Monday, June 25, 2012

Monday Malarkey - a little late in the day but who's counting?

Wow, are we busy bees, around here. I have finally begun seriously packing with around two weeks till closing on our new house. We've been having fun wandering the hardware store aisles and furniture stores, looking at lighting and tile, paint colors and furniture swatches (because we don't actually own a sofa and Kiddo will be taking the futon in the fall) and ladders (because the ceilings are higher and the roof is steeper than that of our current home).

The de-pinking of our possible-maybe future library will be high on the agenda:

Even the interior of the closet is pink.

I finished one book, this weekend. I'm thrilled! And, speaking of thrills . . . it just happens to be a British thriller that has been sitting on a shelf for several years:

Soft Target by Stephen Leather is one of many books in a series about undercover cop Dan Shepherd, but it stands alone just fine. While posing as a hitman to prevent not one but two attempted murders, Shepherd must also deal with trying to find an au pair to care for his son. Add to that a second undercover job trying to catch two dirty cops who have stolen from drug dealers, two possible terrorist threats and one store robbery and there is a lot of action packed into Soft Target's 520 pages. While some of the strands of this novel were predictable, I didn't think it mattered. I was having too much fun.

Which leads to the shocking revelation that I found a few future releases so irresistible that I went on a minor requesting binge. I'll pay penance by trying to fill up my donation bags faster. Fortunately, they're all September releases.

Everything that walked in, this past week:
  • Visiting Tom: A Man, a Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace by Michael Perry - from Harper for review
  • The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin - from Harper for review
  • The Mirrored World by Debra Dean - from Harper for review
  • Plague: A Gone Novel by Michael Grant - from Paperback Swap
  • A Place Beyond Courage by Elizabeth Chadwick - from Sourcebooks for review
  • Miss Buncle's Book by D. E. Stevenson - from Sourcebooks for review
  • A River Runs Through It and Other Stories by Norman Maclean - gift from Book Club Care. Thanks, Carrie!
My sidebar is getting embarrassing. I'm still reading Johnson's Life of London by Boris Johnson (whose hair I will happily cut in tidy layers, if he wants me to pop over to London . . . any time, Mr. Mayor), but I'm still craving fiction and it really needs to be fairly fast-paced to keep my attention. I haven't touched Learned Optimism in at least 3 weeks. I still plan to finish it; I just can't get excited about it, right now. I'm feeling awfully optimistic with a new house and loads of DIY projects in my future, after all.

After finishing Soft Target, I discovered I have 3 fiction ARCs remaining and I chose to begin reading Marsha Altman's latest Darcy book, The Knights of Derbyshire. So far, so good.

Then, Isabel decided to bring me a purple mouse in the middle of the night and when she jumped onto the bed for a head rub of praise, she managed to pull me out of a tremendously cool dream in which our new house was a former bookstore with built-in shelves on all the walls and an unfinished loft. I couldn't get back to sleep, so I started reading Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson. Perfect for my mood! Plus, there is a nice robot/human fight-scene chapter that takes place at a fictional store in Tulsa's Utica Square Mall, a place I know well and enjoyed visiting fictionally, even if it was a bit of a violent experience.

Tomorrow, we will be knocked off the internet. AT&T was sending us threatening missives. Call us about your upgrade to U-Verse or we will kill your internet and phone service! Fine, fine. Geez, some corporations are so severe. They need to take a major chill pill. We're getting upgraded, tomorrow. And, then when we've finished our pre-move painting and shifted to the new house, we shall ditch them. Mwah-ha. Take that, AT&T.

Since I've begun packing and this move is going to take for-freaking-ever, I'm likely going to limit my book reviews to weekly Monday Malarkey updates and the odd mini review, for a while. They're probably more palatable, anyway. I tend to go overboard when I get serious about "reviewing". I'll try to keep doing Wahoo! Wednesday posts and Fiona Fridays, if possible. And, I have decided this Thursday will be my Children's Day - 4 reviews, all picture books for preschoolers. Please pardon my limited ability to visit other blogs, for a while.

I'm getting over it:

You know how I've been slightly mourning the idea of leaving behind the things that I love about this house, like the gorgeous bathroom tile and the totally-me kitchen updates? I'm getting over the clingy stage, already. I'm having so much fun planning changes in the new house (after painting, the #1 project will involve brightening up a tiny water closet -- just a toilet in a claustrophobia-inducing, closet-sized space -- with tile and mirrors and whatnot) that what I'm leaving behind isn't even entering my mind, anymore. Wahoo for that.

Okay, off to bed. Those middle-of-the-night cat wake-up calls are killers. Happy new week!

Still-very-cheerful Bookfool

©2012 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

20 comments:

  1. Yeah, the pink makes me giggle a bit. :)

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  2. Anonymous6:28 AM

    Nancy, I'm going to be excited to hear about your new house renovations. Fun to pick things out and kind of exhausting. Have a good time. And, yes, the pink is kind of frightening. LOL

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    1. It'll probably be a slow process (except for the painting), Kay. We are just bursting with ideas but we're very slow at DIY. Wish I could have you here to help. That house you sold looked absolutely fabulous.

