Mmmmmm....Good Book...

just a quick line to opine about a series I've been reading.

Links to the Kindle downloads.

Infinite Sacrifice (free at time of posting)
Infinite Devotion ($3.99)
Infinite Loss ($4.99)

They're fairly short (this coming from a vorocious reader that demolished Under the Dome in less than 2 days...so, grain of salt), but particularly rich in detail.  Not for everyone, especially those that are offended by the possibility of past lives (since that IS what the entire series is about).  But for people like me that do...they're wonderful.

Oh and another, if you'd like, that I read last year and liked alright:

Threads: The Reincarnation of Anne Boleyn ($3.99)

I finished the Infinite series and started on Exodus Lost (was free when I posted the link a few days ago, is now $2.99) and I'm thoroughly intrigued.  I'm loving the Egyptian/Olmec connections being made and finding the whole thing just highly interesting.  If you're into ancient history and New/Old World connections, this one is a good one to have.  I'm loving this one so much that I see myself procuring a hard copy, soon.

And now I'm off...

Freebies....

for the Kindle...or Kindle App.

(Note:  Please check the price before downloading...while they're free at the time of this post, they may not be free for long.)

Preppers Pantry: How to Build a Perfect Survival Pantry for Food and Water Storage (Survival Pantry - Your Complete Guide to Stocking Up and Surviving Anything)

Exodus Lost (the History geek in me can't wait to read this one)

The Procrastination Cure: How To Stop Procrastinating, Maximize Productivity And Master Time Management (Become Productive, Get Rid Of Procrastination, Increase Productivity) (the procrastinator in me needs this one)

Things Mother Used to Make A Collection of Old Time Recipes, Some Nearly One Hundred Years Old and Never Published Before (I've had this one since November and love it)

Baking in Your Skillet: A Collection of Skillet Recipes

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Almond Flour Recipes: The Complete Guide for Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and More (Every Day Recipes)

Gluten Free Oven Recipes: The Beginner's Guide to Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and More (Every Day Recipes)

Survival Guide for Beginners

JeBouffe Home Canning Step by Step Guide (second edition) Revised and Expanded

Rice Flour Recipes - 40 Gluten Free Rice Flour Recipes For All Occasions

Thyme & Oregano: Healing and Cooking herbs, and more than 30 Ways To Use Them

Okay...pretty sure that should keep you busy for a bit!  I know, it's such a random list.

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It's Just How I Feel....

don't know if it has to do with the land purchase, world issues (debt, stupidity, weather, etc.) or the fact that I finally got Tanker to go on board full on with the homestead...but that "panic" feeling has increased substantially the past few days.  That need to get started (on things not yet started) and moving along (on things that have) at a fast pace with ducking out and digging in.  Damn near full on jitters have set in.

The land purchase started out as a control thing (admitted)...wanted control over one thing with all the uncertainty swirling around Tanker's military career future.  I mean, they don't let ya know in the MSM (if you love that sort of stuff) all the trifling stuff that goes on at individual garrison/brigade/battalion/company levels; so the general public doesn't quite understand exactly HOW that 22,000+ troop cut from the Army works.  Think dirty politics folks and minimize it to a population of 12,000 with a command dead set on reducing numbers.  Who really cares if they're a good Soldier or not.  Things are being pulled out from a good number of Soldiers' pasts (things that punishment was served for, btw) and are being used to put them out.  Then you have Soldiers like Tanker, that do the right thing and don't get in trouble but get injured, that get screwed by the system repeatedly.  All the while, replacements are waiting in the wings, fresh faced and freshly trained...newbies to be sent off to far fetched lands.  But enough of that, it's not news to those in the know anyway...other than to say again, that's where the need to control one little thing came in:  hence the land purchase.

Now that it is done, the nagging bit of "let's get it started" has kicked in, even though I KNOW that we won't be able to even think of starting until Deutschland is a thing of the past (again)...right now, according to contract, that is a little under two years away....two LONG years.  Sigh.  I'm looking forward to those earned leave days that will let us spend time on the land, learning the lay of it better so we can truly start planning out the homestead.  Even though we have no idea when they might be allowed (if ever).  The bonus to being here though (I've lately realized) is that aside from the lack of the high temps we'll experience on the land, I can gather a lot of high altitude gardening tips from the locals.  The downside to that being that all that information will have to be notations in a book, not practical application, for some time.  Blah.

