Book Chat - Currently reading: Hero of Ages, The Dinner

Found a new link up on one of the blogs I follow that is so right up my alley!

Follow the link in the image if you want to link up. What else do you need to do? Just talk about what you're currently reading. Easy enough!

I'm almost always in the middle of several books. Kindle or actual books, it varies, but I do tend to read more on my Kindle than actual books now. It's just so convenient! So here are the books I'm currently reading, in order of how often I'm reading them.

Main book: The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson (Book 3 of the Mistborn series)
The Mistborn trilogy is one that my boyfriend had been trying to get me to read for awhile. How long? Let's see... we started dating in September 2011, and I put the first book on my Goodreads shelf in September 2011, and the second and third in July 2012.
I finally got around to reading them and I read the first one (Mistborn: The Final Empire) in January and finished the second one (The Well of Ascension) a little less than a week ago (yikes, on Saturday?) and I'm 90% through the third one now (it's about 570 pages total). I just have to know what happens!!
The characters are great and the world is interesting with a rich tapestry of a world it's set in. I think of all three of the books, I liked the first one the best, the third one next, and then the second one. The first one sets the scene (or does it? Cos as you read, you find out that so much of what you assumed was happening really wasn't what was REALLY happening) and draws you in. And the third one answers so many questions.
The series is about this group of rebels who plan to overthrow a tyrant ruler. I'm not going to tell you more than that. Just read it!

Book in waiting: The Dinner by Herman Koch
This is one I'm ready for book club. I'm not very far into it, only a chapter or so, because I've been so drawn in by Mistborn. I have until April 13 to get this book read, so no worries. Here's the synopsis. I'm not far enough in to give my own, so this one is from Goodreads:
A summer's evening in Amsterdam and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant. Between mouthfuls of food and over the delicate scraping of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of politeness - the banality of work, the triviality of holidays. But the empty words hide a terrible conflict and, with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened... Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. Together, the boys have committed a horrifying act, caught on camera, and their grainy images have been beamed into living rooms across the nation; despite a police manhunt, the boys remain unidentified - by everyone except their parents. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children and, as civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple shows just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

I have some other books on my 'currently reading' list on Goodreads but I haven't touched them in over a month, so they don't really count. I'll come back to them eventually. After I read my next few bookclub books and this short story by Brandon Sanderson my boyfriend has been telling me about for about three months now. Got to appease the boyfriend...
I kid. He tells me about good stuff. Mistborn, Breaking Bad... Sh, don't tell him I respect his opinion, even if it takes me awhile to get to his recommendations. 


If these books interest you, you should check me out on Goodreads! Check out my books, read my reviews (though I don't have many, I tend to just star and move on), be my friend! 

To give you a better idea of some of the things I like to read, here are some books I have recomended to various bookclubs I'm in that we should read.  Several of these did get chosen and the members loved them, for the most part.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
What Alice Forgot by Lliane Moriarty
Song of Ice and Fire: A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
The Hunger Games (trilogy) by  Suzanne Collins

 Some of my recent suggestions, that are currently being voted on. I hope one wins, I really want to read these!
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom
The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani

Me Myself & I link up #3 and games!

Sheesh, I haven't done one of these since December? That's crazy! I have got to get back on track with my blogging.

1. Do you celebrate Saint Patrick's Day? How?
Lol, I don't really, not even close. I actually went to a brunch with some friends on Sunday and as I walked up to the table I muttered, 'Oh fuck I forgot to wear green'. Then as I hugged a friend I hesitated and told him not to pinch me or he gets no hug hello! He behaved. He did not pinch.
I really just don't understand the big deal about St. Patrick's Day. Maybe because of a number of factors...
a) I don't look great in green. I look good in teal but people always say that doesn't count. Pft.
b) I don't drink that much.
c) I'm not Irish. I'm French!
d) Green beer? GROSS.

2. It's March which means spring break! We want to know how your spring break went or if it hasn't happened yet, what will your spring break consist of? 
I don't really get a spring break. I'm not in education. March to me means March Madness (by the way, if you want to join my bracket group, you can! The group is here and it's just for fun, no money, and the password is "bracket time") and playoff push.
However I do have some friends who are teachers and some friends who are in law school and last week was their Spring Break, so I was able to spend time with friends who I don't see much. Trivia night, game night, brunch! Good times. It was nice their Spring Break all fell on the same week.
One thing that we did was successfully complete this Zombicide mission. I have played this mission three times now, with experienced gamers the first two times, and failed miserably the first two times. Here's the second time we played it:

Zombies, don't eat my friends!

