Sunday Salon: Birthdays and Zombies and Vacations, Oh My!

 So I am sending all my well-wishes this morning from a gorgeous sunrise view of the Atlantic.  My family spent the weekend at New Smyrna Beach at some friends' condo to celebrate my 47th birthday.  There is no better way to toast another year of being alive.  I really could care less how old I am.  The only downside of it all was a particularly pesky stomach bug/flu thing that plagued me for most of this week.  But by yesterday I was starting to feel a little better.  Just in the nick of time.

Because next Friday, the cat-sitter moves into Casa Nawrot and my family will fly off to Poland for a couple of weeks.  Is it crazy that I'm JUST as excited about all that flying and driving time (aka undisturbed reading) as I am about the destination?  Long, quiet periods of reading time just don't happen in my day-to-day life so I have big expectations with a Kindle chock-full of good stuff.  But more on that in a minute.  In addition to spending time with my husband's family, we are planning on seeing Warsaw, Prague, and more.  Anyway, while I am away, the blog shall be going dark, and I'll turn the light back on again on the 15th.  I shall miss you!

So back to that Kindle topic.  Last week I went looking for my Kindle so I could load it up with all the books on my humongously long and continuously growing WANT LIST...and I couldn't find it.  Anywhere.  I generally only use it when I travel, so I went through all my suitcases, purses, etc. and the thing has disappeared.  Panic ensued.  My mom had given me Amazon money for my birthday, so I just decided to get a new one.  I couldn't be messing around, I've got books to read.  So hopefully by early next week, I'll be good to go.

Yesterday, after we'd hung at the beach for awhile, we showered and stormed the theater to see "World War Z".  What fun!  Brad Pitt and zombies, baby.  I'm not sure if I'll get a chance to write it up, but I will tell you it was definitely worth the price of admission.

So as far as reading while living in reality, it has been slow going.  I did finally finish Khaled Hosseini's "And the Mountains Echoed" on audio, and am now about halfway through "Lost in Shangri-La" by Mitchell Zuckoff.  In print, I did finish "Metro 2033" after reading it for nearly a month!  I admit it was worth it.  Now I am working my way through an ARC of the third installment of the Red River Mystery series by Reavis Wortham called "The Right Side of Wrong".  He writes such enjoyable books!  I am hoping to have that finished before I leave on my trip.

So I will bid you adieu for now.  I won't be back with my Sunday Salon until July 21st, and I'm sure I'll have lots of news to report.  Have a great Sunday!