Book Review: You’ve Guac to be Joking

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Book Review, netgalley

Book Review: You’ve Guac to be Joking
Author: Cat Faulkner
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Release Date: March 5, 2019

Review: If you love puns and guac, “You’ve Guac to be Joking” is for you. This book is a quick read full of wonderful punny illustrations of avocado being various things and people. The one that stuck out to me the most is Hugh Guacman and it was a picture of an avocado with Wolverine claws. If you’ve had a bad day than this book has guac to cheer you up.

Notes: I received this from NetGalley and in turn I’m to provide my honest opinion of the material I reviewed.

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2018 Year in Review

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year in review

Year in Review:

2018, was kind of a crapshoot year. Some things were OK, and somethings bad. Overall I’d call it a meh year.

January:
-Started off the year eating Pork and Sauerkraut, cause how can you not?
-A few snow days.
-Fraggle Rock turned 35!
-11 years since my name twin from college passed away.
-Cataloged STEM kits for work.
-Went to Elmwood Park Zoo.

February:
-Eagles win the Superbowl!!!
-Went to Vendor Bingo for the last time.
-Saw Black Panther in the theater.
-Reiterating this quote: For the record, I may work for the public, but I am NOT your servant.

March:
-More snow!
-Joined FB 13 years ago.
-20 years ago we lost our dog K’ai.
-Went to Sugarloaf craft festival.

April:
-Went to Great Adventure with Andrew, he survived and even liked most of the park.
-More Snow!
-Celebrated my pop’s 92nd birthday.
-Went to Elmwood Park Zoo and met 6ABC’s Adam Joseph.
-Tried the Railroad Street Bar & Grill in Limerick. Good grilled cheese.
-Co-worker passed away 😦
-Great Philadelphia Comic Con
-Met Paul Kasey (Weevil, Blowfish, and various DW characters)
-Met James Remar & Jim Cummings.
-Met Steve Whitmire, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Carol Spinney, David Bradley, Peter Davison, and a couple more DW people I can’t place their names.

May:
-Saw Avengers: Infinity War in the theater.
-Piper gave us a health scare with Canine Vestibular disease.
-Voted in the PA primary
-Wizard World Philadelphia Comic Con
-Met Henry Winkler, Stephen Amell, Karl Urban, Jewel Staite
-Bob Camp signed some original Ren and Stimpy toys I had from my childhood
-Memorial Day weekend Travels
-Tarrytown, NY, saw Washington Irving’s home.
-Quassy and Lake Compounce amusement parks
-Saw Deadpool 2 in the theater.
-Drove to Killington and Okemo, VT to ride mountain coasters.
-Basketball Hall of Fame
-Went to Rhode Island and the Roger Williams Zoo and met my friend Patti for the first time!

June:
-Saw Solo: A Star Wars story in the theater.
-Libraries Rock: Summer Reading kick off
-Cedar Point weekend with friends.
-Run & Ride, did the 1 mile option
-Celebrated my mom’s birthday at The Captial Grille
-Celebrated Father’s Day for my dad and my Pop.
-60’s day at work.
-Went to Sesame Place.
-Went to Elmwood Park Zoo.

July:
-Hospital stay for cellulitis.
-70’s day at work.
-Met Bobby Rydell at work.
-Animal Adventure Park
-Beekman 1802 farm tour of the Garden’s
-Black Cat cafe
-Dairyland
-Howe Caverns
-Covered Bridge outside Schoharie
-80’s day at work.
-Supported a friend’s business.
-Visited the Sunflowers in Elverson.
-Saw Cirque VOLTA.
-Jammed my thumb.

August:
-90’s day at work.
-Tony Lucca & Jesse Ruben in concert at Sellersville Theater.
-Hospital stay for Kidney stone, and Kidney stone removal surgery.
-Left hander’s day!
-Food truck festival
-1 year ago we lost our dog Frankie.

September:
-Chile Pepper Festival
-Celebrated my aunt’s birthday.
-Toured Citizen’s Bank Park
-Keystone Comic Con
-Met John Barrowman, Catherine Tate, Joe Manginello, Mr. McFeely, Amy Acker
-Celebrated my birthday at Lorenzo and Sons pizza place in West Chester, Pa
-Banned Books Week!
-Gritty became the Flyers mascot.
-Went to Great Adventure.

