Life and Lit

I met a couple of friends for an un-birthday trip to The Cheesecake Factory a few weeks ago. Yes, I live two hours away from the closest one. So, yes, I traveled two hours for cheesecake. Sometimes, you just need a good cheesecake. Anyway, on the way back to my car, the friend who was driving took us by the place where the District 12 village scenes were filmed for The Hunger Games. She and I went to see the movie together so it was fun to poke around as she reminded me, "This is the bakery, this was Katniss's house, this is the dam she runs across at the beginning." She remembers it better than I do, and she isn't a reader at all! Our other friend, an avid reader, hasn't seen the movie or read the trilogy yet, but hopefully we convinced her to give it a try. She's just wary of all the hype. "Sometimes the hype's there for a reason!" I told her. She's read Twilight and Harry Potter, so she'll get to The Hunger Games eventually, I'm sure. This location is actually an old mill town.  I'm not clear on what kind of mill it was.  These are historic buildings that the film crew used, they are not sets that were built and made to look old. Anyway, here are the pictures I took. I only had my phone with me so they aren't the greatest, but I thought I'd share them anyway.  The place is the Henry River Mill Village, located in Burke County, NC. The aforementioned dam. There were signs up all over the place saying this was a dangerous location and not to go farther, so this is as close as I got. Katniss's living room. My friend said the upstairs scenes…

Holy cow. It has been three weeks since I last posted. Three weeks! Where does the time go? I've been desperately juggling a lot of things for a while now and I just finally hit critical capacity. My blog had to go neglected. I accepted a new position at work as a "Clinical Research Coordinator." Sounds way important, doesn't it? Don't let that Coordinator title fool you. There's a director above me who is very hands-on. Thank goodness. There's also a part-time person and that's my whole department. The doctors at the office where I work take part in a lot of clinical drug studies and I'll be helping with those. I have a feeling it's a job you either love or hate. I really think it's going to be a good fit for me. Variety, independence, details, time with patients but not too much... At the beginning, I'm scrambling to get in a ton of training. I've just really gotten started this week but in the interim, I've had a lot of reading to do. A lot. Hopefully I will get caught up on all that soon and get back to some sort of normalcy. Until that happens, I'll only be posting sporadically. I'm not giving up on my blog by any means, and I don't even expect this interruption to last much longer. I ask for your patience as I struggle to find my footing in this new role. I'll be posting a Character Connection on Thursday for sure, and I do still check in on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest occasionally. Meanwhile, let me just say that I've read and mostly loved The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman, and Juniper Berry by M. P. Kozlowsky. I'm currently reading Madame…

I don't know about you, but having the 4th of July fall on Wednesday this year threw me all out of whack. Work two days, a day off then work another two days and have another two days off... It kind of didn't work for me. It was nice to have Wednesday off but then I was a little indignant about having to go back to work so soon. And the rest of the week dragged. My aunt had her annual 4th of July cookout so we went to that. I blogged most of the morning and then made my mac and cheese. My family loves it and I make it for most get-togethers. The secret is the sour cream. I got all Betty Crocker-y after looking at Pinterest too and made a couple of patriotic desserts. Here they are: Found at Occasionally Crafty via Pinterest

It's hot here in the mountains of North Carolina, folks. Hot like we only see a handful of days in the year, thank goodness. We've been on the wrong side of 100 degrees for a couple of days now and I think we're all feeling it. I know that's normal for some of you, so feel free to call me a wimp if you want; I'm still going to complain. And I'm getting cranky. Not because of the heat (although I'm sure I would if I had to be out in it), but because of the AC. You read that right. I have a love/hate relationship with air conditioning. My parents didn't put it in until after I moved out. I know my elementary school didn't have it and I'm pretty sure my middle school didn't have it. So I never got acclimated to it in my formative years. Don't get me wrong; I'm thankful for the cool air when it's this hot, but I hate to have cold air blowing on me. HATE. I can't seem to get away from it this weekend. Wherever I go in this house, the air conditioner is blasting me. I would set the temperature higher, but I'm married to a Florida boy who finds such talk sacrilegious. Oh, the compromises we make in a marriage. Enough complaining. I've spent the weekend downloading pictures off my camera's memory card. My aunt almost lost six months of pictures recently and she was sick at the thought of it. I have two years' worth of pictures on mine. Holy cow. I've downloaded a few events here and there, but I decided to learn her lesson and get to work. I'm up to Christmas 2010 right now. O_o A local theater has been screening old movies on…