Yep - believe it or not - I'm back again!

“Wowzers!” anyone still visiting here will be thinking.  “Wait a minute, didn’t you just do a post yesterday?”

Yes, yes I did and I’m doing another one today.  Work has slowed down considerably and I’m one of the few ones with stuff to do and I’m bombarded with other Assistants wanting to know if I need help.  I don’t really – but they want to do something and if I have them help me with my work, it gives me time to do this – win/win

I was brief yesterday but I’ll get more wordy today – something I’m always on board with.  What’s going on my life?  Let’s see.  Just got through a very tough time.  I’ve never named where I work here and don’t plan on doing it today.  But I will say I work in health care.  I work as an assistant to what we call Care Coordinators, most of them nurses.  They help arrange for home care for clients getting out of the hospitals, going to nursing homes (though I’ve nothing to do with that special focus) and kinds of other interesting things.  I have two Care Coordinators myself that I do administrative work for but I work on a team within a team with 16 in total and I love them.  I know people complain about the health care system in Ontario – and a lot of it with good reason.  But daily I see these people are dedicated to helping others and often go that extra mile.

Now they went on strike a few weeks ago.  Again, I’m not going into the issues, but what they were asking for was completely reasonable and all of their assistants all across the province were behind them 100%, encouraging them and offering all the support we could. 

  
But we are in a different union so we still had to go into work.  And because they were out and upper management were spread very thin, we assistants had to step up and take on a lot of the responsibilities that we are normally expected or trained to do.  We aren’t nurses and we don’t have the expertise we needed to handle a lot of the calls.  Some of the ones I took were SO difficult because they needed to speak to their coordinator and their Coordinator wasn’t there.  They are back at work now thank goodness, but it really did upset my depression apple cart.  I felt the same way as I did back in September when it was so bad.  But thankfully the meds I’m taking are good and our very dear Care Coordinators are back and my work world isn’t so topsy turvy again.

 In other news, I’m headed to RWA again year.  And me and Wendy are going to be roomies again – yea!!  We weren’t for a couple of years – she was Librarian of the Year – and most deservedly so – and last year I skipped it as the money was allocated to a total redo of my bathroom.  I’m so excited for that.  It’s tradition now *grin*

I’m also a grandma – not sure if I’ve blogged about that.  Yes, my youngest son and his wife whom I love to bits and bits had a little boy last October.  And Jace is his name.  He’s cute as a bug – as I imagine all grannies say about their granbabies.  It’s amazing how much I’d forgotten over the years about taking care of a newborn.  The holding the head thing freaked me out.  I’m glad he can hold his own head now.  Right now he’s in Mexico with his mama and papa.  Two weeks after that he’s headed to Florida with his mom and his other grandparents and in May he’s headed to Italy.  It’s very strange when six month old baby has done way more traveling than his granny.

While I haven’t been blogging lately – a long lately – I have been doing reviews on GoodReads.  I signed up there for a Challenge and gave myself 60 books to read this year.  Astonishingly I’m up to 30 all ready.  That’s what happens when you need a new cable box because the sound has gone on the one you have now.  And the only station where the sound is normal is CNN.  And as anyone who has tried to do it, watching CNN can be depressing!!!!! And – why is everything “
Breaking News” there??

I’d watch a story at say 5:00 pm and then again at 11:00 and it’s the same story and it’s still breaking.  Breaks don’t take that long.  I know.  I had a break in my leg and it only takes seconds.

Now, one might ask “But why doesn’t she just take the box back and get a new one instead of watching Wolf Blitzer every day.”  And that would be a real good question, I don’t like Wolf Blitzer.  I do like Anderson Cooper though.  I think everyone likes Anderson Cooper – how can you not?   The answer as to why I haven’t got a new box is I don’t really have an answer for that – except it’s electronicky and I don’t like electronicky.  I don’t watch much TV except for Face Off every Tuesday.  And I’ve gotten pretty fast at reading the captions.   I will have to before April though when the next season of Outlander comes on.  We have to have good sound for that – it’s imperative. 

But, I’ve read a lot more books than usual.  And I’ve done reviews for all of them at Goodreads and it seems easy as anything to copy and paste them on the blog.  So that’s what I plan to do – that along with my ramblings about all kinds of stuff.

And my final rambling of today……  This was who I saw last night and he was WONDERFUL!!!

I saw him 30 years ago on his Reckless tour the first time around and now I saw him again last night.  He's looking much older.  Of course when I saw him the first time it was The Palace of Auborn Hills and he was at the front and we were at the very back so he was about 1/2 inch tall.  And while our tickets last night were very good, I have, I think, 5 pairs of glasses for me near sightedness - I think that's when you can't see things far away - which makes no sense - and I couldn't find a one of them.  So while he was much bigger last night, he was also quite fuzzy.





