Happy Raturday!

 

"We've been counting down the days until Halloween all month"

"Still counting down the days until Halloween."

*All pictures this week are courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

Apartment Life #542

 

This is a weekly blog post that I'm calling Apartment Hell  Life. I've mentioned a few times some of the crazy things that have gone on in and around my apartment complex and in my neighborhood in the past 27 years that I've lived here and people keep telling me I should write a book. But instead of a book, I've decided to share the crazy things that have happened in and around my apartment complex in the last 27 years here in a weekly blog post.

On Wednesday night about 12:24AM I heard a gunshot. It was close, I had my bedroom window open and it was loud. Sounded like it came from across the street. I would have called the police but all they do is drive by when I call. So why bother. 

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One morning I heard 2 police officers talking while they were walking up and down my street. I took the dog out and got this picture. They kept walking back and forth on my street looking at the rocks. I don't know if they were looking for spend shells from a bullet or blood drops. I have no idea. I never heard if anyone got shot or hurt from the gunshot I heard that night. Usually people talk around here if something like that happens and no one was talking so I don't think anyone did.

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The high this week was 83F/28C

The low this week was 66F/18C

So that's it for this week's Apartment Hell  Life! Be sure to come back next week for more.

Saturday Vittles

 

Air Fryer Chickpea Salad

You will need:

1 can of chickpeas- drained and rinsed

1 cucumber- chopped into bite size pieces

1 cup cherry tomatoes- cut in half

1 cup sliced black olives

Juice from 1 lemon

1/4 cup diced cilantro

1 avocado- chopped into bite size pieces

No calorie cooking spray

1/2 tsp. McCormick Montreal Steak seasoning

1/2 tsp. McCormick Mesquite seasoning

Satt to taste

What to do: 

Add chickpeas to a large bowl. Spray the chickpeas with the cooking spray. Add the seasoning and toss. Add to air fryer basket and cook at 300F for 10-15 minutes. Remove and put in refrigerator to cool. 

Add everything else to a bowl and toss with the lemon juice. When the chickpeas are cooled, add them to the bowl, toss and serve. I served this with chicken as a side dish.

Makes 4 servings

Each serving is 200 calories

We had leftovers of this and I ate this for lunch too. 

Freebie Friday!

 

Welcome to another weekly Freebie Friday post, where I tell you what free samples and full-sized products I received in the mail and how you can get them too. Someone asked me why I do a "Freebie Friday" each week, so I'll tell you.

A while back I listed all the free samples and wins that I had received that previous year and so many people didn't believe that I could have gotten so many free things.  I decided to prove it by taking a picture every week and sharing the sites that I found the links to the freebies at. So now you too can get great free samples coming to your mailbox each week.

  You can find links to great samples at Hey It's Free and Freebie Shark.

A couple of weeks ago, I received a virtual Prepaid Mastercard from a class action lawsuit settlement. $37.42 was the amount. That's one of the biggest ones I've gotten. I had forgotten to post the screen shot I took of the email they sent me. lol 

I also got a mini can of Pringles and perfume from Macys. 

Did you receive any freebies this week?

Book Review: Rescue Me by Kelly Collins

 

Book Description

A small-town mill owner in over her head. A construction boss with a plan to save her. And a business partnership that turns personal fast.

Carla "Carl" Stevenson has been running the family lumber mill in overalls and steel-toed boots since before she could drive. Now the market has tanked, her brother wants to sell, and a corporate developer is circling Frazier Falls with plans to bulldoze the town for cattle farming. She'd rather go down swinging than hand over her family's legacy.

Owen Cooper has been buying lumber from "Carl" for years. He never realized Carl was a woman. 

When he meets Carla, she's everything he didn't expect: tough, stubborn, and completely unimpressed by his reputation. He's got an ambitious eco-building project that could save the mill, and she's got the lumber supply to make it work. All they have to do is trust each other.

That's the hard part. Carla doesn't trust charmers, and Owen has never given a woman a reason to stick around. But the more time they spend together, the more their business arrangement starts to feel like something neither of them planned for.

With a corporate shark playing dirty and the future of their town on the line, Owen and Carla will have to decide if they're partners, or something more.

My Review

This is the first book from this author that I've read but I know I want to read more now. 

Carla and her brother run the family lumber mill. Carla has been selling the Cooper brother's lumber for years, but most of them know Carla as Carl and never knew that the person they'd been buying from was a woman. Carla and her brother, Rich are trying to figure out a way to keep the lumber mill going after their parents passed away but it's hard. After Carla and Owen meet, they come up with a way to keep the lumber mill afloat because the lumber mill closing would hurt the Cooper brother's business as well. 

There's a bad guy who offers to buy the lumber mill, but his offer isn't good and they think his intentions aren't good for the town or its people. 

The Cooper brothers have been buying lumber from the lumber mill for years but the brothers thought it was run by two brothers. So when Owen has to show up to the mill to fix an order in person, he's very surprised to find out that Carl is actually Carla.

Owen has plans for a Green House Project, but he has debilitating panic attacks and needs someone to do the talking to the investors. He and Carla come to an understanding so they can help each other out of the bind they're in. 

