Mission Accomplished

You'll be in for a BIG surprise if you... Check this blog out!!! http://blue-succubus.livejournal.com/ Seriously!!! Pictures of the Houston Road Trip to come soon...

Mind the Gap

Gap Teeth:

The Latest Must-Have Accessory?

Who has seen the newest "W" magazine?

It has Lara Stone on the Cover, who is the newest "IT" girl. She's known mostly for her languid gap-toothed smile!

Did you know?

Diastema: The term is most commonly applied to be an open space between the upper incisors.

In the Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote of the "gap-toothed wife of Bath." As early as this time period, the gap between the front teeth, especially in women, had been associated with lustful characteristics.

In Nigerian society, diastemata are occasionally regarded as being attractive mostly among the western regions, and some people have even had them created through cosmetic surgery.

In France, they are called "dents du bonheur" ("lucky teeth").

There is an 1987 film called ''Gap-Toothed Women'' honoring women who have come to terms with a slight physical imperfection that, in various societies, has been looked upon as the essence of beauty, as a sign of sexual appetite, as a mark of God's favor and, more recently (in this country), as being Howdy Doody-like.

Yayy for Gap-Teeth !!!

Onigiri

I've been craving onigiri like crazy lately. My weekends mission is to get rice, tuna, and mayo and make my favorite.

Less than 24 hours...

Finished!

Could not put it down.

Overall the books enthralling, compelling, and it's frustrating to wait another whole year till the next and the last installment (5th book - SHADOWFEVER) in the series is released!

Dirty Money

How many of y'all saw this article on CNN?

In the course of its average 20 months in circulation, U.S. currency gets whisked into ATMs, clutched, touched and traded perhaps thousands of times at coffee shops, convenience stores and newsstands. And every touch to every bill brings specks of dirt, food, germs or even drug residue.
Research presented this weekend reinforced previous findings that 90 percent of paper money circulating in U.S. cities contains traces of cocaine.
We all know that the dirtiest thing in the world is money, but COME on...seriously?!?!

Speaking of Money

The POWER BALL is at $245,000,000!

NAC has a $2.00 all employee pot going on for any time it goes OVER the 2 million $$$ mark.

*Keep your Fingers Crossed*

Big Week

One long awaited book gets released this week:

DREAMFEVER

Two of my favorite TV shows begins a new season this week:

PROJECT RUNWAY TOP CHEF LAS VEGAS Yayy!

I forgot how much I loved this band...

Being Human

My favorite show at the moment on BBC America!

Being Human stars Annie (Lenora Crichlow), George (Russell Tovey) and Mitchell (Aidan Turner) as three twenty-something characters sharing a house in Bristol, trying to live a normal social life, despite being a ghost, a werewolf and a vampire. True Blood fans will enjoy this milder British import. Annie is the ghost whose visibility fluctuates with her moods. Vampire Mitchell and werewolf George work at low-level hospital jobs. It's Friends for ghouls!

Let's Play a Game

BOOK COVER DISASTERS

We've all seen/snickered/made fun of those truly awful romance novel book covers, but have you really seen the true disasters? Now I’m not talking about bad covers from publishing companies who are working on a shoestring budget. I’m talking about covers that come from multi-billion dollar corporations with professional art departments operating with huge budgets who put out hundreds of different titles a year … and who just happen to blow it once in awhile.

Below are four of the best, but can you spot what makes them just so bad? Look at the picture and highlight the whited out text underneath to get your answer. Have fun!

Answer:CASTLES IN THE AIR featured a heroine with one too many appendages. The hero held one of her hands, she leaned on another hand, and the one tucked into her skirts seemed so unnecessary! Answer:Susan Macias's (now known as Susan Mallery) FIRE IN THE DARK western historical has a naked rubber man in the water with, if you look closely, a floating orange penis! Answer:Speaking of weird penises, I hope you looked closely at Elizabeth Bevarly’s SNAKES ON A PLANE cover. One word of advice to the heroine...RUN!!!

