlord was the only book I was able to pay half with my store credit since the other two, Rules of Civility and Dark and Stormy Knights was on their massive clearance shelf.  Not bad considering I had to drive into the city to get these books!  Totally worth the gas in the truck to buy from there because the ladies that work there are so wonderful and have helped me make some serious book decisions before!

Totes cheesin' it up on the webcam because I was having issues with
my camera and I'm wayyy too tired to sort it out right now.

I'm sure you're dying to know what I've chosen.  Is this how this works? I just tell you about what I bought? Is that a book haul?

Warlord by Ilario Pantano with Malcolm McConnell

Why I chose this book: Every once in a while I love to read a good military fiction book.  I've been due to read one for a while now and I wanted something that I could somehow know what was going on.  I saw the Marine Corps emblem on the spine and pulled it out to check it out.  I've only ever read one book on the war in Iraq and it was written the year following 9/11.  Considering that the person who wrote this was a sniper in Desert Storm and lead an infantry platoon in Iraq after 9/11, I was drawn to this book over others because I felt it could give me some insight to the life of these guys and gals that served and in some cases still serving in this area of the Middle East.

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Why I chose this book: Set in the late thirties I was immediately drawn to this book because I've read so much futuristic/alternative universe books recently that I was definitely ready to pick up something that was set in the past.  Basically, from what I understand of the synopsis on the back, Katey Kontent, 25, meets this handsome banker dude in a jazz bar on New Year's Eve and the story follows her year long journey to the upperside of the New York society.  It sounds quite a bit different from what I normally gravitate towards at the book store like all those murder mysteries my Ma has me hooked on.

Dark and Stormy Knights edited by P.N. Elrod

Why I chose this book: Whenever I buy more than one book I usually always pick one with little to know thought process.  Picking at random basically. This one is it.  From the sounds of it, this one is more supernatural based, or maybe not. I can't tell from the synopsis.  What I found interesting from further inspection one I got to the truck to head home was that there isn't just one author.  There's more than the four names that are listed on the front cover.  Should be an interesting read in general!

I will also take along The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien that I'm currently reading as well as the book I need to finish for school and can not for the life of me remember what it's called right now.

What was the last book you purchased?

#BlogEveryDayInJuly Challenge

Jeane and Jem are hosting a challenge the month of July.  It's just what the title of this post says, they're going to be blogging every day in July!  Jeane's post here has a list of daily prompts and a nice little button show off.

I'm planning on blogging the first week in July even though I'll be on the road and in who-knows-where Wyoming.  I decided that I'm going to attempt Jeane and Jem's challenge, though I won't be following all of their prompts.  I plan on mixing them up a bit and doing which ever ones I feel the urge to do.  As I've mentioned before (I think) I have issues committing and I can't automatically just crank out decent quality of posts on the daily. So they're my disclaimer, I'm going to attempt the challenge, but I'm not planning on doing all the prompts on all the right days. Hollandaise*? Good.

Also, I guess I should note that I'm going to write and schedule posts for the first week of the challenge since I'll be traveling and stuff.  Some days I'll post twice, once with the scheduled post and then whatever I decide to blog about during our trip. Looks like it might be a bit busy around this spot of the internet!

*Culinary humor right there. I couldn't help myself. I said hollandaise because I didn't know how to spell capisce. Capisce? 

Music: 3 Songs On Replay

Do you ever find yourself listening to the same songs? On repeat? For days? Or maybe a couple of weeks?  Well, I definitely do! It happens so frequently that I'm starting to sing at work, and I'm not a singing-in-public type of person. In fact I'm more of a sing-in-the-shower and sing-in-the-car type of person.

Here are the three songs I just can't enough of the last couple of weeks.

Day Drinking by Little Big Town - I first heard this on the CMT awards when they performed in all white and HAD PAINT SPLATTER EVERYWHERE AT THE END, it was super neat.  I have to admit, I just really love the whistling and the drumming parts.  It's so easy to get that tune stuck in my head!


This is How We Roll Remix by Florida Georgia Line, Jason Derulo, Luke Bryan - So, yeah this one is also from the CMT awards.  The version on spotify (the official version, I think) is different from the actual CMT performance version where they mixed This Is How We Roll and Talk Dirty together.  Both versions have been stuck in my head and are super fun to dance around to while getting dressed for work.



Surfboard by Cody Simpson - Originally I didn't like this song when it was performed the first time on the last season of Dancing with the Stars.  I guess by the second time it was performed, in it's entirety this time, I started to like it.  So of course I took to spotify and guess what...it's stuck in my head.

What about you? What songs have you found yourself humming or singing when there's no music playing?

Of Mulberry Trees and Water

One thing that I've found myself missing about from my childhood has been the long summer weekends camping.  It used to be the norm for my Ma to take off on a Friday and we'd load up the truck and camper on Thursday when she got off work and set off on the road.  Most times we didn't even have a specific location in mind!

I've fished, camped and swam in more lakes than the average Joe in Kansas.  I guess in some ways we just lake hopped most summers, which was fun because we got find the best camping spots and the best fishing spots!

These weekends, and in one summer we spent maybe eight days home just long enough to do a bit of laundry and pay bills, have a special place in my heart that bring some memories back when I hear certain town names.

A favorite story I like to tell is about the time we camped at Wellington City Lake.  We had found a lovely sunny spot on top of a little hill.  We could see the entire lake and there wasn't many people around.  There was lots of room for our dog, Dusty, to roam around.  During our set up of camp our camper became unbalanced after we unhitched it from the truck and it started to roll down the hill....towards the lake. I was about eight and on crutches and I remember yelling for my parents when it started to roll.  My Ma was the one who stopped it from rolling into the lake.  Ever since we've yet to camp on a hill again.

Another story that I just love to remind my Ma of is the year we hitched up our camper and traveled to Fritch, Texas for our family reunion that June.  We stopped somewhere in Oklahoma on a Thursday night at a KOA.  It was late and since we don't normally do the KAO thing because they're usually packed during the summer and it's just not something that our family likes, we didn't have much choice of camp spots.  So we ended up under a mulberry tree.  My Ma was so mad because there was no way around tracking in mulberries.  We spent the better part of that evening cleaning up the floors in our camper to make sure there weren't any mulberry stains because my Ma was not having any of that.  The next morning we loaded up in the truck and headed south again for Fritch.  When we set up camp in Fritch we were happy to have made it to our destination.  Camper is unhitched, legs are pulled down, slide out has been cranked out, water, sewer and electricity hooked up and everything is level.  We open the door to do our clean-everything-and-put-things-back-where-they-belong routine and the look on my Ma's face was priceless.  She forgot to turn the kitchen sink off completely and had flooded the main part of our camper.  Not only did we spend a lot of time cleaning mulberries from our camper floor that weekend we also spent a lot of time and paper towels drying out our camper.

As you can guess, these are just a couple of many stories we have.  What is your favorite thing from your childhood during the summer?