Feeling rushed

Computer time running out.  Don't want to do anything which will take up any amount of TIME.  However, I must write up this audiobook because it is due today!

Book review: A week in winter, by Maeve Binchy, read by Rosalyn Landor.  Seemed a bit too long, but I enjoyed it.  Similar to a recent book I reviewed, this author introduces characters one by one.  By the end you are thinking,, "Stop already!" The end was satisfying and focussed on the first week of customers in a hotel in a mansion on a cliff in a small town in the west of Ireland.  The first characters we get to know are the people who own the hotel and work there.  Later we are introduced to some of the guests who end up there, all for pretty different reasons.  Sometimes we get all the way to that last week and then we go back and meet ANOTHER character and proceed again to the last week, each time learning a few new details.
I think some of the people have dinner at a restaurant called Quentins, which I think was the main subject of one of her other books.  I borrowed this audiobook from the Millville Public Library (AUDK F BIN)

Ugh...what else do I have to say today.  Am at the library, with a few irritating patrons.  A woman talking to herself who was trying to print out an entire conversation between herself and a girl's father, but it was going to cost $16.30, which she didn't have.  Then she had problems emailing or saving it.  So much drama on Facebook.  I can't imagine having much of a conversation at all on it.  Guess I just don't GET IT.

It's a gorgeous Mother's day

Except for the crowds and the large lady covered with tatoos.  Made the mistake of going to Bob Evans and Starbucks on Mother's day.  God...the crowds!  The health club was relatively quiet but I was forced to watch CNN, which is really getting on my nerves.  They announce all of this stuff that you heard about two days ago like it is this fabulous new discovery.  They also give wrong info and pronounce things badly.  It is almost more than I can take to listen to the "news" these days.  After you listen to the latest hostage crises and murders, you wonder how there can be any Americans left living.

Yahoo is acting up, yet I am fearful of "upgrading" to the new Yahoo.  Upgrades usually get rid of several features that I liked before.  Upgrades are one of my many fears.  Here are some more:
- fear of getting a new phone
- fear of getting a new camera
- fear of plans going awry
- fear of being awakened in the night
- fear of going on a trip without a phone or computer

Felt better AFTER my workout than I did before.  Went to work out right after eating too much at Bob Evans.  Now I sit at Starbucks being sorely tempted to get a large mocha cookie crumble drink with chocolate whipped cream on top.  I can only imagine the amount of calories in that one.  Was driven inexorably last night to eat stuff I shouldn't and of course, gained a pound this AM.  Feel kind of hopeless about getting my weight down.  Really hard being here in Starbucks constantly confronted with beverages that our populace consumes with narry a thought about it.

An entire afternoon without a snack

Can I do it?  Ate my lunch early cause it was here.  Nothing to eat all afternoon.  I brought no snacks to work because I am trying to be careful and my coworker apparently is in the same boat.

Practicing French in the car.  Pronouncing things properly gives your face and neck quite a workout.  I need to be doing those exercises anyway to combat the double chin affect.  Then went to get my nails done and the only magazines I could find were Essence, something in Vietnamese and People en espanol.  So I read People in Spanish.  

Working today but hardly working.  Classes are over and exams are starting and there is just not much activity around the library today.

Suddenly humid

Wow, it is going to be over 80 degrees today.  Having a hot flash just thinking about it.  That is getting a bit over my limit of comfort.

I only watch a few minutes of TV each day.  Happened to catch Matt Lauer at the top of One world trade center at the moment the top spire was raised, lowered and attached.  1776 feet tall - is that a historical date or how many people died on 9/11?  We now have the tallest strictly office building in the western hemisphere.  Ain't America great!?!?  Other interesting facts were that it takes the workers 40 minutes just to get to the top to do their jobs each day!  And that the first businesses will get their keys in 2014.  I happen to be going to New York next Saturday.  Must add this to the list of things to do (it is short, so far).  Feel kind of bad that I haven't visited the site at all in ten years.