October:
-New York Comic Con
-Professional Attendee, library sessions at NYPL Building is amazing
-Met David Tennant, Matt Smith, Alex Kingston, Mark Sheppard, Jodie Whittaker & Chris Chibnall in passing.
-Saw good panels: Star Talk, NYPL about Graphic novels, Good Omens, Ghost Adventures
-Cheesetober Fest
-Wings of Hope food truck fest
-Went to Knoebels

November:
-NaNoWriMo
-The Hooters in Concert at the Keswick.
-Hersheypark in the Dark
-Saw Bohemian Rhapsody in the theater.

December:
-Tumblr banning adult content and flagging random stuff.
-Family holiday get together.
-Duck Donuts
-Baked cookies twice.
-Holiday party for work.
-Bought a cool piece of art from an artist I follow on Instagram.
-Christmas with my Pop.
-Looking at lights on houses on Christmas Eve.
-Dusted off my blog.
-NYE bowling for my other job.

Ok, looking back on my year this way, I did some fun things, but no where near the normal amount of fun things I normally do. Here’s to next year being better.

Book Review: Flawed

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2018 release, Book Review, Flawed by Andrea Dorfman, netgalley

Title: Flawed
Author: Andrea Dorfman
Publication Date: Sept. 2018
Publisher: Firefly Books Ltd
Received: NetGalley eARC

I received this book from NetGalley. I’m not obligated to give a positive review.

This graphic novel is really short. Under 100 pages. I know it’s listed as new adult, but I kind of feel like it should be longer.

Review: The book is a memoir of Andrea falling in love with a plastic surgeon. She’s in love with the person but hates his profession because of her feelings on plastic surgery.  Through letters and a long distance relationship, she come to terms with her insecurities she’s had throughout her life.

The illustrations in book are wonderful.

Overall a nice book for a quick read.

Dusts off

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books, update, year in review

Hello out there blogland. I know it’s been almost exactly 1 year since I last posted. Where to start.

I’m now the full time cataloger at my library. I get to be with books all the time. It’s great.
I went to Cedar Point this year and rode Steel Vengeance. It was amazing.
Cellulitis and Kidney Stones are no joke.

I read 61 books during my book year. (I go from Christmas Day to Christmas Day)

Here’s my GoodReads link: 2018 Reading Challenge

I’m definitely going to try and make this bigger part of my new year. I have books I want to talk about,  Influenster items to review, and hopefully travels to show off.

Year in Books

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books, what I've read, year in review

Goodread’s Year in Books Review

So lots of things happened this year, and I’m not going to get into most, but know that I became a full-time librarian/cataloger this year and I read a boatload of books. 93 to be exact.

Yes, that’s an insane number, and a majority are considered juvenile easy readers because I can read them while checking them over before checking them in. Some were really cute. Some were meh. I read a lot of graphic novels/manga this year too.

Goals for next year. More “big people” books. I’ve got about 20 out from the library that would be amazing starts for my 2018 list.

Check out the Goodread’s link at the top of the post to see the books I’ve read this year.

Some favorites:

• Ghosts
• I Work at a Public Library
• 7 ate 9
• Ms. Marvel- No Normal
• A Million Ways to Die in the West (tip: watch the movie first)

 

Book I didn’t like, and ironically it was a kids book titled Miffy at the Library. This book is all sorts of wrong. I know it was trying to teach colors and stuff, but you do not absolutely tell children, arrange the kids books of the library by color. Do you realize how many kids can potentially try that? Keeping the stacks organized is tough enough without a book telling kids something different than the standard library way of organizing their stacks.

Overall, it was a really good book year for me, and I hope to keep up my momentum in 2018.

Have a wonderful new year readers!

Coasting with Culture: Crossing the Tetons

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coasting with culture, Grand Teton Mountains, idaho

Once we left Yellowstone Bear World, it was off to Wyoming to ride another Mountain coaster, but before we got there we had to cross through the Teton’s. Here are some pics from right before we got into Wyoming.

I’ll bet you’ll never guess what this field is…

Look at that view!

I just had to zoom in on the mountains. It was awesome.

Thanks Gary for taking this pic of me 🙂

Sign at the place we stopped to take pictures. Seems like we followed a good portion of that trail as well.

This building almost felt like a step back in time.

So close to Wyoming!

Next up Wyoming!

Coasting With Culture: Yellowstone Bear World

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coasting with culture, idaho, moose deer and bears oh my!, Yellowstone Bear World

After the rest stop, we made our destination in Idaho, Yellowstone Bear World. Part drive through park, part kiddie rides, and part petting zoo makes for a great spot for families of young ones in the area.

