Category: My Ramblings

As everyone knows that for the past few months I have been asking for three things lately: another bookcase, the chance to go to NY in May for BEA and a netbook. Well I think my lucky three’s have finally come true. I had put it out there and I am happy to say I think it worked. Perhaps I should go and pick up a lotto ticket.

I got my book case from CSN stores to You can see it here. Funny enough when I was at Walmart this past week, I was looking around and saw a bookcase similar to the ones I have in my living room now on sale. I should have seen that one coming. Isn’t it always the way though?

Then at the last local meet up we got to talking about BEA and NY and I figured before any further planning happened I better make sure I could go and I got the official okay. So I will be in NYC in May. Hope to meet some of my fave bloggers while I am there.

Then lastly, Thursday when I was at Walmart I saw a netbook on sale so after supper I managed to convince someone about getting one. So this is going to be basically a early birthday and xmas present we agreed on. Unfortunately when I went to Walmart that night they didn’t any have more left so I ran to Best Buy and managed to find out and thankfully they had some.

So this is my brand new toy.

Its an ASUS EeePC.

Its a cute and compact which will be travelling with me whenever I go away for a few days or while I am in NY in May.

I am still getting use to it and basically still playing around with it. It wasn’t online when I took the picture because I have to get a router as my internet connection at home is a cable modem so anytime I want to use it online I have to unplug the cable from desktop, then reboot modem to plug in netbook. So its a complicated situation so until I get a router I will only being using it when I go to the library or at our next meet up.

The background picture on the netbook is called Autumn and it came with windows XP. I thought it was a great fall picture to use and the picture was taken in my dining room where I was using the netbook at the time.

You know school will be starting soon when the library wraps up their summer reading program.

This years theme was called Go, Wild Read! It took place from June until August 17th. I am not sure of the exact figures for the children or teens reading program but I know that the family one was over 6000 hours read and over 2000 tickets were submitted. Wow that is alot of hours read.

I think this was the first year that Michael didn’t win a gift certificate in the early drawings. He was a little disappointed but I explained it was the lucky of the draw.

There were quite a few sponsors that donated prizes such as gift certicates to a french bookstore, a book/toy store in the village, the city donated prizes as did the members of our local liberal riding.

Another great thing about the party was that they make sure everyone leaves with a book which is a great idea. These books are donated by the book/toy store in the village. Michael picked this:

Once everyone got a book and since for some strange reason not alot of people showed up (roughly 50 people if that) not sure if it was the heat that kept them home but like I said to Michael their lose our gain. So they told the parents to come and choose a book for the family. I could have picked anyone but I got this one because we borrowed it from the library and Michael loves it. (His review will be up on http://www.booksuponaweeonesshelf.com/ sometime this week)

As with every wrap up there is a party and this year was the best one. Michael loved so much it was fun to see. They got this juggler who I think said his name was Gabby. He was amazing. Really funny and he had the group involved in his act.

He did some juggling with balls started with 3 then worked up to 5. Then he went to the pins as you can see in the photo. Not once did he drop a think.

Of course kids being kids were telling him what to balance on his chin, he used a pin, then the case he used to carry his things in, then it was a stroller and the last one was this:

I have no idea how he did it but hands down to him he was fantastic. Then to wrap it up he juggles with fire.

It was a great party and a great summer reading program. Can’t wait until the summer of 2010 to take part in it again. Thanks to the library and the city for hosting this great program.

As you may have noticed last week I was on vacation for 5 days and we went to Lake George, NY. This was the first time I was there and I had no idea what to expect but was really looking forward to getting out of Montreal for a few days.

When we left Montreal we had no reservations so we basically said that we would go and see what we could find and if nothing then we would head to Albany or Plattsburg. Thankfully we were in luck and their was plenty of places to stay. Apparently tourism was down this summer and was picking up the week we were there.

We drove around and decided that we would rather stay out of the down town area of Lake George. We knew it would be busy and loud so we drove out of the city and made our way along and looked at places. Some of the places seemed to be priced a little too high for what was being offered. We found a cheap place in Diamond Point and got a cabin by the lake.

This is us on the dock at the cabin. Behind us is Lake George. It was so peaceful to just sit and watch the sites. Plenty of boats on the lake.
This is another shot from the dock. There was also a tiny beach there too.

There is so much to see and do there that sadly we didn’t get to do or see it all in the five days we were there. We needed a longer vacation.

One of things I did notice was the differences in the borders. Crossing over into the US its very hig tec security and I realized how much has changed since 9/11. We crossed over by the Lacolle Border. Saturday when we came back we were in line to cross over to Canada for well over an hour and Canada had nothing like the US security.

Anyways what did we see and do you are wondering. Well Tuesday night we drove into town and walked around had ice cream and listened to an Elvis impersonator. If I didn’t know that Elvis was dead i would have sworn it was him. He was very good. Also while we were eating our ice cream the pub beside it has a singer singing and he was really good.

Wednesday we went and played mini golf at Around The U.S.A. This was a great little course and we had alot of fun. It was great to see so many US landmarks such as NY subway, oil well in Texas, Empire State building and the Statue of Liberty. We had lunch at this great little cafe over looking Lake George and the ships.

