May 20, 2014 | Literature |
Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Tom Clancy is an amazing writer, I am always surprised by how much I like his books. He does a great job of giving you a feeling of the military teams, attitudes and technology without being over-your-head with the terms and lingo.
This books started out with some world building and character building but quickly introduced “teasers” for the main plot. Once the main plot was revealed the action was non-stop to the end of the book. My problem is more with the choice of enemies (environmental terrorists) than with the actions or reactions of characters in the book.
The “bad guys” want to wipe out all life on earth to save the earth and return it to their natural state. They are willing to go to extremes (bio-terrorism) to achieve this. However most of their views and beliefs weren’t the fanatical dedication I would have expected. They drove Hummers around their compound, talked about getting bear-skin or lion-skin rugs, and utilized all manner of electricity and technology to live comfortably. Now maybe this is just an expression that you can never really tell who the terrorists are, but to me it seemed that they just wanted to create an elite society and the environmental stuff was tacked on at the end since its a “hot button issue”
The most annoying thing in the book was Clancy’s interchange of the words vegan and vegetarian. As a vegetarian for 15 years I can tell you that there is a major difference between those two terms and neither one of them include eating pastrami…. To be so precise with the military side, it seemed sloppy to me to not have this clarified.
Overall I extremely enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone who likes a fast-paced novel. The military stuff was not over the top and should be accessible to anyone who has seen a recent action movie.
View all my reviews
May 14, 2014 | Current Events, kittens |
During the recent thunderstorms my clock fell off the wall. It wasn’t damaged, but the pin holding it was tiny so rather then get the picture hanging hooks and hammer at 10:30pm we decided to wait until morning. I put the clock on the floor.
When I woke up I found that during the night someone had chewed the hands of the clock and bent them out of shape. The Other and I were sleeping so that leaves 4 suspects.
I don’t know which cat did it, but I have my suspicions…
May 11, 2014 | Fashion, Food, Holidays, kittens |
If, like myself, you are the mother of kitties it becomes important that you take mother’s day into you own hands. Kitty paws just aren’t gonna cut it! This year I help my fur babies pick out some really great gifts for me – assorted Frango Mints and a kitty necklace! They are so thoughtful!
After trying all the mints, I decided the Milk Chocolate Mints are still my favorite and informed the kitties I would like only those next year. They looked disinterestedly at me in what I assume is agreement. The Other all got me a gift – Starbucks Chai! I didn’t even have to help with this one – he is a lot more capable than the kitties.
To further treat myself, I decided to give myself a manicure utilizing the new book and nail tools I got from my Reddit exchange. Overall I think it turned out pretty good for a first try! I choose an easy one – Dots and went to work.
I didn’t have the exact colors suggested in the book so I decided to utilize my set of Coach polish.
Started with a base coat
Then my base color coat. The book suggest light pink so I used that color from the Coach set. I think this nail polish is getting a bit old (I did get it 3-4 years ago) because the pink went on a little gloopy.
Now the first dot color. The book suggest blue, which I assume is because its the darkest. For this reason I decided to start with the purple.
I waited a while in between each coat because I didn’t want to smear the dots. Luckily its easy to turn Kindle pages with wet nails. For the second dot coat I used the dark pink, since it was the second darkest color.
Finally on to the gold dots. I tried to fill it any remaining gaps but overall I think the gold was a little light compared to the other colors. If I did it again I would make sure the dot colors were closer in intensity.
Once I gave the dots a bit to dry I put on a super shiny top coat. As I said I think I did pretty good for my first time. I can’t wait to try other ones in the book. I’m thinking either Strawberries or Ladybugs next!
May 10, 2014 | Food, General Chit-Chat, kittens |
The weather is finally getting nice and the kitties are getting spring fever. Magritte has been especially bad begging at the front door even though she has a wonderful outside kitty playland and screened in porch. But in the end I guess she knows I will give in an let her out – I just wish she wouldn’t immediately run and eat grass. Grass barf is the worst!
We also ordered some Pineapples from Hawaii a couple weeks back. These are Kauai SugarLoaf Pineapples and they are amazing! They are less acidic (almost none) compared to regular pineapples and much sweeter. We orignally had them when we travelled to Kauai in 2009 and have been trying ever since to get them shipped to the mainland. Finally they were available and just as good as I remember. Now if only I can find a way to ship Coco Puffs.
May 6, 2014 | Fashion, Hobbies |
I participate in the Reddit Gift Exchange and this time I did the nail and makeup exchange. I was really excited about this one because I like getting my nails painted and recently have started to enjoy painting my own nails and even trying out designs. It seems like I can’t go into Ulta or Sephora without purchasing nail polish regardless of how many colors I have. I actually put a self-imposed ban on my nail polish buying leading up to the exchange (and even that I broke…)
I didn’t do this one myself, I used my Christmas gift from Brianna to treat myself to a gel mani. Its sparkly teal with orange glitter – I feel like a mermaid!
