You'll love this one...!! A book club & more discussion
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Watcha Doin' - 2016.1
message 3601:
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Travis
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Dec 05, 2016 06:58AM
Plus it got to the point where I was like look I'm not paying $40-$50 a year for a tree to stand in my house for 2 weeks when you can go buy a prelit artificial for 50% off or more the week affer Christmas. I always thought I liked the real tree tradition turns out I was over it
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I was going to put up my little table topper tree last night, but I got watching Downton Abbey.
We have an artificial tree too :) always had an artificial one as a kid, so did my hubby :) We did get a new artificial one this year which is taller and is poofier. Can't wait for all the decorations to get here to decorate it! We have our old one up all decorated though until then. Hubby agreed to put up outside lights this year since we are in an actual house vs and apartment so I'm really excited about that :-)
Peggy wrote: "When bf and I started living together 6 years ago I also really wanted a real tree. We got one. It left needles in the trunk of the car and he's still not over that. Comes up every year ;-)I now ..."
That's so funny. He figured out a way to get out of it, didn't he? lol
I think I would like a fake tree as long as it looked real. Unfortunately, some of them definitely look fake and I wouldn't like that. I don't think hubby would really go for a fake one though.
I've never had a real tree. Which I haven't even been able to put our artificial tree up for the last few years. Diesel liked to chew on tree branches outside so I could only imagine what he would have done to a Christmas tree! Now we have Turbo and I can just see him jumping and knocking it over. Or trying to eat the ornaments, and most definitely going after the presents. The ballet was wonderful Friday night. It amazes me how the men lift the women like they weigh nothing. It was all so beautiful.
When I was a kid my Aunt who lived in Manhattan set up her aluminum tree with floor lamp that rotated colors, no lights on the tree itself, I thought it was the swankiest, most cosmopolitan, coolest thing in the world.
KimeyDian, at ballets I am astounded that the ballerinas run and leap TRUSTING that the guy will catch them. The learning curve for that must be painful.
Does your husband drive a big truck Kimey. Judging all upon your dog names. Or whatever pet it is. Really making a lot of assumptions today arent I
Joan wrote: "When I was a kid my Aunt who lived in Manhattan set up her aluminum tree with floor lamp that rotated colors, no lights on the tree itself, I thought it was the swankiest, most cosmopolitan, cooles..."My grandma and grandpa had one like that too, Joan, and I felt the same way!
Some very cool X-mas trees: (made of bacteria and fungus, nothing less)
And others...of books
of chemical products
Mariab, those are so creative! Love it.
Very cool, Mariab!I remember those aluminum trees with the wheel light of changing colors. Pretty wild, I thought : )
Glad you enjoyed the ballet, KimeyDiann. It can be so transporting. My very favorite is the dance of the snowflakes. I studied ballet for 10 years growing up. Too nearsighted to find my marks of stage unfortunately.
We have an artificial tree now. Two of them actually. One full size, one teensy. We put them both up. Haven't done so yet this year.
I like the alternative christmas trees Mariab.
Great pictures, Mariab! I'm liking that tree made of books!
Travis of NNY wrote: "Does your husband drive a big truck Kimey. Judging all upon your dog names. Or whatever pet it is. Really making a lot of assumptions today arent I"He does currently drive a big Dodge truck... but he is just a huge car/truck fan in general. He's also really big into drag racing and building fast cars. I lost count of how many cars/trucks he's had several years ago. It was over 100 when I lost count. He's had everything from little imports to classic cars to race cars to pickups and everything in between. He picked the names for the two Weimaraners we've had (Diesel & Turbo), and I've named the others (Britton, Addie (actually, Addie was already named when we got her), and Grace).
@TJ, the snowflakes were my favorite too! They had a bunch of little local kids as extras, the snowflakes were like 4-6 years old and were so stinkin' cute!
Had to look that breed up Kimey.having listed so many I expected a small breed. Instead yhey look a lot like my brown german shorthair pointer. Or an english pointer. I'd say lab but their fur looks silkier more like the pointer than the coarse hair lab. Look like nice dogs. Of course I like hunting breeds anyway
Is it sad to be excited about getting a new generator? It does mean now we have another means of getting power and we can put the fridge back on.
I was just looking at the results of the 2016 Goodreads awards and it is so evident that people are voting for books they haven't read. But that is no surprise. We already knew that.Just looking at the "Best Book":
2nd place, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things has 6852 ratings, but received 27,917 votes.
Small Great Things has 17,302 ratings and 23,912 votes.