OK, OK, OK - since his Mama pastes his pics on Facebook all the time - is he not just cute as a button?  Was I right or was I right!

and what does it say about me that I make the picture of Bryan Adams bigger than the one of my grandson????  I think it's maybe because I'm still not 100% on board posting pics of him - granbaby that is - not Bryan.

Ahhhhh - the fun!

So, I've posted recently about the success I've had spreading the love of romance amongst my coworkers. I'm happy to report that they are really starting to get addicted now!! In previous reports, one of my coworkers Wendy (we shall call her Wendy) was reading Sugar Daddy by Lisa Klepyas and hoping for a certain pair to end up together - and I was a tad concerned as I knew they didn't. Well, Wendy ended up being fine with that, as have most who have read the book seem to feel. So then she moved on to Blue Eyed Devil. She reported in with me on her progress and how much she was loving it. On Wednesday, she asked me if I could bring in Smooth Talking Stranger as she was just about done BED.

Well, unfortunately, I forgot it on Thursday. Last week I was on the dreaded 12:00 to 8:00 shift and since it's out of my normal routine, it totally slipped my mind until she showed up at my desk looking for it. Friday morning, the phone rang around 10 and it was another coworker Deborah (we shall call her Deborah). Now I don't know what it is - but when I get a call at home from work, I always figure I'm in DEEP SHIT and someone is calling to warn me for when I get in. So I was a tad light headed and starting to sweat when I recognized her voice. But that wasn't why she was calling at all. No indeed! Wendy had asked her to call since Wendy didn't have my phone number, to remind me to bring in Smooth Talking Stranger!! And since I was going to bring in a book for Wendy, and Deborah was off on vacation this coming week, could I bring a few in for her too!

MY COWORKERS ARE CALLING ME AT HOME TO BRING IN ROMANCE BOOKS! Is that cool or what!??!?!?! And it's a good thing that she did call since it had slipped my mind again! So before leaving for work on Friday, I loaded up a bag with books. When I got there, Wendy was on lunch (since I started at lunchtime that wasn't a surprise) But as soon as she got back she came over looking for it. I very happily handed it to her and she hugged it. Since it was a weekend coming up and she's a fast reader, I also brought in a couple of other books for her:

Barbara Samuel's No Place Like Home - since she enjoyed In the Midnight Rain
Julie James' Something About You - since No Place Like Home is such an emotional, makes you cry book, I thought she might need something light that would make her laugh after.

AND - I didn't get Sugar Daddy and Blue Eyed Devil back because Wendy loved them so much she said that another coworker, Tanya (we shall call her Tanya) really needed to read them too. Tanya started reading Sugar Daddy Thursday night and was really enjoying it. So now she also has BED for when she's done.

And I also brought in books for Deborah. She loved To Die For by Linda Howard and already has Drop Dead Gorgeous to read. She is also the one reading the In Death and Stephanie Plum books. I also gave her Open Season and Rachel Gibson's True Confessions. There were two others but darn it all, I can't remember what they were now.

And then there is Joan who has read all the Stephanie Plum books and is now making her way through the In Death books.

After all these years of collecting books, this is such fun lending them out - as long as I get them back again though ;-)

Miscellaneous

To balance out the cat pics since it seems some people don't like the ugly one *g*

Miscellaneous isn't that different from ponderings really, but since I just did a Ponderings, I had to change it up. And generally, Miscellaneous is longer - at least this one is.

Response from Co-Workers on Romance Books

Well, Wendy (we shall call her Wendy) finished Sugar Daddy. And thankfully, she LOVED it.

Spoiler Alert

She was fine with who Liberty ended up with thank goodness. When she told me she finished it, I asked her if she was fine with the fact it didn't end up the way she was hoping - and she was :-). And now she's half way through Blue Eyed Devil. Wendy (we shall call her that) was delighted to hear there is a third book, Jack's story. She's blaming me for her lack of sleep however.

Another co-worker Deborah (we shall call her Deborah) recently read Patrica Gaffney's book, Wild at Heart that I brought in for her and loved it. She asked me to bring in more books. Now she's quite a speed reader. She's read all the Stephanie Plum books - the ones I didn't have she bought herself. And she's more than half-way through the In Death books. She just needs to figure out where she is and what she needs next. I'll bring them in, but she has to figure out what *g*.So in the meantime I brought her To Die For and Drop Dead Gorgeous by Linda Howard. I had to warn her that although I love Blair to death, some readers find her annoying. Well she read To Die For and accused me of ruining her Sunday. She couldn't put it down! And today she was telling me she loves books that take place in the South - New Orleans in particular. I'm going to have to get a flashlight while I look for Lucky's Lady by Tami Hoag for her next reading pleasure.

