likeabulldozer: ([Katie] Peace)
Bite Club (The Morganville Vampires, #10)Bite Club by Rachel Caine

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I loved this book. It was all the best things about the Morganville Books rolled into one, including a ton of Myrnin stuff that was just amazing. There was some great character development in Shane, who has lacked a little of that in the last few books. There was also some really nice Michael and Eve stuff. There's something going on there that I suspect we'll see more of in the next book.

Can we have #11 now please?



View all my reviews


I submitted my final project for Secondary Reading and got a 100 on it which was awesome because I sort of missed a couple of weeks of work in the crazy of life. I think I'll end up with a C which will drop my GPA a little bit but probably not as much as I'm worried about. I could go average it out. If I did math, which I don't. Nor am I that crazy about needing to know now.

Saw Thor last night. Won't spoil except to say it was awesome.

Graduate next weekend. Have to send out announcements this week. I'm late doing it. I know that but it's really no surprise as procrastination is my favorite thing ever. I took my ASL final last Monday and I think I did fairly well. Grades aren't in on it yet but they should be soon enough. This week I finish student teaching and then I have to run errands like getting my transcript from AC and picking up my cap and gown. I've also got a final on Tuesday but I expect it to go really well and am not worried.

I can't wait for summer. I want to lay out in the sun, read and sleep late. I'd also like to get my laundry done and my house kind of clean.
likeabulldozer: ([Katie] Peace)
So I've been busy, busy, busy. Still student teaching and wrapping things all up for graduation which is in two weeks. That doesn't even seem possible and yet I'm so glad it's close. I'm anxious to graduate and often have that 'I should be doing something but I don't know what' feeling. Student teaching is great. There's rarely a morning I don't wake up and want to crawl back in bed but that has noting to do with the kids and more to do with me not being a morning person. Once I get to school, it's fun. I don't necessarily enjoy teaching them grammar but they usually end up amusing me over something in the lesson. Sometimes they even surprise me.

This week they've been doing TAKS testing stuff and so as a bit of a break I've shown them Doctor Who. Today we watched The Shakespeare Code (totally English. It has Shakespeare in it!) and they really liked it. They *did* ask me if Ten was on speed. I was like...well no but he is very bouncy then they wanted to know if he was crazy and since he's pretty maniac at that point in the series I was like 'Kind of?'. Tomorrow we're watching this year's Christmas Special because it's loosely based on Dickens A Christmas Carol if you squint. I'll have to explain to them that the Doctor regenerates and it's the same guy, different body.

This morning the little dogs got skunked. Sort of a glancing blow so they smell but not horribly. I threw them in their crate and bathed them when I got home this afternoon. They're still a bit skunky however it is better than they were pre-bath.

The tornadoes in Tuscaloosa are difficult to hear about. We have friends there and it's one of Tony's favorite places. Our friends have been lucky and are alright with the exception of one guy in the hospital who will be okay. Nature is just giving them a beating. It's scary for sure.

This weekend Lisa and Wyatt are coming up. We're going to work on the deck and just hang out. I think Lisa and I are going to see Water for Elephants. I read the book and really enjoyed it so I'm looking forward to seeing how they adapt it to a movie. That being said (the company part not the movie part) my house is a wreck. Between teaching and my own school and just life in general I haven't really had time to do anything to the house outside of keep our head above water. Once I graduate I'm going to have to do some major cleaning.

On the job front, I haven't heard anything but I'm not too discouraged yet. Everyone is saying 'At least June maybe July' which seems like forever to twiddle my thumbs. It's just not a good time to become a teacher if you'd like to get a job.

I'll just leave this here

G'night!
likeabulldozer: ([Dean] Know what I'm thinking)


Also I should probably update something else?

I'm slowly learning everyone's name up at school. It's about 150 kids I think so it takes a little while. Things are actually going pretty good right now I'm just *busy* and I'm not used to it so it's taking me a bit to adjust. I'm struggling with how to use my free time and get things done that I need to get done. Not only am I working I'm trying to do spring cleaning on my house during the weekend so yeah, busy is a good way to describe things right now.

I found a great, great used clothing store here that has things cheap and they're all very gently used. I've been doing some shopping for school clothes there. It's fun because you never know what you'll find. Sometimes
it's horribly outdated stuff, sometimes it's literally brand new.

