Some good books...

Again, months have passed since I last posted. Summer is over, Autumn is half way finished. My husband is at the State Police Academy. We have been waiting for over a year for this to begin. Its been something we've anxiously awaited, and yet I find myself missing him like crazy. As if I didn't realize the day would finally come when he left. He gets some weekends off.

I read two great books over the last week or so. Nicholas Sparks Safe Haven and Ben Sherwood Charlie St. Cloud. Charlie St. Cloud is also called The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud. I believe they shortened it for the film, and the book I bought was titled after the movie. Safe Haven just came out this past September. It started a little slow for my taste, but once it got going it was fantastic. Both books were great. Highly recommended!

Charlie St. Cloud is also a movie. It came out this past July and I believe it came out on DVD this past Tuesday. I hope the movie is as good as the book was.

Not sure which book I'll move onto next...

Busy Busy!

Again its been over a month since I posted! Time is flying by so quickly, its already August.

My 25th Birthday is in about three weeks -- eek! Only 5 more years until 30. And I still look like I could pass for 17 or so. I'm told that I will appreciate that when I'm older? lol

I did two horse camps last month (I might need my brain examined! haha) One was a Beginner session and the other was Intermediate. The ages ranged from 6 to 14. Both camps went really well and I actually had fun, even though it was exhausting and I crashed every night. I had two very nice groups of kids.

We hosted our own horse show at the barn on the 24th. It was like 97 with a heat advisory. I think the heat really took a toll on our entry amount. But the show itself went very smoothly and we did have a halter class with 6 horses in it - I was excited! We will have another one in October, hopefully the weather cooperates better this time.

I had a day off this past weekend, first one in weeks. I groomed my horses at home and rode the pony bareback around the yard. Then Tony and I rented like 5 movies to watch. I had a blast just sitting around doing nothing and watching movies. Reminded me of college when I worked at Blockbuster and watched at least one movie a day haha! We watched The Runaways, Dear John, and Old Dogs. We also rented Wolfman and Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, but didn't have time to watch them Saturday. We finished Wolfman last night and will do Dr Parnassus tonight (hopefully).

This weekend I have a horse show, we leave Thursday. I'm already half way through the show season, unbelieveable! Then the 16th thru the 20th I have my third and final horse camp, another beginner session. I will update again soon maybe with some pictures this time ;)

Its been a long time...

I see I haven't posted anything since October. It doesn't feel like its been that long, but I guess the time got away from me.

Around the same time as my last post, my mom got very ill. She had an emergency appendectimy and had some complications from the surgery. After being in and out of the hospital three times with a bacterial infection, collapsed lung, blood clot, and allergic reactions to the pain medication, mom was on her way to recovery. She is much better now and has been smoke-free since her surgery! I'm proud of her for that and for how strong she was dealing with all of the complications one after another.

I had started a new job at a local bank in November. It started out ok, but I quickly realized that was not the position for me. In February, I started giving riding lessons at a facility not far from my house. I juggled both the bank and the barn until the end of April when I resigned from my position at the bank. It wasn't that the bank was a bad job exactly. Just that my dream job finally came around and I had to go for it. It was getting too difficult to schedule lessons around my goofy hours at the bank and I didn't want to be loosing students because the bank wanted to schedule me 5 days a week for 4 hours each shift. That kind of shift just wasn't productive for me.

The lessons have really taken off. I'm thankful to finally be doing something I've always wanted to do.

Tony is still waiting for word on a start date for the Police Academy. We hear rummors for next month, then we hear rummors it may not be until the Fall of this year. I feel bad for him, I know how frustrating it must be just waiting for that stupid letter. Its almost as bad as when he was in the Marines and we would just sit around waiting for word, which of course, was always last minute.

This February we got dumped with snow. More snow than I had ever seen in my lifetime. I wanted to blog about it, but I spent three days straight shoveling the driveway, the cars, sidewalks, a spot for the dog to do her business, an area for the mail truck to pull over to get to our box, and even a large area in the pasture for my cooped up horses! My mom and dad had gone to Flordia for a business convention of my dad's. They missed all the fun! It was actually fun when it was snowing giant flakes the size of quarters. And it was coming down so quickly, it was unreal. Then in the morning when I got up to feed the horses and was up past my knee to get out to the barn, unbelieveable! It was beautiful but awfully heavy to shovel. I had to use the wheelbarrow to take snow away because the piles from shoveling were well over Tony's head and we were running out of room.

After about five other guys with plows on their trucks zoomed down the road watching us struggle with all the snow. A nice man drove by, stopped, backed up, and asked us if we wanted a hand. The picture is below, it took him about 3 minutes to do the driveway. We had been working on it for 3 hours and only made a tiny dent in it. Thank you to that kind stranger!

Tony and I took a trip to Tampa over Mother's Day weekend. I hadn't been down in almost two years. And his sister-in-law was having a baby shower for their second baby--a little boy. It was a nice get-away. Usually the heat does me in for. But either it wasn't that bad there, or I'm getting adjusted to the heat from my long days outside riding or instructing. So we had nice weather. I finally got to Clearwater and I loved it. The water is exactly as the name describes, clear! The sand was white and it wasn't too crowded. I really enjoyed my two trips to Clearwater.

