Pieces of Me - Review

My friend Eisley Jacobs had just released her latest book "Pieces of Me".  

This Young Adult SciFi Thriller is very intriguing.  The story is full of adventure, twists and turns that keep you interested ... so much that you might just read the entire book in one day like I did!

Here's a bit of the teaser on the book...
Imagine having amnesia. . . imagine having recurring amnesia. . .  you have no recollection at all of your name, your family, the day before. . . imagine pieces of your life written on sticky notes in various locations ~ sticky notes to guide you through your day. . . because tomorrow you'll forget.

Pieces of Me, Chapter One -- http://eisleyjacobs.com/novels/pieces-of-me-chapter-one/ #YA #Thriller #ScienceFiction #Fantasy "Fast paced thriller with tons of heart!"

My disclaimer:  I did not receive anything in exchange for this review.  I bought the book, read it and gave you my honest review of it.  However, I am trying to win a contest to get an autographed copy of the book because Darly refuses to read my epub version. ;o)  I'm also trying to spread the word so my friend's book gets into more hands.

Dogs don't like to go to the store!

Today I saw again a car with an extra "alarm" of two poor hot dogs waiting while their owner went into the grocery store. 

I would like to take this opportunity to remind folks that your car gets baking like an oven out there in the parking lot...all that heat can cook your poor puppy's brain. 

Your dog is not happy to go shopping with you, they are stressed because they've been left alone in the car and all these strange people keep trying to come and steal your stuff.

Have you ever had to wait in the car while some other person said "I'll be right back"?  No matter how fast they do come back it seems like FOREVER!  This is what it is like for your dog and why they are so happy when you finally do come back.

While the car is in motion your poor dog is trying so hard to not fall over.  An unrestrained animal in the car can become a projectile if you need to stop suddenly or are in a crash.  I saw today a poor husky get his head stuck in the cracked window...if the driver had stopped quickly the dog could have been strangled, had his neck broke or worse.

Sure your dog acts like they love to go for rides in the car, they want to be with you.  Even my Lilly runs for the car and jumps in, but as soon as we get going (with her secured in her crate) she starts whining because she does not like riding in the car.

Unless your dog suffers from separation anxiety they are much happier at home, doing their job of protecting your house from vicious mail carriers.

Birthday Plans

Darly's birthday is next month and she wanted to come up with something "epic" for her party.  Surprisingly she wasn't at all interested in doing any of the go somewhere else type parties.  Being highly sensitive to noise I can see how having her friends at home would be more appealing.

So after googling many versions of Fabulous Birthday Party Ideas we came across ...

Murder Mystery Party!  She liked that right off the bat.

But she also wanted her friends to be able to dress up as any character they wanted to...not just the characters in the mystery.  So we have...

Comic-Con Murder Mystery Party!  and now her friends can be anything...  but how to tie this in to the storyline?

Well we had to write our own story.  Hummm that seems hard.  So we did some more research trying to find a murder mystery kit that would fit in with our theme... um not so much.

And then we found where someone had their guests come up with their own character for the mystery.  Ah HA!

So now the guests will come up with their own character, and name (so for the party they'll be 3 people... who they really are, their costume character, AND their mystery character)  bwahaha!  They will each write a brief bio of themselves with how they know the victim and then an alibi. 

At the party each guest will read or act out their part and then we'll vote on who we think "dun-it"  The person with the most votes is our killer! 

DH asks: "What if there's a tie?"  - they did it together!
"What if it's a 3 way tie?" - they hired a hitman!
"What if it's a 15 way tie?" - we'll have to provide more evidence and vote again.

The invites went out today and the guests are excited...most are involved in theater, so this should be really fun with all the drama!

Due to scheduling the party isn't until May... but I'll try to have pictures.

Flakers

Okay, I really wanted to stop being so negative on my blog, but I guess that just isn't going to happen.

Unfortunately I am exposed to a lot of people who are flakers.  (yeah, my spell check doesn't like that word)

A flaker is someone who says that they will do something and then later either totally forgets about doing the thing they said they were going to do or just before they were supposed to do it, says they now can't (and the reason isn't very good).

I wonder if this is just a homeschooling phenomena or if this happens with other folks too?

It seems that we either get a lot of folks who will sign up for our homeschooling classes and either forget that they've signed up or they schedule to do something else and are no longer available to come.  It gets really frustrating because as homeschoolers we struggle to be seen in the community as legitimate educators for our kids and when we get someone to give of their time it is easier to get them to do that if we have a sizable group, but if we say we are bringing a group of 20 kids + their parents and then the day comes and only 10 kids and parents actually show up it looks bad.  Also frequently you need to have a large group to get the discounted price.

I know that many of my homeschooling friends feel my pain.  I think that I get irritated by this so much because to me flaking is like lying.  Or maybe it seems as if something better came along.

I understand having to cancel if your kid gets sick...trust me, if your kid is sick I want you to stay home because there is nothing I hate worse that someone who shares cold germs.
I understand other emergencies.

What I don't understand is setting up an appointment when you've already said you would do my class.

Google reader

I visit most of my friends' blogs via google reader.  But this week I was notified that reader is going away.  :'(



apparently I was just barely accessing all the power of google reader.  I learned that I could have been using it to do much more than just blogging.  but alas, seeing as they're doing away with it...no point in figuring that out now.

However, never fear, I figured out how to continue to access everyone's blog updates.  blogger let me subscribe to all of my reader feeds.

now to see how long blogger stays around.  I guess if they do away with blogger then I'll have no blog.  That will be a bummer.

Happy? Monday

I see that it has almost been an entire month since my last post.  :p

Since then well we had that dog's 12 week post op appointment.  The update on Lilly is that she is still doing very well although she does limp and hop in the evenings...usually because she decided that it was worth it to "spaz out" a time or two during the day.

Darly started rehearsing for her new play.  She is the Old Widow & a Maiden in Robin Hood.  NO not maid Marian, but one of her back up dancers.  As the Widow she has 3 children who insist on pulling her arms out during their number.  Hopefully that quits soon as Darly needs her arms.  ;o)

I've been busy getting costumes for the show.  Turns out that our show and the other show by the same group are a week apart and both the same time period...so we are "fighting" over costumes.  Robin Hood is first so I "got" first dibs on the costumes.  I need to send the other show pictures of the costumes we are using so that they can use them for their show also.

I had a director's meeting for my homeschool group...it didn't go so well.

Took Lilly to the groomer.  At first I was pretty upset because they were taking so long with her, but then I found out they did that because they were going easy on her leg.  She still looks really good.

We had a blizzard and Church was canceled.

More CYT - costuming the kids

Ice skating with the church youth group.  I fell down after the Zamboni had come through...also my skates were about as dull as they come.  I've decided to shop for our own pairs again...we had some a few years ago, but of course Darly out grew her pair and mine weren't the right size.  Hopefully Darly's feet have stopped growing as these will be hers for life.

Darly took a class on needle felting.  She likes it.  I don't know what to do with the homemade dust bunnies though. ;o)

More CYT costuming!

oh and we had that time change thing.  oye!

Yesterday Darly & I met some of her friends and saw Oz the Great & Powerful or whatever it's called.  It was really very good.