I passed my teacher certification test so I'm officially certified now. I took a practice content test and got 78% of it right so they advised me to go ahead and take the real one. I'm going to schedule that for some time in April. The state of hiring teachers right now sucks but I'm hoping I'll be able to get in with the school I'm student teaching at. It's a smaller school and they really do need another English teacher. Now whether they'll get one or not is anyone's guess at this point but it's a possibility. On that front I've got to get a resume together. I've never really done a professional resume so that'll be interesting.

Hmmm I think that's it really. I've been reading a lot (you know that using free time wisely thing) and eating too much sweet stuff paired with not working out enough. I need to get that into gear as well.

Ya'll have a great week/weekend.
likeabulldozer: ([Katie] Peace)
First a couple of book reviews cut because of spoilers. They are Keys to the Repository & Misguided Angel. Both out of the Blue Bloods series by Melissa De la Cruz

To read makes our speaking English good )

The student teaching gig is going well. I haven't done much yet outside of observe and try to learn all of their names. 8 classes of 7-30 kids depending on the class. I think 7 is the smallest class and 28-30 the largest. Next week I'm teaching the largest class a lesson. I've got it all planned up and such. It's not a fun lesson per say--Parts of the dictionary--but the cooperating teacher thinks they need it. I'm going to have them do a treasure hunt kind of thing with it getting them to actually use the dictionary and not the online one.

The kids at the school are really good kids. The biggest problems I have with them (or their regular teacher has) is there are a few chatty ones but in general they settle down and they get to work. We watched Buffy on Thursday. They're reading HG Wells The Invisible Man and she wanted them to see how literature impacts pop culture so we watched the Invisible Girl episode in S1 of Buffy. It was funny to see them watch it and hear the comments they made. Most of them really enjoyed it. They thought the fashion was funny. They kept saying 'It's the girl from 'How I met Your Mother' or 'It's the guy from Bones!' and 'Isn't she from Scooby Doo'. Oh SMG. How badly you need a good job.

My other school work is going pretty good. There's not a TON of it which is nice. A lot of people take this class while doing their student teaching so they go pretty light on the class work.

Kiddo is doing so much better in school on the whole. It's nice. I'm not sure if he's getting a tiny bit more mature or we've just gotten through to him. Regardless I'm grateful for it.

Okay. That's all I have to say. Ya'll have a great weekend!
likeabulldozer: ([Claire] GTFO)
Crescendo (Hush, Hush, #2)Crescendo by Becca Fitzpatrick

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I enjoyed this one mostly because I love Patch and I like the mythology. I did feel like it was a lot of the same and Hush Hush was a better book.

Spoilers from here on out:

Nora gets in trouble. Patch saves her. Nora doubts Patch. Patch can't tell her the truth for various reason. Nora doubts Patch more. Nora trusts the wrong guy. People try to kill Nora. Patch ends up being the good guy.

It's a nice plot for a first book. It needed to change up for the second one. That being said, I probably will read the third one because of Patch and see if she changes up the plot line for the third one.



View all my reviews

Okay so I know it's frigid everywhere just about. I also am aware people live in below zero temperatures all the time. We don't here. Yeah it gets cold and single digits but it's rarely much below zero. At least not for long. It's been this cold practically all week. What does that mean? Well the pipes in my bathroom burst. We had to turn the water off yesterday. It's not a giant deal because we went next door to get water from my grand dad so we've got drinking water, washing water, etc etc. However it's still living in a house with out water. The plumber was supposed to be here this afternoon/evening. Because pipes are bursting all over Amarillo he's not going to be here until Friday morning.

Wyatt and Lisa are driving up here tomorrow. Or at least they're supposed to. And we have no water. If we don't have water by Friday afternoon we may be going to stay at their house for the weekend. Which is great that we have a place to go where we can take our dogs but I still want water on in my house now.

Also, the cold popped the clamp on a hose on Tony's transmission off. Transmission fluid everywhere. Broken clamp. It had to go to the shop. Lately I swear we can't catch a break. It's just one thing after another.

