Apartment Life! #4

This is a new weekly blog post that I'm calling Apartment Hell  Life. I've mentioned a few times some of the crazy things that go on in and around my apartment complex and people keep telling me I should write a book. But instead of a book, I've decided to share the crazy things that happen in and around my apartment complex here in a weekly blog post. 

This week I'm going to show you a couple of the strange things I've seen. 

That's a bouncy house in my courtyard. There are 16 apartments in this courtyard and the mother set this up every day for a month. The kids were crazy loud and to me this was just rude as hell. You don't do stuff like this right in front of other people's doors. After people complained to the manager a lot, it was finally taken down and not set up again. 

Then there was the guy who set up a tent in front of his apartment door. He and his 3 dogs slept out there a couple of nights. I have no idea why. Maybe he wanted to go camping.

Then there was the time that a little bunny hopped over to Ken while he was standing in the alley. We would have kept him because he was super sweet but my daughter was very allergic to him. So we found him a home with a couple who had other rabbits and had big rabbit hutches set up for them in their back yard. Ken said the rabbits were running around in their back yard and then at night they were put in the hutches to keep them safe and so sleep. 

We loved the bunny, especially my daughter because he always wanted to be held but she was so allergic. Poor thing.

We don't have a lot of tree's around here besides the Pine tree's since we live in the desert but on the bike path that is right next door to my apartment complex there are some metal tree's. lol 

That's my apartment complex and the bike path from the previous picture is literally 5 feet to the left in this picture. 

So a few years ago I was out taking the dog for a walk and saw these two guys pulling a fully loaded shopping cart up the bike path. One guy has a bicycle hooked to the front of it and is trying to pull it along. 

Most of those bags on the cart are filled with cans and he stopped along the bike path, emptied out a bunch of the bags and stomped on them and put them back in the bags so that the bags are smaller. We found out later that they are room mates and lived in the apartment complex down the street from us. They were taking the cans down to the recycling center. I hope they got a good chunk of money for all their work. 

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

Favorite Video of the Week

Since we just had Thanksgiving, I thought it would be fun to see what others thought of Thanksgiving food. I thought this was so darn funny.

Freebie Friday!

Welcome to another edition of Freebie Friday, 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. So 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 boxes of Replens moisturizer and A coupon for a free box of Root Touch Up Hair Dye from SampleSource.

I now have 5 boxes of the Replens moisturizer in my cabinet. The freebie places sure like to give these away. I will say that it does the job it's made for and it doesn't have a bad scent to it.

I don't color my hair anymore so I gave the coupon to my daughter since she does. Make sure to sign up for SampleSource so the next time they have samples available you'll receive an email reminder.

Did you receive any freebies this week?

Recipe: Shredded Chicken Salad

What you'll need

1 large chicken breast

1 celery stalk, diced

1/2 cup fresh corn

2 green onions, diced

3 TBSP cilantro, diced

2 tomatoes, chopped

2 cups chopped lettuce

What to do

Season the chicken breast with salt and pepper and roast in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes or until cooked through. Let cool and then shred it with a fork. 

Add all ingredients to a large bowl and toss well. Serve with your favorite salad dressing. 

I made a large bowl of this for dinner earlier this month and Ken and I both liked this. I just threw together what I had on hand at the time and it came out good. Next time I'll make sure to have some avocado for this this though. I think that would have made it even better. 

What's your favorite kind of salad?

Favorite Picture of the Week

While my daughter was over last week, Falcor fell asleep while she held him. Awww He loves my daughter.

Review: Fierce Obsession by Suzanne Wright

Book Description

When raven shifter Riley Porter was given sanctuary by the Phoenix Pack, she let them believe she had left her flock. Reluctant to divulge the secrets of her past, she was still embraced as family. Only Tao Lukas, the protective and passionate Head Enforcer of the pack, was resistant to the enigmatic shifter. Until Riley started to arouse in him something other than suspicion.

Tao doesn’t trust lone shifters, especially ones so guarded—and tempting. But the sexual tension between them is making them both come undone, and vulnerable to more than desire. All Tao wants is for Riley to stay with him and to trust him with the truth of her past.

