I finished this book before going away on my holidays but I haven't had the chance to write about it until now. Heroic Measures by Jill Ciment was interesting not one I would recommend it didn't really have an ending. It was about a dog who was old and very sick and the couple who owned it would do anything for her.

While away I started to read Columbine by Dave Cullen

Jodi Picoult

This book, Handle With Care, is not on my Oprah book list but someone lent it to me and I do love Picoult's books, like her other ones I couldn't put this one down, like her other ones it is a controversial book. This book deals with whether to abort a baby with a disability or not, which disability is more worthy than others. I was able to see all the characters point of view of the issues they have to deal with. It also shows what the family members have to deal with by having a daughter/sister with a disability and their daily routines. I definitely recommend it and would like to see your thoughts on it too.

My next book is Heroic Measures by Jill Ciment.

Ernest

I have finished book number 4: Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. It was about his life told by him as he was living in Paris in the 1920's. I got to "meet" some of his friends and other noble writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald. Hemingway definitely enjoyed his alcohol and drank at every possible time he could find. He also enjoyed going to the track to see the horses.

My next book to read is Jodi Picoult's newest book Handle With Care.

Bzzzz

Plan Bee was definitely an interesting book especially if you like bees. It is basically a book all about the facts of bees, honey and beekeeping. If you are interested in becoming a beekeper this book would be very useful, unfortunately that is not my calling in life. I did learn a lot about it and I will see bees in a different way from now on, but I think I am ready for another type of book so the next one on my list to read is A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemmingway it is his biography.

I have finished Camilla as my summer reading program progresses. I am down 2 and 23 to go. Camilla was an interesting story about a 15 year old girl living in Manhattan New York in the 1950's. She is learning a lot in this year about her family and love and the world around her. She had to mature quite quickly to deal with everything around her and yet she is still a child.

My next book is Plan Bee by Susan Brackney, after picking it up from the library I realized right away that this may be a tougher read for me as it is not a novel but more of a book about honeybees and bees in general. Hopefully I can learn a bit about these busy little creatures.

It didn't take me long to finish my first book of the summer. I finished it last night and I have already picked up,thanks to the library, my next choice to start tonight. Camilla by Madeleine L'Engle. I am not sure what this one is about but will try to be as excited to read it as I was with the last one.

Yes, My Darling Daughter was a very captivating book and kept me wanting more. Although at one point I thought I may have read too much too late in the night as I ended up dreaming about it and couldn't get back to sleep. It is quite an intense book full of mystery and wondering what will happen next. It seemed very real like watching some of the CSI episodes.

Summer Book Reading

I have decided to take Oprah up on her summer book club, she has a list of 25 books that she says you can't put down so I thought that it is a good start for me. I am trying to get most of them from the library but since summer has started today I went to Chapters to get my first read. I am starting with Yes, My Darling Daughter by Margaret Leroy. I will be going to New Brunswick for a week in July so I am hoping to get a lot of reading done driving there and in the early mornings before we head off for the day. My goal is to at least get through 1 book a week and see how that goes.

Boston Bound

I am on my way to the Boston Marathon with a qualifying time of 3:39:44. This will be my first time to Boston and I am looking forward to it all. I trained hard since January to go and now it is a reality. Someone I trained with also qualified and I am so happy for her too she worked hard and was very determined to get there.

To hear more about how this all came to be check out my other blog here.

I do have to thank my running group for putting up with me and dealing with my competitive nature. I know they are happy for me too and I am so lucky to be able to run with them all.

A Sad Day

TSN'S MAGGIE THE MONKEY TO RETIRE AFTER 2009 NHL PLAYOFFS

http://watch.tsn.ca/nhl/clip159423#clip159423

TSN regrettably confirmed today that world-renowned post-season prognosticator Maggie the Monkey will officially retire after making her picks for the 2008-09 NHL Playoffs.

Maggie will make her first-round playoff picks during the NHL ON TSN PLAYOFF PREVIEW SPECIAL on Tuesday, April 14 at 9pm et/6pm pt. Throughout the network's NHL playoff coverage, TSN will look back at Maggie's stellar career and her on-again, off-again, relationship with NHL ON TSN host James Duthie.

"This is an emotional day and really an end of an era," said Duthie. "Sure, we've had our ups and downs, but Maggie helped put this network, and the NHL, on the world stage. We plan to send her off in style, so if anyone has a great recipe for a goodbye banana cake – we'd love to have it."

Maggie the Monkey, a crab-eating macaque from the Bowmanvile Zoo, gained international fame in 2003 as a guest analyst on TSN's NHL Playoff coverage with her ‘highly scientific' method of predicting NHL winners by spinning a wheel. Maggie boldly - and correctly - predicted the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim would make it to the 2003 Stanley Cup Final® by beating favoured Detroit, Dallas and Minnesota.

Overall, Maggie the Monkey's playoff prediction record is an impressive 40-35. Maggie's best year was 2006 when she finished first out of a panel of TSN hockey experts including Bob McKenzie and Pierre McGuire. The one blemish on Maggie's broadcasting career – is that she has never correctly picked the Stanley Cup® final winner. She plans to go out on top and improve her record with her 2009 Stanley Cup® winner prediction this year.

Taken from tsn.ca

New Job

My new job has been going well, I am a much happier person and stress free. Sure the drive is longer but it is definitely worth it in the end and I do not have to deal with traffic as I am now out in the west end. I can easily get to my running group after work because it is on the way home.

