7TOF: Spring Break and other items of interest (or not)

I got busy today and now here it is, fifteen minutes till midnight and I have to think of 7 things. Let's see if I can do this.

1. As of this afternoon, MadMax is on spring break. As if to celebrate, the weather was absolutely lovely. The eastern half of the country got our weather this winter, this has been the mildest winter we've had in years. It was nearly 70, and the sky was blue as it could be. Sadly, tomorrow we are back to our usual for this time of year-- it's supposed to be about 50 degrees and raining.

2. Originally, we had planned to take the week off to drive out to the Oregon coast, both for fun and to do a few college visits for MadMax. So Dean took the week off. Then for several reasons, the trip to Oregon got nixed. We're doing a three-day swing out to Spokane, but otherwise this will be a vacation at home. Usually the idea of wasting a vacation at home would bother me, but for some reason at the moment, it sounds pretty nice. I'll report back and let you know how it goes.

3. For the first time ever, I did a status update Facebook about that last post. I'm not making this up: I got almost ten times my usual number of pageviews. Now I know how to increase readership if I decide I want to. It didn't occur to me until it was too late, though, that a number of local people would see it, and that now they will be looking at me to see what my makeup looks like. I may wear a paper bag over my head for a couple of weeks. (obviously I'm assuming that most of the new viewers won't see this if I don't do another status update, so if you're one of them and you're here... ummmmm,... hi.)

4. Taxes are done. boo-yah.

5. So we sat out on the deck with a drink tonight because it was so pretty, until it finally got too chilly around 7:30. Then we watched the Duke game. Remember in yesterday's post I mentioned living in North Carolina? Yeah, well, we became major college basketball fans while we were there. Usually we cheer for the other blue team, but they lost earlier this week, so Dean is now rooting for Duke. I'm usually a big March Madness fan, but for some reason this year I just can't get excited about it. I didn't even do a bracket, for the first time in years.

6. March reading report: American Savage by Dan Savage, four stars (out of five); Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews, four stars; Trade Me by Courtney Milan, three stars; First Frost by Sarah Addison Allen, three stars. And then Ulysses and Jane Eyre, but I already told you about those. I also re-read Chasing Fire, which is Nora Roberts' take on the Missoula Smoke Jumpers. It's better than I remembered it. American Savage is getting its own post at some point, I'm still working on it. And there are still four days to go, so maybe I'll get another one read. We're on vacation, right?

7. I'm addicted to a new game I found this week: Seven Little Words. It's just hard enough to feel challenging, but not so hard that you can't finish a puzzle in ten or fifteen minutes. You get seven clues, and then there's a grid of parts of words ARG  PLU  SI  TIES -- etc. You put them together to form the words that match the clues. You get one free puzzle per day, then you can pay for more if you want.

OK, it's actually 12:03 so technically I didn't make it in time. But I'm going to cheat and backpost this by six minutes. After I proof it. And think of a title.

Have a great weekend!