3 Years and Counting

Today's mine and the boy's third year anniversary. Its a little hard to believe its gone by so quickly. I thought it'd be fun to share a few pictures, except it wound up being a little difficult since most of our pictures together looks like this.
I have managed to find a few photos with smiling faces to share with you all. Although someday an outtake montage might be pretty amusing!













And yes, I do find it a little amusing that I'm on the left in almost every picture, but there really wasn't a whole lot else to choose from. I believe he thinks its almost a game to see how many pictures in a row he attempt to destroy. Hopefully tonight I'll be able to accomplish taking at least one my preferred type of photos!

~Shoshanah

My Little Library

Remember when the boy bought me a bookshelf for my birthday? (No? Go here to catch up!) I've finally made a point to start using it!

And no, this isn't close to all the books in our apartment. Its more like books that have been read in the past year.

When I was filling up the shelves I knew I wanted it to be organized, but I wasn't sure how. Should I go by book size? Or alphabetical by author? Or by genre? Such a hard decision, at least for me. In the end I decided to go by genre first and then by author's last name within genre. Of course this presented a problem in its own. For example, when I put The Last Summer (of You and Me) on the shelf, does it go before The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants alphabetically or after since its was published later? I decided for after the series, would you have done the same?

One thing I found a little assuming is how you can tell almost instantly by looking what type of books are on each shelf. The top shelf is all chick lit, which instantly jumps out at you because the whole shelf is pastel colored. The left hand side of the second shelf is historical fiction, and the right hand is science fiction/fantasy. It isn't as obvious here, but its pretty easy to notice when the books start being all blue and black that you've changed genres. Finally the 3rd shelf is non-fiction, made of mainly of memoirs but a few historical non-fiction books as well. Also on the 3rd shelf are some of the boy's books which needed a to go.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with my little organization. I do still have one shelf left on the very bottom, but I have a feeling it'll be full awfully quickly and then I'll be needing a new shelf! I'm hoping there's at least someone else out there who likes to see their books organized as much as I do, after all its like my own mini-library! If so, how do you organize your books? Or even if you don't know, what would make sense to you in regards to organizing your books?

~Shoshanah

What's in a Name

(a Where in the World Wednesday post)
I think I might be one of the only ones doing a Where in the World Wednesday today, but that's fine with me because I still want to share this picture with everyone.
This is me in Jerusalem on Ben Yehuda street. And in case you can't read Hebrew, the sign at the very top says "Shoshanah's Bar." I was so excited to see this, because as you might imagine, in America its awfully hard to find my name in print. All of those gift shop's that have personalized keychains for tons of names, will NEVER have Shoshanah. Except things are a little different in Israel where Shoshanah is a pretty popular name. In fact, I've heard there's an Israeli song where the only word is my name repeating.

I know there's other names out there where its hard to find it already in print. Or if you have a common name, you might spell it an uncommon way so you can't find it either. Have you always been able to find your name in print, or it is almost impossible for you to find it like me? (And if anyone else is participating in Where in the World Wednesday, let me know!)

~Shoshanah

Graduating From the Pants

The Last Summer (of You & Me) by Ann Brashers
I picked this book up mainly because its written by the author of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I loved those books (and the movies) so I figured I'd give her first adult fiction book a try.

The book is about two sisters Riley and Alice. Riley is the older, athletic sister who you'd call a free spirit. Alice is the younger, somewhat shy sister who seems to absolutely idolize who older sister. Then there is Paul, Riley's best friend. The three of them spent ever summer together throughout their childhood at New York's Fire Island. This books tell the story of their last summer, the one before everything changes.

It did take me quite a while to get into the book. The first half just seemed really slow and I couldn't seem to really connect with it. Then halfway through everything changes, and at that point I couldn't seem to put the book down. The book is definitely a tear-jerker and I was holding back tears by the end.

Even though after the 2nd half I wound up enjoying the book immensely, it still wasn't perfect. The characters, while I liked them, didn't seem very fleshed out and developed. Which I wouldn't necessarily expect from Ann Brashers considering how distinctly you're able to identify with each girl from the pants series.

