Stacking the Shelves #2

Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may it be physical or virtual.

This is another weekly meme about books, I’m probably boring you all but it’s my blog and I can book if I want too.  These are what I purchased this week.

 

Chasing Vegas by Tad Vezner

This looks different and entertaining.  I can’t quite tell if it has a supernatural touch to it or not but I know it has a science fiction feel which is certainly good enough for me.  This book is #40 on my To Read list.

Purchase Price – Free

Kindle Version

 

 

Creatures of Appetite by Todd Travis

A couple of FBI agents are in search of the Iceman, a seriel killer who preys on little girls.  The search gets more intense when the Iceman challenges the profiler and agent in charge of him.  Sounds like a great thriller to me.  This book is #41 on my To Read list.

Purchase Price – Free

Kindle Version

 

 

 

Blood, Smoke & Ashes by Bradley Convissar

In 1955, Jane the Ripper is killed in the electric chair.  Every decade a copycat has come out and killed in the exact same way.  When a victim survives, they get more evidence, only the evidence leads to Jane the Ripper and not a copycat.  This book is listed as a Supernatural, Thriller/Horror, yes please.  This book is #42 on my To Read list.

Purchase Price – Free

Kindle Version

 

 

Origins (Zombie Games #1) by Kristen Middleton

A zombie book, a female lead who kicks ass, a possible series of zombie books.  How could I not pick this one up.  This book is #40 on my To Read list.

Purchase Price – Free

Kindle Version

It’s all good

I have stuff to blog about, but I’m not really in the mood to blog about it.  I could tell you how my oldest daughter got my wife to keep paying for her storage, even though she’s got over $6000 in her bank account and we’ve struggled to eat this past couple of weeks.  Or how my wife knew about the money and still paid it.  Or how the same daughter could teach a class on how to make money from financial aid for college.  Or how my oldest son surprised us by coming up from Virginia last weekend.  The problem being he quit his full time job before he came up and he’s blowing through his money on fast food and pop because he knows the first bank of grandma will give him some when he runs out.  Or that my whole family has all kinds of time off next week and I have to work 5 days.  Or how when I thought we’d be able to buy a house this summer, but my credit score is freaking 10 points to low.  Or how the AC was out for 3 days and it was 90°+ on those days.

All that has gotten me pissed off in the past week at one point or the other.  But I had a decent day today so I don’t want to talk about the crappy part of my life.  Let’s talk about the good.

• My oldest son has come home for a visit.  He has been pleasant and helpful around the house.  I think we bore him to death because we don’t do anything and he always has to be moving but he says he’s not bored.  He was originally just going to stay the weekend, then that extended to the next Friday, now he’s here through the 4th.  Like I said, I don’t mind him being here, he isn’t a bother.  But I do enjoy my evenings with Cheri and no kids, not that we do anything, but it’s our time.
• My oldest daughter has found her own apartment.  We love her, but she annoys us.  Granted, very rarely is she ever home, but she is at night and she has no clue how to be quiet.  She can’t even open a freaking door without being loud, she grabs the doorknob’s, yanks the doors open and close, slams the cabinets, fridge and toilet lid shut.  She just doesn’t care about anybody around her.  So we are happy that she’s on her own, just so we can sleep without getting woke up.  Sure, we worry about her being on her own, but she’s self sufficient and will be fine.
• I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before here but Samantha has made the All-Star team in softball.  She had her first practice last week and a batting practice tonight.  Of course, I’m happy for her but it also means I get to watch her play more.  I’m really enjoying watching her this year and she looks like she’s really enjoying playing.  Here’s a vine video of her in the batting cage - https://vine.co/v/haagaKvYgX2.  It may not work in chrome but I’m told it works in other browsers.  If you follow my Twitter you can link up to my Vine page or just continue to follow Twitter because they’ll probably all be posted through there.  Or you can watch the following YouTube video.

• Trevor’s team made it to the championship game which is tomorrow morning.  While it sucks it’s at 9 am, I’m happy his team has made it this far.  He’s not as good as his sister and to be honest, he doesn’t even look like he’s having fun, but he says he is and wants to play so there it is.  I’d say that they are favored to win, his team is the best in the league.  While they have taken a couple of losses, they are definitely the better team.  I believe they’ll be facing the team that they beat in the first round but they barely beat them in the final inning so it’s certainly not in the bag.  I know it’s a double elimination tournament and they haven’t lost so they will have to lose 2 in order to not win it all.
• Had a good day at the pool with the family.  3 of my kids, 2 of my brothers, and 4 of my cousins kids plus the adults.  I even took a dip in the pool for awhile, got in a water battle with Samantha (she lost, of course).  It was a pleasant afternoon.  If you follow my Instagram, you would have already seen this photo.