I have 2 little ones, one is almost a year old girl and the other is 2 1/2 year old boy and they have quite a busy schedule. I go to 2 music classes in the week and 2 playgroups then I have Friday to do what I think they would like to do. Grandad also comes by once a week to take the little boy out and spend some time with him at the different museums and galleries. He really looks forward to his time with his Grandad. Now that the weather is nicer we get out to the park outside their front door on a regular basis.

This is definitely a good fit and I look forward to going to work again.

Google Reader

I was informed of this great website http://www.google.com/reader. It allows you to type in the sites/blogs that you visit frequently all in one place and then you can go to this site to see if /when anyone has updated their blog. It helps save you time, instead of going to each separate blog on your own and finding nothing new, you can go to this one and view them all.

You will need to sign in and set up a profile but think of all the time you can save while still enjoying all the great things to read. I think you should try it out and don't forget to add my 2 blogs to it.

http://boston42km.blogspot.com
http://stephgordon.blogspot.com

Confessions of a Shopaholic

I just finished reading this book. It was a nice light read nothing overly exciting but an easy read. It is about a woman (Rebecca Bloomwood) who works at a financial magazine, yet has a hard time keeping her own finances under control. Basically, she just loves to shop too much.

I know that the movie is out in theatres now but I don't think I will be one of those going to see it.

My next big book is Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, it is about 817 pages so I am not exactly sure how long it will take to finish. I figured that if I can read this book I can possibly read anything.

These past 2 weeks I was out of commission at work as I have decided to change families. However, I was asked to supply in a daycare centre. Yeah money!!! It was quite a different experience for me as I am used to one or two children at a time and working 10 hour days. At this place I worked with about 8 preschoolers and there were also about 5 kindergarten children. These children are very busy and when they first told me their names about 4 of them told me it was Spiderman, some were the red one and the others the black one. The ratio was about 4 boys to 1 girl, so there was a lot of Spiderman action going on.

The weeks went by quite fast and I was happy to help them out. They seemed happy with me too and were sad to see me go on, who knows maybe I'll be back full time one day.

Changes

I am making a few changes with my blog. I will no longer be blogging on here about my running, instead I have decided to start a new blog dedicated to just running and my progress. For those of you interested in that part of my life feel free to visit me and comment at http://boston42km.blogspot.com .

I will keep up with this blog as well but leave it more to my thoughts in other areas and my day to day things like books I am reading or have read and other such things.

I haven't been keeping up with my running routine as much I should be. I know it is early on and I shouldn't be skipping runs already but it seems whenever I am suppose to do my run we get another 20cm of snow, plus we had our bus strike so it would take me a long time to get home or to run club (sometimes too long that I miss run club). Running outside on my own is not really safe either and the treadmill is broken. Although now I don't have much of an excuse to miss because I am off work for 3 weeks.

I gave my notice to my family in mid January giving them about 2 months to find a new caregiver (how nice of me eh?). They decided that 2 weeks was sufficient time and so now I am off earlier than I expected and a little tighter on money too. I believe that it will be worth it in the end. The new family heard about it and offered for me to start about 2 weeks earlier (so nice) so now I am just stuck with 3 weeks instead of 5.

This weeknd is going to be a nice treat, as my aunt is coming up from NJ and we are planning to get together and maybe take in the Art Gallery and eat Beavertails along the canal, plus it will be the first weekend of Winterlude. I am looking forward to it.

Reading "The Reader"

So it has been just over a week and I have finished yet another book, The Reader by Bernhard Schlink. Quite amazing for me, but I wanted to finish it sooner than later in case I liked it and wanted to see the movie. I found it to be interesting, yet depressing about a young boy who began a relationship with an older woman and read to her many books until one day she disappeared. He later (years later) ran into her when she was on trial for a very serious crime. I will leave it at that so I don't give too much of it away. I am not sure about seeing the movie I may wait until it comes on DVD, but Kate Winslet did win a Golden Globe for her part in it.

On another note, my Marathon clinic started on Tuesday night and so far so good. I know, I know I haven't gotten to the hard parts yet but I feel pretty good about this one and I am sure no matter what happens it will help me on my road to getting to Boston. We learned that over the course of the clinic we would have run the equivalency of running from here (Ottawa) to Toronto AND back. That is before running the actual race! So I still have a lot to do since at this point I have only run 22km.

I'm Back.....Finally

Yes it is true, I am back and hopefully will be back for a while now. I have been quite busy over the past while with Christmas and New Years and making changes with work. I have been reading lots but I haven't posted anything. So here I am.

I just finished this lovely book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. It takes place in 1946 in London and in the little Island of Guernsey which is located in the English Channel near Normandy. An author from London befriends a group from Guernsey who lived through the Occupation. It is not like other fictional books but letters sent back and forth telling their story. It was a nice change from some of the other books I have read.

Other things happening this New Year is next week I will beginning my training for my next Marathon. It is being held here in Ottawa and I am also going to be a group leader with the Running Room which will give me more motivation to get out and run. Although hopefully it won't be as cold as it is today -36 with the windchill!! Not exactly what I call fun. I hope to finish the race with a time of 3:50:00. Yes that is 3 hours, almost 4 hours of straight running. Anyone want to join me? I didn't think so. I am also considering running the NY Marathon in November but it is hard/expensive for a Canadian to get there. So I am trying my luck in the lottery and if they choose my name then it is a go. Cross your fingers for me.

The Rideau Canal opened on New Years Day and has been opened since then. I work near there so I have walked along it with the young one, the smell of the Beavertails keeps me coming back, I don't always eat one though. I also went for a skate but I may have to wait a bit before I do that again.