One of my coworkers, Tarryn (we shall call her Tarryn) who is also a very strong fan of the In Death series, got a Kindle a month or so before I got my Kobo. We took them out at the same time at lunch today to compare size and stuff. The screens on both are the same size but the actual Kindle device is bigger. And it has a key pad which the Kobo doesn't.

I was quite glad I went with the Kobo as there was an interesting article in today's paper. Unfortunately I couldn't find it online, but the gist of the article was that librarians are loving ebooks. It seems that they like the fact that there are no late fees and a lot less paperwork involved. There has been a real increase in the library lending out ebooks since last year; one of the reasons being many people got ereaders for Christmas. And now that the Kobo has made an appearance, they think the number of ebooks the library has will at least double by this time next year. I'm hoping Wendy or any other librarian pops as I'm curious as to whether other libraries are experiencing this dramatic increase in ebooks. And as Tarryn and I were comparing reading devices, I showed her the article in the paper. If I wasn't such a nice person, I would be thinking neener, neener, since you can't 'rent' ebooks from the library on the Kindle.
I had a doctors appointment after work today - need a supply of happy pills I did and I had my first chance to use my ereader at the doctors office. It was great!! And when the nurse saw what I had, she was very curious about it. Seems she's a big reader too. After the appointment, I showed her how it worked and she decided since it was her birthday coming up soon, she knew what she was going to ask for.

It's kind of odd in a way. Online, I'm one of the last holdouts in getting an ereader, but in the world I live and work in, I'm one of the first to get one. Tarryn is the only other person at work who seems to have one. And everyone I show is quite impressed. A couple of people haven't even heard of them before!

After I stopped to get my supply of happy pills and all the rest of the plethora of pills I have to take due to my advancing age, I stopped at Chapters. The book I was reading on the Kobo is The Conqueror by Kris Kennedy. I got it in eform after I read Wendy's review of The Irish Warrior. But d'oh - I already had the print copy of it. But I discovered another good thing about having an ereader. I don't have to worry about where I put the book!! I know I stared The Conqueror ages ago, but it disappeared in the land of books that I have. Anyway, after reading quite a bit of it at the doctor's office - you know you never get in on time - I was really enjoying it and decided to get it. And wouldn't you know - Chapters is having a buy 3 get 1 free sale!! I was determined to resist buying books for a while - what with both RomCon and RWA coming up soon. But you can't ignore a buy 3 get 1 free sale can you? No, you can not! So in addition to The Irish Warrior (and isn't that a great cover - that's why I went for print rather than e), these are the other ones I picked up for the can't say no book deal.


Lord of the Highlands by Veronica Wolff - a time travel by the looks of it.





No Chance by Christy Reece - I have the first two in this new trilogy





and

Burning Alive by Shannon K. Butcher - just cause. I wanted a variety of the books so I figured this was as good a paranormal as any.




And that wasn't all I got at Chapters!! One of the best places in the world to go if you ever get a chance is Medieval Times Dinner Theatre. (if you click on the link, you can see the 'Toronto' Knights - the Red Knight is my cutest knight - heh heh heh) Of course you can't go there now as the G 8/G20 meetings are being held in Toronto and if you get me started on that subject, this post will last for eternity - suffice it to say they've pretty much locked down the city AND CANCELED THE RETURN OF DOC HALLIDAY and spent over 1 billion $'s in security (it's no wonder I don't do taxes).

I've been a few times now, the last time with Ames and Nath and if we do a Canadian Blogger Get together, we really should go again as I can't think of a more fun place to have dinner!
Anyway - I was walking to the romance section of Chapters, having read a pretty good Medieval book and on my way to get another one, when what should catch my eye but these REALLY COOL knights on horses figurines. What can I say? It was destiny!!
Are they not awesome or what!?!? I got the green one to start my collection.

And I know JUST where they will go! On the upstairs book case, next to my
Guy of Gisbourne figure.




~~~~~UPDATE~~~~~


There was one other figurine I got too, but since I didn't see a picture of it, I didn't post it. But doing further 'looking into', I did find a picture. Now this is how shallow I am. One of the reasons I picked it up was because I thought they did a pretty good job in making the figurine kind of cute. Is that not a shallow reason? I'm almost embarrassed. The other reason, it was less expensive without the horse

And *sigh* I was cataloging my books and it seems I already have copies of two of them - the Veronica Wolff book and the Christy Reece book. I missed the Wolff book at first because I only gave her one F so it didn't come up. Oh well, back to the bookstore I go for another two. And I'll have to try and stay away from the other Knights and their horses!!

And why was that underlined? I don't understand Blogger sometimes.