You've Got Mail Monday

November is halfway over. Thank goodness. I'm just about done in, but if I can make it to November 30th, it will get easier from there. I attended the WriteAngles Conference this Saturday. John Katzenback, author of Hart's War and Just Cause sat on one of the panels I attended. Anthony Swofford, author of the memoir, Jarhead was on another panel. Keynote speakers were Pat Schneider and Suzy Becker. Great day and bought books I have no room for in my office--like always. I picked up Katzenbach's book, What Comes Next, Everything I Was by Corinne Demas (she sat on the same panel as Kaztzenbach and I loved her), Swofford's book, Jarhead, for my hubby, and The King's Agent by Donna Russo Morin, who just so happens to be friends with one of my favorite historical fiction authors, C.W. Gortner. I also saw a local teacher and purchased her book directly from her: The Paladins DuBois by Patricia Donaruma Williford.

My office remains a mountain of books, which I have to clean because the Lil' Diva is having party here on Friday night and I sure don't want anyone to think I'm a total slob. I'm really not, I've just had a hectic year and haven't been able to stay on top of things the way I usually do.

Christmas presents have started to arrive from various retailers. One of the presents I was going to get the hubby ended up being an emergency purchase when his shaver died. Well, died isn't actually accurate; it broke and wouldn't shut off. The new Braun will arrive tomorrow. In the meantime, I managed to convince the old shaver to stop running constantly by knifing it almost to death. Some of its parts will never be the same. Dad used to have one of those self-cleaning shavers, but it took up a lot of counter space and required regular purchases of the cleaning cartridge, which weren't cheap even at Walmart. Here's the new purchase:




I wonder why he opted to go with a wet and dry shaver this time. He's never done that before.

The coming of Christmas means the mail carrier, the UPS driver and the FedEx driver are all visiting us often. I still have boxes in the playroom from this week's deliveries. I picked up a couple of cute seasonal bread pans so I can make something for the church bazaar. I'm not much of a crafter these days, so I'm focusing on filling up the bake sale table.

Thy Will Be Done by Ronald Kirk and Closet Words by Kim Hilton arrived this week. I'll be reviewing those books during their December virtual book tours. I received a small catalog from the National Home Gardening Club, which I am a member of, about the AeroGarden. These units allow you to garden all year long. Too bad my cats would eat anything I tried to grow in the house. My December issue of All You magazine arrived, as did the first issue of my new HGTV Magazine subscription. Actually, my office right now is also piles of unread magazines. I swear, I will get to them all. I don't subscribe to anything just for the heck of it.

I also received this new product to review. It's called Re-Grip®. You install it on tool handles and it redistributes the energy created by impact. I think I'll try to add it to my rubber mallet to see how it works.

That's it for this week's You've Got Mail Monday. Hope you enjoy your week.