Book review: Winter journal, by Paul Auster.  I didn't/don't even know who Paul Auster is, but according to a Henry Holt & Co. ad I saw in the New Yorker, he is "one of the great writers of our time".  I did enjoy this memoir...which detailed all the places he has lived (in order) and traveled and the decline and death of his mother.  Also there is a New Jersey connection, which I always like to know about.  And he wrote this when he was 64, about the same age as I am.  I liked the first paragraph - "You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else."  I recommend this book.  You can borrow the large type edition from the Millville Public Library (LT 92 AUS).

Book review: Peaches for Father Francis, by Joanne Harris.  In which the characters from a previous book called Chocolat come back to Lansquenet, a small village in France.  There is an interesting addition of an Islamic theme and the push and pull between the cultures.  There is a bit of a mystery about who caused a fire and who is the covered up woman and why has she come to town.    Our heroine, Vianne, returns to the small town to straighten out some things. She gets very involved and has trouble getting back to her life in Paris.   I borrowed this book from the Vineland Public Library (FIC Harris Joanne)

A lot of spawning going on

Attended the re-dedication of the sign for the Fortescue horseshoe crab habitat, the first official horseshoe crab sanctuary in New Jersey.  Due to Hurricane Sandy, the sign was damaged.  There were plenty of horseshoe crabs spawning and we learned the appropriate way to HELP them if they get stuck in the sand.  One should never pick up a crab by the tail.  Pick it up from the side and just orient it so it can get back to the bay.  It was like an ORGY. Up to 14 males can attach to a female to fertilize the eggs. A female typically lays about 25 egg clusters each year.  Each cluster contains about 4000 eggs.  But only a small amount ever reach adulthood.  Some horseshoe crabs live twenty years, but it takes about 10 years before they can mate. Since I can't figure out how to get pics off of my phone, I had to steal this photo from someone in Maryland.



















Rushing today as had to use the Bridgeton Public Library computers.  They only give ONE hour and there is no room to put my STUFF.  But, they are the only library open on Thursday evening.

My trip is coming up and I don't have a plan for taking pictures.  I am getting in the mood to do that.

Bad travel dreams have started

Last night I dreamt that I missed the plane and also that I forgot my suitcase.  Just went to visit a supremely organized friend of mine.  She loaned me some Euros and told me about a few things to do in Paris off the beaten path.  She has many travel purses and a list of what she has done every year in Paris and an ongoing list of THINGS TO DO there.  I am feeling overwhelmed.

It is National Stroke awareness month.  See if the person can SMILE and raise both arms over their head.

I seem to have been catapulted into a position today.  Mostly a figurehead at this point.  Just by hanging around.  Possibility of a part-time temporary job.

Went out for a walk down the street in Greenwich today.  Appreciating the quiet and the lack of traffic.  Soon, the seasons of BUGS will start and I will no longer want to stroll outside.  But, today, great smells and not too hot or cold.

Where I live at, you can't trust NOBODY

Overheard, at Wawa.  I don't really WANT to trust anybody in my neighborhood.  Feel sort of bad about my glee thinking that the dog next door may have run away yesterday.  I saw her out the window with NO leash and NO people.  That night I walked around the outside of my house picking up trash since it was trash night and noticed a LOT of trash on the one side of my house.  Never have I had so much trash before those people moved in next door.  Also saw two big piles of dog shit in their yard.  They don't pick up after their dog.  Must remember to add that to the letter I probably won't have the nerve to send to their landlord, who is a LAWYER.

Not much on my calendar today.  After I get done using the computer, I am going to go home and STAY there.  I need to do that more, but I don't really want to.  Am much more comfortable running around the county doing errands of one sort or another.

A feel good story today about Charles Ramsey liberating the girls from their captivity in Cleveland.  A black man freeing white and hispanic girls being held by a Puerto Rican guy and his two brothers.  Charles said, "I knew sumpthin' was wrong, when a pretty little white girl ran straight into the arms of a black man!" (him)  Americans are so desparate for good news that they stand out in the street and CHEER when they hear some.  The three girls had been missing for ten years or more.