There are so many more examples of this. "Best Mystery", End of Watch has 27,297 ratings and received 42,382 votes.
Back to Best Book - out of 20 books in the category, only 7 have an average rating of 4.0 or higher. How is it books with an average rating of 3.5 make it to "best".
I'd far rather see awards given by a panel of people who have read every book and voted on what they thought was the best. Otherwise, it's just meaningless. It's just a popularity contest.
They are beautiful dogs, and very smart. Diesel was a light-ish gray with gray eyes that changed shades depending on the light. After he passed away in September, I said I wouldn't have another one because he was so special to us. But when the vet called and told us about an almost-year-old Weim. in need of a home almost a month later, we brought Turbo (his name was Blu) home with us. He looks very different from Diesel; he is a very dark slate-gray, almost black, and has amber eyes. Britton is a yorkie mix of some sort. His papers say full blooded Yorkie, but he is over 15 lbs with curly hair so I don't really know what he is. Addie is a miniature Schnauzer. And Grace is a German Shepherd or something very similar.
With the exception of Britton, it appears we have a thing for dogs of German origins: Schnauzer, Shepherd, and Weimaraner.
I agree Janice. I looked at the winners earlier. I wonder what Joe Hill has to say about it. Especially as his non horror book won the best horror book. I did vote for it though. I think you should be only able to vote if the book is on your tbr, marked as read and rated. If it came up with an error message if these criteria are not met, it might reduce the amount of people voting for a book they've not read. I know they could just add it and get around that but i reckon it would stop some people. I reckon they should take the ratings received in to account. In the case of Kings book, only 27,297 of the votes should count perhaps.
Yup, the way these awards are set up is completely meaningless.
Janice, I agree about the meaningless awards, it seems to be a problem with most on-line rating sites. Funny, when the Web was just starting I think everyone believed crowd-sourcing and anonymity were great advances & Wikipedia was the new model. Instead we get worse-than useless ratings, cyber bullying and fake news.But there I go being a pessimist again - what would Pollyanna say?
Crap, I'm losing time again. I went to bed Sunday around midnight after finishing a book, and just got up an hour ago. I hate when this happens. It sounds like there's been a lot going on, glad to see so much fun going on.I used to get real Christmas trees, but they got too expensive. The needles never bothered me - dogs and dog hair in cars and house, so needles were just one more thing :) Now I have an artificial tree that's really too big for me - I have to get my neighbor to put it together and take down for me. I won't be putting it up this year, but I'll be at my dad's for Christmas. I'll set out some decorations (actually I still have a wreath on the wall from last year ☺ ), but not too many.
Mariab - love the bacteria and fungus trees. They're beautiful!
Friday was a really good day, and then it just got frustrating. Met a friend for lunch and returned my dvr cable box (got fried when the power went out). Then we went and purchased tickets for Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy in January and Menopause the Musical in February. Can't wait to see them both. At home later the cable box wouldn't work. After a lot of time on the phone, everything works, but I was very upset - all my recorded shows are still on the dead box and I can't get them back. I don't care about most of them, but there's the whole second season of Poldark lost to me. I'll have to wait and beg my library to order it. At least I finished watching Ripper Street. And I'll be able to see the first episode of Vikings.
Janice wrote: "I was just looking at the results of the 2016 Goodreads awards and it is so evident that people are voting for books they haven't read. But that is no surprise. We already knew that.Just looking ..."
I completely agree, Janice. These awards are coming across as farcical now.
That's annoying j'mom. That reminds me. I must back up all my downloaded series on my laptop. I have the first episode of Vikings waiting to be watched. I can't wait! I can't decide whether to hold off watching it until a few weeks episodes have been reslised so i can binge watch them. One hour of Ragnar and Lagartha isn't enough for me. I downloaded the first three episodes of The Last Kingdom but i think I'm going to wait on those now until after Vikings is done. I don't want to get confused. Lol. We're currently watching the latest series of walking dead but I'm not really enjoying it. It's pretty depressing.
I have to wait and have at least three episodes of Vikings to watch in a row. With just one there's too much of a letdown and the energy doesn't know where to go. I've found three is the right amount for me. Any more and I might go a little berserk :)
I had heard that Joe Hill had talked about his book being nominated as horror. Later he retracted his comments and said that he was happy to have his work recognized.
Joe is too busy spending all day bashing Trump amd Republicans but he did take time to say thank you
I agree, I don't get these goodreads awards. I do look at it and might vote if I actually read and liked the book but otherwise it's just fluff stuff. This year I voted for America's First Daughter which I read and really loved. It didn't win though.