So I bide my time and begin building on the Homestead Library...thus far we've only acquired a couple of building books to add, but the wishlist is ever growing.  On the way now are this and this.  Those are for Tanker to thumb through so he can work on the final design.  We have a minimalist home plan already, it's just the integrating of other, more self-sufficient, elements that require tweaking of said design.  The outbuildings are all mine to tinker with.

Alas, the screamers are requiring attention....gotta work on that whole self-sufficient thing with them.  Later all!

We all love Free...

right?  Right.

The past 3 or 4 days in this house has been one of free reading.  This is soooooo going to sound infomercial-ish, I am well aware of it and can't help it.  I LOVE the Kindle for PC app at Amazon!!!!!!  Why? you ask...um, first off it's FREE, secondly you can download lots of FREE books and thirdly...well, it's FREEEEEEEEE!

It feeds my desire to continue to shove useless (and not so useless) info into my already slightly overtaxed brain. Information like that on Practical Distillery, How and When to be your own Doctor, Simple Field Sabotage and Sailor's Knots...just a few of the hundreds of Freebie books.  This thing is flippin' fun...tons of public domain books that are free...how-to books, classics, you name it...it's there.  It's like a book heaven.  Go check it out...you won't be sorry...well, the choice overload may make you want to hunt me down but remember I've been reading up on Field Sabotage...lol.

Happy New Year All...go expand your reading repertoire.

Alive...

totally. And at last adjusted to the time difference. Not much to say about our little area here except that the lovely hills have knocked 8lbs off my rear and have given me a bit more tone to the legs (not that they were shabby...just sayin'). We await housing and are holed up in the post hotel at the moment. The screamers are adjusting pretty well, I think. Excited, whiny when we walk to the Com/PX but liking it thus far.

I did learn something on my time off...one SHOULD NOT read "The Stand" while they are battling a severe case of bronchitis. SHOULD NOT. As usual, the book is way better than the movie (yes, I hadn't yet read the book...it is on my re-read list, while NOT sick).

Hope all is well in reader land and yes, I do get the news...I'm well aware of the goings on in the world...just don't have the time to jump in the fray at the moment.

Tonight's Thoughts

Nothing profound, nothing that will be entertaining (maybe, I really tend to not think these posts through to the end...call it a character flaw).

Tonight will be a long night. I got a good 5 hour sleep last night and a three hour nap with the screamers today...my body is running on a full night's sleep and is totally keyed up. Brain is always that way...nothing new there. So tonight I am entertaining myself with watching 'The Stand' while working on some writing and reading 'Twilight' for the third (or more...lost count) time. Yes, pretty much all at the same time.

Movie running in the background. Essay and book pulled up on the computer screen, research windows running right along with them. Book in my lap, glass of wine sitting on the table and the last of the smokes lined up.

The last of the smokes...that's a phrase I just didn't think I'd be saying or writing anytime soon. But that lovely new tax is scheduled to take effect on the first of April, so now seems to be as good a time as any to give quitting for good a go. It's possible...I've seen it done, heard rumors of it, even experienced a minor quitting session while in Basic. This time has got to be permanent though. Can't afford them especially when they will be jumping from $1.29 (plus tax) to over $3 (plus more tax). Seems to be the time, I say, so why not.

Besides, it'll help with that running thing I've been doing. I figure it can't hurt to be able to do a nice steady run for 3+ miles with a loaded pack on...don't ask...I'm nowhere near that yet. Knocking off the smokes should help with that, 'course temps that don't ride a roller coaster through the week would help too. I'm pert near tired of nice and warm mid-week with frigid weekends. It's getting entirely to predictable and I am not a predictable kinda girl. Gimme something better, surprise me with a warm streak that lasts more than a day...huh, can ya, please?