The bad part is, I couldn’t do the infamous butt dive because of my back issues (I think I’ve mentioned them here).  I was also supposed to go golfing with my cousin from North Carolina in a few days and I think I’m going to have to bow out of that too.  What is the infamous butt dive you ask?  Ask and ye shall receive.  This is from a couple of years ago.

Upon further review, holy crap am I white in that video.  Ignore the fat gut, just watch the dive.

So I guess you take the good with the bad.  While it has been a crappy week in some areas of my life (including work, because it always sucks), there is also is some good points.  So I guess I’ll dwell on those and try to enjoy my weekend, before I have to go back to hell (work) next week for 5 12 hour days.

WWW Wednesdays #19

To play along, I’m supposed to answer 3 easy questions.

What are you currently reading?

The Gate by Jason Brant

This seems like a decent read.  It’s supposed to be 2 college kids who win a trip with one of the psychic tv shows that go into haunted houses and look for evidence.  Which of course, they end up going into a real haunted place.  I started this today but I’m not real far into it.

What did you recently finish reading?

Sunfall Manor by Peter Giglio

I read this yesterday and today.  It was a little different.  My main complaint would be the length but it was free so I guess I can’t really complain.  It did have a twist ending so that was good.  It lead up to what you thought would be a continued story and then all of a sudden, the twist ending, and it’s done.  I think I read where it was only 78 pages.  I don’t generally look and see how long the books are since I generally purchase free ones so it’s my fault.

Inheritance by Joe McKinney

I liked this book quite a bit.  I even gave it 5 stars on Goodreads.  It catches you from the beginning and through out the whole book it’s dangling what’s going on but it’s just out of your reach.  Which I like, because it keeps you entertained.  As typical with books, while you are learning more about the characters, it gets a little slow.  This book, the author keeps it going by throwing some calls in the mix (the main character is a cop) and it keeps you entertained from start to finish.

What do you think you’ll read next?

The Ultimate Game (Echo’s Revenge #1) by Sean Austin

Gaming gone wrong.  A little different then what I normally read.

If you want to join on WWW Wednesdays, click the logo on top or go to http://shouldbereading.wordpress.com/ and leave a comment.

Music Monday’s #3

Welcome to the next edition of Music Mondays.  It’s pretty basic, I take a playlist and put it on random, and post what comes up.

• Playlist – “Anything & Everything”
• Description – Anything from Christian to Rock, Rap to Country, Classical to 80’s.  Pretty much anything and everything that I like.
• Number of songs on the playlist – 1,272 songs

 

1. Coming Undone (Korn)
2. Cool Lookin’ Woman (Jimmy Vaughn)
3. Far Behind (Candlebox)
4. Ain’t No Grave (Russ Taff)
5. Slither (Velvet Revolver)
6. Callin’ Baton Rouge (Garth Brooks)
7. This Means War (Petra)
8. Breath (Breaking Benjamin)
9. With Arms Wide Open (Creed)
10. It’s The End of The World As We Know It (R.E.M.)
11. Sweet Caroline (Neil Diamond)
12. Born on the Bayou (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
13. Love Story (Taylor Swift)
14. When I’m Gone (3 Doors Down)
15. Little Bit Is Better Than Nada (Texas Tornados)
16. So Cold (Breaking Benjamin)
17. Frozen (Madonna)
18. Stupify (Disturbed)
19. Animals (Nickelback)
20. Help (Beatles)

There’s a lot more of my normal music on this list so that is good.  I spent the last few weeks taking my playlist and dividing it up between decades just to give you an idea of what all is there.  I’ll list the decade, how many songs, and the top 5 artists (top 5 as in most songs in the decade on my playlist).

