this little life of mine

So ... another birthday has come and gone. I hoped to get by quietly, but here at work, that never happens. I got happy birthday wishes, birthday cards, little gifts, cupcakes, and I got to wear the adorkable pink birthday "crown".

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

•Grab your current read
•Open to a random page
•Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
•BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
•Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Welcome to my first Teaser Tuesday of 2012! This week I've started reading Bumped by Megan McCafferty, a book which will count towards my goal of reading 20 books for the 2012 YA Reading Challenge. My teaser comes from page 12 on Nicky the Nook:

Angel screamed, swerved, screeched the breaks, and screamed some more. We are blessed that there aren't too many cars on the road at sunrise. 

Once again I have signed up for some Reading Challenges for the coming year. I'm hoping to keep it down to just a few so I don't get totally overwhelmed, so I've chosen the Off the Shelf challenge, 2012 Debut Author Challenge, and 2012 Young Adult Reading Challenge. 

For the Off the Shelf Challenge, I've randomly chosen six books from my bookshelves:

1. Montana 1948  by Larry Watson
2. Mariel of Redwall  by Brian Jacques
3. 5th Avenue, 5 A.M.  by Sam Wasson
4. There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbour's Baby - Scary Fairy Tales  by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
5. Waterfall  by Lisa T. Bergren
6. Hunter Brown and the Consuming Fire  by The Miller Brothers

I've chosen to read 20 books for the 2012 Young Adult Reading Challenge, and most of them will just be added as the year goes on. For the 12 Debut Author Challenge books I've chosen:

1. Cinder by Marissa Meyer
2. Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi
3. Above by Leah Bobet 
4. Something Strange and Deadly by Susan Dennard 
5. Storybound by Marissa Burt 
6. The Cabinet of Earths by Anne Nesbet 
7. The Vanishing Game by Kate Kae Myers 
8. Unbound by Emily Goodwin 
9. Lies Beneath by Anne Greenwood Brown 
10. May B. by Caroline Starr Rose 
11. The Treachery of Beautiful Things by Ruth Frances Long
12. Seraphina by Rachel Hartman 

There is sure to be a lot of crossover and I'll probably change my mind on some ofthe books I choose to read, but those are the lists for right now. 

This morning after watching the Rose Parade, mom and I went down to the Atascadero Lake for a walk. It was brisk and cloudy, but not too cold. There were a few birds out - mostly coots, geese and ducks, but there were also some egrets and herons. The two swans were there, too, but they were always on the opposite side of the lake, so I couldn' get a shot of them.  We haven't had any rain for along time and the water level was really low, and kinda stinky on the back side of the lake, but it was nice to get out and get some fresh air and exercise anyway.

For this week's You Capture I present my Top Ten Photos for 2011 (in no particular order):

1. Perfect Shell 1, Avila Beach, CA,  June 2011

2.  Atascadero Lake Sunset, Atascadero, CA,  June 2011.

3.  Dolly Portrait in Sepia, Atascadero, CA, July, 2011.

4.  Monorail, Seattle, WA, August 2011.

5.  Wolves, Seattle, WA, August 2011.

6.  Old Boots, Seattle, WA, August 2011.

7.  Morro Bay Sunset, Morro Bay, CA, September 2011. 

8.  Perfect Shell 2, Avila Beach, CA, June 2011. 

9.  Sepia Sailboat, Morro Bay, CA, September 2011.

10.  Under the Pier, Avila Beach, CA, June 2011.