Hot Hot Hot

My word, it has been hotter than hot here the past few days!! The last two days in a row we had temps in the mid-90s plus high humidity. That makes for some pretty unbearable times when you have no a/c - which is the case for me at home, in the car, and at work, so pretty much all the time.
Yesterday I managed to run errands and enjoyed going in to the a/c zones of the store and the library. Today I was not so lucky - today I had to work. At one point (around 6pm) I got an outdoor thermometer off of the shelf and brought it out to our work area. Within 10 minutes it was reading 92 degrees (in the shade). Someone got the idea to put it out in the sun to see how much hotter it was out there. Set it down on the cement slab and within 5 minutes it had maxed out at over 120 degrees. Is it any wonder that very little physical work was done today? Thankfully there was little enough to do that nobody really complained about us lazing around.

I still have my sunscreen/sunblock issue. Every one I use reacts badly with my sweat and turns my clothes orange. It's nothing that is visible on my skin, and on a dark shirt it does not show, but I should not have to choose between spending the entire summer in dark clothes, ruining everything I wear, or getting sunburned every day. This is extremely frustrating. Even more frustrating is that the sunscreen seems to hold on to my skin longer than one would expect. I wore sunscreen YESTERDAY but did not apply TODAY. However, the shirt I wore TODAY is the one that got orange sunscreen stains on it. The one from yesterday is fine. I don't know why that is, but that's the status. Tomorrow I will need sunscreen again, but tomorrow I will be wearing a swimsuit and I don't care if that gets stained by my sunscreen. In this case, I'd rather have a stained swimsuit than a painful sunburn across my back and shoulders.
I can't help but wonder if it's related somehow to having had my gallbladder out last summer. I never had a problem with it before last July, around the same time I started having the really bad painful gallstone attacks. I had my gallbladder out in August, and didn't need/use sunscreen the rest of the season. Now this year I am completely without a gallbladder, and I'm still having the problem. Maybe it's a coincidence, but maybe it's not. Hard to say.

Seeking Sara Summers

Seeking Sara Summers by Susan Gabriel

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Overall, I found this to be an enjoyable book. There were several distracting instances where apostrophes were misused, and a couple of times where homonyms were mixed up, but they did not do much to detract from the story as a whole and I was able to get past them fairly quickly.


Part of what drew me to this story was the title. I am always happy to find characters with my name, spelled the way I spell it. Characters named Sarah are very common, those named Sara are hard to find. To have nothing else in common with the character is irrelevant to me - I'll read almost any book with a main character named Sara.


I do think that the jacket description gives away a little too much of the plot, which made the story itself rather predictable. Sara needs to discover who she is before she can decide what she wants, and this is Sara's journey of self-discovery. However, Sara's ultimate decision about her life, as well as her husband's revelation in the second-to-last chapter, are left as mysteries until the very end - something I really enjoyed. Keeping those two secrets until the last few pages of the book is a great way to end things.


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The Lunatic Cafe

The Lunatic Cafe (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #4) by Laurell K. Hamilton

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is the fourth book in the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series. It is less intense than the third book, but that is not to say that it is less of a story. Anita is back and doing what she always does - except that the Christmas season is slow for zombie raisings and there haven't been any vampires to execute lately. She manages to get tangled up in local Were politics, which is not fun for anyone, least of all her on-again, off-again boyfriend Richard (who is a Werewolf). The immediate mystery is solved during the course of the book, but naturally there is always the underlying overall mystery of what Anita will do with her life when she has two supernatural creatures vying for her attention. As usual, there is a lot of blood & gore, but also a lot of great one-liners. Nothing in this series is gratuitous, and each book gives us a deeper glimpse into Anita's past and why she is the way she is.


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News from the Doctor

I got a call yesterday from the doctor's office with the results of my ultrasound from May 29th. My ovaries are not overstimulated on 150 mg Clomid, and therefore I am cleared to bump it up to 200 mg Clomid next cycle. I will be on 200 mg Clomid for three months before being referred to a Reproductive Endocrinologist. I'm hoping it won't take all of that, but facts are facts and Clomid hasn't gotten me pregnant yet (though it does seem to be helping me to ovulate - or at least, to have cycles that are closer to normal in length: 37 & 35 days instead of 3-4 months).

I'm guessing that we're out for this cycle. I'm not giving up yet, but the timing of when ovulation likely occurred (I'm fairly certain it's passed) was over this past weekend, which was exceptionally busy and not exactly a time when we had any privacy.

Friend Makin' Monday

This week's task is to share 10 things you love about summer!

1. Visiting with family - it's the only time I get to see some of my extended family members.
2. Sunshine - I'm prone to sunburn but I love the sunshine.
   
3. Funny streaks in my hair from natural sun-bleaching - they make me laugh.
4. Wearing skirts without tights!
   
5. Crocs with no socks!
   
6. Watching children play at the park.
7. More daylight in each day.
8. Late evening walks.
9. Riding bicycles.
10. Wearing flip-flops.

So, how about you? What are your favorite things about summer? Please leave me a comment so I can check out your post, too! :-)

Aaron & Laura's Wedding

Today was a good day. My youngest brother-in-law, Aaron, got married to his longtime girlfriend, Laura. No confusion intended, but Jon now has two sisters-in-law named Laura. They got married in an historic church - it's small but nice and there are a lot of interesting things there, including an antique piano that I loved (it wasn't used in the ceremony).
I have no photos from during the ceremony because I was holding a sleeping baby, our nephew J. It was his first birthday and he was so excited about the wedding that he slept through the entire thing.

Aaron, the groom.

Aaron with his best man, Jeff.

Aaron with his parents, Joy and Jim.

Groomsmen watching the professional photographer take pictures of Aaron.
From left: Jeremy, Brian, Jeff, and Jon.

Decorations on the pews. Note the portraits on the wall - those are people who helped to preserve the history of the area and the buildings.

Their individual & unity candles.

Jon says, "Enjoy the Golden Shackle." Ha, ha. Very funny.

The Cake
Aaron & Laura cutting the cake together.

And the traditional smooshing of the cake into the face of your beloved. The little girl wearing a white dress and a tiara on the right is Laura's niece and the flower girl.

H with her Uncle Jon outside at the reception.

Aaron dancing with his mother - too bad she chose that moment to look away!

H dancing with the bride & groom.

Aaron dancing with H during the Dollar Dance. This is a definite improvement over Brian & Crystal's wedding two years ago, when she thought that she was paying to dance with another child that was there instead of dancing with the groom.

Laura & Dennis sharing a joke during the Dollar Dance. When Jon & I got married, Dennis was the one who made fun of Jon because Jon kept saying that my dress was too big for him to really get close to me - Dennis proved otherwise during our Dollar Dance.