Updated Bucket List

So, I have been a bit of a slacker when it comes to updating my Bucket List...

Travel to Paris

Go Hot Air Ballooning

Buy a decent camera previously accomplished!

Take a cooking class

Take a cake decorating class this one I am in the process of completing right now through a Community Ed class! I am taking an Intro to Cake Decorating Class, and will also be taking a cake decorating flowers only class later this month

Be promoted in the workplace Hear ye - hear ye - I was recently PROMOTED at work. My new title: Store Operations Coordinator (from Store Operations Specialist).

Get another dog

Move into a single-family home

Alaskan Cruise

Travel to see more of the West and East coasts

Travel to Hawaii

Travel to Australia

Live on or near a lake

Host Thanksgiving Dinner at our home (must obtain home with larger kitchen first...)

Ride in a Limousine

Road Trip with Derick

Take a get-away vacation

Host a Holiday Cookie Baking Weekend at my home (must obtain home with larger kitchen first...)

Start a retirement account

Rebuild my hard-copy and electronic portfolios

See my work in print

Pay for the meal or dessert of a prom couple anonymously while at the same restaurant

Eat more fruits and vegetables

Serve food/meal at a charity during a major holiday

Re-read a book series

Read or review all of the design books I own

More seriously discuss if and when to have kids

Find an Endocrinologist whom I interact well with

Snowboard again

Go Scuba Diving

Skype with my Twitter Twin someday previously accomplished!

Work more closely with or for the ADA

Organize my digital pictures

Obtain my education degree to teach art or design

Learn how to play acoustic guitar

Busy Little Book Worm

The latest of my novel conquests is The Heroines, by Elieen Favorite. First of all, how cool of a last name is Favorite?!

Secondly, this was one of the books that I found while searching the Swap Site. The book summary caught my attention and sounded like it would be an interesting read:

In the padlocked attic she'd hidden all her books on shelves with locked pine doors. One never knew who might show up and in what state. The last thing you wanted was for Anna Karenina to discover accidentally that she was bound to take her own life on the railroad tracks...' Watergate is breaking news, but at the Prairie Bluff boarding house in rural Illinois, there are more immediate concerns...Emma Bovary has arrived unannounced - and distraught - and Anne-Marie and her daughter Penny have torn themselves away from the television coverage to attend to their new guest. But if there's one rule at Prairie Bluff, it's never meddle in the lives of the Heroines, however cruel the destinies to which they are bound. There's nothing to be done for poor Emma, immersed in her narrative crisis, save for the provision of tea, a tirelessly sympathetic ear, and clean linens...Adolescent angst isn't a patch on beautiful and grief-stricken- and Penny, a moody thirteen, knows she's no competition for her mother's attentions against these ethereal creatures. Hurt and excluded, and frustrated by her mother's passivity in the face of Emma's terrible fate, Penny strikes out across the Prairie to cool her hot head. But when she arrives at the forbidden woods, she's in no mood to obey her mother's second rule, never to enter - and soon finds herself in a world of very real heroes and villains, an unwilling heroine in her very own terrifying story... [Amazon.com]

The book was a pretty quick read - something that was more odd than other books I had read before - an interesting idea of classic novel heroines coming to visit in the storyteller's present day - and they were not allowed to interfere with the heroine's story line. Obscure, but interesting. This book went back on my Swap Pile, because once read, for me, it was a simple read and return type of book. Speaking of which - I should probably get out my library card and go peruse those shelves instead of purchasing books, even IF they are being purchased at Goodwill.

-LD

Readin' Queen

One more book down - the last of my Nicholas Sparks books that was in my stack:

I think I have seen the movie based on this book and didn't much care for the movie. The book also wasn't the greatest Sparks I have read either. Funny, considering it was one of the first ones that he wrote, following  The Notebook and A Walk To Remember. Both of those books are on my "for keeps" shelf at the moment. 

From the website:

Thrown to the waves, and to fate, the bottle could have ended up anywhere. Instead, it is found just three weeks after it begins its journey. Theresa Osborne, divorced and the mother of a twelve-year-old son, discovers it during a seaside vacation from her job as a Boston newspaper columnist. Inside is a letter that opens with, “My Dearest Catherine, I miss you my darling, as I always do, but today is particularly hard because the ocean has been singing to me, and the song is that of our life together….” For Garrett, the message is the only way he knows to express his undying love for a woman he has lost. For Theresa, wary of romance since her husband shattered her trust, the message raises questions that intrigue her. Challenged by the mystery, and driven to find Garrett by emotions she does not fully understand, Theresa begins a search that takes her to a sunlit coastal town and an unexpected confrontation. Brought together either by chance or something more powerful, Theresa and Garrett’s lives come together in a tale that resonates with our deepest hopes for finding everlasting love. Shimmering with suspense and emotional intensity, Message in a Bottle takes readers on a hunt for the truth about a man and his memories, and about both the heartbreaking fragility and enormous strength of love. For those who cherished The Notebook and readers waiting to discover the magic of Nicholas Sparks’s storytelling, here is an achingly lovely novel of happenstance, desire, and the choices that matter most.

I also found it interesting that there is a "Did You Know" section about his books on the website:

Did You Know...

Theresa was named after Nicholas’s agent, Theresa Park?

The novel was sold to Warner Brothers when it was only half complete?

The first draft of the screenplay was finished on the same day the novel was finished?

So that is what the book is about. It is going into my Swap Pile though - not a book that I need to keep around any longer. 

I feel like I might be in a reading funk at the moment. 

I got through this book to get through it. At times it held my attention, and it was a pretty easy 300-ish page read to go through on my commute. I do have to say, it is enjoyable to have the option to spend about 40 minutes in a book on the way to/from work every day if I want.

Next on the docket is:

The Heroines by Elieen Favorite

Come to think of it, I have accumulated quite the stack of books under the desk in the office, waiting for the right swapper to request them from me. The more I see them sitting there, the more I want to build one of these at my parent's lake place:

A Little Free Library. Check it out, I think it's an awesome idea!

And how perfect would that be right at a cabin?! I think it would be a great place - especially since there are people around my parents' cabin who stay year-round, and I am sure there would be some great books that show up there from time to time - and I could stock it with my stack of books right now!

-Happy Reading!

LD