At least the minor peeks at spring have bolstered me a bit. All the more resolved to drop the extra pounds and spend hours in the tent this year...with or without the spouse. Which seems to be a sticky point with my lady friends. They seem to think that me, goin' on a walkabout all by my lonesome is not a good idea. Now, I'm not afraid/worried/scared of it...I look forward to it. I hold the philosophy (and I'm sure that it'll be called 'stupid') that I'm going to die someday...it can't be stopped or prevented...I've done a lot of dumb things in my life (car surfing, playing with baby copperheads, getting married...no, not all at once though that would have been a rocking wedding), just chalk this one up as one more. I highly doubt that my hiking a well traveled trail in the middle of tourist season and sleeping out ONE freakin' night is going to be the death of me. However, if it is...then so be it. I'm more concerned about the plane crashing or being hit head on by another driver while I'm cruising to Canada.

Alas, I am the freak of nature around here for many reasons. My insistence at a vacation by myself just amplifies it. Oh well...the freak of nature thinks it's time to get busy doing nothing...ya'll have a good night...ya hear?

Have I told you...

about my ferocious appetite for books? I'm sure I've mentioned it in passing, but not at length. I've decided that it's important for me to share this, as books are my passion (knitting falls in secondary to them)...my favorite thing (other than family of course) in the world. It's important for me to share this for two reasons:

1.) It will explain my online absence since Christmas Eve
2.) The passion of reading is a sanity saver when there is nothing else to do

Naturally point #2 can/does apply a bit to prepping, there will be things that you need to save your sanity. So that justifies my obsessively large reading selection in a way that most people don't think of.

Point #1 was brought about by a simple, single book purchase that the spouse made. He doesn't read anywhere near as much as I do and it is VERY rare for us to share the same taste of books. I love just about anything classic (though Wuthering Heights does bore me to tears and I've not cracked open War and Peace in a gazillion years), pretty much all of Anne Rice's work (specifically the Mayfair Saga and the Vampire Chronicles), the Harry Potter series, anything remotely Shannara related by Terry Brooks, the EC series by J. Auel and the more recent acquisitions (see further on in the post) to the household. The only true book passions the spouse and I share are Stephen King, Harry Potter and the newest members of our little library. He is more of Dean Kootz kinda guy for the most part. We have an obscene number of books.

The reason I gave the above information is to show the pretty extreme differences in our reading (well, my reading, lol) and that there is very little that we share as reading passion. Until recently. The latest series added to our library thoroughly entranced both of us. The spouse used his holiday gift from the in-laws to buy a book that has been impossible to get at the local library (a leap for him since he usually does the library thing first). I've had an aversion to the series because it has a massive teenage following (have you guessed yet) or we would have bought the first book sooner. The spouse devoured it (rare, very rare for him) and insisted I read it.

Let us push on to say, I am now hooked. My absence for the past four days is because I've been wrapped up in the Twilight Saga. Yep, it grabbed me. So much so that the spouse decided he would treat me to the remaining three books. He brought the last two home on Friday evening. I handed back to him the last of the series this morning (Saturday), finished. Obsessive, completely sucked in...I could NOT sleep until I was done. And now I'm ready to start the whole series all over again.

It is not rare for me to do that with a new book, but 4 is definitely something new. I don't know what possessed me, other than it really is a good series. Perhaps because it's been forever since we've gotten a new book. Maybe it's because I desperately needed a break from the "real" world. I've not looked at the news (either online or on TV) since the first book hit my hands. The break has been refreshing in the sense that I spent a few days in a mindless, numb state that didn't make me feel there was something that I needed to do NOW. I had a vacation from the panic, anger and fear that the news sometimes floods me with.

My only problem now is that I've torn through the new books and am stuck with re-reading my favorites until the spouse finishes. Not a big problem really but what I really WANT to do is read beginning to end, one after another with no waiting. Finish one, start the next. That is my most favorite way to read a series.

So I patiently wait, another week or so, for the spouse to finish (I have mentioned that reading is troublesome for him, that will explain the time). I think I'll spend the next week reading over something slightly more relevant to prepping just give my brain a fantasy break. Guess it's going to be Square Foot Gardening this week, not that it will keep me away as fiercely....I'll still be around to ramble at you!