Category Archives: Meme

I’m linking this post to Sunday Post, Stacking the Shelves, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

Is it already the end of the year?! Holy cow did December fly by.

Well, this month was a whirlwind. I scrambled to get gifts out in the mail in advance. Since there’s only one post office for my town, it gets swamped around this time of year. A dog that I had fostered back in November and who was adopted right before Thanksgiving, wound up being returned. So, she came back to stay with us while she waited for her forever family. I honestly thought we’d have her for Christmas since she was returned right before the holidays, but she found a forever home right before Christmas. She was a sweetheart and I’m sad that she’s gone, but glad that she has finally found a loving home. I also wound up getting the flu the week before Christmas. I don’t think I will ever complain about a simple cold with sniffles again. Right as I was starting to feel better, the government shut down, which meant I was furloughed until further notice. The first couple of days were nice because I still needed to rest up and recover from the flu, but now I’m getting a little stir crazy. Like I said, this month was pretty intense. I’m hoping that next month is a little less chaotic.

Read More →

I’m linking this post to Sunday Post, Stacking the Shelves, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

I’ve been pretty busy the last couple of weeks. It seems like the weekends just get away from me and before I know it, it’s Monday. I’ve been on track with keeping my posts scheduled to go out on time, but when it comes to these wrap-ups that I kind of have to do the night before or the day of, that’s where I keep dropping the ball. I’m starting to think I should just do a monthly wrap-up. Make it a little bit easier on myself.

Anyway, some friends and I rescued an African Spurred Tortoise that had wandered onto my friend’s property the other week. These guys are not native to our area and he clearly got out of his enclosure and was doing a bit of exploring. It was definitely an experience. He was huge and heavy, and didn’t want to be corralled. Which meant that I had to pick him up and carry him back towards the house so that we could get him loaded into a vehicle. He got to spend the night with my friend’s other tortoises before he was reunited with his owner.

Yesterday I was able to attend the Mojave Desert Land Trust plant sale event. I have been looking forward to this for months. Usually when you go to nurseries out here, they are selling fancy desert plants. However, the MDLT was focusing on the native plants to the area that help benefit the ecosystem. So there were palo verdes, creosote, and even baby Joshua trees. The residents out here have been fighting for years to get the Joshua trees added to the Endangered Species Act as a threatened species. Usually you can only get a Joshua tree if you grow it from seed, so I was really excited to get my hands on a baby JT. Plus, the proceeds from the sale went to the MDLT which strives to protect, restore, and educate the public about this amazing landscape. So it was all for a good cause.

Read More →

I’m linking this post to Sunday Post, Stacking the Shelves, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

So… if you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen that I recently got a position working at Joshua Tree National Park. I’m currently only part-time and sort of fill in when someone calls in sick or asks for leave, which means my schedule is all over the place. So that is why I haven’t done a wrap-up in a while. I’m either at work, or exhausted from work. So, I’m sorry if my wrap-ups are a bit sporadic for a while until I get back into the groove of things.

Oh, and I also had a bit of exciting news the other day. Sourcebooks Casablanca has this InstaSwoon newsletter that they put out and right there at the top of the email this week was my photo of Hunt the Dawn! They featured one of my photos in their newsletter! I was blown away. I usually tend to keep to myself and fly under the radar. Not to mention I don’t use a bunch of props or elaborate photo shoots for my bookish photos. I just sort of pull out a book I want to feature and take a quick photo of it. I also only use my smartphone to take the photo and don’t do any crazy editing to my pictures. So, never in a million years would I have thought that any of my photos would stand out, let alone to a publisher, to the point where they’d want to share it with their readers. I’m honestly still speechless over it all.