• 1950’s (7 songs – Frank Sinatra, Frankie Lymon, George Jones, Jerry Lee Lewis, Nat King Cole)
• 1960’s (50 songs – the Beach Boys, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Beatles, the Righteous Brothers, Rolling Stones)
• 1970’s (113 songs – Billy Joel, Queen, Aerosmith, Boston, Foreigner)
• 1980’s (383 songs – Petra, Van Halen, Michael W. Smith, White Heart, Journey)
• 1990’s (418 songs – DC Talk, Michael Jackson, Michael W. Smith, Garth Brooks, the Choir)
• 2000’s (242 songs – Godsmack, Linkin Park, Three Days Grace, Staind, Puddle of Mudd)
• 2010’s (53 songs – Maroon 5, P!nk, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Halestorm)

As you can see, the majority of my playlist is from the 80’s and 90’s.  And a lot of those are the christian music that I used to listen to.  The 2010’s is probably low because I never listen to the radio anymore so I don’t ever add anymore new songs.  I should probably rectify that but I don’t really go any great distances so I end up listening to 2 songs before I’m getting out of the car.  Either that or 20 minutes of commercials which is why I never listen to the radio anymore.

Stacking the Shelves #1

Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may it be physical or virtual.

This is another weekly meme about books, I’m probably boring you all but joining these leads me to other blogs, which leads to other books I may be interested in.  These are what I purchased this week.

 

Wick (Wick #1) by Michael Bunker

This is listed as a pre-apocalyptic thriller which will be a new one for me.  I’m afraid it’s going to be too much drama, not enough action but we’ll see.  If I like it. I believe it is the first of four books.  It’s #40 on my list to read.

Purchase Price – Free

Kindle version

 

 

Ghost Hand (The PSS Chronicles #1) by Ripley Patton

It’s supernatural, and it’s different.  The main character has a hand made of energy instead of flesh and bone.  It starts doing things on it’s own and other want it.  Sounds good to me.  It’s #41 on my list to read.

Purchase Price – Free

Kindle version

 

 

Binary Cycle: Disruption by W.J. Davies

Earth is gone and humans are inhabiting another.  Only this planet is on the brink of destruction too and it has to be stopped.  This is part 1 of 3 so we’ll see if it holds my interest enough to purchase the other 2.  It’s #42 on my list to read.

Purchase Price – Free

Kindle Version

Flashback Friday’s #10–I Love My Wife

I have decided that every once in awhile, I’d throw up an old post for Flashback Friday’s.  It’s a flashback of sorts.  This post was from June of 2011.  It’s a few weeks after Cheri was diagnosed with her MS.  I still feel this way, but I probably show it even less.  I suck.  The post is called “I Love My Wife.”

 

I know, everyone says that.  But I mean it too.  Not only does she take care of this family.  But she does it all with MS (Multiple Sclerosis).  She’s probably had it for years even though she was just diagnosed a few weeks ago.  She was diagnosed with other things before so through all that time, she was on meds that would help for a month or two, then stop helping.  Well, now we know why.  They weren’t treating the right disease.  It sucks that the diagnose was that, but our hope is, now that we know what it is, maybe she can get the proper help.

Even though she doesn’t sleep worth a crap at night (I still say it’s because she’s in bed with me).  She wakes up every morning and wakes me up.  And for the last few weeks that’s been at 4:20 am.  Then she tries to sleep a little bit before having to get up to get my two kids (8 yrs. & 6 yrs.) up for school.  Takes Samantha to school, comes home and then takes Skyler to school, then comes home for a few hours before taking Trevor to school.  In between all that, she’s making sure they are fed and looking good.  Then a couple hours afterwards she picks up Samantha and Trevor.  All this while some days she can barely move without pain, days where her head hurts so bad she looks drugged, days where she’s so exhausted, it’s all she can do to just get up to go to the bathroom.  Then after everyone is home, she makes supper.  Not always just 1 supper as Skyler doesn’t eat meat so she cooks 2 meals for us.  But that isn’t all I love about her.

She is so strong, when she feels so weak.  So smart, even though she feels like her mind is failing her.  So loving, when all she feels is pain.  She has taken this diagnosis in stride and just keeps plugging along.  She complains about the pain, who wouldn’t, but she never says “Why did this happen to me?” or “What did I do to deserve this?”  She just keeps going and tries to do all she can.  I have to tell her to stop and I get on her all the time for not asking for help.  I have to tell her it’s ok to not go to the kids games because it’s 100 degrees out.  That it’s ok to sit on your butt once in awhile and just take it easy.