As Riley’s mysteries come to light, so does a danger that threatens not only her life but the safety of the entire pack. For Tao, keeping Riley safe means keeping her close—forever—as his mate.

My Review 

I am totally reading this series out of order but only because when I found this book it was free on Amazon at the time so I grabbed it. Unfortunately last time I looked it was no longer free so I'm glad I was able to get it when I did. 

Riley is a raven shifter and she's been keeping her distance from most of the pack even though they treat her well. Tao didn't trust her right away but now that he knows more about her he feels better about her and it doesn't hurt that he's attracted to her. 

Riley gets invited back to her flock for her uncle's anniversary, they are very happy to see her but a couple of the people there aren't and made sure she knew it. While there some drama happens and she has a close encounter with death. Up until this point it was obvious that Riley and Tao had the hots for each other but the emotional connection just didn't feel all that deep until Tao almost loses her. That's when the feel of this story changed and took on new deeper, emotional turn. 

There's also some drama from a drug lord that wants something from the Tao's pack but he's not getting his way and it's made him more than a little angry. 

I really liked how this story moved along. The pace was fast but not rushed and I felt like I really got to know Riley and Tao as well as several of the members of her flock. Some of them I liked and some of them I didn't. 

It really didn't come as a shock to me who was behind all the problems with Riley's flock but some of the secrets that came out were a great twist to the story. There were a couple of editing mistakes that made me read and re-read a few lines about her parents being only children only to talk about her uncle a few lines later. She can't have an uncle if both of her parents had no siblings. But the rest of the story was quite good.

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars. 

Happy Raturday!

*Picture courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

"You no hold dis. Whole thing is mine!"

*Picture courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

"Mom lets me lick the spoon when she's cooking."

*Picture courtesy of Rambling Ratz*

"Dis thing is too hard to cuddle wiff."

*Picture courtesy of Jin Wicked* 

*Picture courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

"Mom made me a plate of thanksgiving goodies."

Apartment Life! #3

**First, let me apologize for not stopping by any blogs for the past few days. I caught a cold that has had me down for a few days but I'm hoping to visit a few blogs today. It's been a crazy week.**

This is a new weekly blog post that I'm calling Apartment Hell  Life. I've mentioned a few times some of the crazy things that go on in and around my apartment complex and people keep telling me I should write a book. But instead of a book, I've decided to share the crazy things that happen in and around my apartment complex here in a weekly blog post. 

This week I'm gonna share something scary... Fire. Living in an apartment, fire is something that I think we all think about. We've had a couple of trash can fires, 3 of the smaller bushes have caught on fire but we have fire extinguishers and the tenants were fast at getting those out thankfully. Then a few years ago we heard loud booms going off in the back alley. Turns out one of the cars in the alley had caught fire and the booms we heard were the car tires exploding. 

  

Thankfully the fire department got here and put the fire out before the fire spread to the apartment building.

The smoke, fire and exploding tires brought out a lot of the people who live here and we watched the fire department put the fire out.

Fire is not something you want around your home, that's for sure. 

And this week the police showed up in my courtyard again for a domestic disturbance but the people refused to open their door. 

I took this picture through my screen door which is why it's hard to make out but that's one of the police officers standing at their door knocking on it. They left a few minutes later since no one answered the door.

That's all for this week's Apartment Hell  Life! Come back next week for more.

Favorite Video of the Week

I found this entirely too funny. Especially the hamster and mouse.

Freebie Friday!

Welcome to another edition of Freebie Friday, 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. So 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 sample pouches of VetriScience calming chews for dogs.
A pack of trident Gum-Spearmint flavor.

The dog chews don't seem to calm my dog down at all but he eats them so it's a little treat. I've always liked trident gum so a win for me.

Did you get any freebies this week?

Happy Thanksgiving

To my friends here in the US, Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope you have lots of good food today. 

My dad, stepmother, daughter and grandson will be here celebrating with Ken and I today. 

