ALA New Orleans

So the end of June was the awesomeness of ALA New Orleans! Johnathan, Amy, Lee Anne, Angel and I all drove ~ 13 hours to New Orleans in my car, which Ed Young said was, "stone-cold crazy" of us, and then we proceeded to spend the next 5 days in pure AMAZINGNESS!!! I decided to do whatever I wanted, as this would probably be the only ALA where I would get to have fun and do what I wanted, since the next ones I will probably be presenting at.
The fun stuff included getting 133 books (most of them as ARCs) and paying almost nothing for them except for the shipping. I met a TON of great people and made many connections with others in the field.
We also ate some incredible food! I completely recommend Mother's and The House of Blues.
I do not recommend driving that long with that many people in one car and a ton of stuff in the back...not that it was a bad trip, just not a ton of room. :P
All-in-all it was an amazing trip!

Books out of my comfort zone

So this month for the YA book club I'm in we had to read either Marcelo in the Real World, or The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I must say both of these books are so far out of my comfort zone to read because I really don't like realistic fiction. I decided to suck it up and read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I was so surprised!!! I actually liked it a lot! :)  It was very sad, but there was a lot of humor that made it relatable and fun. There were also fantastic drawings in the book to go along with the story. I recommend it if you're not sure about realistic fiction, but want to try one out.

Some new books I'm reading

So, as you can see, I didn't get to all the books on my summer reading list, but the ones I did, I enjoyed a lot! I'm probably going to be writing sporadically because the school semester is in, and I'm taking 3 classes and teaching 3 classes! It's a very busy semester!!! :D
I just finished reading Hex Hall, and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I have a TON of new books I bought with birthday money, so here is my new list of materials:

Evil Genius
The Limit
The Thief*****
Mara Daughter of the Nile****
A Matter of Magic*****
Doctor Who: Night of the Humans****
Doctor Who: Apollo 23
Extraordinary

So, if anyone knows anything about these books let me know. I'm excited to read them! I have more at home, but I'm not sure of their titles as I'm at school, so I'll edit them in when I have time.

Summer Reading List

So I have a TON of books that have piled up for reading this summer. Here they are, and a ranking if I've read any of them so far.

The Red Pyramid - Rick Riordan *****
Fragile Eternity - Melissa Marr ****
Suck It Up - Brian Meehl ****
Hush, Hush - Becca Fitzpatrick *****
Radiant Shadows - Melissa Marr ****
The Oracle Betrayed - Catherine Fisher ***
International Librarianship - Robert D. Stueart *****
The Keys to the Kingdom - The entire Garth Nix series (7 books)
The Warrior Heir - Cinda Williams Chima
The Sorceress - Michael Scott
The Black Book of Secrets - F.E. Higgins
The Invention of Hugo Cabret - Brian Selznick***
The Sweet Far Thing - Libba Bray
Old Magic - Marianne Curley***
Evermore - Alyson Noel
Oracles of Delphi Keep - Victoria Laurie
Death's Daughter - Amber Benson****
The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner - Stephenie Meyer
Savor the Moment - Nora Roberts
Shiver - Maggie Stiefvater
Skullduggery - Aaron Elkins
Heat Wave - Richard Castle****

As you can see, I haven't really gotten to too many of the books on this list. I'm hoping to get through all of them by the time fall semester starts at the end of August.

If anyone has any suggestions, let me know. :D

Summer in Missouri

Summer here in Missouri is VERY different than summer in Walla Walla, WA! Today it is 88 degrees outside, but feels like it's 106 degrees! I'm just glad we have a pool at our apartment complex. Now, WW normally gets warm by now, but for some reason this summer they seem to be having a strange, rainy summer...very weird. 

One thing that I completely LOVE here are the thunder and lightning storms in the evenings!!!! They are so BEAUTIFUL! 

Pre-lightning photo w/o camera flash



During lightning photo w/o camera flash



The pictures totally don't do the storm justice! The whole sky was brought to life at 2 am by the thunder and lightning. It looked like it was daytime with the amount of lightning in the sky! :)

'Chopped' in Real Life

So, my husband decided one day it would be fantastic if we could do the TV show Chopped at home. At least in the way that he would give me 3-4 secret ingredients and I would have to create some fantabulous meal from them for him. The first night we tried this he gave me pepper bacon, jalepenos and strawberries. I made a pepper bacon encrusted steak with a red wine, jalepeno, strawberry & blackberry reduction and broccoli on the side. It was AMAZING! I had a lot of fun just throwing ingredients together and making a great meal. I'd never before just created something; I'd always used a recipe to make something. So we decided to continue this Chopped theme of dinnertime (And if you've never seen Chopped, I recommend it. There are 4 chefs to begin with, and they get 3-4 secret ingredients and have to make an appetizer, then one is 'chopped,' and the 3 left get 3-4 new secret ingredients to make a main course, with one again being chopped. Lastly, there are 2 chefs who receive their secret ingredients and have to make a dessert. The last chef standing gets a monetary prize).

Information Technology

Tuesdays are the longest day of the week. I worked today at the public library, then raced to school for Cataloging class...not really a class I want to race to. 3 hours later I have Intro to Information Technology, which is an interesting class, but it's hard to concentrate after already having 5 hours of work and then 3 hours of class. Dr. K always makes it interesting though. :) Today is about Digital Libraries, and by the way, just in case you were ever wanting to know, Sir Francis Bacon is the man who said, "Knowledge is Power." Random fun fact for the day! :D Only 1.5 hours left of class, then I get to go have dinner and play with the kitties!