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Friday Fun! (Relaxation and Final Week of Blog Tour Updates)
Hello my lovely readers!
I had the best weekend last weekend. It included bicycle rides, farm stands, picnics, and listening to a record player. Super relaxing. 🙂 Which is a good thing because this week was orientation for another school (think of them as like departments) at my university. Busy busy! I found ways to relax though. I of course got in my gym time. I don’t always manage to do spin classes because of how the timing works with my schedule, but I was able to this week. I was really pleased to see that my leg strength has drastically improved. My level ten of difficulty used to be gear twelve. Now it’s gear eighteen. Yay! I also started playing a new videogame this week. I picked up Donkey Kong Country Returns for my wii. It’s super fun! Very old school side-scroller but still integrates the wii motion controllers in well. I do die a lot in it, but I’ve never been a great videogamer. I just enjoy it.
This was the final week of the Waiting For Daybreak
Just a Lil’ Lost posted a review where she states, “McNeil brings a fresh voice with this zombie apocalypse-type story. She has written a character that is refreshing and different from others I have read.”
Obsessions of a Library Gurl (who, full disclosure, is my friend but who was able to use her librarian talents to offer a fair, even-handed review), also posted a review stating, “It was an easy read and one I was able to quickly get into.”
Obsessions of a LibraryGurl also interviewed me. Check that out to hear what I think about zombies as an analogy for rape.
Reflections of a Book Addict posted a review where he states, “In all, it is an awesome read that really gets you in tune with Frieda’s struggle with the undead.”
Reflections of a Book Addict also interviewed me. Check that out to find out more about my own pets. Also, comment on the interview post to be entered in the final giveaway of the tour!
And that’s it! Hard to believe the final week of the tour is over. Many thank you’s to everyone who helped make the last week varied and exciting!
Also, happy weekends to my blog followers. 🙂
Friday Fun! (Biking, Gardening, Wii)
Hello my lovely readers! I hope your week treated you all well. It’s finally feeling like summer around here. You would think the summery weather would mean timely buses, but no. The T has made me late just as much as it did in the winter. I take this as a sign that I need to speed up project Amanda bikes to work. Last weekend, I attempted the route with my gal pals Nina and E. It turned out I was only able to make it 8 of the 12 miles. I’m going to have to work up to it. In spirit of that, I’ve been planning on biking to my bus connection to start building up the muscles. 🙂 I had yet to do it this week, partly because of rain and partly because I realized I need to figure out something to wear under my skirts while on the bike. However! I am determined to bike at least 3 days next week. Keep your fingers crossed for me!
I transplanted my seedlings, which are now plants, into their permanent containers last weekend. The containers are a bunch of different vibrant colors, and they really brighten up the kitchen! Now I just need to start my strawberry plants, transplant my flower into a hanging basket, and start either onion or spinach (I have yet to decide which). It’s all lots of fun, and I can’t wait to see the produce I (hopefully) get in the end!
I played Kirby for the first time this week, and I now get the appeal of that odd little pink blob. It’s a lot of fun! I also downloaded one of the super marios (he’s in a castle and goes into paintings….) onto my Wii. It’s one I didn’t really ever play as a kid, so it’s all-new to me. It’s a lot like a predecessor of Mario Galaxy, so it’s a bunch of fun. Of course, I can’t wait to try the new Galaxy when it comes out next week!
I hope you all have lovely weekends. I know I’ll be seeing at least a few of you tomorrow at malibtweetup4! Yay!
Friday Fun! (Visit to VT, Gal Pals, Wii)
Although the reason for my visit home last weekend was sad, I had a wonderful time getting to see my dad’s side of the family mostly together for a change. My aunts, uncles, and cousins were all wonderful, although it’d been so many years that I did shock a few by having beer at the wake. Hah! Apparently, me being 23 snuck up on them. I also got to see my nephew, who is now talking in complete sentences. I was shocked at how well he remembers me, as well as at how much time he wanted to spend with me. It was fun! Apparently, I like toddlers. Who knew. I also got to meet my niece for the first time. She’s got her daddy’s red hair, so she’s bound to be a bundle of trouble. 😉 Really, though, she’s looking quite good for all the time she had to spend in intensive care at first.
Back in Boston, I hung out with my ever-lovely gal pals, Nina and E. I, shockingly, got to introduce them to the infamous Telephone music video, which they naturally fell in love with. Bonding occurred over Thai food, and Nina sent me off with a bottle of vodka. The gal knows me so well. 🙂 Meanwhile, all three of my herb plants came up and seem to be doing relatively well. *fingers crossed* Also making an appearance is the seedlings from the mystery seeds I got from Old Navy. I have no idea what flower it’s going to be. We shall see. I’ve been playing my way through wii’s Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess. It’s the furthest I’ve ever made it in that type of game. I will say, getting to swipe the wiimote in the air and having it kill troll things on the screen is AWESOME. I think if I ever actually manage to defeat this, I’ll have to try another game where I get to wave my arms around and kill things.
