this little life of mine

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!

This week I'm back in zombie mode with This Is Not A Test by Courntey Summers. I just started it, so I don't have too much of an opinion on it yet, but I am enjoying it so far. Here are my teasers from the middle of a paragraph on page 21:

Even as they were being pulled away from us, they were reaching for their children and Trace and Grace reached back because they didn't want to be left. And then they were gone.

A lovely Cosmopolitain and a rum and Coke. At The Custom House in Avila Beach, CA.

A raspberry lemondrop martini with sugar rim - sweet!!

This weekend my mom and I took a well-deserved and much-needed "staycation" to Avila Beach and it was delightful! Avila Beach is one of my favourite places to go in SLO county, and we've stayed at just about every other coastal town except Avila Beach. We stayed at the Lighthouse Suites and got an oceanfront room with a great view:

We went wine tasting at a couple of the tasting rooms in Avila Beach. The first was Morovino where we decided to just have a glass of wine instead of a full tasting. We choose a delightful Pinot Grigio and settled in a comfy corner to just relax!

Later we stopped at was Woods Winery where we tasted five different wines including a delightful Tipsy Dog Pinot Noir!

We also took a walk along the pier. The weather this weekend was fantastic and there were TONS of people enjoying the sun and surf. There weren't many very big waves which was good for the kayakers, but there was a nice breeze which was good for the sailboats.

During the summer months, Avila Beach hosts the Fish and Farmer's Market along the promanade. We've been to it before and really enjoyed it. There's tons of delicious food to choose from (I struggled between a fish taco and a tri-tip sandwich before going with the tri-tip, and also had roasted corn - so delish!!), vendors selling everything from handmade lavendar soaps to yard made from the wool of local alpacas, delicious fresh fruits and veggies, and a live band. 

It was a blast! Afterwards we just sat on our deck and watched the sunset.

It was, in a word: delightful!!

I don't think the lady who used to host Sepia Scenes is blogging anymore, but I always enjoyed this meme, so I've decided to just keep doing it on my own. This past weekend my mom and I started cleaning out my grandparent's house. We discovered several treasures including this old rubber stamp that my grandfather apparently used for his work. It doesn't have a date on it or anything, but I know it's pretty old because my grandparents moved out of Dayton in the early- to mid-70s, I think around the time my grandpa retired. Also, this box only cost 8 cents for third class mail! Ha!

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!

Good morning! This week I'm reading Albert of Adelaide by Howard L. Anderson. This is an anthropomorphic book along the lines of Watership Down and the Redwall novels which features a duck-billed platypus named Albert as it's hero. I'm not very far into it, but so far I'm really enjoying Albert's story. Here's my teaser from page 22 on Nicky:

"But where is here?" Albert persisted.

"I can't tell you that, Albert, because I don't know myself. I can tell you that where we are is real and it's a place that can get you killed if you're not careful."

Happy Reading!

It's a little warm today, so the garden is a little droopy, but it's still doing pretty well.

The bush goliath tomato plant is stuffed with tomatoes, a couple of which were ready to harvest:

This little critter (I'm guessing it's a caterpillar??) tried hitching a ride on my tom. I transferred him to our tree where he'll hopefully be okay.

My Big Beef tomato plant is still huge, but still not really producing much except a few mutant-looking toms:

The peppers are both still going strong, too. The big plant has several big peppers on it. I really want to hold out to see if they will turn red, but I'm afraid the plant will break off with the weight of them, so I took, a couple in. The little plant actually has a tiny pepper starting on it which is pretty exciting!

Here is my haul for the day. These guys are going in a pasta salad for lunch - yum!

Cheers!

Yesterday my mom and I went up to my grandparent's house to collect my dishes and generally go through some stuff. 

There were lots of really old, interesting things to go through. Here's a cute little pitcher/vase:

And here's a collection of miscellaneous keys:

This, um, I'm not sure what it's called. Shot? It's not a bullet, but it's used in a rifle. My dad used to make these when he'd go hunting. It has to be pretty old because my dad died in 1981, and I don't know if grandpa went hunting after that. I know he didn't do any hunting after he moved to California, and that was in '95.

We found several pocket watches, too. Here's a cool one that lost it's glass. But it still works!

Cheers!

All photos taken by me; collage created at picmonkey.com.

This week's All About Me Blog Challenge is the letter "C", and I have chosen to write about coffee - with much thanks to Kate for the prompt!

As you can see from the collage of coffee pictures I've taken over the years, I LOVE coffee! It started in childhood when I tried some of my grandmother's coffee with Coffeemate Creamer. Oooh, the creamy goodness! I wasn't allowed to drink much coffee as a child (it stunts your growth!), but started drinking quite a bit in high school. My friends and I would go have Cafe Mochas at either The Combine Mall in Pullman, WA or The Peppermill at the Moscow Mall (Moscow, ID). (I wish I'd thought to take pictures of those cups of coffee complete with the swirls of whipped cream and dark chocolate shavings on top, but I had no idea taking pictures of food and drink would become such a "thing"! ) 

In college (Central Washington University in Ellensburg, WA) my roomie and I had our own coffeepot and made and comsumed at least a pot of coffee a day. Just regular coffee like Folgers or something; nothing fancy or special. It was good, though, and really helped us study! On the weekends, I would walk downtown to The Village Cafe and treat myself to a Cafe Mocha and toasted cheddar bagel. I believe there was a little bookstore downtown that also made espressos, but I can't recall the name of it now.

Nowadays I'll get coffee at Starbucks, or Peets, or my current favourite coffeehouse, Bru in Atascadero, CA. At home I prefer Dunkin' Donuts regular coffee or flavoured coffees (I love vanilla!), but I'll buy pretty much whatever's on sale, and at work I use the Starbucks Via packets to make a cup of really yummy coffee. 

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!

Last week I started reading another MG book, but ended up not really liking it, so I stopped. I felt a little bored with reading and wondered if it might be a good time to take a little break. But then I dug back into Nicky's library and found Godless by Pete Hautman. I downloaded it quite a while ago, and couldn't even remember why, so I decided to give it a shot. It's a very fast read - I've finished it already! - and was really an exciting and fun story. My teaser comes from page 103:

"Grab my ankle, Henry!" Magda shouts, but she can't see how far he's slid. I watch, helpless, as Henry slowly slides over the horizon, his naked belly squeaking on metal. 

After I finished Godless, I thumbed through the library again and found The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler. This is another one I downloaded a while ago, and decided it was time to read it. I'm so glad I did because so far it's really quite good! My teaser comes from page 161:

"Fair?" My voice rises. "You have a new family and you're trying to get rid of me by giving me gifts. Is that fair?"

Happy reading, everyone!