The worst part is the rest of us in the house take advantage of her and she lets us.  The kids are horrible about this, but I don’t think all 3 have a clue what she deals with on a daily basis.  2 are just too young to understand, and the other is afraid to admit that it’s happening to her mother.  Even I’m guilty of this, I try to help out and I think I do help some, but she always does things for me that I could do for myself.  I tell her to leave it for me, but I know she won’t.  I need to just take over and do it for myself.

I won’t even get into what she deals with emotionally with dealing with certain family members of hers, or either of our exes, and even myself and the kids.  The whole time she deals with those emotional rollercoasters, she deals with this ugly disease.  But I believe that things will get better, because I can’t see why this awesome woman was brought into our lives, just to suffer with pain and anxiety.  I see her strength fighting this disease the whole time.  And I will be by her side the whole way.

So in closing, I love my wife, not only for the love she shows me but for the strength she shows everyone else.  She doesn’t even have a clue how strong she is, and I love her for that.  My job as her husband is to make sure she knows how special she is to me.  I don’t always show it, that’s my flaw.   A flaw she more than makes up for with all the ways she shows me that she loves me.  I will try to live up to her expectations because it’s the least I can do for my wife, the love of my life, my everything.  My heart and soul belongs to her.

I love my wife!

WWW Wednesdays #18

To play along, I’m supposed to answer 3 easy questions.

What are you currently reading?

Inheritance by Joe McKinney

This has been pretty good so far.  It has mainly been a regular book but it has a supernatural feel to it.  There is something happening, supernaturally, but we aren’t exactly sure yet.  I think I’m 37% through and the supernatural stuff is about to hit the fan, so to speak.

What did you recently finish reading?

101 Things to do Before the Apocalypse

This was ok, it certainly wasn’t horrible but it wasn’t as good as I thought it would be.  Towards the end I was just flying through it so I could get to my next book.  It wasn’t quite as funny as I thought it would be.

What do you think you’ll read next?

Sunfall Manor by Peter Giglio

This sounds interesting, kind of creepy actually.

If you want to join on WWW Wednesdays, click the logo on top or go to http://shouldbereading.wordpress.com/ and leave a comment.

Where have you been, Google knows

If you saw my post about camping this past weekend, you know I used a couple of screen caps from the Google Maps from my phone to show the campground.  Well, one night I was playing on my phone while everyone was sleeping and while I was on Google Maps, I noticed an option in the menu.

See that?

Right over there,

to the left.

Down there,

a little further.

Yeah,

right

there.

<<<<<<<

 

 

Location History, hmmm!  So I clicked on it.  And it’s exactly what it says it is.  Remember when I took the kids to the Sox game?

My phone is freaking tracking me.  Now I personally don’t care, it’s not like I’m out on a killing spree or anything.  If the cops ever come knocking on my door wanting me, it’ll probably be of the false arrest variety so maybe my phone can be my alibi.

You see up above, last Thursday.  It tells me what time I left home (6:38 am), what time I arrived at work (6:47 am) and how long I stayed (7:06 pm) and that I drove over to Baugo to watch the end of my son’s game.  How long I was there (7:37 pm – 8:15 pm) and what time I arrived back at home (8:21 pm).

To be honest, I think this is cool as hell.  But as you can tell above, the red lines show I was all over the place.  Although those lines don’t show my route, just a direct line between stops.  On this day (my birthday actually), I traveled 26 miles but it says the only places I were was home with some travel time in between.  What I was doing was running errands, but everywhere I went probably has never been “checked in” before so they didn’t register.  Some of them, I probably wasn’t there long enough to register that I stopped.

I zoomed in on the map.  The bottom right corner is my home.  What I do remember from this day is first I went to the top red line which was the post office, then the little triangle to the left of that is the bank, but neither of those lines go directly to where those places are on the map.  I think I went back home after that so I don’t know where the 1 hour, 50 minutes comes in.

Later in the day, the big loop at the bottom, we drove out to IHOP for lunch and hit Kmart to pick up a White Sox shirt for Samantha to wear to the game.  None of those showed up on the travel, nor do the red lines correspond to exactly where we were at.  I also noticed on the days I go to work and back and nowhere else, sometimes it says I traveled a mile, some days less, some days a little more.  Considering I only travel one route to and from work, I’m not sure why that’s different.  So maybe it’s not as cool as I thought.