Thursday was another fun packed day. Right across from where we were staying was a library so we went to check it out. It was such a cute and quiet little building. It wasn’t very big but I was surprised at all the new releases they had. Found out that if we were visiting a week we could have borrowed books or videos.

That morning we headed down to the dock and discovered we had some company two beautiful ducks were there looking for food. It was alot of fun to watch them and seeing them follow us. I think they were hoping that we had some food to give them.

I loved being on the dock it was so quiet and peaceful. I wish I could have spent more time there.
We did a horse and carriage ride and got to see some sights and had a beautiful horse named Big Jake. We ate lunch by the water again this time it was McDonalds nothing fancy. By the way has anyone ever had Sweet Tea? I am so hooked on that and they don’t have it here in Canada 🙁

That night we decided that we wanted to do the fire works cruise. The town of Lake George does this every Thursday night from the beginning of July to the end of August. It was a beautiful show that last at least 30 minutes or so. They were the best fireworks I have ever seen part from the Fourth of July ones we watch on TV.

We were suppose to leave on Friday but since the weather was so nice we decided to stay another day and thankfully the place we were staying at had room. I managed to get a little shopping done while Michael was in the arcade which he loved because you got tickets that you could redeem for prizes and he had a blast. Then it was off to Pirate’s Cove for another mini golf game. I didn’t play this time but Michael had a blast.

Seeing as it was our last night in Lake George we decided to go out for supper and found this great spot called Jaspers. While we were eating outside we saw some Amish walk by. It was so strange to see it as I have never seen that before. I enjoyed listening to them speak as it was in their language. That night Michael wanted to go back to Around the World to play mini golf. He loves to play the game. This side of the course was landmarks of the world. Countries that were covered was Germany, Canada, Japan, England, Ireland, etc.

Then on Saturday we packed up and went into town for the last time. Michael needed his fix at the arcade (he was like a gambler needing to play one last time) and then we went to Gooney Golf for one last game of mini golf. On the plus side of all this mini golf my game has improved alot.

It was a great vacation and it felt good to get away and sit by the dock and pool and not have a care in the world. Now we are back to reality with two weeks before school starts. So it will be busy here for another few weeks until a routine is in place again.

I was lucky and got to read 2 and a half books while on vacation. Look for the upcoming reviews this month.

This is the paddle boat on Lake George that does tours of the lake. We didn’t get to do that one which is too bad as it looks like a great boat.

I took close to 600 photos so picking out ones to post was really hard. I hope you enjoyed the little glimpse into our vacation.

Have you ever been to Lake George? If so what was your favorite things to do?

I saw this little cartoon in Woman’s World magazine (August 24, 2009) issue and I just had to share it with you. It is too funny don’t you think?

I just wanted to let everyone know that this week I am ON VACATION. I am not going to a tropical location just somewhere with a beach and hopefully good weather.

I will have no access to the internet so everything you see this week has been schedule to post. I hope you enjoy the reviews. Some of them are late but I was saving them for this purpose.

I am hoping to see alot of the sites, do alot of tourist things, take tons of pictures and read a few books while I am away.

Are you curious to what books I am bringing on vacation with me? I am bringing: (This are all required readings for the end of August and early September)
-To Tempt the Wolf by Terry Spear
-Dreaming Anastasia by Joy Preble
-Millie’s Fling by Jill Mansell
-Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse by Kaleb Nation

I have other books that are in my August basket that I need to read and will probably slip some of those into. I know I have too many books but I personally think you can never bring too many. You never know what the weather will be like and nothing worse then being stuck inside with nothing to read.

I wish you all a good week and I hope you get tons of goodies in the mail and that you have great books to read. I will comment next weekend when I get back. Enjoy your week.

I know there has been a huge buzz over my recent post on Twitter (late last night and early this morning) about a huge announcement I had to make well I had to make sure that everthing was in place before I actually posted about it or even spoke about it.

After much thought and talk with other bloggers who suggested that I should have a blog for children book reviews, I have decided on the spur of the moment (Tuesday) to start another blog that will hopefully one day be Michael’s blog. Right now I will be posting on it the children book reviews with his help and input.

Here it is without further delay: Books Upon A Wee One’s Shelf

http://www.booksuponaweeonesshelf.com/ is the link. I am still adding reviews to bring it up to date. I hope you enjoy it.

I have to give a huge THANK YOU to Michael for helping me out with setting up the blog on a self hosting site and for all the other work he has been doing behind the blog. If you haven’t checked out Michael’s blog then you really should. He is a great blogger. Thank You again Michael for all your help.

I hope you will add this newest blog to your blog roll and check it out and please leave comments, Michael loves listening to them.

Today on twitter @galleysmith had posted this link: Teen blips and I admit I was curious to see what it was (and now I know you are too, go ahead check it out) and I was really happy that I did because its a list of 325 blogs. I started to scroll through them and there was alot that I recognized right away. Then I came to #37 and I was in total shock that I actually had to refresh to make sure, Cindys Love of Books made it on the list. Wow thank you to how ever put my blog there.

Seeing this makes blogging that more rewarding for me. It gave me that little boost that I needed. Thank You again to whoever you are.