Well crap I got eaten (top right, the teal figure on its side). Eat my friends so I'm not alone!

But we did it! I almost died, half of our team DID die, but we did it! Now I can retire from that mission. I have some pictures of the successful mission but they're on my iPad.

3. A Zombie Apocalypse happens and you're stripped of all your luxury items. What beauty product would you miss the most?
Whoa... eerie. It's like MM&I knows I love zombies. I would definitely miss a few items... I wouldn't miss mascara. Bleh. But I would miss Lush's Rub Rub Rub salt scrub and lotion in general. Scented, with cocoa butter, whatever. I just love lotion and hate dry scaly skin.
Maybe I should set up my zombie plan bunker safe spot in a Lush factory....

4. What is the one cause that you feel most passionate about?
(Does backing Kickstarter projects count? No? It should!)
For the last several years, my sister and I have participated in the March of Dimes March for Babies walk. As more of my friends get pregnant, and I look forward to the days when that will be me too, I realize the importance of the work March of Dimes does. Every woman should be able to have a healthy pregnancy and if they do everything right, not have to worry about having birth defects or premature labor.

5. What's the #1 most played song on your ipod? 
I actually don't use my iPod anymore; at work I use Pandora for music when I'm going to be deskbound for awhile. But songs that I definitely wait to hear, or if I haven't heard in awhile, I'll go to Youtube and listen to:
Taylor Swift - "Red"
Maroon5 "Daylight" and "Payphone" (OMG I'M GOING TO THEIR CONCERT TONIGHT)
Train -  "Drive By" and "50 Ways to Say Goodbye"
Coldplay - "Viva la Vida" and "Yellow"
Oh and "Hoppipolla". I like Vitamin String Quartet's instrumental version of it. The original song by Sigur Rós is very cool too. Check out the video!

Time to pimp out the games I can't wait for, that I'm backing through Kickstarter!

Zombicide Season 2 (Prison Outbreak) + Expansion to S1 or S2 (Toxic City Mall) - I've mentioned this one before. I play the first game (Season 1) a lot. Hell I have a picture of it above. If you like zombies, if you like co-op games, get it! You play as survivors trying to complete some mission (some are easy, some are epic fail hard) and fight off the zombies. Some will live, some will die... some will be the hero (DON'T BE THE HERO!), some will be the bait. 12 days to go!
Dragon's Hoard - I've mentioned this one as well. 6 days to go!
Dungeon Roll - Mentioned this one too. You roll dice to see what treasure you'll unlock, what enemies you'll defeat, and how deep you'll delve into the dungeon. And when the dreaded dragon will show up. 10 hours to go!
SuperFight! - Another I've mentioned before. Really looking forward to this one. You have cards with characters that you chose to go against the judge's character, and then you have randomly selected powers/weaknesses cards. 8 days to go!

And some new ones!
Machine of Death - this seems like an interesting party game. So you're an assassin, and there's this machine of death that using a drop of someone's blood, can predict how they will die. So you get a card showing their method of death (cancer, old age, slipped on banana peel, etc.) and you have to make it happen. But maybe this person is on a space station, and you only have a few tools at your disposal. So how the heck are you going to make it happen? Well... you're the assassin. I'm sure you'll figure it out. 8 hours to go!
Story War - A storytelling party game! It's like Dixit meets Apples to Apples meets awesome. So you split into teams and there's a judge. There's a location and each team plays their character cards and some item cards and use their own creativity to argue why they would clearly defeat the other team. It's a more interactive Apples to Apples/Cards Against Humanity. Because while in those games you can argue for your card, in this game, it all comes down to HOW well you argue for your card. Debate club with cards? 3 days to go!
Flash Point: Fire Rescue - Extreme Danger -  I actually haven't backed this one, my boyfriend told me about and that he already backed it, so there's no real reason for me to back it. We did the same thing with Zombicide S2. It's an expansion to Flash Point, which is a co-op game where you play as fire fighters trying to rescue victims and put out fires and try to keep that building from collapsing in a fiery ball of wreckage. Which happens a lot... 28 days to go!

Hm....  I'm noticing a definite trend to my preferred types of games.