Anyway, my gift arrived today and I couldn’t be more thrilled!! It is a DIY nail art book and some nail art brushes. My Santa included a super nice note and she totally got me the perfect gift. Honestly I would already be trying them if I didn’t get the above gel mani last Friday 🙂 Give me at least another week
So thank you thank you thank you I can’t wait to try it out! I will definitely post an update when I try my first design.
In the meantime to hold you over (cause I’m sure you need that) here are some recent manis I did myself:
Butter Knackered – this is the polish I broke my ban to buy. It was the last one left and too pretty to pass up!
Butter Rosie Lee – so much glitter!!!! Butter makes the best glitter polish I know, only issue is getting it off.
These are actually Sally Hansen nail stickers. Great for a quick mani and have some cool designs. I hope to be doing designs like this myself now!!!!
Apr 30, 2014 | Food, Holidays, Travels |
I’m not big in to celebrating Easter except for the obvious reasons (food and candy). This Easter there was no big family get together so I decided to enlist The Other to make a lamb soup. Lamb, I have learned, is traditional on Easter but soup is not. This would be my first foray into a more adventurous soup from my Cook’s Illustrated Soup and Stew book.
The soup – officially called Irish Stew in the book – consisted of Lamb shoulder, and potatoes. There was a variant which included turnips and carrots which I decided to try. I thought this would add a little more variety to the soup. Although I love potatoes, my results with lamb have been mixed about 50/50. Brutus on the other hand was just excited meat was being cooked and decided to jump on the counter ( a no-no) and photo bomb while I was taking photos #throughglass
The bad news was that since it was Easter weekend and people like to eat lamb on Easter my butcher didn’t have any lamb shoulder and the Jewel had only 1 package left. I quickly called The Other to see if we could sucessfully scale down the soup from the required 4.5 pounds of lamb to just 1 pound. He said it could be done and was not worried.
My two tiny lamb shoulder chops
All that’s left after removing from the bone and trimming – it doesn’t look like enough!!!!
We successfully scaled down the recipe and made enough for about 4 servings of soup. It was awesomely delicious. The lamb was cook perfectly and so tender and flavorful it was by far my most favorite part of the soup (again just making me sad I didn’t have more lamb!) There was a weird aromatic in the soup which I think came from the turnips that I didn’t care for. It wasn’t enough to not eat it but if I made this again I would leave out the turnips and just do potatoes and carrots.
The cook book also listed a complimentary quick biscuit recipe which was supposed to be easier and faster than traditional biscuits. We did not scale down this recipe….
They turned out pretty good even though I forgot the salt during the mixing. They were easy to work with and cooked in about 15 minutes and for those doing Weight Watchers were about 3 points each. I am definitely going to keep this recipe on hand for get togethers and parties. I also liked that the biscuits were small (2.5″ round) so a good option for finger food or hors d’oeuvre.
Apr 28, 2014 | General Chit-Chat |
I was having a hard-core snuggle session with Brutus this morning and in the middle of nuzzling his neck I realized he smelled like poop. I did a quick poo-spection and didn’t see any obvious cause. That’s when I realized he was eminating a strong poo-aura. So we decided to give him a bath.
He is such a good boy. He went in the shower with The Other and didn’t scratch or struggle at all. He only screamed out his displeasure once.
Now he is a clean, fresh smelling fluff nugget….at least for today.
Apr 18, 2014 | Bright Ideas, Current Events, Tech |
Yup, I got a Google Glass – and I couldn’t be more excited about it!! I have so many ideas in my head of what I am going to do – and I won’t lie, most of them involve the kitties….
I just got it today but I have spent pretty much the whole day playing with it – so much so I ran out the battery! The obvious things are to take pictures and movies on it, but it can also send messages, make phone calls, play music, post to Facebook and YouTube and of course play games. It’s still technically in beta so there isn’t much “Glassware” (that’s what they call the apps) yet.
Taken #ThroughGlass !
One of the apps I got was a compass – now it will make sense when you give directions like “go west on Main St”! I also got an app that will translate signage by looking at it – no more confusion here:
I also got a field trip app that will tell you interesting information about the sites you are visiting. And another that will check your calendar for upcoming appointments then display an instant dossier about the people I am meeting. I’ll be like a spy! There are also fitness and food apps. I plan on trying to use this a lot more to post things here too. I can’t say enough how excited I am about this!!
Apr 17, 2014 | Bright Ideas, Fashion |
I try to always have fresh flowers in the house but I usually don’t get Roses because for the price they don’t last add long as other options. With Easter coming up though there are lots of flowers on sale at Jewel so I got this pretty bunch for a deal.
This gave me some inspiration for fun nails. I found these nail art stickers at Jewel as well. You just wait for the color to (mostly) dry, place the stickers where you want them, then put on a top coat. It’s a great easy way to get fancy nails without much effort or skill. I did each nail a bit different too, which I think gives it a more hand-crafted look (pun intended)!
And no, none of this helps Brutus smell any better. His poo-aura conquers all!
Apr 15, 2014 | Politics |
Personal Beef Wellington and Creamed Corn. Because this is how I assume Mr Moneybags would celebrate after the government took the GDP of a small country in taxes. Thanks Obama…
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