Favorite Picture of the Week

Ken got 4 new legs for the couch and they were taller by about 3 inches so our couch isn't so low to the ground anymore. So while he was putting them on, Falcor kept busy trying to help. When Falcor first saw the new legs sitting on the table he started barking at them until Ken put them on the floor for him to inspect. lol 

And this is what my couch looks like now. smh

Yeah it's higher which is easier to get up from my it now looks like someone had no idea what they were doing when they put legs on this thing. LOL Ken doesn't read my blog so I can say that. Heh. Oh and my daughter and grandson came over for dinner the other night and Falcor sat there looking at Logan's plate while Logan didn't look too thrilled with dinner. 

Review: Married To The Cyborg by Cara Bristol

Book Description

Glitz. Glamour. Kidnapping.

Anyone who is anyone attends the annual Association of Planets gala, the largest, fanciest soiree in the galaxy.

Escorted by her husband Brock, Penelope “Pia” Aaron attends the event to mix and mingle with the galaxy’s power elite to further her career as an AOP ambassador.

Brock Mann isn’t there to serve as his wife’s plus-one.

A cyborg and a field agent with the covert force Cyber Operations, Brock knows the glitzy, glamorous evening isn’t going to end happily for one individual. An intercepted partial communique has revealed that one gala attendee will kidnapped. Who the intended victim is, why the person is being taken and by whom—that’s what Cy-Ops must find out to stop the abduction

And then Pia is taken.

Without knowing who or why she was targeted, Brock must race against the clock to find his wife before she’s killed.

Saving the girl and the galaxy just got personal.

Married to the Cyborg is an exclusive Cy-Ops Sci-fi Romance, available only to subscribers of Cara Bristol's author newsletter. To subscribe, visit the author's website: carabristol.com.

My Review 

I read a couple of this authors books and liked them so I subscribed to her newsletter and I received this book for free. That was a nice surprise. 

This book is about two characters in one of this authors series and since I hadn't read that series I wasn't familiar with them but this is a stand alone novella and I didn't need to be familiar with them in order to enjoy this book or understand what's happening. 

Pia is mingling at a gala when her husband, Brock tells her to be careful. Something is up but he's not allowed to tell her what. Someone is going to be kidnapped but the cyborg's don't know who until it's too late. 

When Pia is kidnapped and they find out who the kidnapper is, they are shocked. There's a lot happening in this short novella but it was a good story. Good story line and a great twist thrown in. 

I give this book 3 out of 4 stars.

Happy Raturday!

*Picture courtesy of Cindy Rogers*

"Snacks are life and nommy"

"Picture courtesy of martymousehouse.com"

*Picture courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

"Ok cat, I'll share my noms with you."

*Picture courtesy of Jin Wicked*

Apartment Life #2

This is a new weekly blog post that I'm calling Apartment Hell  Life. I've mentioned a few times some of the crazy things that go on in and around my apartment complex in the past 20 years that we'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 20 years here in a weekly blog post. 

This week I thought I would show you some apartment maintenance. Or at least how my apartment complex takes care of apartment maintenance. 

It rained one night and the next morning the overhang in front of a couple of apartments had detached and was ready to fall down. Instead of bringing the whole things down they decided to take wood and prop it up until the next day when maintenance got here and fixed it. It was quite dangerous and could have fallen on someone.

These are just a couple of cracks in the over hangs over the walk ways and instead of fixing it, they had someone come out and put in staples and paint over it. 

They got paint all over the walk ways when they did it.

Sometimes when an apartment is vacant, they will take the air conditioners out and put them in other apartments if the AC goes out. Instead of putting a board over the huge hole, they left it open for weeks and we let the manager know that homeless people were crawling into the apartments through the holes and spending the weekends there. 

This might be one of the reasons that the overhangs gets soaked through and fall down. They hadn't cleaned the gutters for 3 years. That's pine needles from the pine tree's. 

We only have someone come by once a week and pick up trash from the complex so this shopping cart and other trash ends up staying where kids and people throw it until the grounds people come and remove it.

These pictures are taken right out my bedroom window. This black sludge is raw sewage leaking right out of the sewer pipe that the plumbers use to snake out our apartment building's pipes when they back up.

