DarkWriter's Ramblings

Having an ATV = Fun.

I've had the thing three weeks now, have been out weekends and mostly both Saturday and Sunday each weekend. It's good exercise - works muscles I didn't even know I had, and give's me an excellent excuse to enjoy gorgeous nature trails and get constant fresh air.

That being said, went out again today...explored new trails with the hubby and a friend (who's g/f was supposed to come out to play as well, but studying took over her saturday - bummer).



On to books -

Read Mark of the Demon - So freaking good! Loved it. Then picked up Witch by Marie Brennan - Excellent, just like Warrior. So very amazing.

Currently reading Strange Angels by Lili St. Crow. It's pretty good, not my favorite though. Will be done tonight then need to figure out what's next.

Good mood, but sleepy from all the fresh air.  *Yawn* 

Once best friends at an elite superhero training academy, Callie
Bradford--code name Iridium--and Joannie Greene--code name Jet--are now
mortal enemies. Jet is a by-the-book hero, using her Shadow power to protect
the citizens of New Chicago. Iridium, with her mastery of Light, runs the
city's underworld. For years the two have played a dangerous game of cat and
mouse.

But now playtime's over. A looming evil threatens both them and the world
they share. As Jet works with a "normal" man who has an extraordinary
ability to make her weak in the knees, Iridium teams with a mysterious
vigilante called Taser. Both Jet and Iridium are convinced that the other
woman is the key to a catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions.

And one of them is right.

    Warrior

- By Marie Brennan

When a witch is born, a doppelganger is created. For the witch to master her powers, the twin must be killed, but what happens when the doppelganger survives?

Mirage, a bounty hunter, lives by her wits and lethal fighting skills. She always gets her mark. But her new mission will take her into the shadowy world of witches, where her strength may be no match against magic.

Miryo is a witch who has just failed her initiation test. She now knows that there is someone in the world who looks like her, who is her: Mirage. To control her powers, Miryo has only one choice: to hunt the hunter and destroy her.

As an every so slightly early birthday present the hubby took me out to the city to the bookstore to shop  :)  I'm sure you can imagine my delight.

Then, he told me I had $100 to spend... well forget delight, now I'm just plain excited.  As a plus, Chapters was having their buy 3, get the 4th free on all best sellers and regular priced books... even better - especially since I know a couple of the books I want are hardcovers and or $15+ books.

So here's what I bought:

Warrior - Marie Brennan
Witch - Marie Brennan
Mark of the Demon - Diana Rowland
Black and White - Jakie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge
Evermore  - Alyson Noel
Darkborn - Alison Sinclair
Always Looking Up - Michael J Fox
A Madness of Angels - Kate Griffen
My Sisters Keeper - Jodi Piccolt

So yes, I'm thrilled... plus I picked up a couple of new bookmarks - super cute little penguin ones and a pretty jeweled initial one.  And on top of my purchases today, I'm going to still get Summer Knight in a day or two as well as Faefever when it's released in paperback late this month.  So I'd say it's a pretty good month for book.

I looked at my savings today between the 4 for 3 and my irewards member discount and I got $150 worth of books for $100. Not to shabby as far as I'm concerned.  :)

After shopping, we zipped to Walmart for a couple things and then home depot to try and find a 3rd matching bookshelf to my other two...  but no such luck, we'll have to check another location.  Then we met my mom and grandpa for dinner and spent a couple hours visiting.

It was definitely overall. one of the better birthdays I've had in the last couple years (my birthday's keeps falling during the week and with the zoo at home it's just to tough to do stuff that evening).  The hubby promised to make me a really nice dinner tomorrow... so I'm looking forward to that.

So we've added a new addition to our zoo... lol

Picked her up tuesday night - she was one of the farm cats at the hubby's parents and far to cute to pass up. So Jim has his cat, who's slowly adjusting and I have mine and we share the dogs...

Only problem?  I am having a hard time naming her, so it's been two days and she doesn't have a name. Any idea's would be more than appreciated. I'm looking for someting cute and fitting but not typical.


She's got a couple of black spots on her sides, perfectly round.. and her meow is this funny squeaky little thing. 



On another note, I'm super excited for the Hardcover release of Summer Knight in hardcover in just a few more days (July 7th) and Faefever in paperback in just a couple more weeks (July 28th).  I have Winter Night and Proven guilty on order from amazon.ca, but apparently they're having a hard time getting proven guilty from their supplier in hardcover at the moment so it's been delayed.  In the mean time I'm going to pick up Turn Coat and Small Favor sooner rather than later (so sometime this month)...

Yay for new books!!

Otherwise I've been designing a website, just need approval from the rest of the club before I go ahead and start putting money out for a proper domain name which will happen sometime in the third week of July... so for now, it's just www.southinterlakeatvclub.homestead.com

Guess that's about all for now... watching the bomber/eskimo game on tv... Go Bombers!
 

