Tag Archives: fun

Fruits Basket, Volume 3

Posted in Books by

Book: Fruits Basket, Volume 3 by Natsuki Takaya

Pages and Format: 2oo Pages/Paperback

My Thoughts: I still love Fruits Basket!  In Volume 3, Kyo and Yuki get a lot of chocolate from the girls at school for Valentine’s Day.  Tohru spends a lot of her money on chocolate for the Sohma family, and can’t pay her deposit for the class trip until later in the month.  She also goes on a trip to an onsen with Momiji, Kyo and we meet the mother of one of the zodiac members.  Plus, we also meet Hatsuharu, who is the ox.

I’m still impressed with the artwork, and at the end, there’s an interview with the author, as well as some artwork some fans sent in.  It was interesting to learn that she doesn’t write out a full script, and just writes straight from her notes.  She also works all day, stopping only to eat.

I know there’s cool stuff like this at the end of each volume, so I’m looking foward to re-discovering that.

Rating: 5 out of 5.  It’s definitely one of the lighter one’s, but there are also some dark undercurrents…which come from Shigure oddly enough.  Overall, it was really fun to read!

Adventures In Baking

Posted in Food by

I made cheesecake squares and peanut butter snickers cookies yesterday.

I’m definitely branching out with the whole baking thing, and am not making my way through every chocolate chip cookie recipe under the sun.  If I make something that’s not cookies, it’s usually brownies.  I can’t remember the last time I made cookies, so I figured I go looking through some of my favorite food blogs and see if there was anything interesting…and found peanut butter snickers cookies over at the brown eyed baker.  They were pretty yummy if I do say so myself.

I also made cheesecake squares- I wanted cheesecake, but not an actual cheesecake, so I made cheesecake squares.  I’m not a big fan of making the crust- it was fine until I had to press it into the pan.  It was thinner in some places than in others, and I’m quite sure that it’s because I just put the crust into the pan and didn’t pay attention to the fact it should be relatively equal in the whole pan.  Other than that, they seemed to come out okay.  And it took about 10 minutes of crushing the graham crackers by hand to realize using the rolling pin would be a lot easier.  The only thing I didn’t like about the cheesecake squares was that they were a lot more lemon-y than I expected.  If I make them again, then I’ll definitely adjust the lemon juice and the lemon zest.

I think I’m going to start doing more muffins and quickbreads…that is a project for next month.  Or maybe this month.  I’ll see how fast the cookies and cheesecake squares go.

Podcast and Writing Talk

Posted in General, HP & The Giant Prehistoric Chicken by

I’m still on my podcast kick, and just when I started to get the number of podcasts down to a manageable level, I found some more to listen to!  While I still have a bunch of episodes I need to catch up, I’ve decided to take my time with it.  I’m not going to go back and listen to the episodes of the new podcasts just yet, so I’m going to download each episode as I listen to it.

Joy the Baker has a podcast!  I don’t read her blog too often, but her podcast is hilarious!  It’s still pretty new, but it’s really fun!  I’ve also been listening to Abandon All Hope, About Face Mouth, For Whatever Reason, Meat-Free Radio and Game Night Guys…to name a few.  Actually, I’m listening to 28 different podcasts!  No matter how many times I tell myself that I will NOT go looking for new podcasts, I find myself…looking for more podcasts.

In other news, I think I’m getting close to the end for Harry Potter and the Giant Prehistoric Chicken!  I’m excited, because it’ll be the first time I finished a novel.  And not only that, but it’ll be the first nano I finish!  I have no idea if I’ll go back and edit it.  I might, but I’m still not sure.  If I had to decide today, then I’d definitely edit it.  If I do, I might put it up somewhere, like over at ff.net or something.

I did a lot of writing on Wednesday, which was really nice!  It’s been a while since I’ve spent the whole morning writing, and I miss it!  Remember when I said I’d write whatever the average word count was for each novel?  It’s AWESOME!  I think it a lot closer to what I actually write for each thing, because for the first time in weeks, I’m not constantly checking how close I am to my word goal.  I’m definitely going to be doing this again!

I definitely need to get my butt into gear for camp nano!  I think I might do my ncis fanfiction next month for it, and as for august, I have no idea if i’m doing it yet.  I think it depends on how my plot bunnies work out.

Here’s A Random Music List

Posted in Music by

It’s been a while since I’ve done a music post, so I thought I’d share some of the music I’ve been listening to.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Oliver Boyd, but here’s some other songs/artists:

  • Living On The Highwire from the Lemonade Mouth soundtrack- very catchy song.  I have no problem admitting that I still watch the Disney Channel, and while I have seen the whole movie, I’ve seen a good chunk of it. 
  • Break My Heart by Sara Ramirez- I love this song!  I’m not sure what genre it would fall into, but iTunes says it’s singer/songwriter…whatever that means.  It’s kind of a mix of jazz and blues…but I’m probably wrong about that since I don’t know anything about genres, and the distinction between the two.  It’s a pretty happy song, actually, because it’s about a person who’s looking for a reason to miss someone. 
  • Push by Fill The Silence- I heard this song on Greetings From Nowhere, and decided to go looking for it.  I like it- it speaks to me, althought I don’t know why it does.  It’s the only song they have on iTunes right now, so hopefully they have something else soon!  I’m curious about what else they’ll come up with.
  • The NCIS Soundtrack- I know there’s 2 different ones, but I have the first one.  Most of the songs are album only, so chances are, you’ll have to buy the whole album for most of the songs.  Well, on iTunes anyway.  I actually didn’t mind, because most of the songs are some of my favorites.  Right now, I Don’t Want To Be On TV by The Toxic Airbone Event, Fear by Stop Making Friends, After All by Saving Abel, and No Matter What by Jakob Dylan are my favorites.
  • Mariah Carey- For some reason, I’ve been listening to a lot of her lately, namely Honey, We Belong Together, Against All Odds, and Vision Of Love.  I wish I could sing like that.  Actually, I wish I could sing period…and if I could sing like Mariah, that’d be an added bonus.  🙂
  • Parachute- they’re one of my favorites.  The songs getting the most playing time are Back Again, She Is Love, Blame It On Me, and Something To Believe In.  They have really catchy songs, and I find myself wanting to sing along.  I’m always in a good mood after listening to them.