Apartment Life #409

 

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.

These tiny wild flowers are popping up all over my street. After changing some things on my camera I was able to get a pretty good picture of them. They are tiny but cute. 

I spotted this ugly car across the street. 

What color is that? Flat periwinkle? Terrible. 

Maintenance drained our pool and they're filling it in with dirt. 

It took about a week, at least they put caution tape around the empty pool to warn people.

Almost filled.

Later this day they had the pool completely filled in with dirt. I guess we'll see what happens now. 

If they actually do anything with this, I'll let you know.

My new neighbor that just moved in a week ago into Xavier's (missing man) apartment, already is getting complaints against him from residents. The first complaint was all the noise all night long out in the alley. He and all his friends and girlfriends stay up all night yelling and screaming at each other. The manager gave them a noise warning. 

Then my daughter's best friend sent me this video she took of the guy's dog out offleash again. He has a big pitbull, which we aren't allowed to have that breed dog here per our lease.  The dog was running all over the courtyard. My friend had just gotten home and she couldn't open her door because she has 2 cats and was afraid the dog would run in her house or the cats would run out. The manager gave our friend her personal cell phone number and told her to call her if they were making noise in the alley at night again. So, she sent this video to the manager and the very next day, the manager put another notice on the guy's door. 

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On Wednesday I noticed one of the old spigots that still had some of the old hardware from when we had sprinklers here was turned on and broken and water was shooting 20 feet in the air.

The water was shooting up in the air and over the roof of the office. It got turned off and fixed eventually.

The high this week was 59F/15C

The low this week was 36F/2C

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

Saturday Vittles

 

My daughter and I are trying to eat healthier, so I am sharing some of the dishes that we are eating each week. 

Lunch Plates

I'm not really sure what to call these plates that we've been having for lunch. We just put a little of a few different low calorie foods on a small plate for lunch. We've been switching up what foods we eat for lunch so we have a variety of things to eat. You can change it up to suit your taste.

On this plate we had for lunch was, sliced chicken breast, Veggie Straws, raspberries, baby cucumber, radishes, black olives, green olives and blueberries. 

Each plate we have been making is about 200 calories and 10 carbs. 

Would you eat this?

Freebie Friday!

 

A picture of Falcor, just because. lol 

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.

This week I received: 

I won this Hot Chocolate gift box from a FB group giveaway. It has 4 servings of hot chocolate, 4 cookies, 6 candy canes, 2 bags of mini marshmallows and crushed candy cane sprinkles for your hot chocolate. What a great prize this is. 

Did you receive any freebies this week?

Book Review: Red's Alphas by Michelle Hercules

 

Book Description

What if Red Riding Hood didn't fall in love with one Big Bad Wolf but three?

I've been a city girl my entire life. But when my grandmother got sick, I didn't think twice before packing my bags and moving to Crimson Hollow, a small town in West Virginia. Two years later, I'm still here and finally adjusting to the quiet life. Only there's nothing ordinary about this town.

A walk in the woods proved almost deadly and left me changed forever. I was attacked by a rogue wolf, and now, I belong to the Crimson Hollow pack. I'm a shifter. To make matters worse, my arrival in the pack created a rift among the wolves, making it impossible to tell friend from foe, including the three alpha's sons who have taken a keen interest in me. If dealing with all that wasn't enough, wolves are disappearing. We must discover who is behind it, or there won’t be a pack left to fight over.

My Review

Amelia moved to Crimson Hollow after her grandmother starts to get sick. She loves her grandmother and wants to spend whatever time she has left with her. Things are going good for a couple of years and then she walks through the woods on the wrong night and get attacked by a rogue wolf shifter. Amelia doesn't know anything about wolf shifters so when the Crimson Hollow pack saves her and brings her back to her pack, all she wants to do at first is run away. The wolves weren't supposed to bring her back to their pack because the pack that bites and changes a human into a wolf shifter is supposed to bring them into their pack, if they survive the transformation at all. But these wolves didn't want to leave her to that fate. 

The only problem is, having Amelia around the Crimson Hollow pack is causing some problems in the pack because some of the other wolf shifters don't want her there. But her three alpha wolf shifters can't let her go, they all want her there and they all want her. 

Things start going on around the pack, things start changing and some of the others aren't happy about it. She's not sure if the entire pack will ever accept her and her abilities. It sounded to me like some of them were jealous of her. Amelia is different because she didn't know that she came from a family of witches so she's different from the other wolf shifters which makes for some interesting problems and makes her different. 

Tristan, Dante and Sam all want Amelia and I really liked the slow burn romance between the four of them. 

I liked the story but it ends in a cliffhanger and I really hate those so I'm not sure I'll read the next book is this series or not now. 

I give this book 3 out of 5 stars. 

Amazon

Favorite Picture of the Week

 

We had some cloudy days this week.

And then this day as the sun was setting it just looked so blue.

The blue was so pretty. 

But when the sun started setting behind the clouds, some of the blue turned red and it was so pretty. 

Book Review: Creatus by Carmen Desousa

 

Book Description

Derrick's desire to save one human girl will ignite a war...

For four thousand years, creatus have concealed themselves from the humans who hunted them almost to extinction. Unwittingly, one creatus will endanger them all...

As with most of his family, Derrick Ashton knows his future and what position he's destined to fill within his unique society. Everything changes, however, when he breaks one of his family's strictest laws and falls in love -- with a human.