Well, it was an interesting last few days... and scary for my puppies....

Thursday night, the three monsters (Kelly, Cole and Tyson) decided to pick a fight wit a porcupine... yes, seriously. This is the 2nd time in the last year Kelly's decided to do this... one would have thought she'd learned the first time, but apparently not.

So anyways...  spent about an hour pulling quills out of the dogs faces. Cole had 2 on his chin... and they were pretty superficial so I figure he must have been far away when the porcupine lost the quills... pulled about 15 from Kelly's chin - so at least they were reasonably easy to pull and not in her mouth. Tyson however, well she was another story. I pulled 21 or 22 quills from her and I swear she'd bitten the thing... not fun..  So there was one quill I couldn't pull... called the local vet (my normal vet is 2 hours away) to see if he could do a quick 15 minute after hours call... no go, he's laid up in bed.

The quill wasn't bothering Tyson because of the angle it was at so she had to wait until morning for that one... she went to her normal vet and 15 minutes, 45 dollars later, my drunk puppy is happy again (those sedatives sure knock them out good... she was like bambi on the ce...)

Friday night, Tyson and Cole are out playing in the bush.. about 10 we're calling them in to put them to bed because it's been a long day. Jim's calling and calling and neither dog are coming back... so I call Tyson instead of Jim and she comes barreling back... it's dark, she's soaking wet so I tell her to go to bed which she does. I walked downstairs after her, turned on the lights and look at her... she's soaked alright, in BLOOD. Seriously.

My sweet puppy has split her ear, from tip upwards about 3 to 4 inches... By the way, dogs have an artery in their ear.

Called the after hours number to the overpriced local vet that I deal with when I have no other choice (they aren't the best and they kill the wallet), took her in, got her fixed up and now she's wearing a cone around her head to keep her from being able to scratch at her ear and rip the stiches...

It was all very scary, the amount of blood was obscene and I'm just happy she's alright. Cole was on the doorstep when we got home soaking wet from swimming in the back dugout, happy as a clam.

And, a couple pictures of Tyson...


   

yes, she regularly settles in to sleep on her back  :)



On another note, I finally finshed reading Dante's girl by Natasha Rhodes and am starting The Last Angel.  Dante's girl was excellent, much better than I was expecting.

Today was a pretty fun day.

Our little customer service group at work (there's 6 of us) had a fun teambuilding event.  We worked the morning, and then this afternoon when over to some of the Habitat for Humanity sites to do some landscaping.

www.habitat.ca/

It was pretty much a blast mixed in with a lot of hard work.  We all learned why landscaping is not typically done when it's raining though...  Trying to move around top soil, lay sod & spread gravel and lay sidewalk slabs flat? Ha!!  I think it took us three times as long as it should have.

All in all though we made a pretty good dent in the landscaping and hopefully the next group  to go (there's a group going tuesday) will be able to finish the sites off.

I have to say though, now that I've actually spent some time on a habitat project, I'm really glad I got the opportunity and I'm thrilled that it was landscaping over building, because let's face it... A hammer + me?  They don't mix, I'd definitely hurt myself.

I think this is something I'll definitely do again.

After we were all soaked to the bone and had done as much as we could for the day, we walked over to our boss' house (It just so happened that the site was only a block and a bit away from his house...) and he fed us steak and beer... which was perfect after a tough afternoon of manual labour.

A couple hours of visiting later and I made my way home and am now comfy in bed and definitely ready for a good night's sleep *yawn*

So this weekend is going to be a busy one.

Tomorrow morning we need to get up stupid early (for a saturday at least) and head out by 7:30 to go to the town wide garage sale. Not so much my thing, but it'll be good excersice walking around town for a few hours.  Hubby and I are going with the in-laws so yeah.

Then we'll come home and let the puppies out, and pretty ourselves up to go out in actual public (no the garage sale in the morning doesn't count as public... I could care less if the small town locals see me without make up) and go to my nephew's 1st birthday - which there will be camera's at so at this point I care.  :)

I have to sneak out of the party part way through to go take advantage of daylight and a family friends yard to get a nice and recent picture of my parents to have printed and framed for their 30th anniversary, then back to the birthday I go. 

Sunday I really have to get my act together and make my practice wedding-esque cake and fondant for the anniversary party.  It's going to be pretty neat I think. Three tiers, blue and white - the middle layer will be blue and the other two will be white with blue polka dots... I dunno, maybe you can picture it.  I'm only going to practice with two tiers just for the flavours of the bottom to layers and to work on my fondant technique.  I am thinking I'm going to need to have people over to eat the practice cake though... I so don't know what I"m going to do with all the cake... yikes!

The baking thing will likely take up a good chuck of my day, and I have laundry to do as well as a bit of housework. I'm pretty sure both Saturday and Sunday are going to suck for any sort of relaxing.  Ugh.

Can I have Monday off like everyone in the US??? I could really use a 3 day weekend.  :)