Dave and Jenny's Blog

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY PRINCESS!

Sorry for the long pause in updates, we're working on getting the site easier for both of us to use. Anyway, here's a slideshow of the pumpkins Jenny and I carved today. Thanks to Yes We Carve for the Obama stencil and huggieshappybaby.com for the Disney castle stencil! You can view all the photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/davereid20/sets/72157608525793979/. Only five days to go! Have you voted? Go EARLY VOTE!

I'll soon be posting my refined and delicious Penne Rosa recipe, inspired by Noodles & Company. Keep posted!

Here is the list of the free books we will be giving away. They are all advanced reader copies. We cannot sell these books; however, since we will mail them to wherever you are, we are asking you to donate (just a little) to Dave's laptop fund to help cover the shipping costs. Trust me, his laptop is pretty beat up! If you want more information about each book, clicking on the book cover will take you to the book's Amazon page, and clicking on the book's title will take you to the book's LibraryThing page where you can read reviews by the community.

If you want one of these books, please e-mail us with your selection and your current mailing address. We will be adding/changing this list often, so check back often to see if there's a book you want!

Click read more to view the list...

(Well, the kitties aren't free, or mine to give away, lol.)

This has been a busy and long week so far, and it's only Wednesday!  I normally work two days, have a day off, work three days, have a day off.  But today was the first day of school for my coworker Dee's boys, and she wanted to be there with them.  So we traded today for Saturday.  Not too bad of a deal for me, even though I have to work 5 days in a row!  :)  Dave and I will actually get to go to the Farmer's Market on Saturday.  I'm excited.  In other busy-ness for the week...tutoring has started up again, and we have to go to Omaha on Sunday for my 2-year-old second cousin's birthday party.

I've been thinking lately about purging some of my book collection.  I'm a natural packrat, and I love the feel of a home filled with books, but I know I own several I won't get around to reading any time soon.  My grandma is a big book lady (gee, maybe that's where I got it?), and her house has always been filled—FILLED—with books.  Like, you can't see the floor...or tables...or even bookcases...because towers and towers of books cover every inch of my grandparents' house.  They've been working on cleaning out their house recently, with help from my dad and his two sisters.  So far, about half of their garage is filled with boxes of books.  I know I have a long time until I reach that point, but I don't want my future house to look like my grandparents'.

SO!

Who wants some free books?

This recipe is from 365: No Repeats, by Rachael Ray.

If you had been to our apartment recently, you would have seen that the amount of books Jenny has been bringing home was not equal to the amount of space we had for them. With piles of books in random places and nearly covering the dining table, we were in dire need of a new bookcase. Luckily I had an OfficeDepot gift card and a nice coupon so on June 1st I ordered the Realspace Soho Premium Wide Bookcase (5-Shelf, Classic Cherry) since it seemed to have a good quality and would be fairly similar to our current bookcases. The delivery date was two days away and just happened to be on one of my few-and-far-between days off from work, so I figured, great, it will get here quickly and I can put it together while Jenny is at work. Little did I know how wrong I was...

~ Sarah Elizabeth, one of my coworkers

In an hour or so, my uncle John will be going into surgery.  For those of you who don't read my mom's or my xangas, I'll fill you in...about a month ago, my uncle went to the doctor because he was short of breath.  They found a mass on his lung, and after the biopsy last week, discovered it's cancer.  He's 43 years old, and has never smoked in his life.  There's a slim chance they will only have to take part of his lung during surgery today, but most likely they'll have to take the whole thing.  I can't be in Omaha today to be with my family, but Dave and I will be going there on Sunday; hopefully uncle John will be feeling up for visitors then, but we'll see.  So please, keep him and his family in your thoughts today.

The reason I have to stay in Lincoln today is because of work.  Tonight is the midnight release party for Stephenie Meyer's Breaking Dawn.  And yes, I'm pretty excited about it, but it's hard to feel truly festive, you know?  Oh, well.  My coworker Amanda (the Harry Potter nut) is a huge Twilight fan (aka, Twihard, hehe), and she ordered amber colored contacts to wear at the party tonight.  (In the books, the good vampires have amber colored eyes when they aren't thirsty.)  She convinced me to order them, too, so we could be good vampires together, but even though I ordered mine about 3 weeks ago, they never came!  Very disappointing.  Now there's no reason for me to get them, so I really better be able to get my money back.

Well, I'm going to go read my book, The Eight, until I have to get ready for work (I'm scheduled from 5 p.m. until 1:30 a.m.).  I'd really like to finish it before I leave since I want to start Breaking Dawn when I get home tonight.  I don't like having more than one book going at once now that I'm not in school anymore.  But it shouldn't be too bad, since I've read The Eight before.  I'm rereading it to prepare for the sequel, The Fire, which I should be getting as an ARC from librarything any day now.  :)

Oh, one more thing (book-related, bien sur)—we should be finally getting our bookcase from Office Depot today!  Dave plans to blog about it soon, so I'll just give you the short story...we ordered this bookcase about 2 months ago, and after not being able to find our apartment (lamest excuse ever), they up and cancelled the order without trying again at all.  But Dave contacted the right people, and they promised to fix it, so we should be getting it today.  It's very much needed, because I have several stacks of books piled up on the dining room table which keep getting taller...  Hmm, hopefully Dave can use his skills to get my money back for the contacts, too...

Bon, c'est tout.  Bonne journée, mes amis!

Yesterday, Dave and I went to Omaha to visit with my old friend Ian.  It was his 25th birthday, and he'll only be in Nebraska until Tuesday before heading off to Washington, D.C. for an internship.  We're a low-key bunch, so we just wandered around the Old Market, looking at all the fun shops (it's been forever since I've been down there!), and eating Ted & Wally's ice cream for a snack (oh, how I've missed that!).  We also wandered through the Passageway, and looked through the gallery containing sculptures and paintings by Eva Aeppli.  I have no idea how I've avoided seeing the sculpture garden in all my many trips to the Old Market throughout my life!  There's a cute little garden tucked into the Passageway, with sculptures depicting each of the astrological signs.  So of course, Dave, Ian and I had to take our pictures next to our signs.  Click "read more" to see the pics...

Our trip to South Dakota was very fun.  Dave and I left Thursday evening after I got off work.  After stopping at the fireworks outlet where Dave's dad and sister work, we stopped at his parents' house to visit with his mom a bit before heading to our hotel for the night.  My parents drove up Friday morning, and Dave, his mom and I met them at the Barnes & Noble in Sioux Falls around noon.  I think the big meeting of the parentals went pretty well!  :)  How about I let the pictures do the talking?

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Complete the following activity to see where you fall.

1) Bold the books you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Star next to the books you're reading/have read some of.