I only voted for books I actually read, which was like one or two. I've noticed a lot of books on GR that aren't even released yet will have an almost 5 star rating simply because people like the author. I've always had a problem with the fact that people can rate and review books that aren't even finished being written. I'm feeling antsy today. I have a big deadline at work and I'm having to wait on other people before I can make any progress. I like to work under some pressure, but this is a bit too much.
I agree that the reviewing books before they are written is strange. Even an author you love could write a book that you don't. But, people still seem to do it regularly. I think Patrick Ruthfuss wrote the best response to his followers doing this. His book Doors of Stone has 1,951 ratings and it is not completed yet. Here is his "review" - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Good luck, Kimey. I hate waiting on others to get my work done. It really stresses me out.
Good luck KimeyDian it can be really nerve wracking waiting for other folks to get their parts finished.Hmph, my dumb iPad browser just tried to change wrack to wreck! Grrr.
That review is just awesome, Kristie.
Kristie wrote: "I agree that the reviewing books before they are written is strange. Even an author you love could write a book that you don't. But, people still seem to do it regularly. I think Patrick Ruthfuss w..."Thanks for linking Patrick's review, Kristie. It's great!
Sarah wrote: "Is it sad to be excited about getting a new generator? It does mean now we have another means of getting power and we can put the fridge back on."Everything that improves your life, even a weeny bit, is worth to be excited and happy about! :-))
Janice wrote: I'd far rather see awards given by a panel of people who have read every book and voted on what they thought was the best. Otherwise, it's just meaningless. It's just a popularity contest..."Sure! But the whole point by the media is having thousands of people liking and clicking their pages, isn't it? I think they don't care a thing about really finding the best book, or anything like that...
Mariab wrote: "Sarah wrote: "Is it sad to be excited about getting a new generator? It does mean now we have another means of getting power and we can put the fridge back on."Everything that improves your life,..."
That is true. Thanks Mariab. :-)
I've read Rothfuss's review before but it was fun to read again. Very bizarre when people rate before reading. I can't explain why someone would do that. Oh well.
That review is so funny!I wrote a few weeks ago about my paper on emotional eating, and it's now published. You can download the pdf in the right top corner: http://journal.frontiersin.org/articl...
So exciting, Peggy! Congratulations! I've downloaded and will read it this afternoon.
Sarah wrote: "Joan wrote: "Cherie, didn't Freud say that everyone is fascinated by poop?."Indeed. Hmmm. Freud was definitely responsible for a lot of crap. Mainly of the bull variety. lol."
Hear hear
Sorry, catching up. I love real trees. We had them in my share house and we would name them accordingly. Leany, Droopy, Flopsy. We decided the best way now to do it was to get a tree in a pot. When I was a kid my parents did this. It was small but ever year we decorated it and had a real tree that smelled. Unfortunately Lexx drowned it with good intentions (summer, it's fricking hot. But pines don't like wet roots, fyi).
I just put up our Christmas wreath which is our only Christmas decoration tonight. It is made of black baubles and other baubles made from The Zahir, which is the best use of that book. However, I bought my brother and us advent calendars of beer and cider. Lexx has a cider one, and we have a beer one. A craft beer or cider every day until the 25th. It is amazingly awesome, like being a kid again but with a lovely Aussie, cold, craft beer at the end of each day.
P.S. I'm so sorry. Started acting in a new job as soon as I came back from holidays and I am shit and exhausted.
Would love to see a picture of your wreath made from book baubles! Love the beer advent idea. I'm thinking a shot of kraken rum a day would be good as it's nice and warming. I love that stuff!
My boyfriend showed me those advent calendars too. He would love to have one! We checked several websites but they don't seem to deliver here. Maybe next year someone in the Netherlands will decide to sell them :)My mother-in-law always gets us advent calendars with chocolate. Which is sweet, but the chocolate in it is not good at all. And this year, half of my chocolates have white spots on them and crumble when I take them out, so I don't want to eat those weird ones. But since they're not so good anyway, I don't even mind so much, and take a piece of my regular very delicious chocolate instead.
Rusalka wrote: "Sorry, catching up. I love real trees. We had them in my share house and we would name them accordingly. Leany, Droopy, Flopsy. We decided the best way now to do it was to get a tree in a pot. Wh..."
So I take it The Zahir was one of your least favourite books of the year? Hehehe.
We have the beer advent calendars here as well. Too bad they don't have a wine one. I'd be all over that.
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You'll love this one...!! A book club & more
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