In other news, I spent the day at a teaching seminar that was fairly interesting until the last hour when they decided that we didn't know how to use google search or google docs. Seriously? I was probably the oldest student in the room or close to it and it was ridiculous. My dead grandma could use google search and google docs. And we were told this was on the cutting edge of education technology and that we should put it on our resume. Well I'm sure we should but if that's the cutting edge it needs to step up.

I'm also firmly in bitch mode because of my water. It's to be expected I guess. I'm cold and I want a hot shower in my own house

/stops bitching forever.

Ya'll have a good weekend.
likeabulldozer: ([Parker] Act Naturally)
I had my first day of class yesterday. It was classroom management and it's a three hour class. I've had several of those and honestly I don't mind them. This one was a bit uncomfortable just because it's packed and I'm very restless when I sit. I shift and fidget and move around a lot. The kiddo gets his inability to sit still from both me and Tony. Anyway in this class I always feel like I'm going to end up bumping into the people next to me or bother them with my shifting and fidgeting. So far the class is pretty much what I expected and that's good.

I've been really working on making sure I do some kind of exercise every day. I would like to lose 20lbs before this summer. I say would like to instead of making it an actual goal because I'm horrible at making goals and completing them. I'm better at just deciding I'd like to do something and move toward it as best I can without making myself crazy. So anyway, exercise of some kind every day. I've done really well since Monday. I either do Wii stuff or (and class helps me here) I count my mile one way walk from the parking lot to the building the class is in then after class I take eleven flights of stairs down to the ground floor. I'm not insane enough or in shape enough to take the stairs up. Sometimes if I have time and I'm feeling ambitious I'll do both.

Kid is doing better in school I think. After a break we always have this period of him settling back into the routine and getting on track. He's really sweet. He's very excited about me being in his school this semester for my student teaching even though I probably won't see him at all because he's middle school and I'll be in the high school.

The Vampire Diaries Stuff--Season 1 so no real spoilers for most people )

I'm looking forward to new Supernatural. I'd like for it to be now please. I'm hoping we'll finally be moving beyond the plot I don't like to something I do like.

Still reading a lot although right now it's The Morganville Vampires books because I'm canon reviewing for Myrnin. I'm trying to take notes as well because so much of what you learn about Myrnin in these books comes from the other characters rather than him. Since he's kind of batshit insane it's hard to trust what he says about himself. I may have figured out how to place his age a bit better. At what point in English history did people start using last names? My Medieval Survey class went over this a little bit but since it was a survey class there were giant leaps of time left out. In any case Myrnin gets referred to as Lord Myrnin of Conroy, the way he would have been at a time period before they started using last names.

My connection speed for some reason lately is sucking hard. I'm gonna have to call my wireless company and talk to them about how ridiculous it is. I'll end up doing it at night because the late night tech support will actually do something for you rather than open a ticket and refer you down to someone else. Undoubtedly along the way the open ticket gets lost, nothing gets done and it's just stupid. I hate our internet provider but unfortunately living out in BFE it's the best option we've got right now.
likeabulldozer: ([Dean] Know what I'm thinking)
So lately, since I got sick with a cold two weeks ago, I have been exhausted all of the time. Like I'm getting 12 hours of sleep a day sometimes more if you factor in naps. I feel fine otherwise. I decided today I need to work on eating breakfast (which I so rarely do. It's bad I know) and I need to get back to working out. I did get on the Wii and did some step and some yoga and I did feel a lot better after that. It's nearly midnight here now and I'm not exhausted which is a change. I'm hoping if I keep this up and get some activity going that's not just poking around the house and has some sort of regularity it will fix the exhausted.

I'm going to have to get into a routine anyway. I start school on Wednesday (weird day Idek) and then go into Student Teaching on Feb 8th. I'm really excited. I adore the teacher I'm working with and she's super excited about having me because we know each other a bit. I'm also nervous (naturally). It's going to be odd keeping very regular hours again though (7:40 to about 3:45) because I haven't done that since I worked years ago.

Hrm. Reading I've been doing a lot of it. Writing...well wouldn't you know it, it petered out when I mentioned it was going well. I swear it's like a bratty kid. I have taken some notes and firmed some ideas up so it hasn't been entirely nonexistent. It just hasn't added any words to the story. I think the notes I made will help me shape it up and flesh it out though.