      The pink has got to go. LOL

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  3. Whew, you're busy! I like to move but hate all the work involved, if that makes sense.

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    1. Yes, that makes perfect sense. It's a pain in the patootie to do all the packing and shifting, but very fun to move. I like new beginnings. :)

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  4. Glad you are moving on to the fun stage of renovating the new house! I'll be so excited to see what you do with your pick room!!


    ♥ Melissa @ Melissa's Eclectic Bookshelf

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    1. Well . . . we'll be at the fun stage in a couple weeks. At least, part of it. As soon as we've painted, we'll have to move things to the new house and then fix up the old house. That will take some time. We're notorious for not finishing projects and there's some repair work to be done before we can put it on the market. Then, we'll return to the fun stuff in the new house. It's all exciting to me, apart from having to move things in the heat. It would have been better to buy a house in the fall. LOL

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  5. holy crap! That's room is pink! I always wonder what on earth people were thinking when a room is that colorful. Maybe I'm just really dull, though.

    Being woken up from a good dream by our kitties is the price we pay, I guess...doesn't make it any easier, though. ;)

    I'm glad you're not regretting the move and not going to miss your old house too bad.

    Robot Apocalypse has been taunting me for some time. Maybe, I'll have to give in.

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    1. Jenny,

      The previous owner was a painter and apparently she had an affinity for strong color. LOL Also, she has a little girl -- the pink room was obviously hers; there were still toys in it when we first saw the house. I'm pretty dull when it comes to wall colors, to be honest. I love my blue office and my dove grey hallway and den, but my tendency is to paint everything bright white and then add color in other ways (paintings, pillows, singing loudly). :)

      I probably wouldn't have remembered the dream if Izzy hadn't awakened me, so there is that. But, man . . . so exhausting.

      Thanks! I'm really looking forward to the closing and finally getting started on things. Right now, it's just a waiting game.

      Robopocalypse is fun. I wasn't in the mood for it when I got the ARC, last year -- couldn't get into it at all -- but this time I'm loving it. You might have to give in. But, you have time before the movie comes out. It won't be released till 2014.

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  6. Anonymous8:50 PM

    Whoa Nellie, that's a crapload of pink!

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    1. LOL Yeah, fortunately the pink is only in one room. Now, the yellow . . . it's in the den, both hallways and the kitchen. I HATE yellow!!!! That's going to be a bear to get rid of, but it's got to be done.

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  7. Thanks so much for the mention! Cheered up my day no end!

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    1. Cool, I'm always happy to cheer up someone's day, Stephen. Thanks for stopping by my blog! I'm going to have to order more of your books. If I had some on the shelf, I'm afraid I'd be bingeing on them, right about now. :)

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  8. Wow! That is quite a room. Even the curtains are... I'm at a loss for words. ;) But you sound very excited and I'm thrilled for you. It's going to be so much fun hearing about your new house adventures. And you'll be able to walk or bike in your neighborhood. YAY!!!

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    1. LOL Yeah, those curtains are really something, aren't they? I hope they took the curtains. :) I'm excited. It's kind of weird just waiting. We set a pretty late closing date to make sure they had time to move out and fix anything that needed repair -- and they've already moved out. So, now it's just a waiting game. It gives me time to throw things out, I guess.

      The sidewalks and leash laws are so exciting! My bike has just been sitting in the garage, rusting and getting covered with dust. I can't wait to start biking!! You know how envious I've been of your ability to hop on a bike and take off. And, right now a section of the Natchez Trace is under repair and closed to traffic for a year. So, the bikers are having a field day, peddling that stretch. I'll have to give that a go! The Natchez Trace is beautiful.

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  9. I'm not gonna lie, I am TOTALLY in love with that wall paper!! LOL…It may look awful in person, I don't know, lol…but I really do like it, lol. But yeah…lots of pink can be a bit overwhelming. I'm really glad I'm renting right now…it's been overwhelming just making this place a home…I can't imagine what it's going to be like when it's my own HOUSE!

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    1. It's actually textured paint, Chris! I hate it. :) But, obviously someone liked it. It's a very, very pink room, definitely overwhelming. So, unfortunately, is the yellow in the hallways, den and kitchen. *shakes head* You'll have fun when you get your own house. It took us a long time to get our current house to fit our style (so, naturally, now we're leaving it, LOL) but I'm oddly looking forward to starting the process all over again. Really, that surprises me!

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  10. You are welcome! Are you getting email again? and yea, that pink is intense. It matches your sidebar color, right?

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    1. Yes, our email was only down for about 3-4 hours. We had trouble mailing *out*, not receiving, after the switch. It seems to be fine, now.

      Mmm, not quite the color of my sidebar but it's definitely matching in intensity level!

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