A Moment Of Gratitude – A Celebrate The Small Things Blog Post

Las Vegas aerial view taken from a blimp by DanitaDelimont
Poster is available via Zazzle

It is time again to join Lexa Cain for her weekly blog hop “Celebrate The Small Things” You can join this ever-growing list of gratitude practitioners there. Remember, when you look close enough, you will always find something to be grateful for.

This week I am grateful that our move is now in it’s final stages, and we are actually getting on the road on Tuesday. I am looking forward to finally moving out of here, and toward the West, something we all have been looking forward to for a while now. Las Vegas, here we come!

I am grateful that I am getting better at moving efficiently and in a more organized manner. This will come in handy in the near future again, our stay in Las Vegas is limited to about 6 months. So, basically as soon as we unpacked, we are going to re-pack. I better have that down to a science by then!

I am grateful that I have chosen to take the next few days off, and that I am flexible enough to do so. It is so much harder when your schedule is dictated by a typical job. I am glad that I am in charge of my own schedule.

I am grateful that found some baby pictures of my daughter, I did not remember we had. Somehow they got mixed in with some tax papers (I don’t know how that happened), but they are adorable, and put a smile on my face. I can’t wait to tease her with them later on today.

Speaking of pictures, going through all of our stuff, I also came across my own basic training pictures. Now there is something to scare the kids with. Is it a bad thing to be grateful for having been hurt bad enough in basic training to receive a medical discharge? Well, I am, because it brought me to this time and place, something that might have never happened would I have actually been physically able to stay. I guess it is possible to be grateful for torn ligaments and improper medical treatment after all. Was not that much fun when it happened, though.

What are you grateful for this week? I hope you take the time to write a blog post, and join the hop, or create a list in your journal. Gratitude is a practice that should be held sacred by everyone, no matter which spiritual background or the lack thereof  one comes from.

Have a great weekend!

Claudia

P.S. I will not be a part of next weeks hop. Monday will be the last day I will be on this blog until end of June. See you in July!

T Is For Two Of A Kind (Book Review)

Title: Two Of A Kind

Rating: 2.5/5 Stars

Author: Susan Mallery

Genre: Romance

Publisher: Harlequin

ISBN-13: 978-0-373-77768-6

This book was my introduction to Susan Mallery’s series centering around Fool’s Gold, California. Looking for a romance that was engaging and filled with quirky characters, I picked up this book upon a recommendation.

Sadly, I was not impressed.

While laced with funny interludes, both main characters as well as most of the additional characters fell short of their potential, with little depth, despite the promise of interesting background stories. As a wife of a war veteran, I wanted to like Gideon, emphasizing with the drama that war, and in his case being a prisoner of war leaves behind. That drama is a a deep one, leaving behind scars that for some never heal completely.

With that background story in mind, I was ready to like the main character, with and despite his flaws, but Susan failed to execute that potential enough, to keep me from feeling disconnected. Maybe it is because I entered the series in its middle, but it has been my experience with other series, that this does not have to be the case. Felicia, the female lead comes across as annoying at times, her lack of social skills irritating. She reminded me of all the aspects that I do not like about a television show featuring a highly intelligent woman “Bones”.

To be fair to Susan Mallery, I will pick up the first volume of the series to see if my impression would change, with a more intended introduction to the series. I will keep you updated. But as a stand alone novel, I would not recommend this book.