Maggie just had the baby this past Wednesday. A healthy baby boy, named after his father, Louie. Their oldest daughter, Ava (my flowergirl), is five now. I wonder how she will adjust from being the only daughter and granddaughter to sharing the spotlight! I know I was a bit of a monster when my little brother was born. But we get along great now...took about 15 years though!

Thats about it for the updates right now. Hopefully my next post won't be months from now. :)

I'm in a movie!

Well....I'm an extra, a nurse to be exact. But I will be on film!

I'm pretty excited. This was just sort of a spur-of-the-moment, what the heck, why not decisions. The name of the film is Love and Other Drugs, directed by Edward Zwick. It stars Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal. Its due to come out sometime in 2010.

The three scenes I was cast for only have Jake in them.

It was such a fun and exciting experience! I am a huge movie person. So to actually be behind the scenes watching the directors, crew, actors, etc. at work was so exciting for me. Jake Gyllenhaal is even better looking in person than I thought (haha!) I've seen most of his movies and he has always been one of my favorite actors to watch. So to see him, and work with him (even if for only a few minutes of film time) was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

I'm not sure when it will be in theaters, but when I know I will post an update! And I'll describe my scenes and what I was wearing so everyone can look for me!

There are two other movies also filming around now here in the wonderful city of Pittsburgh. One with Russell Crowe and another with Denzel Washington. Read this article to learn more!

PS. in the first scene I did, Jake puts his arm around my right shoulder! I hope they don't cut it out lol. :-)

Lately...

Over the past few weeks I read quite a few books. Last post, I wrote about My Sister's Keeper. Since finishing that book, I gobbled up For One More Day and The Last Lecture. I also read three others which were more for the equestrian people: The Hearts of Horses, Riding Lessons, and Flying Changes. They were all wonderful books. Some took longer than others, but all of them were worth my while.

Mitch Albom is a wonderful author. For One More Day was full of emotion and exceeded my expectations. I found myself eagerly reading each page. I had to tell my eyes not to skip ahead to the next sentence before I finished the one I was on! I loved it. My husband and I picked up his latest book, Have A Little Faith. My husband is a huge Mitch Albom fan. I can't wait to dig in!

The Last Lecture was a book I picked up on-sale at Books-A-Million about seven months ago. I knew it was something I wanted to read eventually, so I put it on my shelf of "to read" books. I had a general idea on what the book was about. I knew it was about the CMU professor, Randy Pausch. I knew it was going to be sad and I knew the author has since passed away.
(Randy and his family)
What an amazing book it was. I love his outlook on life--or what little he has left while composing his final lecture to be addressed at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University (just a quick walk down the street from where I attended the college of Pitt). But it was so packed full of emotion. It was definitely a tear-jerker. And I loved how Randy didn't just write about his inevitable death. He wrote about his life, his loves, his family, his accomplishments. Highly recommended!


The Hearts of Horses, by Molly Gloss, was another novel I picked up at Books-A-Million. It had an appealing cover and was on the first bookshelf when I walked into the store. It was that month's suggested reading, or something along those lines. I put it on the shelf with the many others I had purchased with the intention of reading in the future. It was a little slow to get into. Its set in the early 1900s in the West and tells the story of a female "bronco buster." Although, she uses a more gentle approach to breaking horses. More of a "horse whisperer" technique, if you will. Once it got going, I was really into the story. It was easy to paint a picture of this time frame and the way of life for them.


Riding Lessons and Flying Changes were both written by Sara Gruen (also the author of Water For Elephants, one I hope to read soon). They are about a former Equestrian Olympic contender who lost who she was after a terrible accident when she was eighteen-years-old. Twenty years later, she returns home to help with her dying father. Her parents own a world-class equestrian facility. Throughout the stories, the main character deals with skelatons in the closet about her past and heals the old wounds. They are really great, but would appeal more to an equestrian. I enjoyed them of course! :)

Right now I am working on Nicholas Sparks' The Lucky One. I can already tell its going to be another edge-of-the-seat page-turner!

Great Book

I've been reading a lot lately. One of the latest books I read was My Sister's Keeper. I got the book a few months ago when the movie was in theaters. But I hadn't read it until a few weeks ago. What a wonderful book. I highly recommend it to anyone! Jodi Picoult does such a great job, each chapter is done in a different person's point of view. And between each person, even the fonts change. It is brilliant. If you've seen the movie, it doesn't matter, still read the book. The endings are completely different. Jodi even says on her website that once she sold the movie rights, she gave up the rights to be able to say "yes" or "no" about what they do to the film. So she is clear to note that she did not have any input in the changes and the different ending. Either way, I would still like to see the movie and I hear it is still a great film, despite the changes.

Take Me Out To The Ball Game...

This past Saturday, Tony and I ventured downtown to catch a Pirates' Ball Game. The team has been pretty bad for years, but the park is beautiful and its just fun to go to a baseball game. The weather was perfect, 75 or so and sunny! A cool breeze coming off the rivers, not a cloud in the sky. We had great seats in section 116, directly behind the home plate! Our seats were under the over-hang so we didn't have to worry about squinting or getting too hot in the sun.

Tony hasn't really been downtown much. The first time we met I tried to take him down to Station Square, but got horrible lost and we drove by from the other side of the river. I pointed "there it is!" but we gave up and went home after that! haha! So it was nice to get a GPS (and I've gotten better driving downtown since our first adventure) and make our way down to PNC Park. I think Tony had fun :)

Pictures!: