Embarrassing confessions

I have a confession to make.  I am a celebrity "novel" junky.  I've read it all from Perez Hilton to the Kardashians and let me just say, some are totally worth it, while others should get new ghost writers.  I've even gone as far as gifting someone (who will remain nameless for her own protection) Spencer and Heidi's "book." Your Welcome (to those of you who I didn't send this book for the gift of not having to forever explain why it's in your collection, and to that special someone who received it -  I know it's been enjoyed).

Some of my past favorites include Kendra Wilkinson's Sliding into Home (like you've never wondered what goes on in the playboy mansion!!  And it's worse!), and Perez Hilton's Red Carpet Suicide: A Survival Guide on Keeping up with the Hiltons (say what you want about him, but this book is hilariously true).

However, today I read a book that rocked my celeb loving world.  Let me introduce you to Tina Fey's Bossypants.  It is absolutely one of the best books I've ever read.  I don't care if you aren't into reading (or whatever), don't like 30 Rock, or have a "thing" against funny books - Go out and buy a copy.  Who cares how much it costs!  Do it!

I love this book on so many different levels.  I love it as a woman.  I love it as a fan of her work.  I love it as a fan of comedy.  I love it as a fan of reading.  And I love it as a fan of equality.  And I assure you you don't need to feel the same about all of these things as I do.  You WILL find something you love about this book.

So in conclusion yes, I have read Kardashian Konfidential (and it is the worst book known to man), but I promise you I'm right about this.  To make it easier for you, I'm including direct amazon links to my favorite celeb books.  Buy them!






It's funnier if you read his blog before he "changed" into a better person, but still good even if you just follow celebrity gossip.  Plus it's cheap.  Like real cheap.











What initially drew me to this book was the curiosity of a ridiculously old man having a ridiculous number of girlfriends, and while you will find the answer to all those gross mansion questions, you'll also probably be surprised that it's a pretty good book.  The best part about it is that you get to learn about Kendra without having to deal with that obnoxious laugh.









 This one's the kicker.  Like I said, worth every penny.  Without a doubt in my all time top five books I've ever read.  Please do yourself a favor (especially if you're a female, but it would be excellent education for males too), and buy this book.  Now.  The link is right there.  Super easy.






After being inspired by this read, I think I'm going to move on to Chelsea Handler and Ellen Degeneres.  Keep an eye out for how those fair on my list of celeb novel endeavors, now that I'm officially out.

Do you secretly read trashy celeb books, too?  What's your favorite? Have a different embarrassing (yet still PG-13) confession?  You know what to do.

Day trip to Massachusetts take two!

On our second day of Massachusetts adventuring, we headed out to Springfield - the city of firsts.  Just for fun you should look up Springfield, MA's wikipedia page.  The number of things invented in this town is just ridiculous.  What first drew us to Springfield was a conversation we had with a bartender in Glens Falls.  She had shared with us that it was her grandson's birthday, so she was taking him to the MA city for the weekend to visit the Dr. Seuss Memorial Gardens.  Upon hearing this I was instantly devastated that I hadn't heard of it earlier, and beyond sad that we'd run out of time to go ourselves.  "Luckily," the navy must have been listening, and granted us the opportunity to visit! (Silver lining, anyone?)

After some research we found out that they have what they call a museum "quadrangle," where you pay one flat fee ($12.50 a person, or $10.75 with military discount) to visit five museums in one day.  Of course we couldn't pass up a deal like this, and it made driving an hour just to see statues of Dr. Seuss characters more reasonable.  

Being a Green Eggs and Ham enthusiast, a picture with Sam-I-am was the highlight of the trip for me, but it was all pretty amazing.  The statues are excellent, and watching the excited kids run around the main characters of their favorite books is a great way to spend the afternoon.  As for the museums themselves, we only actually visited two - because of time, and because one was closed for repairs.  The Science/Natural history combo museum was by far our favorite.  It started out a little shaky with some rough exhibits of taxidermied animals, but by the end we more than enjoyed our time there. 

Life size T-Rex in the dinosaur exhibit!

The second museum we visited was the art museum.  It was definitely less than stellar.  Our biggest complaints were the lack of original art (nearly everything in their main room was a replica of the original piece), the lack of definition between Japanese and Chinese exhibits (they were mixed in all together, without information cards to let us know what was what), and that the majority of the museum was under construction until 2014!  The highlight was actually the architecture and detailed woodwork of the building itself.  Since one museum was closed all together (the Connecticut Valley History museum that houses the actual Dr. Seuss Exhibit :( ), and the art museum was pretty torn apart, we probably would have been upset had the tickets cost any more. 

