Reading Railroad

I did a post in July (where did summer and fall go?!) about my love of audible.com here. Safe to say I'm still loving it as I've managed to read 7 more books and am half way into my eighth.

• The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins - Oh my stars and garter belts is this good! Suspense and intrigue in a modern 'who dunnit?!' This will be made into a movie which won't do it justice. English narration is excellent.
• Yes Please by Amy Poehler - gritty, witty and charming
• A Fine Romance by Candice Bergen - I love Candice's voice and how open and honest she is in this book. I'm thinking of reading her first one about her childhood as well. If I met her I would ask if "romance" reference is ultimately to her daughter :)
• Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns - I don't remember how I came upon this but I'm glad I did. Set in the "old" south, it's a lot like Fried Green Tomatoes with a great storyline and good amount of sass. Awesome narration. 
• Happily Ali After by Ali Wentworth - sarcasm abounds and Ali seems like a girl I could easily hang with, but the reading was a bit "off"
• The Rocks by Peter Nichols - Love, love, love this! It starts in current time and works backward so there's a rich tapestry of how the main characters' lives intersect and the root cause for what occurs. Bittersweet.
• Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid - Fun read, a lot like Sliding Doors with a decision point where things go in different directions by alternating chapters if Hannah had said yes vs. no.
• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr - I'm a little glad Christmas is over because I found myself struggling between listening to this and my beloved Christmas music. It's set in WWII about a blind girl and a young Austrian soldier. 

Queued up next are:
The Traitor' s Wife by Alison Pataki
The Book of Joan by Melissa Rivers
The Sexy Years by Suzanne Somers
The Japanse Lover by Isabel Allende
Is Everyone Hanging Out with Me by Mindy Kaling

So this happened!

It was a lovely ceremony, all two and a half hours! I think there were close to 300 graduates in attendance - associates, bachelors, masters, doctorates and certificates. Only 8 from our class of 15 attended - I'm so glad I didn't skip this milestone ritual. Three of our instructors are also in this photo - the one with the velvet beret and blue "scarf" has a PhD - I think I want one ;)

TV Shows

We are "upgrading" our cable (I'm convinced it's a scam but hubby says it's the greatest thing ever) so losing all our current settings and recordings. The good news is we'll be able to record multiple programs at once. One of my current issues is there are 5 programs I like that all air on the same night - if football delays on one station then two shows compete with the others and I have to choose which to record and watch later vs access on demand and be forced to watch commercials. It's house of cards. #firstworldproblems I may or may not have ever stayed up and watched all five in one night by recording in different rooms #pathetic

The bad news is I've confirmed that I watch entirely too much TV. I made a list of shows to program into the new system - 30+! In my defense many of these air only 2-3 months each year and I don't watch all the cooking shows if the menu is "weird". It's a weak defense. 

The Great Holiday Baking Show seasonal

Downton Abbey ended 2016

The Good Wife ended 2016

Madam Secretary 

The Walking Dead

Vikings lost interest

Modern Family

The Goldbergs

The Big Bang Theory

Telenovela  cancelled

Younger

Impastor 

Odd Mom Out

Real Housewives BH

Real Housewives OC 

Real Housewives NYC

Fixer Upper

Lip Sync Battle lost interest

The Tonight Show

Project Runway

Cedar Cove cancelled

Giada 

Pioneer Woman

Daphne Dishes  cancelled

Southern at Heart  cancelled

Valerie’s Home Cooking

Homeland 

The Leftovers

Game of Thrones

Ray Donovan

Masters of Sex
New Good Behavior
New Timeless

Khalil Gibran on Children

“Your children are not your children.
They are sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. 
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the make upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness.
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He also loves the bow that is stable.”

Life Lately

I have been drowning in school work and work work lately (plus hubby stuff). I love my job and am excited to see light at the end of the school tunnel (November thesis presentation and December graduation dates are on the calendar!), but let's face it ... I'd rather be cooking.