Like the pants books, this is also being developed into a movie. Although I'm not too sure how that will wind up as movie. A lot of times I'll read a book and think I would love to see someone turn this into a movie, but I didn't have that feeling reading The Last Summer (of You & Me). But it could wind up being an interesting movie, I guess we'll have to wait until 2011 to find out if it works as a movie.

Has anyone else read this book? If so, what did you think? If not have you read or seen the movie of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants instead?

~Shoshanah

Cheeseburgers in Paradise

Over the weekend before we went shopping at the grocery store I took out my favorite cookbook, The Little Black Apron. Since almost all of the recipes in there sound appealing to me, I told him to go through and pick out something and I'd make it for dinner. Well, being the male that he is, he decided on their recipe "Classic American Burger." Every time we've had hamburgers in the past he's made them, but I made a promise, so that meant I was making burgers for dinner.

Overall the recipe was pretty easy to follow and the burger's turned out pretty tasty. Although, one of my favorite things about the cookbook lead to a little confusion. See the cookbook is geared to the single girl living on her own, which means most of the recipes are for a single serving. Which I think is great since so often when you're cooking for just yourself it hard to make the recipe suit just one. Except in this case the boy decided we needed to buy over 2 lbs of meat, that way he could eat leftover for the next few days. Which mean I needed to eight-tuple most of the ingredients. Not that hard in theory, and overall it wasn't a problem, but in general the burgers did taste a little salty.

The boy had wanted a cheeseburger from himself, but I was planning on just having a hamburger. I don't really like cheeseburger since people normally make then using cheeses I don't like, things like American or Provolone cheese. But the boy had bought Gouda cheese for the burgers, and Gouda is a cheese I really do like, so I figured I'd give it a try.
And really wound up liking it! I won't go so far as to say I love cheeseburgers now. And I'm not planning on ordering a cheeseburger the next time I'm at a restaurant. But at least I do know, if made with the right type of cheese, I can enjoy a cheeseburger.

And for dessert? Well I needed something to go with my Classic American Burger, and what's more American than apple pie?
So, I had an apple pie larabar. I don't buy these very often, which means every time I have one I forget how amazing they taste. There are a little hard for me to find, and when I do find them they tend to always have the same flavors. But I am definitely thankful I can find they few that I do.

Overall, I would say it turned out to be quite the successful meal! Good thing because there's still a good amount of food leftover! Do you normally make a point to cook just enough to eat that night? Or would you rather cook a lot more to make sure you have food left over for the next night?

~Shoshanah

Jedi and Goats

The Men Who Stare at Goats
To start off with this movie has both Ewan McGreggor and George Clooney in it. Which means even if its awful there's still a good amount of eye candy to look at throughout the movie. The basic plot of the movie is that Ewan McGreggor plays a journalist looking for a story. He finds a pretty good story when he winds up with George Clooney's character, Lyn Cassady, in the middle of Iraq. Lyn Cassidy is part of a super secret branch of the military government that goes by the code name of Jedi. So here is Ewan McGreggor, aka Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi himself, with an actual American who calls himself a Jedi and believes he has Jedi like powers. According the the producers casting Ewan was a complete coincidence, and only Ewan thought about it after the fact. But really these two things, the good looks of the actors and the Star Wars irony, were the only good parts of the movie for me.

Throughout most of the movie I was sitting there tired waiting for it to be over. There were a few off-the-wall funny moments, but overall I wasn't really feeling it. Actually, if you look at my past few movie reviews its been a while since I've really enjoyed a movie we've seen. But I can promise you that will change next weekend with my pick!

~Shoshanah

Horsesitting

The boy and I are housesitting for his parents this weekend. For most people that would entail staying at the house, bringing the mail in, maybe feeding an animal or two. Well, I can tell you that we will be feeding an animal or two, but it won't necessarily be the animals you're thinking off. Here's a picture of me from the first time we housesat.
Yes, there are 3 horses in the picture with me. We're taking care of 5 this weekend, 3 "mom" horses and 2 "baby" horses. Have I mentioned before that I'm not really an animal person? I guess it shows just what I'm willing to do for the boy. Hope everyone else is having a great horse-free weekend! (Or horse-filled weekend if that's what you'd prefer.)
~Shoshanah