Wenzel Alpine 8.5 X 8-Feet Dome Tent

Wenzel Alpine 8.5 X 8-Feet Dome Tent

So I took my tent out for a bachelor party weekend for my future brother in law back in March 2010 for a long weekend. Thankfully, I had the foresight to do a trial run to work out how to put the tent together because this was my first 5 sided tent. Setup was a breeze!!! Only problem I had was putting the rain cover on because I put it on facing the wrong way. It did better than expected because I set up my tent on wet ground and never felt wet the whole time. No moisture got in which is awesome when it got down to the 30s and I stayed dry. I have had a Wenzel sleeping bag for at least 15 years which is why I went with them for this tent. I will definitely use them again!

The Third Wheel

The Third Wheel

 

That "effin" Flowers, as both his friends and his enemies refer to him, is back in a superior police procedural/thriller from John Sandford. This novel is much darker than Sanford's previous books. For one thing, the lines between the good guys and the bad guys are not as sharply drawn. Things are not all black and white. It will perhaps leave you, as it did Flowers (and me) questioning some serious moral truths about the nature and shape of justice. Flowers ends up taking a position on this issue which you may or may not agree with depending on your own views. Everything is resolved in the end but Flowers has to make some choices which leave him unhappy. Flowers' boss Lucas Davenport and his two co-workers Shrake and Jenkins are back to help him out and it is interesting to get a view of Davenport different from how he presents himself in his own series of novels. Along the way we meet a new character, Sheriff Duke, who I hope either Davenport or Flowers will run into again. I downloaded my copy at midnight and ended up not being able to put it down. This is a great read.

The Mark of Athena

The Mark of Athena

I love all of Rick Riordan's books. I am disappointed that this book crashes the Kindle Fire. I thought I was alone last night with this issue but I see that there have been more people with bad files reporting crashes. I have read numerous books on the Kindle Fire and this is the first one that has crashed my Kindle. I got to around chapter 25 and 4 pages in the application crashed back to the home screen. I contacted Customer Service and was informed that the book would be removed from the Kindle store and the publisher would be contacted to get the issue corrected however it will take at least a week before this happens. Hopefully it will be resolved soon so I can continue reading this wonderful book.

Hidden (House of Night)

Hidden (House of Night)

This is an improvement over the last few House of Night books. I am home sick and was looking for something to read, and this popped up from Amazon. I truly did not even care about this series anymore after the last 2 or 3 books, they just seemed to be fillers, and absolutely no fun to read IMO. The adult characters were a relief in Hidden, finally no more just absolute nonsense surrounding Neferet. I was over hearing about her fooling the whole world after book five, and I felt that it was dragged on to the point that this series was just ridiculous and worse, boring. In Hidden we finally get to move on, and it is enjoyable! It made me remember why I liked these books to begin with.
I think it was a good choice to have rotating narrators as the story actually moved along quickly, and it was refreshing to hear from some of the more mature characters. I actually liked Zoey again in this book, probably because we weren't forced to listen to pages of inner-monologue from her.
As a pleasant side note: The phrase "bull-poopie" is refreshingly sparse in this one.

Hungry Girl to the Max!: The Ultimate Guilt-Free Cookbook

Hungry Girl to the Max!: The Ultimate Guilt-Free Cookbook

I own all of the Hungry Girl cookbooks, and I was actually happy to see that this "Bible" has come out, I decided to purchase this book in Kindle format since it is filled with a lot of old favorites from the other books, (and some great new things that I can't wait to try ), making it much easier to take along to the grocery store. I am however a little disappointed on the way the index is set up, It would be nice to have links that would take me to all the recipes that I am looking for, for instance, I want to find recipes for Salmon, well if I look up salmon in the index, well yeah the word is there, but it is not linked to any of the salmon recipes, so I would still have to look in the table of contents to find any recipe with the word salmon in it, this takes up way to much time. I love the Picture section, if there is something that looks good, then just click on the picture and it takes you to the recipe, just wish there were pictures to all the recipes, but yeah that is asking to much, can you imagine 650 pictures! LOL, the book would be HUGE. Anyway I gave this book all 5 stars because it is Hungry Girl and she has Awesome Recipes! But I give the Kindle Format only 4 stars because of the index problem. If you don't have any of Hungry girl books yet, then this would be a GREAT one to start with, but if you already have some of her books, then this would be a Great one to have on the Kindle, no point in repeating it on hard copy. It has everything you need, the best of the best!

The Panther (John Corey)

The Panther (John Corey)

Admittedly, I am a long-time John Corey fan. I keep expecting the author to eventually run out of the smart-alec remarks that John Corey is famous for, but he just keeps 'em coming. In The Panther, John and his wife Kate are sent over to Yemen ("If the earth had an anus, it would be located in Yemen"), ostensibly for one purpose, but of course office politics within the Anti-Terrorist Task Force, FBI, and CIA quickly turn it into something entirely different and, of course, far more dangerous. Nelson DeMille's talent lies in maintaining the irreverent character of John Corey while simultaneously writing a tense, thriller plot. The story is fast-paced, which keeps the reader's attention, while experiencing laugh-out-loud moments when Corey makes his random observations ("But the problem, as I saw it when I was there, was that we had a very small American presence in a very hostile environment. A recipe for disaster. Ask General Custer about that.")

As usual, DeMille uses current Middle East events to fuel his plot. Given his character's ties to 9-11, he creates taut, believable (for those of us not in law enforcement, lol) scenarios that keep you on the edge of your seat. If you haven't read a John Corey novel, it's perfectly okay to start with this one. Just be prepared to want to go back and read all the previous ones! As long as DeMille keeps writing them like this, I'll be buying them.

3M Low-Maintenance Half-Mask Organic Vapor, P95 Respirator Assembly

3M Low-Maintenance Half-Mask Organic Vapor, P95 Respirator Assembly

For the relative inexpensive cost of this respirator, you get the face mask, 2 orgainc vapor filters and 4 regular filters. All the components fit together very well. It took me about 10 minutes to get used to the face mask, then I hardly noticed that I was wearing it. The obstruction of vision is quite minimal. Protect your lungs and buy this respirator instead of using the ineffective surgical mask type of filters.