Jill Reese

I hate Mondays. I was late this morning. The allergy receptionist even
notices when I am not one of the first ones there for my shot at 8:45
on Monday morning. I guess I am a creature of habit! I also am getting
a headache that my Advil is not quite preventing. And I need to clean
my house. And pack my bags, since we JUST decided to go to the ranch
for Thanksgiving! Whew. That will be fun, though.

Hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving week!

Most people know I love to read. LOVE LOVE LOVE to read. And I read
crazy fast, as well. And for some reason, I get super addicted to one
or two authors at a time, obsessively read their books over and over
and over again, and then put them down for a few months and then move on.

My favorite books for the past year or so have been three by Ilona Andrews: Magic Bites, Magic Burns, and Magic Strikes. They are urban fantasy without the graphicness of Laurell Hamilton. I think I just
made that word up. Anyway….I had to take my LKH books to Half Price
Books. They were too much. So Ilona Andrews’ books are absolutely
PERFECT. I note this to lead into the fact that the next Magic book
wont be coming out until next June. So until then, I have had to move on. The suspense was too much waiting for the next one!

Side note…Ilona Andrews is a wife/husband writing team and I had emailed
them a few weeks ago, and they actually emailed me back! How freakin cool is that.

Authors I have moved on to and am currently obsessed with:
Mark Del Franco
Patricia Briggs
Kelley Armstrong
Lisa Lutz
Highly recommend! Especially Patricia Briggs.

Hopefully these re-reads of the new authors will tide me over until the next Magic book comes out in 2010!

I have also rediscovered the joys of the Houston Public Library
System. Especially the online catalog, where you can put holds on
books and choose with location you want the book sent to! Fascinating.
It helps that the location I use is one of the newest and nicest ones.
Love it!

THIS IS GOING TO BE AWESOME. ENOUGH SAID.

Is it wrong if you don't like the quarterback of your favorite team??
I don't know what it is….but i have zero respect for Tony Romo as a
NFL QB. Oh wait….I DO know…he hasnt won in the post season, he has
no leadership skills, and all in all, seems like a douche. The
pre-game interview before the Eagles Sunday night game was the WORST.
Bob Costas called him "jaunty" and Romo laughed for a minute before
saying "uh..I dont even know what that means…." *sigh*

If anything would make me root for the Texans, it would be the Schaub
vs. Romo question. Although, the Texans do have me pumped up this
week. Probably because Bernard Pollard was on 1560 The Game for an
interview….it was NUTS. Listening to him was like being at a pep
rally or in the huddle or locker room. 1560 has wisely chosen to start
using sound bites from his interview randomly this week….which is
awesome! The addition of sound effects works very well, too. I don't
know what people in Houston will do if the Texans don't beat the
Titans this week. Monday on the radio will be ugly, I'm sure.

Back to the Cowboys…the best part of the team this season has been
Miles Austin. He just looks like he is having so much FUN. It is a
blast just to watch him. Beating the Eagles was nice, too! Don't get
me wrong, Romo being the QB won't make me shift my alliances, but I
just WISH there was a QB in Dallas I enjoyed. Can we clone Troy
Aikman? Of course, Jerry Jones is probably already WAY ahead of me on
that one. I bet in one of Aikman's contracts there were all sorts of
provisions on DNA harvesting, with permission to clone the QB of the
future.

GO COWBOYS!

And I cannot believe it. I also cannot believe that I have worn a coat
the last two days. It has actually been pretty cool. Of course, today
was warmer than yesterday, and Im sure tomorrow will be warmer than
today! Cold never lasts until January or February. I need to live some
place where I can have a use for pretty coats!

The biggest sign for me that it is the end of the year is never the
holidays, but the planning of Annual Meeting. Of course, we are behind
already, ha! But just all the timelines and budgets and letters and
agendas SCREAM end of the year to me more than anything else. At least
this year we moved the date back to two weeks into January instead of
one week. That always makes enjoying Christmas and New Year's
difficult, because there is so much stuff that needs to be done.

I also need to put up my Christmas tree! Whoo-hoo! I love putting up
my Christmas tree. I guess I inherited SOMETHING from Marilyn, after
all! I think that will be my weekend project. Hmm…

Hard to believe it is only Wednesday. In less than two weeks I have
worked on three events totaling over 1200 people. Ridiculous! The
hardest part was keeping the locations of all three straight, though!
Ha! I never could remember which event was at which hotel. As hard as
these were, especially the last one, at least I was working with
Theresa! One of the easier people to work with here, because she
understands what all it takes to pull these events off. And doesn't
just sit in her office and wait for you to do all the work.

It is also hard to believe that Thanksgiving is next week. I don't
have a clue what I am doing yet! I doubt my family does, either. We
usually wing it for this holiday. And since we will NOT be able to top
last year's Dallas Cowboys game, I guess it doesn't really matter what
the plans are anyway!

Hope everyone has a good week!

Vega got married on Halloween…FINALLY. It was like a GHP reunion, and so much fun! The bride was absolutely BEAUTIFUL! Even if she did give the biggest eye roll I have ever seen when the DJ mispronounced Mr. and Mrs. Skrabanek. Hilarious!