Rich, Carla's brother wanted to sell the Mill, and he acted like a jerk because Carla wanted to wait until the end of the month they were given by the buyer to think things over. Rich, acted like a grade A jerk for too long and I didn't like it one bit. But he does eventually come around. 

I really liked this sweet romance between Owen and Carla. They like each other from the start and need each other's help which brings them closer together. As they get to know one another, the spark just ignites for them, and it was fun to watch. Owen's brothers made me laugh quite a bit. I need to read the other books in this series now. 

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.

Amazon

Favorite Picture of the Week- Hurricane Rachel

 

Friday, the clouds started moving in. This was around 6AM or 6:30AM. I was out there for a while waiting to see how the color in the clouds would change, because look at this! It was so pretty. That darker cloud reminded me of an alien invasion movie scene though. lol 

Saturday Sunrise. 

Then during Saturday the clouds started moving in later that day. It rained really hard all night and I slept through all of it. LOL 

Sunday morning. Lots of clouds and it rained on and off all day. The weather people kept saying that the remnants of hurricane Rachel was going to bring thunderstorms and heavy rain over the weekend and into Monday and it did. 

My courtyard flooded overnight on Saturday. The water was ankle deep in the alley.

You see that line on the wall? That's how high the water got overnight Saturday night and into Sunday morning. It was at least a foot high. 

That smaller block wall in front of the gate is the wall I showed in the last picture. The water was rushing both down on the bottom near the sidewalk and on top where the fence in part is. 

You can see the path all that water took down that little hill and onto the sidewalk and street. It displaced some of the rocks and sent them onto the sidewalk and into the street.

*Yep, that's my Clown Motel apartment building in the background.*

One of the nearly dead trees across the street fell over in the wind Saturday night. 

It was darn near dead and probably should have been removed. 

There were a lot of clouds Sunday, Monday and Tuesday but no more rain. This was Sunday night's sunset. 

Monday, lots of clouds but no rain. 

People in Las Vegas were sharing this. lol 

Book Review: The Bad Seed by Kate Yazowski

 

Book Description

Derek nodded as something caught his eye off to the left on Barlow. “Let’s check that out.” he said and swung the car onto the shoulder just as a shot rang out and the windshield cracked. “Get down!” Derek shouted and keyed the radio. “Shots fired 1204 Barlow road. Request back up.”

“Copy that squad one. All units, all units. Shots fired 1204 Barlow Road. Officers involved are pinned down. Approach code three.”

A movement ahead to their right forced both men to fire in that direction. The sharp pain of the impact sends Derek flat to the ground. Greg rolled over and emptied his gun into the darkness.

“Officer down! Officer down! 10-13 Chief is hit. Officer down! Officer down! We’ve been ambushed, repeat we’ve been ambushed!!”

In prowl car three Randy grabbed the microphone. ROLL EMS! ROLL EMS! 1204 Bartlow Road. Approach with caution shots fired OFFICER DOWN REPEAT OFFICER DOWN!”

My Review

Derek Landly chief of police in a small town. Two new cops get hired on, one named Greg. Greg makes people feel a bit off center and they think he gives off a creepy vibe, but he seems to be a good cop.

Ralph Wendell Homles and Henry Patrick Collins escaped from prison, they are both doing time for murder, and were believed to be armed and dangerous. The town of Heaven went on high alert when they escaped and soon after all hell breaks loose. 

The new police office, Greg was on patrol with Derek when they found the convicts. Right away one of the escapees opens fire on the two officers. They were able to get out of that situation and call in the state troopers to get the dogs, choppers and more manpower to find the escapees. They get away and are still on the loose.

Days later Derek and Greg were again shot at this time though, Derek is hit and ends up in the hospital. No one is sure he's going to make it. Questions arise about the shooting, who shot Derek? An investigation ensues and there are a lot of unanswered questions about the shooting. 

Derek and some of the other officers thought Greg was a little off, a bit different than the rest of them and it had them feeling weird. What they didn't know was just how weird Greg was. He had secrets, big secrets. Greg is behind some of the weird things going on in the office as well. 

Could a fellow officer really be behind the attempted murder of the police chief, twice? And if so, why? Did Derek do something to make Greg feel vindictive, is he a psychopath or just a bad seed? 

This book had me on the edge of my seat right away, I couldn't put this book down and read it in one sitting. This is more than just a murder mystery or a police procedural, it's a close look at how a cold stone killer picks his target, acts on it all the while acting like everything is normal until the moment he gets caught. I highly recommend this book. 

I give this book 5 out of 5 stars. 

Amazon

Halloween Decorations

 

So, if you've been visiting my blog for a while, you know we decorate for Halloween. So here are some of the decorations. 

And yes, that's the cabin from Friday the 13th's, Camp Crystal Lake. I bought the cabin years ago. 

Of course there's at least one rat.

Oogie Boogie.

The cover for our lamp disintegrated but it looks creepy for Halloween month so we haven't replaced it yet. LOL 

The lights in the living room window change from purple, to orange.

I have Copilot on my laptop (it came with it) so I asked it to take a picture of me and put me into a Halloween themed picture. Why did it *enhance* my chest and make it bigger? LOL I liked the picture, so I kept it. 

Do you decorate for Halloween?