Joining a CSA has really challenged me to eat more veggies (and herbs & melons!). I love that the farm provides links to recipes every week that relate to exactly what's in that week's box. This week was arugula, parsley, kale, tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, cauliflower, radishes, celery root (celeriac) and jester winter (aka carnival) squash.

For supper tonight we're having Sauerbraten (German-style pot roast), mashed potatoes/celeriac, roasted maple walnut squash, savoy salad with apple and walnut (and bonus radishes), and nutty cardamom bundt cake with bourbon glaze! I'll get at least two work lunches of squash + salad (and cake!) out of this as well.

And make these if you want the taste of summer to last a bit longer, they were winners with my picky family -

Veggie Tacos

Strawberry Lemonade bars

Fall y'all

Acoustic

You know how when you find something seriously awesome and you want everyone else to share in the awesomeness? Well buckle up.

A couple of months ago I was getting ready for a road trip to visit my BFF who lives 5 hours away and decided to look up books on CD to make the long drive a bit more enjoyable. Only I kept calling it "books on tape" because I'm old and that's the only kind of book that didn't appear on the written page or my Kindle that I was familiar with. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Amazon has an audio book division called Audible. Insert angels singing. What isn't Amazon involved in? They offer a one month free trial so I promptly signed up and searched for my first book. I wanted something light, on my "to read" list and long enough to cover both to and from BFF's house. I chose Diane von Furstenberg' s memoir, The Woman I Wanted To Be. It was a good first choice in my humble opinion. Read by the author it was a little saucy and very interesting. I wondered if it was being read to or her accent that put me in a coma-like state ... so much so that it seemed like the drive was over in a flash. I was hooked! This has made my workday commutes downright pleasurable. It's a little more money than I would have thought I'd spend ... $15 a month with a credit for a "free" book (so you're buying a book a month). I like it so much though that it's worth it. I recently purchased three extra credits for $33 because I'm going through them so fast.

In the past three months I've also listened to:

• Trading Up by Candace Bushnell - This is the author behind Sex and the City. Light read / okay. I thought it ended abruptly.
• The Knockoff by Katherine Kellgren - Light read / okay. A lot like The Devil Wears Prada.
• The Accidental Empress by Alison Pataki - I love history and light romance, but it was my fascination with royals that caught my attention. This was on some summer reading lists I had perused via the inter web (blogs, etc.) so into my queue it went. Awesome! Great story, character development and well read. I walked the dog around the lake three extra times one day because I couldn't "put it down". 
• Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll - Awesome! This one kept popping up as a recommendation and was also on summer reading lists. I went for it because it was read by the same person who did The Accidental Empress. It did not disappoint. Very Gone Girl-esque.
• Bossypants by Tina Fey - I'm reading this now and laugh aloud constantly. My only comment is Tina tends to trail off at the end of her sentences ... speak up Tina, I'm deaf and don't want to rewind!

On my wish list:

• The Traitor' s Wife by Alison Pataki - A fictionalized history of Benedict Arnold's wife
• The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins - I don't know what this is about, but it seems to be on everyone's summer reading list and it's a bestseller
• Yes Please by Amy Poehler - I have a thing for funny girls
• Sometimes I Feel Like a Nut by Jill Kargman - I like her TV show Odd Mom Out - quirky and a little dark. Fun fact - her brother is married to Drew Barrymore!
• A Fine Romance by Candice Bergen - What can I say, I like memoirs
• Watch Me by Angelica Huston 
• The Book of Joan by Melissa Rivers
• The Children Act by Ian McEwan - I have no idea what it's about, but it keeps popping up on lists I peruse so I better see what all the fuss is about
• Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek - I'm also a sucker for leadership/inspirational books and I am a behavioral scientist at heart ... I love to explore why people do what they do.
• More -- The Power of Habit, Good to Great, Nudge, The Tipping Point, Daring Greatly

I have another road trip coming up so I had better start planning ... nerd looking for a 9ish hour good "read".