RP. I have been taking it in spurts? I'll get 95% of my tags done. Fail a bit then go all tag vicious again. I'm making activity just fine so far. That's not really a problem and keeping up isn't either. I'm just sporadic. I've been really aching to play someone new at a small, slowish game and I honestly don't have a clue who or what or anything. It's just this itch. Not as a main game. I'm happy with [livejournal.com profile] polychromatic as my main game. It's just a thing.

Eh we'll see. Anyway. I hope you guys have a great weekend!

Bookworm

Jan. 11th, 2011 03:44 pm
likeabulldozer: ([Roswell] I shall believe)
Succubus Heat (Georgina Kincaid, #4)Succubus Heat by Richelle Mead

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I really enjoyed this one more than the others. It was interesting to see how all of the immortals dealt with the situation at hand. I did not guess the bad guy this time (usually I do in -most- books) and I liked that it very much had a on the edge of your seat sort of feel to the plot. The love story got even more bittersweet and angst filled, which I love. And we continue to get hints for the end of the series yet at the same time she shows us that the route we thought she was going to take isn't an option.



Best one of the series thus far in my opinion.



View all my reviews

I've read and reviewed all of the others plus a few more. I really love goodreads. It makes reviewing and adding your books pretty easy. The above series isn't usually my cup of tea. It's written for grownups (gasp!) and it also tends toward the paranormal romance more than I usually like BUT I really have enjoyed this series a lot. It makes me think maybe when I get through my giant pile of TBR books I ought to give paranormal romance another shot. I used to read more of it and so often it was just...PWP or the plot was so thin that it made my eyes bleed that I sort of quit.

I also signed up at goodreads to do their read X number of books in 2011. I put 100 but I've never counted how many books I read a year (not since elementary and I did the bluebonnet books thing) so I may have way overestimated myself!

Today is better than yesterday but I'm exhausted because I stayed up too late last night reading the above book and because of that exhaustion I have zero motivation. I did check out my school stuff and contacted my student teacher to find a time to give her all the paperwork I need to give her. I also made mozzerella stuffed meatballs and homemade sauce in the crock pot but really, that's where my motivation ends. It's dead and gone now. It wants to nap.

Writing is going really well too. For the first time I have a good sense of where I can go with my current stuff very long term. As in series long term. I know the general over reaching plot of what I'm doing right now. I just don't know the details yet. I love the characters and find they're incredibly easy to work with and get to talk. They banter back and forth etc etc but I'm half afraid when I go back to edit I'll find that 90% of their interactions, while amusing to me, don't really contribute that much. Eh in any case it's progress and my writing is going fairly steady if a bit slower than I would like.

Hope you guys are doing good! Have a great day!
likeabulldozer: ([11] Brain Thinking)
I'm doing papers and stuff for classes. I plurked about this one and Tifa was amused so....I present 'The Bromance in Gatsby'

Read more... )
likeabulldozer: ([Roswell] I shall believe)
/fails at updating.

So this month has been crazy. School decided to kick my butt. I had papers and tests and presentations. Poly was insane but in a good way. Everything is chill now for at least a little while which is nice. I like feeling like I'm on top of things even if it is just an illusion.

The kiddo also decided to go crazy this month. Nothing major. Just kid stuff but piled on top of everything else, I was ready to lock myself in a closet and refuse to speak to anyone.

That is over.

YAY.

Well Kid is still grounded but I swear that's like a state of normal for him now. He's not even a teenager yet.

Tony's football season is almost over which means life gets to return to more normal. I'm looking forward to it. He loves football season so I think he'll miss it a little.

TV spoilers; SPN, FNL, Castle Mostly )

I signed up for Nano this year. I skipped it last year because I failed horribly in 2008 because of lack of time. I don't really have any more time this year but I think in general I manage it better. My original writing muse is happy so I'm pandering to her for the moment. I'm kristi1218 on nano if anyone attempting it wants to add me.


Every Halloween the fiction magazine at my college does a Weird & Creepy Stories contest/submissions deal. I didn't participate last year because really I've gotten so much better at time management. Anyway, this year I submitted something sort of last minute and it actually got published. I was super excited (probably the reason my muse is happy) and now that the magazine is out here's the story I wrote:

What is and What Never Should Be )

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