Since we were starving and the regular art museum had major shortcomings, we decided to skip the modern art museum and find somewhere to eat.  Unfortunately, Springfield was majorly a little rougher around the edges than we had expected, and nearly everything in town was either closed or boarded up, so we went out on a limb and decided to stop in Hartford to eat on our way home instead!

Colin throwing up his "spud" gang sign :)

The only thing we really knew about Hartford is what we had heard on the news, which was gangs, gangs, gangs, and more gangs.  Nearly every time we turn it on (both in CT and NY) there is something about gang violence in Hartford, but we figured there had to be some good parts somewhere.  After a quick check of my foursquare app on my brand new iphone (woo!), we decided to eat at a hamburger restaurant called Plan B.  We figured it was fitting considering this was our literal "plan B" for the day.  Not to mention the reviews were nothing short of "this is the best burger I've ever had" etc. etc. 

After sitting down to order our plan b burgers, we found that those reviews were more than accurate.  These burgers are so good they could turn even the strictest vegetarians back to meat (I'm looking at you, Ms. Ross!).  Not only do they make their own ground beef in house, but they also use all natural free range meat (see picture below), and it definitely pays off.  We were more than pleasantly surprised.  It was definitely a risk we were glad we had taken. 

That pretty much concludes our memorial day weekend!  We took today to catch up on some reading and relax before closing out the evening with Kung Fu Panda 2 (Colin loves him some Kung Fu Panda).  It's getting so warm here that we actually had to use the AC in our room today, which is something we definitely didn't pack for, and the cat's surely weren't ready for (as seen in the picture below :D), but we're still loving the sunshine.  Here's to hoping this week yields some answers about our future!! Keep your fingers crossed!

Click in to see more pictures of us frolicking around the Dr. Seuss gardens!

On the Same Page Saturday!

Welcome to the first official On the Same Page Saturday!  As a reminder, this month's book is Emily Giffin's Something Borrowed.  This first set of questions (found after the jump as to not spoil anything) is taken from pages 1-100.  Next week we'll be exploring the next hundred, and so on and so forth until we finish the book! Feel free to leave your responses (or questions of your own) in the comments.  (If you've been reading the blog, but haven't gotten involved yet, this is a great way to start!)

A face lift and falling behind

Welcome to the new and improved A day in the life!  Along with this awesome face lift, I have a confession to make - I totally dropped the ball on On the Same Page Saturday yesterday.  To be completely honest, I haven't even gotten around to starting the book yet.  After a few too many chapters of Lego Harry Potter, I forgot all about the chapters I should have been reading!  That being said, I promise promise promise we'll start next Saturday.  No excuses.  On the plus side, it gives everyone more time to try and get the book!  If you don't want to go the amazon route, it can probably be found at a fairly good price at used book stores.  And of course, for free at your local library! 

Today is Coupon Sunday (doubly good because it's the first of the month), and after stopping at six different places (cvs, hannaford, cumberland, price chopper, sonoco, and stewerts), I couldn't find a Times Union to save my life!  I couldn't be sadder.  They were sold out everywhere.  I did find one at stewerts, but after I bought it and brought it home I found out that someone had already stolen the 5, I repeat, FIVE coupon inserts that were supposed to be there this week :(  Talk about major disappointment.  I've thought about possibly buying them on ebay, but I've never paid for coupons outside of the paper before, and I don't really want to start now.

To try and cheer myself up, I went on my second bike ride of the day to Crandell park where they were celebrating Relay for Life.  They had a band on stage and a bunch of booths with little chotchkies all benefiting the cause.  Being that it's such a gorgeous day here in upstate New York, the turn out was actually really great.  The best part was that nearly everyone walked to get there.  Both the YMCA and park parking lots had more than half of their spaces available!  I mostly just sat in the grass and people watched until it started getting a little chilly and road home.

The inspector from the moving company gets here tomorrow (yay!) and then I've got to kick it into high gear in preparation for the actual movers, so posting might be few and far between this week.  But!  Make sure to look out for Guest Blogger Tuesday and a new Navy post coming your way soon!

On the Same Page Saturdays!

Starting this Saturday, I'm going to be integrating a new series into the blog: On the Same Page Saturdays!  Each month (or every two weeks depending on length) there will be a book that we can all read together.  On Saturday, I'll post some book club questions and we can all discuss in the comments.  The more people that play along, the better!  So after some careful consideration (and finally completing one of her other novels), the first book we're going to be reading is...

Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin!  I recently read Love the One You're With, and thoroughly enjoyed it by the end.  In honor of the movie coming out, I thought this would be a fun one to start with. It's fairly inexpensive at Amazon, so follow the link, order your copy, and lets get reading!

I'll be posting the first set of questions on Saturday, but feel free to leave suggestions for the next book we should read in the comments.  No genre is off limits, and it doesn't have to be something you've read - anything goes!