Monday Random

The weekend was good. We enjoyed the first birthday party of the youngest cousin in my family. She is a super cute baby and it was good to spend time with family. My 98 year old grandmother was there and while she's slowing down in her old age, she is still feisty as ever.

Mother's Day in our home was just a typical Sunday. Beau took the kids to church with him in the morning so that I could get some alone time, which I spent coloring my hair, reading, and prepping a meal to be delivered today to some church friends who have a new baby.

Then I headed to church myself to practice with the band before the evening service. Turns out the worship leader was suffering from a hacking cough and she asked me to sing lead on one of the songs. It has been a long time since I've sung anything but background vocals. I was incredibly nervous, but prayed that the Lord would be glorified no matter what happened and that helped to relax me.

I got home to find the house empty because Beau and kids were at the 4th birthday party of a little girl on our street. From the happy screaming, it sounded like much fun was being had. I got to our back deck to find kids running around with water pistols. Molly was on their deck playing with the bubble machine and covered in chocolate from the chocolate fountain. I'm told her dinner was basically chocolate dipped marshmallows and strawberries. So at least there was some fruit involved. And that was before the birthday cake.

So with my reading time, I managed to finish another audio book - Matched by Allie Condie. Here's the review I wrote for Audible.com:

Another in the plethora of dystopian YA fiction that is to be found, Matched is actually quite good and different from The Hunger Games and Divergent. It's less death-defying, which is the huge difference. There's no violence.

But there is a controlling Society who manages every single part of a person's life, down to the person whom they are to marry. And this is where this particular dystopian story differs.

This story is told well. Some of the prose is quite lovely. The characters are full people. And as a first in a trilogy, it's a good start. I'm intrigued enough to want to read the second book, Crossed.

The narrator is very good, with the perfect youthful voice for the first person narration.

I did download the next book, but I'm listening to something else in between to sort of cleanse the palate. Matched gets 4 stars.

So the new book I'm listening to is The End of the Affair by Graham Greene, which has been on my list of must reads for a long time. When Audible announced that Colin Firth was narrating, it moved up to the top of the list to listen to next. I'm about 2 hours in and it is very good, Firth is very good. It's a short listen at just a bit over 6 hours, so I'll get it finished this week easily.

I'm also reading Insurgent by Veronica Roth on my Kindle. It is book two of the Divergent trilogy. I'm about 60% in and it is also very good.

The little bit of TV I'm watching is Once Upon a Time, which is pretty much the only current TV that I care to watch. I had several episodes on the DVR to watch and managed to do that last week. I watched the season finale from last night this morning before getting ready for work. I was curious how there could be a second season if the conflict in this first season was resolved. Turns out they did a pretty good cliff-hanger. You know, fairy tales end happily, but there are a lot of them and they left many of them untouched this season. I look forward to seeing who gets featured next season as the primary tale.

My favorite episodes were the ones that featured Jiminy Cricket and Pinocchio. Also the hunter. And maybe Beauty and Beast. I thought they were really well done and touching.

We are watching the new season of Sherlock, but did not watch last night's episode live after our long day. I crashed. It totally bums me that there are only 3 episodes. Three. Really? *sigh*

And I guess that's all to share on this Monday.