My itty bitty audio book player

My new MP3/wma (audio books) player arrived yesterday, and I'm so thrilled to have it back! I bought one of these last year, but haven't seen it in a long, long time (I believe I left if at the local Sears store when I went to pick up my new eyeglasses -- at least, that's the last time I remember having it. I've searched and searched with no luck, and finally gave in and bought a new one. Although the name is different than my last one, the same manufacturer makes it (Creative Labs) and it was on sale for $19.99 (refurbished)!!! It's a 1 gig player, which is plenty of room for me, since I use this only for audio books.

My local library is a member of a service called Net Library, which offers free downloadable audio books. Although the most recent bestsellers are probably not available, many great books are -- and did I mention, it's FREE?? You get to check out the audio book for three weeks, and you can renew one time for another three weeks. They evidently put in some kind of date code that shuts the audio book down when your time is up. But did I mention - it's FREE?


This little player (about 3 inches x 1 1/2 inches x 1/2 inch) weighs next to nothing and fits in my jeans pocket. The sound is crystal clear. You can easily foward and rewind, and it's best feature -- if you click it off in the middle of an audio book, it will save the spot where you left off. The audio books are NOT broken down into "tracks" so this feature is critical! Some more expensive players do have a "bookmark" feature, but this player doesn't have one.

It's a Creative MuVo V100 - and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves audio books! If you buy any other brand, make sure the player will play WMA files, which are audio book files. Please note that many MP3 players (including iPod) will not work with WMA files. Be sure and check specs!

DUMA KEY by Stephen King

I said I'd never read Stephen King again, after finding myself SO scared while reading one of his books that I threw the book across the room. That was a long time ago -- it may have been CUJO or one King wrote shortly after that. I swore I'd never read him again -- but here I am, reading his newest book DUMA KEY. I'm about half way through the book, and so far it's OK. Not too scarey and really well written. You get completely enmeshed in the lives of the main characters, and I'm a sucker for really good character development. There's been a few hints that darker things are coming, and I pick the book up each night with a bit of trepidation... like waiting for someone to jump out at you and yell "BOO!"... but that person is never behind the corner you think they're going to be behind. I'm pretty sure I'm being lulled into a false sense of security and that the darker side of King will leap out at me at any moment. But my goodness, you have to admire this man's writing, whether you enjoy horror books or not. I often visualize him sitting at a typewriter (not a computer!) and plunking away, picking the words one by one. I just can't imagine how anyone is given that much talent -- how anyone can use the same words you and I know, but put them in an order that just sweeps you away into his world. It's brilliant stuff. I'm not sure what will happen when I do reach the scarey parts... I'm SO enjoying the book and I SO hate to be scared. But I'm already so involved with the two main characters that I doubt I'll be able to put it down without promptly picking it back up again. Maybe I can just read the scarier parts quickly -- kind of skim over them to get the jist, but not the details... So far, it's a wonderful book -- totally engrossing. I just hope I can finish it.

Snow and ice and ice and snow...

We got hit by a fairly unexpected storm last night. Weather forecasters, of course, had not said we were getting 3-4 inches of snow (a LOT by Cincinnati standards), but had predicted freezing rain, which we got after the snow. By 6pm last night, schools were cancelling like crazy, despite the fact it had STOPPED snowing and raining by 10pm! Road crews had all night to clear the roads (have they not heard of overtime??) and honestly, I just don't see why schools were closed today. The saddest part of all this is, is that when Summer approaches and the schools have to decide about all the snow days they've missed, they usually elect to make up one or two, but never all of them. My question is: Which day in school is "disposable" and WHY? I have a history of fighting with the schools my kids were in when it came to making up snow days... I could never understand why ever minute in school wasn't important to the administration. Which day should my 4th grader miss? The day they were to learn to multiply by 5? The day they were to learn about commas? The day they were to do a diarama of the Plymouth landing? The day they were to learn how to spell "enunciate"? Just tell me which little piece of the puzzle was it OK for my child to miss? Ah well.. it's up to the parents with children in school now to fight the good fight for their child. The same weather than cancelled schools today also cancelled Brayden's and my "Gym Class" we had scheduled for 10:15. I am enrolling him in a 2 yr old gym class that will meet every Friday morning for 20 weeks. I know he'll be shy about joining in at first, but when he watches the other kids walking the balance beam and doing other fun stuff, I know he'll join in eventually. The class size is only 7 children, which is great. I think he's going to love it! Besides giving him something fun to do, it will also get us out of the house every Friday, which we both need. (Of course, all this is still dependent on my getting a car eventually!) Once he turns the big TWO on March 1st, I'll also be signing him up for our local public library's Two-Year-Old Story Hour, which I know he'll love. Mary's running late this morning, so I had time to put a pot roast in the crock pot for dinner tonight before Brayden arrives, and get a little housework done. Our plans for the day will include Play-Doh and going down to the basement to play in the Sandbox I've set up down there. Should be fun!

Another beautiful sunrise

Another beautiful sunrise at my house this morning. I'm delighted to find that the sunrises are coming earlier and earlier -- which means Spring is just around the corner! Yay!

These colors are my "dream quilt" colors - that beauitiful turqoise blue with the salmon-pink and butter-yellow. These are MY colors. They remind me of the colors found in Maxwell Parrish paintings, which I love.

And a picture of Brayden Lee playing "Bump bump" on Jeff's recliner. He loves to run his car (notice, it's a NASCAR car) over anything with a bump to it. As I've mentioned before, Brayden loves his race cars and knows them all by name -- Kevin (Harvick), Terry (LaBonte), Bobby (LaBonte) and Dale (Earnhardt Sr.). He can identify them when races are on TV as well.