*Click*Click*Click*

Living overseas is awesome...for the most part. Yes, I get to travel around to cool places, see lots of historical places, or lounge in a country that people dream of visiting. BUT, shopping here is a pain in the ass, especially if you're wanting to find something that you could easily buy in the US. 

Since I live in a tiny community, and if we're wanting something along the lines of books, gadgets and whatever else you can think of, we normally end up going to our "local" sister base that's over in The Netherlands. Yes, I know I could buy off of the economy, but I rather not pay in Euros when I can get something in Dollars! Well, that particular base has a VERY limited selection when it comes to things you want (and their clothing selection is less than desirable) and if you even attempt to do a special order, you could be waiting MONTHS for it to arrive. 

This is where these guys come in:

I think the majority of overseas families end up ordering from Amazon (unless you're stationed at a massive base with a fabulous BX) because you can always get what you're wanting, the majority of the time it's cheaper than what it'd cost in the store, and you're able to read peoples feedback on that product rather than just taking a sales persons word. Amazon must be LOVIN' us because we tend to buy all sorts of various things through them: game consoles, game console controllers, video games, movies, tv shows, dog stuff, electronics, baby wipes (ha), candy...you name it, we've probably bought it. Eric ends up doing all the ordering because they seem to love him, so things will get here within two weeks. Whenever I order something, the mail fairy decides to take it on a vacation to the Bermuda Triangle and I'll either never see it, or it shows up in two months. 

Since Eric got me the Kindle 3G for Christmas, it has become WAY too easy to buy my books.

This whole "one-click" option lets me buy a ton of books, which my bank account doesn't totally appreciate. I currently have a ten books I NEED to read, but, I managed to get a some for free (yay classics!I admit...I do something rather sneaky. Whenever we go up to the local base to do our grocery shopping, we'll stop in at the bookstore there to scope out any new titles we might be interested in. Then, I'll add them to my "wishlist" on my Blackberry so when I get home, I can download them or add them to my Kindle Wishlist. Yes, shame on me. I know I should buy from the store, but that completely defeats the purpose of me having a Kindle in the first place. I'm a "touchy/ feely" type of shopper, so when I see a book I might like, I open it up and read the insert to see if it's something that might interest me. The whole reason why we got Kindles (yes, all three of us have one) is because we won't have a ton of weight due to books when the time comes for us to move again. When we moved from California to Belgium, about 400 pounds worth of books were left in storage. Yeah. We're a reading type of family.

The titles I currently have are:

To Defy A King (currently reading; loving it so far)
The Hangman's Daughter
Water For Elephants
Sins of the House of Borgia
Pale Rose of England
Sookie Stackhouse Series ( 8 books )
Relic (book 1 of Pendergast series)
Medicus: A Novel of the Roman Empire
Dracula
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

My Wishlist:

Reliquary (book 2 of Pendergast series)
The Cabinet of Curiousities ( book 3 Pendergast series)
Still Life with Crows ( book 4 Pendergast series)
Brimstone ( book 5 Pendergast series)
Dance of Death ( book 6 Pendergast series)
The Book of the Dead (book 7 Pendergast series)
The Wheel of Darkness (book 8 Pendergast series)
Cemetery Dance ( book 9 Pendergast series)
Ghost Girl
Ghost Girl: Lovesick
Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution
Red Riding Hood
Beautiful Darkness
Beautiful Creatures
Wicked
Blue Bloods Series ( 7 books)

Yeah, LOTS of reading in my future! Speaking of which, I wanna get back to reading "To Defy A King" :) I giggled when I opened up the cover for my Kindle because there was a picture of John Steinbeck as the screen saver.

The reason why I giggled is because I was just thinking about when I go home later this year, and his picture pops up. We're actually from the same town, which is Salinas, California...we even went to the same high school (yes, it's an old school that was established in 1882). I dunno, just a coincidence that he popped up when I was thinking about home :)

Sorry for the totally random post! lol

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Nerdtastically Apocalyptic Christmas

As I was editing the pictures for this blog, I came to terms with how nerdy my family really is.

Last year, I got Eric a Kindle from Amazon.com and he LOVES it. Comes in handy because he's very into reading and it cuts down on him having te physical book. I know you're probably thinking "Why does it matter if he has the physical book?"...well, since we're military peeps, whenever we move, we have a weight limit. When it was time for us to move here, ALOT of the weight was due to books between mine and Eric's collection (mainly his), in which we ended up putting the majority in storage. Since we've been her, Eric has slowly started collecting even more books.. so,the Kindle has put a stop to that.

Now John has the reading bug. Le sigh. It's fabulous that he's into reading and expanding his imagination....I'm all for it! I'm just not up for the hoards of books that are starting to pile up. So, Eric and I did some talking and we figured out that we should get John a Kindle for Christmas. He'd definitely benefit from it considering he blows through books pretty fast, not to mention, most of the books he ends up wanting have to be ordered online since the bookstore we normally haunt at the "local" base doesn't have the best selection.

We ended up getting him the Wi-Fi capible Kindle ( the one for $139 ) in Graphite. So, he should be able to download books freely at home with the gift card we got him, without assaulting our Amazon account.

Funny thing is, I guess before Eric and I decided on getting him the Kindle, Eric actually ordered a few books for him. So, it looked rather silly that John opened up actual books, then he gets an electronic book reader, lol. Oh well...I guess he'll be able to take the books with him to school and such since he won't be allowed to take the Kindle with him. In addition to the Kindle, I ended up getting him a pretty cool little case for it in his favorite color, which is red.

Eric is insanely hard to shop for, aside from the German pottery we just picked up from him. Most of the time with any guy, you can buy them tools, video games, movies, or whatever makes 'em tick and they'd be a happy camper. It doesn't work like that with my husband. He has this knack of buying himself stuff when he wants it (within reason) to where it doesn't really leave anything left to get as a gift. This happens during our anniversary, his birthday and Christmas. VERY frustrating! So, his coworkers helped me out and kept their ears open in case he mentioned anything at work in terms of what he'd be interested for Christmas. Turns out, he was really wanting to get "The Walking Dead" comic book series, which is what the TV show was based off of. After doing a little bit of research, I found the whole collection and they got here in time:

The Compendium One has the first eight comic books in it, a lovely total of 1,044 pages of cartoons. Then I managed to get editions nine through thirteen individually since they weren't conveniently bundled in a Compendium Two or anything.



Last but not least, there's me. Eric got me a white Kindle 3G with Wi-Fi :) It's still in the mail, but at least I know it's on it's way here!

A pretty simple Christmas, but it works for us.

PS: In case you didn't notice...it seems like the main theme for this years Christmas gifts were zombies / apocalyptic scenarios and electronics. Go figure!

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