The first thing Gage saw at the Easter egg hunt yesterday was Elmo. He loves Elmo.
The jury is still out on the Easter Bunny.
Gage getting ready for the ‘hunt’
Gage collecting one of his 4 eggs.
Happy Easter!
Author: stacybuckeye
Driven to Ink, by Karen E. Olson
Finished 4-4-12, rating 4/5, mystery, 299 pages, pub. 2010
Third book in the Tattoo Shop mystery series (Book 1) (Book 2)
Brett, intrepid tattoo artist and shop owner, loans her car to Sylvia and Bernie so they can get married, the drive-through style only found in Las Vegas. When Brett returns home and looks in the car she discovers a dead body in the trunk (I would normally say she was surprised to discover, but I don’t think she can be surprised by all the dead bodies she comes in contact with anymore). Sylvia and Bernie are nowhere to be found and Jeff, Sylvia’s son and Brett’s tattoo nemesis turned friend, is worried enough to go looking for them. When he can’t find them he takes Brett as his fake bride-to-be to That’s Amore wedding chapel to do a little digging. What they find is that the singing Dean Martins appear to be dying off. Brett sticks her nose where it doesn’t belong, again, and finds herself in a mess that forces her detective brother to babysit.
Is there anything more Vegas than competing drive-through wedding chapels, one side serenading Dean Martins and across the street singing Elvis’s? I do love the setting for this series. The Strip and it’s underbelly really does feel like a main character.
Brett is just as strong and nosy as ever and I still admire her spunk. The love interest that dumped her at the end of the last book is back and the spark is rekindled, only that doesn’t mean it will work out, there are other possibilites.
I loved the first of the series, really liked the second and liked this one. The problem is it felt a little too similar to the other two for me to be blown away. That’s not to say that I’m not eager for the next one, I am. I find these books so fast and easy and entertaining that they are perfect for the limited time I have to read these days.
In my review of the last book I mentioned that I felt like Brett may be getting too many tattoos and the author, Karen E Olson stopped by and left this comment:
The Napoleon tattoo is near and dear to Brett’s heart, since the painting is by her favorite neoclassicist artist, Jaques Louis David. It’s a copy of the painting of him on his horse climbing the Alps. Look it up online. It’s very cool. Thanks much for the great review! I’m thrilled you’re loving my books!
So I looked it up and it is pretty cool. Click here to see what Brett had tattooed on her leg. I think that if I ever do dare to get a tatto I might start with something smaller, but then I’m not Brett Kavenaugh, who can obviously pull this off!
I checked this book out of he library.
2012 Round One Quiz WINNERS
Round One is officially over and we have a repeat winner…
Nise!! (Under the Boardwalk)
This is Nise’s very impressive 5th win in 8 rounds! You all need to study up to beat her, LOL! This round there were 24 participants so she will be receiving a $24 gift card to Barnes & Noble. Congratulations!
And now for my randomly chosen winner, or maybe I should say Gage’s randomly chosen winner…
Carol M!!
Carol will be receiving a special gift from me just for participating 🙂
Thank you both for playing along with me on Tuesdays and letting me get back to my teaching roots by making quizzes and grading them 🙂
Sorry for the quality of the picture, someone was on his way to bed.
For those who read Gage’s April Fooling post the TRUE statement is that he rocks out to La Bamba. He has a dog that dances and plays La Bamba when you push its foot. A surefire way to turn a frown upside down around here is to push the foot and dance around the room with complete abandon. And that works for the adults too!
It all comes down to this
A Kansas win and I see Beauty & the Beast in 3D in my future. If Kentucky wins I’m sure it’ll be 5 action flicks coming my way.
Let’s go Jayhawks 🙂
(I’m only half kidding about Beauty in the Beast)
Sundays with Gage – April Fooling
We took Gage to the library and he had a blast in the large kids area pushing a shopping cart around and playing with the train set, but no matter how distracted he was he always came back to the girl reading in the fire truck. He was mesmerized and would watch her until we pulled him away!
In honor of the day I’ll give you 5 Gage statements and you can see if you can tell the truth in the lies. I’ll reveal the one true statement in a few days.
1. Gage likes his Mom to chew his food and spit it in his mouth, ala Alicia Silverstone.
2. Gage crawls out of his crib every few nights.
3. Gage brushes his own teeth at night.
4. Gage rocks out to La Bamba.
5. Gage is the tallest kid in his My Gym class.
March Wrap Up and a Free Book (Zagat America’s Top Restaurants 2012)
First and foremost – I didn’t win the lottery 😦 I bought my first lottery ticket ever and had a really good feeling about it, LOL. But I’m not too upset about it because OHIO STATE IS IN THE FINAL FOUR! For those of you not keeping track, the game is tonight at 8:45 so break out your Go Bucks cheer. If Ohio State beats Kansas I will lose my yearly bet with Jason. If Ohio State loses then my consolation will be that I still have a chance to win. Oh, the irony.
My husband received a book for the holidays and I’m passing it on to one of you because as the parents of a 1 1/2 year old we are not eating out at fancy places and we are not traveling. If you would like the brand new copy of Zagat’s America’s Top Restaurants 2012 just leave a comment with your email address on this post and I’ll draw a name at the end of the month.
