29 Years Young!!

Well, although it seems like it, I have not fallen off the face of the earth...

not quite yet anyway.
I spent the long weekend playing - in Las Vegas!
What a fun way to ring in a birthday.
We ate from one end of the strip to the next, went to see The Blue Man Group show and tried our hand at CSI Investigations. It was a blast.

Now I need another weekend ....

Love the Bellagio.....
After Sunday brunch we may appear just a LITTLE wider.
No. It's probably just the wide angle lens!
Yep, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
It's only an illusion if you think I ate those chocolate eclairs....

The Bellagio Gardens were bedecked in Chinese New Year decor.
Incredible.

It will be the Year of the Dragon this Chinese New Year
and many of the fancy Casinos were celebrating.
I think this one wins for the most creative use of CHOCOLATE!!
Yep, every flower, petal, tree, scale, tooth and claw was pure chocolate.....
Oh my golly gosh!

They DO read in Las Vegas...even on the Strip.
What an interesting store for sincere collectors.
Can you spell, "cha-ching"??

My students would have loved this - a first edition, signed copy of
Matilda by Roald Dahl that sold for $4500.
It looks just like the old library copy I have in my classroom!!
(Okay, without the fancy signature and the clear plastic around it.)
I also loved the Beatrix Potter book.
I adored her books as a child and my own children were entranced as well.

My CSI - crime fighting companion!!
I love a man in uniform!!

How I love those mystery stories....
Here is the Crime Scene we got to research.
Think...
dry desert....old bones....fibers, seeds, hair....and a wedding ring still intact.
Hmmm.....I wonder who did it???

Gosh, How did Charlie's Angels get in here???
(I'm the short YOUNG one. Jenn's the gorgeous one who looks great in hats!)

The Venetian Italian Renaissance INSISTED on wishing me a Happy Day!!
Ha!!
Gosh, I wish I looked as good as these guys do in tights!

"Forever Young" with a 'Rod Stewart' in Vegas!!

Lest you think I was a total party-animal and not getting anything else done, please be aware that I have finished 2 book group books (Savvy and Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters) as well as attended Book Group and conducted a week of Parent-Teacher conferences!!

I also finished The Informationist by Taylor Stevens


A kick-butt character that frankly scared me with her edginess.
I enjoyed the book, don't get me wrong, but I always felt like it was with a wariness that I typically hold for people I am leery of.
Yes, leery.
Vanessa Michael Munroe scared me.
She was Mission Impossible, girl-style. She's Angelina Jolie-feminine and
Angelina Jolie-take-no-prisoners-tough.
The story was fast-paced; set in Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, places I have little knowledge or experience with. I was caught up with the characters and the story in a few pages but I always felt a little off-balance. The plot was not only tight, it was taut. Yet sometimes so convoluted that I felt I needed a tour guide to keep places, directions and political/cultural ties straight!! All in all this book was a great introduction to a character I would pay to defend me but not invite to lunch.
Hmmm.
I saw that book #2 is out and #3 is on it's way. Do I smell movie rights???
Angelina, dust off your action-boots!
( Disclaimer: The language and violence may be more than a few want to deal with, but it all felt appropriate for the plot and characters.)

Cornelia and Christmas

Eleven year old Cornelia Street considers herself a wordsmith. She'd rather curl up with a good book than socialize with her classmates. Words and books become her castle-wall to hide behind and insulate herself. At the end of the school day, she heads home to her apartment building in Greenwich Village, where members of the household staff await her - but where her mother rarely stays.

Cornelia's parents are both world-famous pianists. Most people would envy that fame and that talent, but not Cornelia. She has no desire to play piano herself and wishes that her jet-setting mother were home more often. Her father is not in the picture; Cornelia has never known him. Though she has every (material) thing she could need, Cornelia is lonely.

That is, until new neighbors move in across the hall. Who would have thought that an elderly woman would become a little girl's best friend? The dazzling Virginia Somerset shares Cornelia's love for stories and big words. The self-proclaimed Scheherazade tells Cornelia amazing tales that star Virginia and her three sisters as they travel all over the world, meeting famous artists and leaders.

Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters by Lesley M.M. Blume is charming. Yet I am reading it through the lens of an adult and not the middle grade reader it is marketed to. As a 4th grade teacher I tried to imagine my students falling in love with this book in a sea of high adventure, fantasy or bubble gum books....think Diary of a Wimpy Kid! That might be a hard sell, unless it was to the right child at the right time!

The stories told by Virginia beg to be read aloud to a child, cuddled up next to someone, the language and vocabulary sucked on and dribbled down the chin!! A read aloud in class or a Literature Circle with some of my students would be a better fit as some of the 'escapades' seemed aimed at adults and not children both in 'tone and topic.' But...this was a book I think I would have loved as a child. I remember loving From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.J. Konigsberg as a child, which also featured an 11 year old girl who felt misunderstood by her parents and friends. (Don't get me wrong, I wasn't that child myself, I just enjoyed reading about them.) I was a bookworm through and through and this book would have appealed to that part of me right off the bat!!

Favorite passages...

"She watched Cornelia for a second. "When I first met you, many moths ago, you were sucha closed book, Cornelia," she said. "You wove yourself into a maze of longer and longer words so nobody could find you. And now you use words as bread crumbs through that maze. When I first met you, you used dictionaries as fortresses, Now you;re beginning to understand that the words in those heavy books are also about the stories those words compose. And, like I've always told you, stories exist to be retold and shared with others."
"Not that I', not impressed that you know such long words," Virginia continued. "But sometimes I think that the simplest language is the best language. Listen to this."
She pulled an old book out from under the sheets. Cornelia could not see it's cover.
"This is a conversation that takes place between two friends," Virginia explained. "One friend has just saved the others life. And the one who saved the other one is telling him why she helped him in the first place." She began to read:
" ' Why did you do all this for me?' (the first friend asked). 'I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.'
" ' You have been my friend.' replied (the second friend). 'That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die...By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.' " pgs. 250-251

This is our book group read for January and I feel only a tad bit smug at being finished early!!! Wahoo!


On a Christmas note - -the holiday was spectacular, as usual!! We are so very blessed. Family, friends, great food, gifts of presents and presence!! Perfect!