Thankful Thursday

I am thankful for my marriage and husband.

Oh sure we don't live a glamorous life and sometimes life gets pretty mundane and other times totally bizarre, but through the thick and thin we stand by each other. We choose each other over anyone else on this earth. I am extremely grateful for that.

You all know, I can get annoyed with my husband (and he can get annoyed with me) but one thing I have always known is that God gave him to me. I try my best (and my best is far from perfect) to cherish that gift. I can see almost every step of my life leading straight to him and knowing almost instantly that he was the one for me.

KLove is doing the Love Dare until Valentine's Day, I have been intrigued by this dare since we saw the movie Fireproof (which was excellent by the way) but of course my marriage was/is not in the turmoil of those characters. But the Love Dare is for anyone. I probably won't post about this again, but I am challenging myself to this Dare so I can better cherish the gift God has given me. Will you challenge yourself too?

Amazon Kindle

So for Christmas my dear husband got me a Kindle. I had initially poo pooed such a thing but then I saw the Barnes & Noble Nook and I got all hyped up on the fact that they said you could share books with your friends. I admit, I was coveting.

I then noticed that the Nook wasn't shipping for weeks after Christmas and then one day at ES's fencing class there was a mom with a Kindle. She spent a lot of time talking to me about it and how FANTASTIC Amazon has been. She also said that she and her husband could share books. Hmmm... wasn't that Nook's claim to fame? So I decided I should actually research digital readers! I know, novel concept (pun not intended)!

After researching the Kindle, the Sony and the Nook I decided the Kindle was the way to go. Apparently most of the book publishers were not actually going to allow B&N to share books on the Nook and if they did you could only share it once and for TWO weeks. Oh as if Blunoz or any of my other friends had time to read a book in less than two weeks! As long as the Kindles are linked to the same Amazon account, you can pass books back and forth, so yea I can't share with my friends but I can share with my husband (if and when he gets one of his own). The other thing I liked about the Kindle was that is actually has international capabilities. Now I don't plan to travel internationally but Blunoz is going to deploy in the next few years (no this is not imminent) and maybe I will get lucky and be able to go join him at an exotic port call, or maybe someday I will be nice and get him his own Kindle. :-) The funniest thing I read was that B&N released the information about the Nook so far in advance that Amazon was able to upgrade all the Kindle software to compete before the Nook was even released! The mom at fencing said all her software was upgraded automatically and without problems.

My MIL knew I was getting a Kindle for Christmas so she cut out an article she read in the newspaper comparing the Kindle to the Nook. Once again Kindle was on top. The one new thing this article told me was that it takes 3 seconds for the Nook to turn a page and 1 second for the Kindle. I think that would drive me CRAZY, but what do I know? :-) The other thing that article says is that yes, B&N lists more free books but the books they are listing Amazon also has as free but the quality is so low on them, Amazon doesn't count them as books (but they are available to download for free).

Once I got my Kindle I stumbled upon the Amazon Best Sellers in Kindle list and there is an RSS feed to it, so I added it to my Google Reader. I have downloaded some fantastic FREE books from this list! Such as Conspiracy in Kiev and Midnight in Madrid, neither of which are free now, but they were when I got them! :-)

So there you have it, my Christmas Present from Blunoz in a nut shell. :-) Thank you my dear husband. I LOVE it!

Half Full or Empty?

Awhile back a friend got stuck listening to a woman complain for an entire swim lesson. She had no way to escape.

We have all met them, those people that never have anything positive to say. Those people that focus on all the wrong going on in their lives. We have even been that person sometimes, I know I have my moments. But we often come upon those people that are ALWAYS that way. People that seem as if they are not happy unless they have something to complain about. It can be a huge downer, but it started me thinking about the glass is half full theory. I like to try to always find the fullness in my glass (but of course have moments when I can't seem to see it). When faced with a perpetual complainer, is it possible to sit there and listen to someone complain about all the things going wrong in their lives and focus on all the things going right in our own?

On a similar note, I think I can see too much the half full glass. Are people like me annoying as well? I have another friend that had a valid complaint that she was tired of having a wrist in a splint. I said "well, at least it hasn't been amputated". She thanked me for putting it into perspective for her, but it still doesn't get her wrist out of a splint. :-)

We may be equally annoying but I am going to continue to focus on the positive aspects of life. Life has way too much to offer to focus on the things we don't like about it. God has blessed me in so many ways and these are the things I choose to focus on. Of course life is going to have its valleys (the bad) and mountains (the great), but don't the valleys make us appreciate the mountains all the more?

Happy New Year! May you always see the half full glass in front of you!