I’ve been buried in books this summer. Quite literally. With Barnes and Noble so close, it’s hard not to. Coles has nothing on B&N. Us Maritimers are missing many good stores, and this is one of them. I thought I would list all the books that I’ve read so far this summer and books that are waiting in my reading queue.

Bridal Bargains:
This was a pretty good book, I learned a lot of things about saving money and about popular scams that go around. Of course, most of it is based in the US consumer markets, so I’m really at a loss on how to do the same money-saving techniques. Pretty much, I plan to not go overboard on anything. But it was a really handy resource and very informative. I encourage any bride that’s not trying to bankrupt her parents to read it.

The Case for Christ:
This one I really enjoyed. I had a few problems with it, seeing as though he only consults Christian scholars to talk about the evidence that Jesus Christ was who he said he was, but still very interesting nonetheless. It gives you food for thought at the very least, and gives you something solid to tell people who scoff at the Bible thinking it a mere storybook full of fiction. The New Testament is one of the most reliable ancient resources we have.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:
Still about 100 pages from the end, this one has been quite the interesting read, as all Harry Potter fans have come to expect. I’m really looking forward to another spashy ending full of cliffhangers at each chapter. Me and Mike are reading this one together, he looks over my shoulder as I turn the pages, or he reads to me as I rest my eyes. I bet we’ll finish it within the next two days!

Coming up:
Can You Keep A Secret?:
Been wanting to read this one for a long while, since I am a huge fan of the Shopaholic series.

High Fidelity:
Mike and I have been passing this one back and forth but for the past month of so it’s just been collecting dust.

The Secret Life of Bees:
This one’s been hanging around for awhile too, so I should read it sometimes!

True Believer:
A big fan of Nicholas Sparks, I’m also dying to read this one, but I think Jamie has it so I will have to wait!

I have a few more that I want to buy in the next little while, but with all the school reading that I have on top of everything else, it doesn’t seem like I’ll get all the books read that I’d like. At least I won’t run out of new reading material for awhile!

Since everyone is so interested in hearing the differences between the two types of bowling that I’ve observed in my 2 hours of American bowling and lifetime playing NORMAL bowling :P, I thought that I would illustrate the differences for you all.

First of all, the balls are bigger and have three holes in them in American bowling. Canadian balls are smaller, and all the same weight and size so you don’t have to pick up your own unique ball, with different weights and are color coded according to weight and finger hole sizes. So you only have one ball to chuck at the pins in American style, so every time you bowl, you have to wait for your ball to come back before you can continue your turn, instead of just taking the next available ball. They also get returned to you under the floor, instead of watching them return.

The pins are a little fatter too, but not really all that noticeable.

The scoring method was a tad different. Instead of a sheet, the scoring was all electronic and automated. We entered in our names, and there was a monitor overhead that kept the score. Each player only had two turns instead of three, except at the end, so if your first turn was a strike you could go twice more. And on the monitor, instead of a shaded-in square for a strike it was an X and instead of a shaded-in triangle for spare it was a half-X. During the gameplay, little bowling animations would show up on the screen, those were probably the highlight of the night.

The shoes and uncomfortable chairs were the same. Happily, the place was a Pepsi establishment, and with the group package we got, we had free pop and popcorn. Oh, another big difference, was the price. They had different weekend and weekday rates (probably that’s the same as home), but the weekend rates were $5 a game!! As opposed to Friday/Saturday $1 a game bowling at Pubnico Lanes.

So that was my bowling experience. I kind of prefer the speedier way that Canadian bowling is, you don’t have to wait for the machine to tell you who’s turn it is, or to get your ball back, or to reset the pins even if you got a gutterball and didn’t hit anything. Everything down here is either automated or drive-thru.

Here’s a few more things I found interesting down in the states:

• Drive thru banking
• Drive thru dry cleaning
• Pizza delivery orders online
• The amount of stores that manage to survive

Well, life really hasn’t gotten anymore interesting lately, thus why I’ve been avoiding any more blogging. Sometimes it seems pointless to even bother when I don’t get any more than 3 people commenting. I guess I should just write for myself. But if I did that, then I would never write, because I’d just get a private journal. But I haven’t kept that up in ages either. I think the only reason that I keep writing in this one is because it has a (very small) readership, but that somehow compels me to keep going in some weird sort of way.

Anyways.

