Wow did this book kind of suck. On a positive note, it only took a few days to read. It was a collection of short stories based on the Sookie Stackhouse series. The main problem was that I had a hard time reconciling the stories to the timelines in the actual books. I’m not convinced that they could have even happened. The secondary problem was that the stories were not all that interesting. Nevertheless, I’m still looking forward to the next book, which comes out this summer. Time to read something else.
feeling winey
The past couple of days have been a wine extravaganza around here. On Friday, we racked a red wine kit. It’s brand of wine kit that I hadn’t tried before (RJ Spagnols). It has a simplified process, which I like. Plus, the kit had dried grape skins included, which is the way to go. Last year, I did a kit with grape skins and it turned out so much better than the ones without. I won’t be going back.
On Saturday night, we bottled a batch of blackberry port. Yum! And, tonight I started a white wine kit, from the same brand as the first one we did. It was a white wine, but also had dried grapes, so I will be interested to see how it turns out. Normally, all of the white wine I make is pretty good, so I wonder if the grapes will add anything.
I have another kit sitting downstairs and another one that will be in at the end of the month. Beyond that, I’m thinking about doing strawberry wine again this year as I’m not sick of it yet and I only have a few bottles left from last year. The wine racks are looking a little bare, so this should help remedy the situation.
commence gardening
Despite the fact that it’s supposed to snow this week, it’s time to start planting! Well, inside, anyway. I planted a bunch of pepper seeds this evening. I did 24 green bell peppers, 20 cubanelle, and 4 jalapeno. I’ll be sharing with the parents, of course. I haven’t scoped out the next couple of weeks, but I suspect there will be more gardening activity soon. Stay tuned.
new obsession
Last fall had us thinking about buying a new house. While we were able to talk ourselves out of that idea, we have not been able to talk ourselves out of owning some land. It is doubtful that we would find a land/house combination that we’d like so that leaves us with building a house. I looked through scores of plans online and found a bunch that were really nice. Many of them were too large, realistically speaking, so I started scoping out some smaller houses (ones that are only a little bigger than our current house). I found this one set of plans I really like and the house is perfect–exactly what I’m looking for.
But, now we wait. One of the reasons we decided not to buy a house is that we’d like to get out of the Westmont School District (due to the tax situation). But, we don’t want to move while Jake’s still in school. The good news is that gives us some time to pull this off (or to change our minds). Worst case, our house will be paid off in December 2012. After that, we’ll start looking for a lot (actually, I’m looking now, but we probably wouldn’t be able to swing the purchase until the house is paid off). If we find some land, we’ll buy it and then start looking for a builder when Jake’s in high school, so we can move after he graduates. It’s definitely a long ways off, but that’s now the plan.
dead and gone
I guess I must have liked this book because I tore right through it. I even stayed up a little late last night to finish it–I only had a few pages left and just couldn’t put it down. So, I only have a book of short stories to read (which I had forgotten about), then I guess I’ll have to get back to my regular reading schedule.