I wonder if the NSA receives these reports from everybody’s phones.

Music Mondays #2

Welcome to the next edition of Music Mondays.  It’s pretty basic, I take a playlist and put it on random, and post what comes up.

• Playlist – “Anything & Everything”
• Description – Anything from Christian to Rock, Rap to Country, Classical to 80’s.  Pretty much anything and everything that I like.
• Number of songs on the playlist – 1,210 songs

 

1. Prayer (Disturbed)
2. New Jack Hustler (Ice-T)
3. This Kiss (Faith Hill)
4. Wonderama (Randy Stonehill)
5. Farther On (Russ Taff)
6. Why Do Fools Fall in Love (Frankie Lymon)
7. With A Little Help With My Friends (Joe Cocker)
8. Everything to Everyone (Everclear)
9. You’re Going Down (Sick Puppies)
10. People Everyday (Arrested Development)
11. Sad Songs (Say So Much) (Elton John)
12. Green River (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
13. Clean (Petra)
14. Come As You Are (Nirvana)
15. Run to You (Bryan Adams)
16. Who’s in the House (Carman)
17. Rockstar (Nickelback)
18. So Hott (Kid Rock)
19. A Matter of Trust (Billy Joel)
20. Toxicity (System of a Down)

Father’s Day Weekend

For those who don’t know, our tradition for Father’s Day weekend is to take the whole family camping.  My family, my brother’s family and my mom’s family and anyone else who want’s to go.  I was going to blog a little bit here and there and put it on one post.  That worked for Friday, not so much the rest of the weekend.  Cheri didn’t go this weekend because of her ruptured disk.  She never would have lasted sleeping or being awake.

Friday

6:30 pm

Samantha got stuck riding with me on the way to the park so she got an education in music. We listened to Johnny Cash, the Beatles, and Tommy James along with some more modem tunes such as Skillet, Carrie Underwood, and Linkin Park. She text grandma and complained about Johnny Cash, my mom told me I was cruel.

9:30 pm

On the picture to the left, I circled our 3 sites that we reserved for this year.  It was nice being that close to the restrooms (which you can also see on the pic)  Typical evening once we got there, put up tents and prepped everything then grilled up some burgers for supper.  We had bought a new tent for this year after last years debacle where Cheri and I spent the night trying to keep out all the water. This tent isn't nearly as big as we thought. So we are letting Samantha and her cousin sleep in their own tent, we'll see how well that goes. If they are up giggling all night, it might be the last time.  Glad they are sleeping next to my brothers tent.

All the kids helped me with my tent with my niece being the biggest help.  It was like having a project with the kids, it was nice.  Actually, all the kids were very helpful this year.  Must be a sign of them growing up.

11:30 pm

The wood we bought from the general store here sucked ass.  We couldn't get any kind of a fire going so most everyone crashed early.  My brother and I stayed up a little while later but he went to bed about 20 minutes ago. We had to chase off a raccoon when it came within 10 feet from us and was eating the dog food out of the bowl we left out.  I'm not really tired, probably because I slept in till 11 this morning.  I got ready and crawled into bed, or air mattress in my pjs and hoodie.  It's quite chilly tonight which is good sleeping weather.  The bad part is going to be my air mattress has already lost some air, I have a feeling I'll be on the ground in the morning and considering I've been living off ibuprofen for the last couple of weeks because of my back, I'm not going too be able to move.  Guess we'll see tomorrow.

Saturday

9:30 am

Sure enough, I woke up on the ground. The worst part was I did that at 6:30 this morning, and it was raining.  Didn’t stop Trevor from snoozing away (pic above).

We've been people watching this morning while eating our Amish crack for breakfast. The guy beside us showed up last night with his kids, set up a small tent and turned around and left this morning.  But we only saw one kid with him this morning and he didn't start a fire or anything.  We had people on the other side who brought out their crying toddlers outside in the rain, to change them.  Then across the street we watched as a fairly heavy woman changed her shirt right next too the road.  Of course after we crack on all our neighbors, my stepdad comes out wearing this.

Could be an interesting day.

11:30 & on

We got hit with some more rain this morning.  But we saw the weather coming and got prepared.  You can see the red dot where we were located and just a little bit of rain coming in the picture to the left.  We put up 2 gazebo like tents right next to my moms porch on their pop-up camper.