I had the smell of raw sewage coming in through my bedroom window even with it closed, for the entire weekend because the apartment manager wouldn't answer her emergency phone or door on the weekends. She says she has the weekends off and unless the place is burning down, don't bother her. She wouldn't even answer the phone.

So Monday morning Ken told her and the maintenance man about the problem and she called the plumber but she had no intentions of cleaning up the raw sewage that had already leaked out under my window, so Ken was out there with a shovel and bucket and was shoveling it up.

The bad thing was it's not even the only time it happened. The sewer pipes for this entire complex are really old and they back up all the time. If you look closely at the bottom right hand side of this picture you can see the black pipe that had a broken cap on it that the sewage leaked out from. This happened several times before they got a cap that fit this pipe. Then last year the bigger pipe in the alley overflowed with so much sewage that someone called the news and they came out and interviewed people here about it because it went on all weekend again before the plumber was called out to fix it. 

So that's all for this week. Come back next week for more Apartment Hell  Life!

Favorite Video of the Week

I've seen a few of these but this one is funny. At some point the kid has to be thinking something is up, I know I would.

Freebie Friday!

Welcome to another edition of Freebie Friday, 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. So 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 Gillette Treo razors
Several Promise Cards
A $5 Amazon gift card from Crowdtap
A prize pack of a signed copy of Pets in Space 2, book mark, toy robot, sticker and tote bag from Author Veronica Scott from a contest she held on FB.

I haven't read the book yet because I'm getting my pace ready for Thanksgiving and it's a huge book, over 800 pages. So I'll need a couple of days to read it.

That's a lot of reading.

Did you receive any freebies this week?

Review: Beautiful Prick by Sophia Kenzie

Book Description

I’m a production assistant for a major movie studio, and I happen to be damn good at my job. So how the hell did I end up as his personal assistant?

Johnny Braylock—even his name makes him sound like a total prick.

He thinks his chiseled abs, massively broad shoulders, rock-hard biceps, and movie star smile can get him whatever he wants…and rumor has it, the tool he’s packing in his pants gets him any girl he wants.

I used to have the biggest crush on him. It was an embarrassing crush. It was one of those crushes where I had a giant poster of him in my bedroom, and I used to tell my mother that one day I would marry him…

That’s before I actually met the 6’1’’ two-hundred pound Welsh God face to face. That’s before he opened his mouth and revealed his true "alpha male", cocky, asshole self. Apparently, because he’s an ex-marine, a gorgeous movie star, and an MMA fighter means I’m supposed to worship the ground he walks on.

Despite being my teenage movie star crush, the man drives me absolutely, positively nuts. I hate him. It’s quite possible that I hate him more than I’ve hated anyone in my entire life. I hate him twenty-three hours of the day. 

It’s that freaking twenty-fourth hour that gets me every time. Why the hell is he so beautiful? Why is his accent so sexy? Why do his insults simultaneously sting and make my body react in unspeakable ways?

And why the hell do I keep coming back…and back…and back for more.

Beautiful Prick is a full-length contemporary new adult romance novel. It’s intended for mature readers, contains harsh language and adult content, no cliff hanger.

My Review

Caroline meets up with her teenage crush, Johnny Braylock while she's a production assistant. She's excited to have met him until she's informed she's now his personal assistant and he immediately starts treating her differently. I hated this guy right from the very beginning. I almost put this book down and stopped reading it when he tricked her into going out to a bar with him and then proceeded to watch her get drunk while unbeknownst to her, he wasn't drinking alcohol at all. She ends up getting herself mugged because of this and I totally blamed him for that. I didn't like him but I was hoping that somehow if I kept reading this book, my feelings would change but they didn't and I ended up not liking this book all that much because of him. 

In order to cope with what happened to her, she asks Johnny to help her learn to fight so she'll be able to protect herself if anything like that ever happens again. Since he's an MMA fighter he teaches her how to fight like that and after a few lessons she thinks she knows enough to fight other people and maybe even confront the 5 guys who mugged her. This story line just bothered me because it didn't make sense. Who thinks like this? Caroline didn't really seem like an idiot, she's smart. Smart enough to be a production assistant and now personal assistant but her street smarts aren't smart at all and that was part of the problem in this story for me. 