Recipe - Oreo Fluff Dip

As promised, a new recipe post!

So as we all know, I've been addicting all of my friends to Funfetti dip (and Zombicide. They go well together). We're having another games night with friends tonight and everyone is expecting me to bring Funfetti but awhile ago I decided to pull a fast one on them and bring a different dessert dip. I don't want to get in a funfetti rut, ya know? Can't overplay that card. I also have over 100 pins on my Yummy Sweets Pinterest board and I've barely made any of them. And I love sweets... and I love sharing sweets.

The dessert dip I decided to make instead is this one: Oreo Fluff Dip

How will it go over? Only time will tell... T minus 5 hours, 28 minutes until the party! (At the time of writing at least... but I'm scheduling this post to go up when I'm at the party.)

This recipe also gave me an excuse to use the food processor that my parents got Chris for Christmas. LOVE IT! It's definitely loud but very effective.

Oreo Fluff
 1 box white chocolate instant pudding mix  
(I actually used two 1 oz boxes... The original recipe I had pinned didn't specify an ounce size to the box, so Chris just bought two, and then I found one that specifies 3.4 ounces. I didn't want to go to the store, so I decided to wing it with just 2 ounces.)
2 cups milk  
(I used whole milk. Boyfriend was a dear and picked up stuff for dinner on Tuesday and I had the Oreo fluff makings on the list too, so he got that too and he got whole milk. I had a small glass of it a few days ago... Man! So different from skim milk, which I've had for about the last 20 some odd years)
1 tub Cool Whip (8 oz), room temp 
Mine wasn't room temp but it had been in the fridge for two days, worked fine. I also used Lite Cool Whip.
1 pkg. Oreos, crushed

The pin calls for Doublestuffed but they had no doublestuffed so BF picked up reduced fat.
2 cups mini marshmallows
I used fat free marshmallows -- no just kidding. They're marshmallows! I used normal ones. Be sure not to get colored ones or your dip is going to be weird colors.

1. In a large bowl, mix milk and pudding mix for two minutes.
2. Stir in Cool Whip and crushed Oreos, and mini marshmallows. (Actually, prior to step 1 I used my food processor on pulse to crush the Oreos to nothing. I left some larger chunks but the majority of it became dust. I also used my large kitchen mixer for all of this with the dough hook. It makes everything so much easier.)

Oreo dust!

3. Cover with foil and store in fridge until ready to eat and serve. (I made mine the night before the party so it has a lot of time to chill, cos if it's anything like funfetti, it needs time for all the flavors to meld together.)

I tried it last night. It basically tastes like Oreo pudding. What could be better than that??

I think next time I will hand stir it though, not use my kitchen mixer because I think I might have overmixed it. What do I mean? Well, go look at the picture of the dip in the original pin. So white and fluffy with black Oreo crumbs!

Here's mine.

Not pretty but it is delicious!!

Hmmmmmm.... Pinterest fail? I think just Picture fail.

Will report back later on how it goes over! Man I hope it's good or my friends might mutiny when I show up with no Funfetti....

Hiatus over!

Whoops, I disappeared again. Sorry about that. What have been I been up to in the almost month since my last post?

All Star Weekend! What an amazing and exhausting weekend! So many people, so much great people watching, so many great events... I worked with retail that weekend, so I was here from 4-midnight Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I saw a bunch of people who I was pretty sure I was supposed to know who they are but, whoops, I didn't know. I could tell they were "someone" though by how many cameras followed them around. And man the bling! So many people were checking out and had their hand on the counter and all I saw was bling from championship rings. NBA and NFL I'm quite sure.

Yea, some of these are familiar.

Not my image by the way, I got it from Hoopism. As promised, here are some more pictures from the building, as decorated by the NBA.

Side of the building, near the box office

Front of the building - my favorite!

To the left of the front of the building, near the Team Shop

Continuation of the last pic

The Beard!! (Lol, first I typed The Bard)

My boyfriend got me a beautiful orchid for Valentine's Day and it's still alive!! I need to take pictures to prove that fact (I have no green thumb. More like a black thumb) but here are pics from when I got it:

Moth Orchid OF LOVE

All of the buds have since opened... Well. All except for one but it never had a chance. It broke off the main stem when I was putting it in my car to take home at the end of the week.