As you can see we were well protected from the rain that was dropping on and off all morning.  Eventually it let off and we headed for the beach.

         

The first picture shows you how far we had to walk to the lake.  I guess I’m getting my use out of the Google maps on my phone (found something else too but you’ll have to wait a few days to see that).  It’s not a real bad walk because there is a path that pretty much leads right to the beach area.  As you can tell, it was pretty chilly.  But that didn’t stop the kids from swimming.  Last we heard, the water was around 60°.  It was a little breezy but certainly not cold.  We stayed there just under 2 hours before heading back to the campsite.

Cheri came up to spend some time with us and she got there not long after we got back.  We sat around and my brother and I kicked all challengers ass in cornhole.  Then we got down to our father’s day supper.  Steaks on the grill, potatoes and mac and cheese.  All the father’s got steaks while everybody else got marinated chicken off the grill.  It was very good.  Cheri hung out for as long as she could before driving back home and we got a fire going (the wood actually burned this time) and we had some smores.  About 10:30 or so, we happened to check the radar and another storm was going to come close but we weren’t sure if we were actually going to get hit.  There was a huge storm to the north and south but a little gap between the two that we might be able to skate free but just to play it safe.  We cleaned up and headed for bed just to be on the safe side.

I took the trash over to the dumpster and when I lifted the lid, a freaking raccoon jumped towards me trying to get out before he realized I was standing there and he jumped back.  Scared the crap out of me, that was the last thing I was expecting when lifting the lid.  I threw my bag of trash at him then slammed the lid back down and headed for bed.  I figured I would be in bed awhile before I fell asleep but I crashed about when the storm was hitting.  All we ended up getting was some high winds, I don’t think we got a drop of rain from that storm.

Sunday

I forgot to mention that I switched mattresses to more of a bed sized mattress so I slept much better Saturday night.  Although it was a little warmer out than I would have liked.  I prefer to bundle up when I’m sleeping.

We sat down to our breakfast of pancakes, sausage and bacon this morning then just hung around and chilled.  Father’s day cards were handed out and then we got to work tearing down.  The kids again were a big help with getting things together and taking down the tent.  We ate a quick lunch before finishing the last of the packing and headed out on the roads.

All in all, it was another great camping weekend.  I always enjoy the weekends, even when we have to battle the elements, which is a good thing because we always seem to have to.  We are talking about extending it another day next year and making it a 3 day weekend.  Which tells you that we all have a good time.

WWW Wednesdays #17

To play along, I’m supposed to answer 3 easy questions.

What are you currently reading?

101 Things to do Before the Apocalypse

This was a fellow bloggers book so I bought it in support of him.  It’s a humorous look at some things to do before the impending apocalypse.

What did you recently finish reading?

Yesterday’s Gone (Episode #1)

Yesterday’s Gone (Episode #2)

Yesterday’s Gone (Episode #3)

Yesterday’s Gone (Episode #4)

Yesterday’s Gone (Episode #5)

Yesterday’s Gone (Episode #6)

This was a great read.  As I mentioned before, these were released in 6 (approximate) 100 page books which is why I waited until I finished them all to give my sort of a review.

At 2:15 am most everyone disappears and these books are what the survivors do afterwards.  From finding out what happened to everyone else to battling the forces that are still trying to finish the job of ridding the world of humans.  There are still plenty of questions that you want answered, such as why are the bodies stacked in certain places, who is really causing all this, what are the creatures walking the streets, and is our government involved?  I will be adding the rest of the series to my Amazon wishlist.

Gehenna (West of Hell #1)

A zombie apocalypse in the old west, I looked forward to this one.  The author did a good job with everyone not having a clue what was going on.  If zombie’s appeared now a days, most of us have an idea what it takes to put them down.  You figure back in the old west, they had never heard of zombies so he does a good job of explaining how they figured out to kill them.  Some of the minor characters do some really stupid things, but you have to think, they had no idea what was happening.  It was a pretty good read, I liked a couple of the main characters.  My only real complaint was the length but considering I didn’t pay for it, I can’t really complain about that.  It even ended with a thriller ending that leaves it open for the next book which I will be adding to my Amazon wishlist.

What do you think you’ll read next?