Read More →

I’m linking this post to Sunday Post, Stacking the Shelves, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

I’m really excited that fall is finally here. I mean, I’ve sort of been celebrating fall since the end of August when I broke out all my fall decor, and clothes, but not now it’s acceptable to wear my Halloween leggings out in public. LoL

The past couple of weeks have been pretty low-key. Last weekend we checked out a local farmers market and went to the Joshua Tree Art Expo. This week started the #contemporaryathon. I had set out to read four books, but sadly I only finished three of them. However, they were three books I’ve had sitting on my shelves for years. So it was nice to finally brush them off and read them.

Read More →

I celebrated my birthday last week. I will be honest and say that I wasn’t really feeling it this year. I think it had to do with the fact that my friends up here weren’t going to be around, and there really isn’t much to do in way of celebration without driving over an hour down the mountain. So, I was just ho-hum about it all. However, I pushed myself to get off the couch and go into Joshua Tree National Park which is just a 5 minute drive from the house. We didn’t do any real hiking since it was already in the 90’s, but we got out and walked around one of my favorite locations and took a drive through the park to check out the scenery.

Speaking of the park, I went in on Friday to see about volunteering, and not only did they sign me up, but my first day “on the job” will be tomorrow. I used to work there a handful of years ago when we lived in the area, and I’m excited to get behind the desk and help people plan out their visit.

Read More →

I’m linking this post to Sunday Post, Stacking the Shelves, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

I got a lot of reading in this week. I caught up on review books for the month of September, which I was a little nervous about. I honestly thought I would have to hustle to catch up but that wasn’t the case.

I have fallen down the Dollar Tree DIY rabbit hole. I feel like I’m the last person to find out that the Dollar Tree is really a Michael’s in disguise. I randomly stumbled across a Dollar Tree organizing video that had me looking at all the plastic bins that clutter their shelves in a whole new light. So, I decided to do a search on Youtube for Dollar Tree videos and holy cow! People are making end tables out of trash bins, shelving units out of photo frames, and plant stands out of paper towel holders! Don’t even get me started on all the Halloween and Fall stuff they are cranking out… and it’s only September. I might have popped into my local store about three times this week waiting for them to get their stock in.

Read More →

I’m linking this post to Sunday Post, Stacking the Shelves, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

The move is finally over and we are settling into the new place. Gah! Let me just say, this move was brutal. Between not finding a house until literally four days before the movers came, to having our vehicle break down on us twice… this was not an easy move for us. This move has been an ongoing struggle for the last two and a half months and I’m just so glad to finally be done with it. I actually got a chance to sit down this week and read three books! I still can’t believe that I haven’t read anything in over a month prior to that. I have a lot of catching up to do. Thank you to everyone who stopped by while I was gone and sticking with me during this crazy time. It’s great to be back online and I can’t wait to see what new books everyone has gotten, and what you all have been reading recently. I need to add some new pretties to my Goodreads list. 😉

Read More →

I’m linking this post to Sunday Post, Stacking the Shelves, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

It’s getting down to the wire for this move. I have been driving back and forth a lot as we continued to search for a house up north. It’s just been so rough because everyone up there is turning their homes into airbnb’s. So, there really aren’t many rental properties available that would fit our needs. However, The Mister and I drove up on Friday to look at one more house and hopefully sign a lease. We actually loved the house and were really excited to get back to the realtor’s office to sign the lease… when our car wouldn’t start. We had someone try to jump us, AAA come and mess with the battery, then he had to call in and send for another truck since our car needed to be towed and he already had a vehicle on his truck. It was a mess. We wound up sitting outside of our potential new home for two hours in the 110° heat. Thankfully, I had a friend in the area who was able to come out and get us once we realized we were going to be just sitting out there a while. She drove us around as we looked over the lease, went to the auto shop where our car was transported, and ultimately drove us out to the only car rental shop in the Morongo Basin that had a vehicle left. We literally rented the last vehicle in the entire area in order to get back home to San Diego and start prepping for the move. So, we got a house but the entire day was a mess and I’m honestly just over the whole move.