So, I only read 5 books and am feeling like I’m in a bit of a reading slump right now. They never seem to last long which is a good thing since this is a bookish blog! I’ve also been in a slump as far as accomplishing my goals. I’ll post them only because I want to keep track, but if I were you I’d just skip right over the rest of this paragraph! Daily goals 10,000 steps (19/31), 8 glasses of water (6/31), daily meditations (27/31), a note to Jason (8/22), One line mom diary (31/31). Weekly goals vegetarian (6/8), letter (2/4). I didn’t keep track of my cardio this month.
So, my goal for the month is to get back on track! And I’m adding 2 things – read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser and to give up drive-thrus for the month. I’ve always eaten fast food but since I’ve been a mother I drive thru somewhere at least once a day. This is often the 5 minutes that I have to eat in relative peace and I need to break the habit. I believe this and lack of sleep are the two biggest things keeping me from losing the baby weight. I need to tape before and after photos on my dash for motivation.
The other thing on my radar this month is World Book Night on April 23. I’ll be passing out 20 copies of The Glass Castle.
March’s 5 Word Movie Reviews – Join in and win $ for charity
For the record, I have not read The Hunger Games series.
Every time you add 5 words of your own to one of my reviews then you donate $1 to charity. What charity, you ask? The charity is chosen by the person who has the most reviews once we reach 100. (Last charity here) PLEASE leave a clear 5 word comment so I can give credit for it.
You can add reviews to any of my past movie posts AND see who is in the contributing lead here.
The Hunger Games, 2012(Cast-Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hewsworth)Grade A-
Totally Captivated By Badass Katniss
Can’t wait for next movie! (Jenners)
Great book adaptation, want more! (Teddyree)
Cesar Flickerman for the win! (Softdrink)
Wow! Ready for Catching Fire? (Kay)
Love Lawrence, Peeta not great. (Heather)
Jennifer Lawrence is really grim. (Tony)
Not Lawrence’s best. Harrelson rocks. (Brendan)
The King’s Speech, 2010 (Cast-Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter Grade B
Wish Triumph Wasn’t War Speech.
Amazing acting – Firth and Rush (Kay)
Funny, delightful, touching. Love it! (Heather)
Fascinating true story; superb acting. (Kathy)
Brilliant, emotional, surprising, loved it! (Teddyree)
It’s not really worth it. (Tony)
Safe House, 2012 (Cast-Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds) Grade B-
Feels Like Jason Bourne Thriller
Guy’s thriller, girl’s eye candy! (Kay)
Red Riding Hood, 2011 (Cast-Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Billy Burke, Julie Christie) Grade C+
Silly Story but Visually Stunning.
Silly, visually pretty, and silly. (Heather)
Boring, poorly acted, visually good (Caspette)
A blast from the past…see what I said about The Kids Are All Right (2010) and add your review. Peeta from the Hunger Games (Josh Hutcherson) was excellent in this one.
90 Classic Books For People in a Hurry, by Henrik Lange
Finished 3-27-12, rating 3.5/5, graphic reference?, 170 pages, pub. 2009
Have you ever wanted to know what people were talking about when they discussed a classic novel like Moby Dick? Well, now there’s no need to waste your time reading the behemoth novel, just pick up this book to find out what happens. In 3 frames!! Yes, every one of these classics is covered in 3 frames. Some are funny, some are serious, and all left me feeling smarter than when I started.
I warn you that it is addicting which is okay since it won’t take long at all to flip through 90 pages. I should also warn you that endings will be given away, so if you want a surprise later you may want to skip that page!
This is more entertaining than detailed (obviously) so as addicting as it is (kind of like donuts) it doesn’t give enough substance to be truly outstanding (kind of like donuts). There are actually a few books in here I’d never heard of and more than a few that aren’t really classics. Unless you think Pet Sematary by Stephen King and The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown are modern classics.
The descriptions of the classics I hadn’t read were funny and some of images convinced me to read the book and some convinced me that reading it would be a waste of time (Steppewolf and The Stranger come to mind). As a matter of fact there were several classics that I enjoyed more in this book than when I actually read them (I’m thinking of Heart of Darkness here). Are you curious how he could possible cover The Bible in 3 frames? Let’s just say he had to do a lot of condensing.
I liked this book a lot and think it would be PERFECT for a fun graduation gift, especially if they are headed off to college. Kind of like a gag gift, but one they’ll actually use.
I borrowed this from the library.
What’s Missing Quiz
For this last quiz of the first round of 2012 I want you to tell me what you don’t see. Tell me the novels that are missing from the library’s shelves by these authors. Some authors are only missing 1 title, some many more, so you can score more than 100 points 🙂
You have until noon Saturday to submit your answers as a comment. Comment will be hidden until I post the answers. No Googling!
LAST WEEK TO PLAY FOR THIS ROUND!!
Have fun and Good Luck!
Obviously the formatting is off so don’t worry about the numbers-just the names and books missing.
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Current Leaderboard here.
Basketball with Gage
We’re still consumed with March Madness here, so Gage has had many opportunities to say one of his favorite words. He likes pointing to the tv and yelling, “Ball!”
Ohio State has made it to the Final Four 🙂 Go Bucks!
Jason holds a slight lead in our brackets, so I need Kansas to win (for today only). C’mon Jayhawks.
Stacy's Books 