Inheritance by Joe McKinney

This book sounds like a supernatural thrill ride.

If you want to join on WWW Wednesdays, click the logo on top or go to http://shouldbereading.wordpress.com/ and leave a comment.

Sundays Big Game

Sunday was a big day for me, I took my kids to their first Chicago White Sox game.  If you know me, then you know I try to get to at least a couple a year, some years more than others but I usually at least make 1 game a year.  Since our money is tight, I purchased the tickets in February when we got our tax money.  I purchased us 4 tickets in the handicap section so Cheri could go with us and prepaid for a parking pass.  With the majority of the cost taken care, it made it a lot easier to take the family this month.  All I had to pay for was gas ($35 for half a tank, freaking ridiculous), tolls and food.  Normally when I go to a game, I save money by eating before I go since the cost of food and drink is outrageous but since the kids had never been there, we ate there.

After a quick hour and a half drive to the stadium, we pulled up to US Cellular field.  The reasoning behind the handicap section was mainly for 2 reasons, too much walking to get to your seats and back out to the car, and a more comfortable seat for Cheri to sit in.  While she probably could walk it and sit in the stadium seats, she also would be in pain for a few days afterwards.  But it ended up being better for the rest of us to.  We went through a special gate with very little line (once we figured out where it was), got to ride in an elevator to our level, and our seats were more or less, a row of our own.  The section is essentially the last row in the lower level.  There is a railing around it (with cup holders attached) so we wheeled Cheri up and they brought the kids and I fold up chairs.  Since all the assigned spots are wheelchair accessible, which means they are wider than normal seats.  So our seats of 4 end up being in a section big enough for 6 seats.  Plus since our seats aren’t attached like the rest of the stadium, you can sit back a bit and have lots of leg room.  Plus you can kick back and put your feet on the railing around the sections.  Basically, it’s sort of like your own box section.  We could stand if we wanted to, lean back, stretch, pretty much whatever we wanted without disturbing anybody else.  It was nice to not be confined to your 1 little seat, especially when your fat ass barely fits in that 1 seat.

You can kind of see the section in the picture above.  Lots of room, right behind the nachos in a helmet stand.  When we first got there I tweeted this.

You can see their free jerseys that they got at the gate.  I took them down to the field to get a close up view and took that picture.  But just a few minutes after I tweeted that, I got this response.

Sweet!  So the kids and I headed off to find the the Guest Relations booth.  It ended up being behind home plate so after we grabbed their certificates (and a calendar), I figured I’d take them around the rest of the stadium and circle back to our seats.

On our way back around, we ran into these 2 signing autographs.  That would be Tony LaRussa and LaMarr Hoyt.  LaRussa was the manager of the 1983 team and Hoyt was a Cy Young winner that year for the same team.  The White Sox are celebrating the 1983 season every Sunday by wearing the throwback jerseys that you see above and on the kids.  The line was huge so I wasn’t about to stand in it but I did cut the line just to take the picture.

Here’s the kids in the outfield, showing off their certificates and calendar.  Just for all the smart asses out there, this was an hour before the game started, that would be why the seats are empty.  I don’t want any stupid Chicago Cubs fan making snide remarks, like this idiot did after I tweeted the following.

I don’t know who that is and he doesn’t even follow me.  We weren’t even playing the Cubs (I checked his account, he’s a Cubs fan) so he had to have either been following the @WhiteSox Twitter feed or the hashtag #GoSox.  So he was specifically look to start crap with someone.  I’m tweeting about the great day with my kids and then this idiot steps in.  Luckily, I don’t let anyone goad me into an argument on the internet, I know that’s what they want, so I ignore them.  People are idiots.

Anyways, anytime Cheri and I do something memorable, we always take a selfie.  Plus I took one to use as a profile picture on Viggle.

         

All in all, I had a great day.  The White Sox won, the kids got to see 3 home runs (1 by the A’s, 2 by the Sox) and they got to see the stadium.  I got to see a great game, some action on offense and a couple of great defensive plays.  I think the kids had a great time but they didn’t really seem very interested in the game itself.  So it might be awhile before I drop that kind of money on taking them to a game again.  Then again, it would make a nice family tradition to do a game every year.  We’ll see next tax season.

Here’s a picture taken by the Sox staff that you have to pay to get developed.  Hence the watermark.