Speaking of moving, the movers will be here in a couple of days to start packing up our stuff. Which means that I will be going silent for a little bit. I am currently typing away, trying to get posts up and ready to go live during the time I will be offline, but I won’t really be on here chatting with you. I will be on Instagram a little bit, but that will probably be all that you will see from me until we get the new house set up.

Read More →

I’m linking this post to Sunday Post, Stacking the Shelves, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

I skipped last week’s wrap-up since there was quite a bit going on. We wound up driving 3.5 hours up to look at a potential house at our new location. The woman who put the house up for rent told us that if we didn’t drive up the following day (Saturday) to look at it, she was going to give it to the next person interested. This was after she accepted our application, took money for the credit check and said the house was ours. So, yeah. Last Saturday was spent in the car driving, only to find out that the house was way too small for us. I mean, there was no where to put my bookshelves… and I only have 3! By the time we got home on Saturday night, I was exhausted and not up to typing a weekly wrap-up post.

This week was just as busy and just as upsetting. There was a house that we put an application in for last month. Even though the house isn’t available until next week, they were going to go through applications a week prior to even allowing people to view the house. However, the pictures looked good, the sq footage was promising, and we felt like this was our place. Well, the beginning of the week started off great with the realtor calling me asking me small questions like if I was willing to pay “x” for a pet deposit, and what lease length was I willing to do? We were in the final stages of getting the house and they wanted to run our credit check. I was beyond excited because I know our credit is good and I felt like we finally FINALLY had a place. Until, that is, on Wednesday afternoon as I was running out the door to start my shift at Comic-Con and got the call that they decided to go with the other person interested in the house. No one could give me a reason why we didn’t get the house, just that they went with the other person. The Mister and I think it’s because we have a cat and a dog, even though the listing said they allowed pets.

At least Comic-Con was fun. Our shift got a rough start when the scheduling computer said we didn’t actually had a shift to volunteer, and that the next available shift was either five hours later in the night or the following day. The shifts are three hours long and we had left our dog home alone without a sitter figuring we’d work our 3 hours and then head home. So, that wasn’t going to work for us. Finally the lady took pity on us, looked on the main computer and pulled up our schedule and was able to get us in, but while we sat there trying to come up with a solution, our shift started and so we were randomly placed with another group. Which wasn’t so bad since we were in charge of stuffing the bags with the event books and lanyards. Then the following day we got to go back to Comic-Con and attend the convention. The Mister was able to get his two exclusive statues that he really wanted, we got a bunch of signed art prints, and I got to meet Sherrilyn Kenyon! It was actually really cool because as we were walking around the artist section of the convention floor we came across the artist behind one of the statues he bought. So we were able to get the statue signed. The one photo is of a woman who made a dress out of Comic-Con bags! It was insane and I had to get a picture of her.

Read More →

I’m linking this post to Sunday Post, Stacking the Shelves, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Independence day last week. We pretty much stayed home and laid low. Our pup goes nuts barking at fireworks, and since they were throwing them off a block away from our house, we decided to try our best to tire him out. Which mean runs (I’m not a runner), and taking him to the dog park (where no one was there with their dog). Ha! It apparently worked though because we were able to sit on our couch and watch the fireworks out our front window while holding the pup and all he pretty much did was grumble and throw off a few barks. Id’ consider that a success.

We are currently going through a bit of a heatwave here in San Diego. It’s been in the 100’s for the last couple of days. This morning I woke up to it already being 80, and yet the weather channel still says the high with only be 92… yeah right!

Fun news! The Mister and I got our volunteer schedule from Comic Con! We will be volunteering on Preview Night which means that we get to choose a day pass for any day of the convention to go back and attend. Usually they’ve only allowed us to volunteer during CC hours, which means we volunteer during the convention and then after our 3 hour shift we are allowed to go in and explore for the day. Getting to work before the convention is in full swing allows us to get a full day badge and I can’t wait! It will more than likely be our last CC since we are moving a few hours away next month.

Read More →