March List, and a little rambling

     A beautiful spring to you, my dears! For once, we're actually having one that's long enough to call itself that! I'm hoping for another full month of it. It's certainly been a pretty enough March here in Mississippi. My little thin blooded self was glad to see warm weather come early so I could pack up the sweaters and flannel pj pants and break out the flip-flops and shorts! I even bought a great swimsuit top the other day at Goody's for, this is just amazing, $1. Yes, one whole dollar. Clearance shopping at its best!

     We've been transitioning our house from cool weather to warm, in rapid mode. One week it's 40° out and the next it's 80°? Crazy. We had daffodils for a while, then our tulips, cherries, and dogwoods finally bloomed. Now we have a front flowerbed full of pretty bright pink Loropetalums (or however you say it) that are almost infested with mosquito hawks. I guess that means we won't have malaria anytime soon, but geez those things get everywhere. And we also have my least favorite...spiders. Our neighbor got bitten by one (oh yes, I just loved hearing that story) and had to be hospitalized twice for complications from it. Gross nasty kill them with a shotgun spiders. Regular ones inside are bad enough, but we have bad ones like black widows outside too. They just love our back porch for some reason. It's the same routine every year...they come, I threaten to move out, the parents call the pest people to spray (already done for this spring!), then everyone's happy again.
     You think I'm overreacting on the spider thing? I swear they come after me specifically. They wait until I'm in vulnerable positions, then attack. Like sitting on the toilet. (This is one of the times living at home has its perks...someone else to rescue you!) Had that happen more than once actually. Or home alone. That's when the big ones show up. The 'I'd rather sell the house than kill that' ones. During spring break when my family was gone to Belize, I found something on the floor I thought was a big ball of fuzz or something. Nope, it was a spider so fat it was plumb round. It had gotten turned upside down and couldn't get back over, it was so fat. I was brave and squished it, and it made the most God-awful squirshy splat. I gagged for about two hours after that. I didn't even pick it up and flush it. Nope, just vacuumed it on down to the Devil. Where those things belong.

     Anyhow, that's enough on that tangent, I'm starting to get all creeped out...back to business!

MARCH

*Wheel of Darkness - Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

*Cold Vengeance - Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

My So-Called Life as a Proverbs 31 Wife - Sara Horn

*Run with the Horsemen - Ferrol Sams

*Whisper of the River - Ferrol Sams

*When the World Was Young - Ferrol Sams

Thirteen Moons - Charles Frazier

Glory Road - Robert A. Heinlein

A Bend in the Road - Nicholas Sparks

The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver

The Host - Stephenie Meyer
*The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
*Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
*Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins
     That makes fourteen for this month, and a total of 38 for this year so far. Next month ought to get fun. I'm running out of new books to read, so I'm going to have to get creative on a book list. Most of mine have been reread so many times it's just not that fun anymore...kind of like going on a blind date with the same person eight times. 

     I nearly ended up not picking a favorite book this month. I nearly didn't read those last three books at all. I was all set against jumping on the Hunger Games bandwagon like I'm sad to say I did when the Twilight books came out (though, to be fair I did read those well before their big popularity came). But a lot of my friends have read them and all say they're actually great books. And then I saw the movie trailer come out and it looked really, really good. Then my best friend Adam got ahold of them...and Lord help me, he's been PRing them to me full time. So...I folded. I make it a rule not to watch the movie before the book (the books are always so much better, aren't they?), so what else was I to do but go out and get myself a copy? Wal-Mart special - the first book is only six dollars and change, and the other two in hardback are cheaper than most B&N paperbacks. To be safe, I did only buy the first one, just in case I ended up not loving them. Well, I was back the very next day buying books two and three. And now Molly's reading them, with me hurrying her along so we can both go see in in theater! 

     I do recommend the Proverbs 31 book for all you ladies out there around the dating and marrying age. I read through it, and when I was looking for some new reading material to send to my Ecuadorian roomie Laura I thought it'd be perfect for her. She's getting married this summer right after coming home, and (MAJOR kudos to her) planning her wedding just about entirely via Skype and mom. She says it's amazing how much you can do with the Internet, but I say it's an amazing tribute to her extraordinary patience and selflessness. My OCD self would have already given it up for a lost cause, but Laura's still hanging in there. Ladies who are already married, you know all the planning it takes, and ladies who aren't, you can imagine! So send up a prayer for her, especially as the time gets closer and closer to coming home and her big day!



    Keep me on your prayer lists too. I'm still on the job hunt...still hunting. If your ear happens to catch news of a job in the banking, secretary/office assistant, etc. world, give me a shout! I applied last week for a opening Regions bank in Oxford had, and I'm scouting out more with my and my dad's contacts. I'm really leaning towards any openings in a bank environment, hoping to make use of my business degree and get a job that would give me an opportunity to learn and advance myself so I can stay there for a while. I've been thinking hard on this since Christmas and I have a really good feeling about moving in this direction. Hopefully I'll find out soon if I end up there! Wish me luck!