In his quest to protect the woman he can never have, a twist of fate propels him into a new role that will cause dissension among his family and endanger the anonymity that they've spent thousands of years protecting.

Now, he will risk everything to save the girl from humans and his own kind. The one thing he can't save her from, however...is herself.

The Creatus series is not your normal paranormal story...it's a realistic supernatural romantic suspense based on the myths you've heard your entire life. Prepare to believe...

My Review

I love a good vampire story and this turned out to be one of the best ones I've read in quite a while. 

Kristina's life has been hard, like really hard but she believes she has a guardian angel. Only he's no angel at all. He's a vampire, one that has no business falling for a human. Vampires have kept themselves hidden from humans because they don't trust humans and know they would probably hunt them to extinction, but he can't help falling for Kristina. 

When Kristina does something to draw Derrick out, both her and Derrick's life take on a totally different twist because they shouldn't be together, it's forbidden but that isn't going to stop either of them in the end. Derrick already knows her because he's been watching out for her for a long time. He seemed a little like a stalker at first to me. 

I really liked the world building and some back story, it made this story easier to read. The characters were great. I am looking forward to seeing what happens to all of them in the next book because I will definitely be reading more of this series at some point. 

This was seriously so entertaining to read and I loved the romance between them. I can't wait to read more now. 

I give this book 5 out of 5 stars. 

Amazon

Happy Raturday!

 

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

Apartment Life #408

 

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.

An ambulance showed up for someone in the building next to me. No cops showed up so I'm thinking it was a medical emergency. 

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This is what my old Air Conditioner looked like. I asked the manager for a new one because this thing was soooo noisy last year. It squeaked, clanged and froze up all the time. And it leaked water into the wall that spilled out and soaked my carpet twice last year. Plus the maintenance man who put this is, secured around it with ugly tape. lol It was terrible. 

So on Thursday maintenance came out and removed the old AC, boarded up the hole that was left there. Spackled it, so it looked like the hole was never there. 

And installed one of the new, quiet AC's. Oh, this thing makes no noise in my apartment because the motor is on the roof. Another blogger told me this was called a Mini-split AC, Thank you for letting me know what this was called. I love the new AC. 

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I told you a couple of weeks ago that maintenance started installing nighttime lights all over the property, so that it would discourage any drug activity and anyone from sleeping around the property at night.  So I took some night pictures to show you the difference after the lights were up. It's pretty dark around the complex.

Down the street.

My complex is on the right. The street lights light it up some but not a lot. 

This is what it looks like now with all the lights on. It's very bright out around my complex now. 

The lights are spaced out about every 20 feet. All the way down the street.

It's not dark anymore. Some of the crackheads across the street are already saying how they are going to break some of the lights.

Well, as fast as they are doing things around here, I bet they fix any broken lights fast.

Maintenance hasn't completed any of the things they are doing right now except for the lights. They are still putting in new decorative rocks, painting the buildings, filling in the pool with dirt and doing maintenance. Hopefully their bosses let them finish some of these things before telling them to change something else. But the lights aren't all that bad. If it discourages people from doing drugs in the dark around here and sleeping in the corners, I guess that's a good thing. 

The high this week was 69F/20C

The low this week was 47F/8C

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

Saturday Vittles

 

My daughter and I are trying to eat healthier, so I am sharing some of the dishes that we are eating each week. 

Tilapia, Green Beans and Salad

We like seafood and found that the pre-portioned frozen Tilapia is only 100 calories for a small fillet. So that's what we used for this dinner. My daughter used some tarter sauce with hers, my plate didn't have the tarter sauce on it. You don't realize how many calories that condiments have until you start counting calories. I used no-calorie cooking spray to cook the Tilapia with. Season your fish however you like. I used Old Bay, smoked paprika, McCormick Mesquite seasoning and lemon juice.

We cheated a little bit and used canned green beans because the store I went to didn't have fresh green beans but the can of green beans was only 20 calories for 1/2 cup. sounded good to me. Then we made salad to go with it. The salad had cucumbers, sliced mushrooms, avocado, and I used my fat free Ranch that only has 35 calories for 2 TBSP serving. 

This dinner was 200 calories and 10 carbs. 

Do you like avocado in your salad?

Freebie Friday! And Happy Friday the 13th

 

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.

This week I received:

2 Men's cologne samples from Macy's. They smelled good.

I received a free Healthy Snack Box- I commented on one of their posts on Fb and won a free box from them. They give away 100 free boxes a day to people who comment. 

In the box was: 

Belvita bites

Nature Valley granola bar

Nutri grain bar

Special K strawberry pastry crisps

Pirates Booty white cheddar popcorn

Simply Cheetos white cheddar

Planters nuts

Snyder's pretzels

There were so many good snacks in the box. My daughter and grandson enjoyed them too.

I also received this whimsical candle and spinning butterfly top from a FB group where I won a contest and this was my mystery prize.

Falcor received 3 different Blue Buffalo treats from Ripple Street for free. He liked all the treats.

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Happy Friday the 13th and the day before Valentine's Day

Since my daughter and I are both single we decided to exchange Valentine's baskets with each other. The basket I made and gave her is on the left and the one she made and gave me is on the right. This was fun. We plan on doing it again next year.