 The Thursday after All Star I worked the P!nk concert. So much great people watching!! And that woman sounds amazing live. Her body is sick. Such an inspiration. I even ran into a friend at the show while I walking the building, selling programs. It was the first time I'd seen her since I cut and dyed my hair (had it dyed professionally). Oh yea that's another thing I did -- I don't even remember when, but I changed my hair! It's a nice coppery red now. Ready for spring!

 The weekend after All Star, the boyfriend and I headed to Austin to see my brother and sister-in-law for my sister-in-law's birthday -- 30! My brother was able to arrange a surprise party for her. She knew my parents were coming up for the weekend, she did not know Chris and I were heading up. We showed up on Friday with the story that oh, we were just swinging by that night on our way to the hotel, we were spending the rest of the weekend with a friend who lives up there for law school. Boy was she surprised to see us the next day when we were supposedly doing a campus tour of UTA. Mwahaha. She also had no idea that my sister and brother-in-law were coming! So that was a lot of fun. My parents bought her a karaoke machine so the majority of the evening was spent on that.

The weekend was great... until Sunday when we were heading out. An engine warning light popped up Chris hadn't seen before, so we looked it up in the owners manual and saw that it was for the coolant level being too low so we swung by a store, bought some more, put it into the reservoir, and headed out... Only to go one block and the light comes on again and the reservoir is completely empty. Not good. Luckily we were able to find a Firestone nearby. Very long story short, the car would take a few days to be ready (first we were told one day, but there was some delay getting the part from a dealership) and I had to be in Houston the next day for time sensitive work things, so I was able to get a ride from my sister and brother-in-law (who are life savers - they drove about 45 minutes back into Austin to get me) and Chris was able to stay with my brother for the night. Then since his car wasn't ready, he was able to switch cars with his brother who goes to school in Austin, and drive home Monday. His car is actually still up in Austin but it is ready to come home! He'll switch again this weekend when his brother is home for Spring Break. Phew!'

I miss having Spring Break... I don't miss school, but I miss that week. Oh well. Only way I could have it now is to be a teacher or some other way work in a school and I don't think that's for me.

 This past weekend, Chris and I headed up to Dallas. Two of his friends up there just got a new house and had been asking him when he'd be able to come up and see it. I looked at my March calendar and remembered that my TRX training starts soon, so suggested that weekend. So we headed up with some friends (carpool power!) for a house warming party. Had a great time! Played some games, slept in, ate some good food, hung out with his friends more.... got serious house envy.

Soon, soon, one day soon Chris and I will get a house. I see it coming. I definitely want the next time I move to be into a house. An upstairs, a guest room, a game room, a big kitchen with an island and a wet bar... Serious house envy going on right now.

And on Saturday, the Kickstarter for the new season of Zombicide started so I stalked it on my iPad and pledged as soon as I could. Those early birds went fast!! So now I'm still stalking it, checking the new stretch goals and optional purchases. Can't wait to get that game.

And now I'm a little addicted to Kickstarter. In the last few days I've backed three more game projects that sound interesting. Check 'em out and if you're interested, back them too! Definitely recommend Zombicide. It's a solid co-op game.

Dragons Hoard - card game to fight your opponents, protect your treasure and maidens in your lair. Looks simple to learn, quick to play. Vaguely reminds me of Lost Cities.
Dungeon Roll - dice rolling game to delve into a dungeon and collect treasure and fight monsters and the dreaded dragon. Another simple to learn, quick to play one. Vaguely reminds me of Escape.
SUPERFIGHT! - party card comparison game, like Apples to Apples meets Cards Against Humanity. I enjoy Cards Against Humanity and a lot of my friends enjoy Apples to Apples, so I figured it was worth a shot.

And now I need to stop lurking Kickstarter. At least until these games fund and ship. Zombicide TCM and PO won't ship until September though... grar.

Oh and I'm helping to plan two baby showers. One in April, one in May.

So that's where I've been for the past month.On tap for this weekend? My TRX training starts Friday night -- was supposed to be Saturday but the trainers have something going on so the group was able to agree on a new time. That will be interesting... and hopefully help me get my workout routine in order. I'm working out friend tonight and it's the first time I've really worked out in... I don't want to say. I also have a games night with Chris' friends Saturday, and then I'm hosting outdoor volleyball this Sunday afternoon. And we lose an hour on Saturday night! Thank god. Love DST.

I should have a new recipe post in the next week or so... It's a surprise!