Answer:I don't think this one really needs an explanation, so let's just check out the expression on his face. Then note the title…

One of those days...

We're getting into the heart of the season once we get into August and September!

Random Boston

Thank you for everything Siobhan, I had a blast!

Boston Trip : Day 6 (Last Day!)

My last day in Boston was spent as a road trip to Rhode Island. Siobhan drove as we took the route south of Boston through Providence and then on to Newport.

With its yacht races and grand manses, Newport has been a playground for the rich since the late 1860s.

Many of the elaborate so-called "cottages" built by the 19th-century industrialists are open for tours, including Breakers. 44 Ochre Point Ave., Newport, RI 02840

The Breakers is the grandest of Newport's summer "cottages" and a symbol of the Vanderbilt family's social and financial preeminence in turn of the century America. Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877) established the family fortune in steamships and later in the New York Central Railroad, which was a pivotal development in the industrial growth of the nation during the late 19th century. The Commodore's grandson, Cornelius Vanderbilt II, became Chairman and President of the New York Central Railroad system in 1885, and purchased a wooden house called The Breakers in Newport during that same year. In 1893, he commissioned architect Richard Morris Hunt to design a villa to replace the earlier wood-framed house which was destroyed by fire the previous year. Hunt directed an international team of craftsmen and artisans to create a 70 room Italian Renaissance- style palazzo inspired by the 16th century palaces of Genoa and Turin. Allard and Sons of Paris assisted Hunt with furnishings and fixtures, Austro-American sculptor Karl Bitter designed relief sculpture, and Boston architect Ogden Codman decorated the family quarters. The Vanderbilts had seven children. Their youngest daughter, Gladys, who married Count Laszlo Szechenyi of Hungary, inherited the house on her mother's death in 1934. An ardent supporter of The Preservation Society of Newport County, she opened The Breakers in 1948 to raise funds for the Society. In 1972, the Preservation Society purchased the house from her heirs. Today, the house is designated a National Historic Landmark.

Upon visiting - you get a Audio Guide for The Breakers Revealed!

A Compelling New Look at a Legendary Mansion. The result of 10 years of research and oral histories, our new tour of The Breakers will engage and enlighten you with detailed and personal accounts of the people who lived and worked in this great house from the height of the Gilded Age through the first half of the 20th century.Listen to reminiscences of life in The Breakers Hear from servants and their children Tour never-before-seen spaces

Views from our sea side drive.

548 Bellevue Ave., Newport, RI 02840

Commissioned by Nevada silver heiress Theresa Fair Oelrichs in 1899, architect Stanford White modeled Rosecliff after the Grand Trianon, the garden retreat of French kings at Versailles. After the house was completed in 1902, at a reported cost of $2.5 million, Mrs. Oelrichs hosted fabulous entertainments here, including a fairy tale dinner and a party featuring famed magician Harry Houdini.

"Tessie", as she was known to her friends, was born in Virginia City, Nevada. Her father, James Graham Fair, was an Irish immigrant who made an enormous fortune from Nevada's Comstock silver lode, one of the richest silver finds in history. During a summer in Newport, Theresa met Hermann Oelrichs playing tennis at the Newport Casino. They were married in 1890. A year later, they purchased the property known as Rosecliff from the estate of historian and diplomat George Bancroft. An amateur horticulturist, it was Bancroft who developed the American Beauty Rose. The Oelrichs later bought additional property along Bellevue Avenue and commissioned Stanford White to replace the original house with the mansion that became the setting for many of Newport's most lavish parties.

Rosecliff is now preserved through the generosity of its last private owners, Mr. and Mrs. J. Edgar Monroe, of New Orleans. They gave the house, its furnishings, and an endowment to the Preservation Society in 1971. Scenes from several films have been shot on location at Rosecliff, including The Great Gatsby, True Lies and Amistad.

Road trip back in Massachusetts