Happy weekends, everyone! Here’s hoping the gorgeous weather holds out!
Friday Fun! (Tiffany, Wii, and Websites at Work, Oh My!)
Even though this week was spring break from grad school, I still had to work full time and of course managed to be super-busy outside of work as well.
My friend Tiffany from my days of interning with Americorps/the National Park Service has been in town for training for her job. She lives in Virginia, so this was pretty darn exciting. This was her last week in Boston, so she came over to my apartment so we could visit in relative quiet as opposed to the noise of a restaurant or pub. It was so lovely to get to catch up after all this time, and I was glad to discover that in a relatively short time we were chit-chatting just like we did when we lived and worked together at the park.
This week I discovered that having the tax return money to buy a Wii and tv is one thing, finding places that have them in stock is another entirely. I won’t even go into the debacle that was the store brand tv purchased at Best Buy (needless to say, it was returned), but I will say what the hell, Nintendo? You have an insanely popular gaming system, and you’re not meeting demand? That just doesn’t make sense to me. After much searching, genius finally struck me in the form of Walmart.com, which had a few consoles in stock. Huzzah! It arrived on Wednesday, and I’m enjoying it just as much as I thought I would. My tv arrived from Walmart.com yesterday, but I have yet to set it up. Fingers crossed that we’ll be able to make Netflix stream on it!
Work has also been very busy as this is the time of year when I update our website. Long story short, with hospital privacy concerns, one person has control of all of the websites connected to the hospital, which means we get to update our websites once a year and that we have zero to very very little control over the appearance. This is frustrating to me as it limits what I can do. (For instance, I’ve been having to use tables. TABLES). Since we can only update once a year, that also means a bunch of our links are broken by the time that comes around, so I spend a lot of time hunting down the good ones. Thankfully, this will soon be in the past as the hospital is organizing an intranet, which means I will get to be webmaster of our websites! (And the nurses’ websites, which I’m actually a bit nervous about). So as soon as I finish this update to tide our patrons over until the intranet, I’ll commence working on the intranet. You guys, I’m nervous, this will be the first time I’ll be using my real web programming skills for work. Eep. *crosses fingers*
I’m excited for the weekend! Be expecting more reviews of old and obscure books as the Audiobooks app is a good companion to web design. Happy weekends!
Friday Fun! (Nina’s Back, Refunds, and Gardening)
This was a busy, but overall fun week for me. One of my closest friends, Nina, was on a two month trip to Israel, and this week she returned home! (She kept a blog of her trip, check it out!) She and one of my other good friends came over Wednesday night, and we all cooked together. Well, Nina and I did. E was the cheering squad. Also, she brought the chocolate. Nina made tehini the way they do in Israel, and we had that with whole wheat bread for an appetizer. It’s a lot like hummus, only more bitter. For dinner we had whole wheat crust pizza topped with vodka sauce, marinated tempeh, shredded carrots, avocado, onions, spinach, and cheese. You guys, vodka sauce lends such a nice sweetness to a pizza. Swoon. Also, Nina brought me a lovely tapestry from Israel. I believe she said it was made by the tent dwelling Arabs, but I was also tipsy when she gave it to me, so I could totally be wrong about that. Although it is many colors, it is predominantly a vibrant shade of red with hints of black, so it will go really well with my living room. I’m so happy Nina is back, and she and E are going to be roommates, so I’ll be seeing much more of both of them.
In tidbits of news, my state refund came in, so there’ll be a bit of shopping this weekend. I was going to get a Wii, but I think I’ll wait for my federal refund for that. Instead, I’ll probably get a new tv, mostly so I can finally hitch up my mac to it and stream Netflix. Also, what’s the point of having a Wii if you’re playing on an old tv? (Don’t worry, budgeting types, some of the money will be going into savings and some into the terrifying undergrad debt).
I’ve decided (partly spurred on by my librarian friend, Kristi, check her blog out), that come hell or high water I will get some gardening done this year in spite of the fact that I have neither yard nor balcony and a kitty who is very determined not to share windowsills. I found a windowbox that is a bit sturdier and fits on the windowsill better, so hopefully she won’t knock it off. I’ve also got some other ideas up my sleeve (such as the topsy/turvy planting thing). I’m planning on growing tomatoes, herbs, peppers, and strawberries. I’m also considering potatoes via an indoor method Nina learned about in Israel. I am, however, known to have a brown thumb, so hopefully this pursuit won’t be in vain.
Happy weekend everyone!
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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