First up when you get there is the drive through wildlife park. There are deer, elk, and of course bears galore. All the animals seemed happy, well fed, and the park is well maintained.

We’ve made it!

Baby!

White Elk

Bears

Once the drive through part finished, we headed through the gift shop into park. We decided to ride the kiddie coaster to get it done and then we spent some time with the animals in the petting zoo.

While everyone else will tell you this ride was not evil, it is evil. It’s a spinning roller coaster, and while looking tame, when two adults are placed with two super skinny 7-10 year olds, the weight was not distributed properly and we spun WAY too much for my liking. (*insert getting old joke here*)

Baby Bears that were born in January.

Moose? Where’s the Moose? Turns out we didn’t have to look too far for him.

Next we went into the Petting Zoo. Here’s a picture of me showing what it’d be like stacked up against a grizzly. Wouldn’t stand a chance.

This chicken is not in the mood for any of your shenanigans.

We decided we wanted to get some selfies with the animals. Here’s Gary trying to get a selfie with the pig. Not sure it worked out.

I had better luck getting a selfie with this deer. She was super happy, and friendly.

She licked me for at least 5 minutes and wanted more!

She then realized that Gary was just as tasty, and spent a good amount of time checking him out as well.

After that, Gary took what has to be an awesome group selfie with the deer.

Which I tried sharing from the Coasting with Culture FB page, but it didn’t work, so check out the post here.

Next up, random pictures as we crossed Idaho into Wyoming.

Coasting with Culture: Idaho Rest Stop

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coasting with culture, hell's half acre, idaho

Yep, I had to break these posts apart again. This one is about a rest stop in Idaho. I know what you’re thinking, a rest stop is that interesting? When you are driving in Idaho, and you see a sign that says National Geologic Site at a rest stop you stop and check it out.

While the rest stop itself needed some TLC, the whole reason why we stopped was pretty amazing. It turns out that there is a lava flow field in Idaho. Who knew there had been at some point a volcano in the area?

Check out this website for a little more about the area.

Starting off our day we ended up in Idaho.

And then we ended up here. The rest stop itself again was bad, but lava trails! So that totally made up for the rest stop bathrooms.

Walking around the trails:

Our tour guide taking a selfie

Can anyone spot the typo?

Coasting with Culture: Temple Square

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coasting with culture, salt lake city, temple square, utah

After a little break in Brigham City, it was time to head into Downtown Salt Lake City and check out Temple Square. Temple Square is a 10 acre block in downtown Salt Lake City owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I’m not going to get all historical or religious on you, but here’s the link to the Temple Square Website so you can learn more. I will say Temple Square is beautiful and relaxing and all the flowers smelled amazing.

So onto the photos!

Nope, not the musical, just the actual Book of Mormon

Inside the North Side visitors center

Inside the tabernacle

Click on the picture. It’s a video clip of the organist playing.

Inside Assembly Hall

Some of the pretty flowers

We even saw a bride and groom taking their wedding photos!

Salt Lake Temple

Artsy shot of the Temple

Brittany and Andrew standing on one of the photo op spots!

Inside the Beehive House

The Joseph Smith Memorial Building

After Temple Square we decided to eat at Bruges Waffles and Frites. It has been featured on The Food Network, so we decided to try it. It was absolutely delicious!

Saw this on the way out of town. With our new appreciation of the railways from earlier in the day, I had to take the pic.

Next up is Idaho and Wyoming!

Coasting with Culture: Brigham City

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brigham city, coasting with culture, idaho, utah, wyoming

Coasting with Culture: Brigham City

After we finished with the Golden Spike Historic site, we were hungry. We ended up driving into Brigham City for lunch.

This was a cool theater sign, and it was showing current movies.

We ended up choosing a place to eat called Idle Isle Cafe, which according to the menu is the 3rd oldest restaurant in Utah. It was a place that had small town charm, and for the most part the food was OK. Would I have liked it to be a little warmer, and some things not dry yes, but overall it was good. (also never realized fry sauce is thing out here).

After lunch we decided to walk around town a little bit.

Apparently, around there if you want to cross the street and feel safe doing so, you hold the flag with you. Gary just picked up the flag so we could see what the sign said, and we had cars stopped both ways, so we crossed the street.

I found another library! How I wish some of them would have been open so I could have checked them out!

Next up we drove into downtown Salt Lake City to visit Temple Square.