I’ve started on my research paper for History, doing it on the Cajuns in Louisiana. It would be cool to take a trip down there, but Mke has so little time what with this job, that he really only has two days out of the week for fun. And that’s not long enough to spend ten hours of it driving and 20 hours of it sleeping. The most I can hope for is another weekend trip to Nacogdoches, which in itself isn’t so bad. It’s a way to get out for a few days.

This weekend I believe that we’re going to some alcohol-themed activity at the Museum of Natural History or something. It’s only from 7-10 though, so we might end up doing something afterwards. Last weekend we went bowling (don’t even get me started on the weirdness of American bowling) and then headed to Ben’s house for Mario Party until 2am. I was so dead tired on Sunday, I almost decided to stay home from The Phantom of the Opera, but in the end I decided to suck it up and go since the tickets weren’t cheap. It was pretty good, the Phantom was nowhere near as good looking as he was in the movie. Well, good looking until he took the mask off, but you know what I mean. He looked like an old man in the play. Although it was pretty cool when the chandelier fell down and stuff. It didn’t really fall, it kinda of floated down, but I don’t think it makes a difference.

Yesterday’s excitement was all about cleaning out Mike’s room. It has a floor! Who knew? So I did our laundry and folded all the clothes and put them away, but I still can’t find Mike’s DVDs. It’s starting to worry me, some of my DVDs are in there. Not to mention some really awesome ones of his. They’ve gotta be in that room somewheres, but who knows. It’s possible that they’re at the apartment in Nac, but we looked last time we were there and didn’t see them.

But yeah, it’s been all about the schoolin’ lately. I’m going to write my Spanish exam on Monday, so I need to review and study for that. And then I have my essay that needs to be researched for, but it’s slow going. I got myself a library card for the public library and took out a few books, so I’m going through all this stuff. I’ve started with my internet sources.

All I can hear in the background is the stinkin’ Dr Phil junk. Grrr. I’ll have to go turn it off before I can concentrate on the studying. I’m getting sooo tired of studying, I can’t wait to be done with this school year.

The last three days I have been perpetually locked up in the house. No car, no people, no fun. The day sucks pretty much until Mike gets home, then we have about 5 hours to hang out until it’s time for bed. I’m so glad today is Friday and we finally have a weekend. Being on my own, stuck in the house, all the time really sucks. I do have the pool key now, but of course it has to thunder and lightning pretty much every day, with rain intermittently thrown in. I was awakened by a doozy of a storm last night. It’s giving the same weather for the next 6 days. I miss the sunshine.

So while I’ve been cramped in the house, I’ve been scrapbooking and studying. FINALLY finished Mike’s and I’s scrapbook from my trip here last summer. I’m about to start my research paper (on the Cajuns! Fun!) and be done with History 2343 for life. (But more fun is yet to be had with History 2353.) I haven’t even worn shorts the last few days, haven’t gone outside so I haven’t been warm. Been surviving off of frozen entrees (that I swear aren’t big enough to satisfy a small child) and Pepsi.

The remoteness of this place makes me yearn for Wolfville, and how you can walk to anywhere you need to go. Or take a bus if you need something cheaper or more specialized. I hope the place we live in down here isn’t so remote. But I imagine living far away from city nucleus costs more than it does to leave near it. Since it seems that only the rich live far from the city (so different from the way it is in Nova Scotia… man, lots of people who live in Halifax suburbs are loaded — all the poor ones live out in the countryside). Whatever, I digress.

I’ve got some business plans that I’m going to unveil in the near future, so stay tuned. On that cliffhanger, I’m going to go see if Mr. Mailman brought me a textbook yet.

Today I brought those pictures to the photo centre in Wal-Mart, and I got them printed out for 28 cents a piece. Not too bad! I got 33 of them, and they came to under $10. They’re a little bit bigger too, so that’s a plus. It was a bit time consuming to go and scan them all but it only took about 20-30 minutes before I had all my pictures. So good deal all around, I would definitely use that to make copies again. You can use memory cards from digicams as well, which is pretty swell.

Tomorrow, the plan is to pick up scrapbooking supplies and then start on the book. I organized all the photos and stuff, I’m still waiting for a few more so that I can round out the album, but I can at least start on it. It’ll be nice to have something to do besides studying.

I’m nearing the end of that history course though! Good news. I’m getting a bit antsy that I won’t finish it in time, and that worries me. I still haven’t heard back from people about the Spanish exam, I wish they would get on it so that I can register for the second part. It’s been about a week since I called them, and these are things that really need to be settled soon, before I forget everything. I’m cramming too much information in my head all at once!

Anyways, not much to say, blah blah blah. These blogs get less and less interesting. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother keeping one.