Wahoo! Wednesday

Goodness, this has been a busy week! I will have some terrific stories to tell you, soon, but I'm so overwhelmed that I'm just going to do a regular wahoo post and hope that I can catch up in a couple of days. Hope everyone is having a terrific week!

First, the wahoos, and then an update. Things I feel like saying "Wahoo!" about, this week:

1. I finally got a decent photo of a red-winged blackbird. Wahoo! And, then, of course I plastered words over his head. I do have a saved version of Mr. Red-Wing without words, of course; you can see that he was making some noise. Isn't he (or she) pretty?

2. I just peeked back at my archives to make sure and, yep, I was right. It's my 1-year Bloggiversary!!!! Happy Bloggiversary to meeeee. And, thanks to all the wonderful people who have made blogging such a terrific learning experience and a huge adventure! If you'd told me that anyone at all would visit my blog (much less my peak number of nearly 250 in one day) when I began, I would have said, "Nah, I'll just be writing to myself." I certainly had no idea I'd meet so many fellow bibliophiles, make loads of new friends and end up with an even longer wish list in no time (really, who'd have thought the wish list of books could get any longer - it was already baaaad). I'd planned to try to write up a "100 things about me" post to coincide with my bloggiversary, but . . . oops, too busy this week. I'll plan to work on that, next week. Although, I'm not sure if I can come up with 50, much less 100 interesting things about me. Maybe 20. Or 10.

3. Family - I'm grateful for family. My family is not as big as this one, though:

Hubby has been in town, this week, so we've gone out to take photos together. He patiently sits or stands while I rattle off about 50 photos of everything I see. In fact, he didn't even see the geese and their gaggle of goslings because he was waiting on a bench, beyond my view. They were between us and I didn't want to upset the geese (they bite) so I just hung around snapping away until I could figure out a way to get past them without trouble. Such fun watching a little family of geese walk and lie around, preen and tussle and then fall asleep (the little ones). Wahoo for families of all kinds!

4. Free books! I know all of you get just as excited as I do when you get an advanced reader, right? Of course you do! Thanks to my bibliophile listserv friends, I've successfully signed up for Simon & Schuster's Advisory Board and an envelope with three books arrived, this week. Wahoo! I finished one of them: The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle. I hope to get a review of it posted by the weekend. In the meantime, wahoo for free books!

We've been running kiddo to swim camp, this week, hence the busy-busy comments and lack of posts. Get a load of these calves:

I definitely need to start swimming and working out with my son (those are not his calves, actually, but youngster's look equally tough). There is not an ounce of fat on any of the people in charge of his swim camp, but there's a lot of muscle walking around.

I'm currently rereading The Secret Lives of People in Love by Simon Van Booy. He's touring, so check out his tour dates and drop by to see him read, if he's anywhere near you. The book is a breath of fresh air. Every story has so many gems of wisdom and beauty that I plan to reread it regularly. You should definitely read this book, even if you hate short stories.

Yesterday was the official release date for "our" Colleen's second book, Rises the Night. That's Colleen Gleason I'm referring to, just in case anyone out there has missed reading up on Colleen and catching up on her vampire novels. Congratulations, Colleen!! Colleen is doing signings, also. You can check out where she's headed via her home page. Yep, you should certainly buy this one, too.

I'm off. Wishing everyone a happy, healthy Wednesday and a pile of excellent reads!

Bookfool