Johnny and Caroline are sexually attracted to each other but I felt no emotional connection between these two at all. He's hot and he knows it and his personality is that of a big good looking jerk. I know you've probably seen or met a few of those and his personality just totally threw this book in the trash can for me. The other thing that bothered me about this story is that Caroline talks about his Welsh accent quite a few times, but is the dialogue of the book you can't tell he has an accent at all. 

In most books where one of the characters has an accent, you can read it in the dialogue. For instance a man with a Scottish accent may say things like, "Aye, Lass." or "Ach, dinna fash yerself." And other characters with accents would say other things and maybe even say some words in their native language. But I didn't see anything that would lead me to believe that Johnny had an accent other than the fact that Caroline kept saying he did and his sister did. I only finished it because I was hoping it would get better but for me the story just made no sense and I didn't care for it. It had potential but fell short for me.

I give this book 2 out of 5 stars. 

Favorite Picture of the Week

Last month Ken found this little stink bug sitting in the chair with him. At first he thought it was a piece of food but when he tried to pick it up, the thing moved back out of his fingers. 

That's when he called me in the room to get the bug and set it free outside. If you aren't familiar with stink bugs, they are called that because if you squish them they release a really bad odor. So if you see one, it's better to just put their stinky butts outside. They don't bite and they don't seem to move very fast, at least this one didn't. 

Review: Shiftr Swipe Left For Love :Dina: book 1 by Ariana Hawkes

Book Description

* * * Can be read as a standalone book. * * *

What if your fated mate was just an app swipe away?

Curvy Dina Taylor hates the idea of online dating. It's something kids do, not 36-year old women, whose boyfriends have left them for the office intern. But her best friend Lauren has a secret she's bursting to share: there are men out there who absolutely love voluptuous girls like her. All Dina has to do is tap Shiftr, the cute little paw-print app that Lauren has just installed on her phone.

In the time it takes Dina to get over her shock that there are guys who can shift into animals, she's hit up by Logan - a dark-eyed bear-guy with a torso like sculpted marble and eyes like pools of lust. He tells her that he feels a magnetic connection to her, but before she can tell him that the feeling's mutual, her clumsy thumb swipes the wrong way, and he's gone.

Dina is distraught, but Tamika, the creator of Shiftr has a cunning plan that may just bring them together again. Will Dina find the sexy Logan in the midst of the eccentric matchmaker's beautiful, opulent summer garden party? And will they discover that they're fated to be together?

This is a standalone, short, sweet, steamy read, perfect for a lunch break, bath time, or a little dose of me-time, wherever you are. HEA and no cliffhanger!

Note: This book and all other books in the Hope Valley Dating App series are standalone and can be read completely independently.

My Review

When I found this book it was free and it might still be if this sounds like a book that you'd like. 

Dina hasn't dated since she broke up with her boyfriend but her best friend wants to show her a new APP and wants her to date again. This APP is different, all the men are shifters and are looking for mates. So Lauren tells Dina all about the APP and the shifters and Dina can hardly believe they are real but when she is looking over the men on the site, she falls hard for one guy in particular. Only problem is Dina isn't tech savvy and swipes the wrong way and her dream guy disappears. Thankfully Lauren has a solution, there's a party happening where most of the shifter men will be attending and her mystery man might very well be there. 

Logan was excited to find what he thought was his perfect mate on the dating APP and then she disappeared, so he was really hoping she would be at the garden party so he could see if she would give him a second chance. 

I loved how sweet and attentive Logan was. He's truly a big cuddly bear and I really liked his personality. My only problem with this book was how fast Dina believed in shifters and how easily she got over her shock of it all. The instalove is another things that bothered me but I can see how it went with the story line for this book.

I enjoyed the book, it was a sweet, quick read and both of the main characters were very likable. It's just too bad I couldn't find this APP in the APP store when I looked. *wink*

I give this book 3 out of 5 stars. 

Happy Raturday!

*Picture courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

*Picture courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

*Picture courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

*Picture courtesy of Poppy's Mischief*

"I'm listening to you. Just one more story, then I sleep."