Welcome to my coffee shop in the cyber neighborhood!


The Chronicles of Nani On Video

I am overcoming my inability to type with my ability to talk (and talk and talk and talk) I'll be posting a video every week on my YouTube channel. I'll be posting those videos here too along with an occasional regular blog in the mix. (As long as my hands are up to doing the extra typing.)

You'll be able to watch the videos here, but I encourage you to stop by my channel at YouTube once I'm up and running to follow me and get my numbers started!


Welcome to my coffee shop in Cyber Space
Try the latte with a slice of black forest cake!


Contact Nani at
chroniclesofnani@gmail.com

Friday, August 16, 2013

Book Review: Total Control by David Baldacci

Book Synopsis at Good Reads

Sidney Archer thought she had the perfect life: a loving husband, an adorable baby daughter, and a great career as a senior partner in a major Washington law firm. But when her husband is killed in a plane crash, her whole world begins to disintegrate. The FBI believes her husband is responsible for the bombing -- and that he may still be alive!


My Review at Good Reads

5 of 5 stars 

Finished 8/15/13

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Like the previous Baldacci book I read it was captivating and believable. There were a lot of characters that were good guys that didn’t seem like good guys and bad guys and didn’t see my bad guys. There was one I was disappointed with because I still think he was a bad guy even though it was written to make you think he was a good guy after all.

The main characters are well-developed and even the supporting characters made me feel relieved or betrayed as the character grew or changed within the story. Baldacci’s descriptions do a great job of bringing the reader into the scene. That’s especially true in the action scenes even where gunfire is involved.

I like the last chapter of and it’s the way I would have wanted the book end but I think I would’ve liked it presented differently. The ending was too easy but the outcome was good. That’s really the only thing I would criticize. It was a great book and I’ll definitely be reading some more David Baldacci.

Friday, August 9, 2013

Free Cheetos Today!


Mmmmm…nom, nom, nom….

I haven’t had Cheetos in quite a while and these taste so good! Plus the big ole bag was FREE! David stopped at Kroger on the way home from maintenance on his car and I asked him to make sure he picked up our free Cheetos.

“Okay Nani, I give. What’s up with the Free Cheetos?”

If you’re a Kroger shopper with a Plus Card you might know, you might even have a free bag of Cheetos of your own. But you might not!

If you shop at Kroger you should have a Plus Card! The in-store savings are fantastic, we get monthly coupons in the mail based on the things and brands we buy the most including an occasional free bag of salad or frozen veggies.


If you have a Kroger Plus Card you should have it registered online. I keep track of our fuel points so I know how much a gallon we can get off a full tank this month and I signed up to have Kroger make a donation to Paws and Whiskers Cat Shelter, our favorite local charity. There are also digital coupons that add extra savings right onto our card.

What I didn't know until I got the knowledge as a BzzAgent and I’m sharing with you now is about the Free Friday Download! Every Friday you can visit your account at Kroger.com and download the Friday Freebie. It’s a coupon for a free item that you can download to your plus card. The free coupon can only be downloaded to your car on Friday, but you have a few weeks to redeem your freebie. I found out about this three Fridays ago. That first Friday was a free tube of Colgate toothpaste, a 4.6 ounce tube, not a sample! Last week we got a free box of Hamburger Helper Ultimate and today I downloaded the Cheetos coupon. Got the Cheetos today and enjoying some of them now.

I’ve been using digital coupons hit and miss when I remember to download them, but now with the effort to check out the freebie every Friday, it reminds me to check out the digital coupons. So we get something free and we’re saving even more now.

If you have a Kroger Plus card make sure it’s registered at Kroger.com! (You still have a couple hours to register and download your free Cheetos to your card tonight!) At least make sure you’re online by next Friday for the new freebie!

022+9669-;/’?

Letting it get empty pretty much added the fruit basket 
to Marco's domain now. Thankfully that wasn’t the good basket!

022+9669-;/’?

That was Marco saying “Hello!” I didn’t include the five lines of empty text he thinks is necessary after his picture… to give the opportunity to bask in his cuteness?

David and I have no ego issues in our relationship because the cats don’t leave any ego left in the house for us!


The cats all roam the house by day, but Marco stays in his room at night and when no one is home. That’s so he gets some kitten food. During the day the girls go in and steal his kitten food. It’s okay because he concentrates on the”big-cat food” during the day. Kaline’s yellow eyes are glowing green! She put on a facade of tolerating Marco but she hunts him from time to time. Her claws aren’t out when she does it, but she’ll walk out and bonk him on the head. Carla does it sometimes too, still with claws in, but Kaline smacks him around a couple times a day. It’s about establishing the pecking order in the house, but I worry that the plan is to keep him in line by giving him brain damage!

Where Kaline’s eyes are glowing green is in the attention a kitten takes all the time that grown cats only demand on a limited basis. As the kitten is learning his new living arrangement, Daddy and Mommy are the ones that are nice to him so he feels more secure around us. That means he sleeps near me during the day. Kaline considers me her property first and she doesn’t like the kitten moving in on her turf. She’s taken to marking her territory. Part of that is rubbing all over us, but part of that has become peeing on some things, like my computer bag which is fairly water proof and I saw her do it so it cleaned up well, but it also included my big plush house robe that I use to warm up in the air conditioning. I was not at all pleased when I discovered the “Kaline perfume” when I put it on a couple mornings ago! The thick robe needs to almost have its own laundry load. ::sigh:: Monday is vet day for all three of them and we’ll ask for some ideas or if it’s just normal and will calm down in a few weeks.


Now let’s see what statements Hilary at Feeling Beachie as for us to fill-in this week!


This Week’s Statements
1) I always _____ texts
2) A love to fall asleep when ____
3) My dream pet would be a ________ named ________.
4) I love _______ more than chocolate. (Or ice cream!!)


My Answers:

1) I always _____ texts
There is nothing I “always” do with my phone aside from turn it off when I go to a movie theater. My hone is first and foremost an alarm clock. I hate texting but I’ better about that than answering the phone because that’s worse to me than texting. I’d rather email, chat online or have coffee face to face! No one ever really calls me anyway. (Probably because of my attitude about the phone!)


2) A love to fall asleep when I’m in David’s car! David’s passenger set is the most comfortable place I sleep, better than sleeping in bed at home.


3) My dream pet would be an orange tabby cat named after Al Kaline. I’m living the dream on that one!


4) I love nothing more than chocolate or ice cream!! I mean come on, ice cream is the greatest food in the world and chocolate is not even a food group; it’s an essential vitamin! Can I live without chocolate or ice cream? Sure, but why would I want to??

Monday, August 5, 2013

Satellite Festival Events

It’s a bright Monday morning and although it’s David’s Sunday, we didn’t go out to chase trains today and we made hot breakfast. Our meal included Kroger brand Brown Sugar Honey Breakfast Sausage which is the absolute best breakfast sausage in the Nani world bar none, so starting off that way always sets the table for a god day. Well, that and I had my coffee in my Good Morning coffee mug. I guess it’s the little things that set my attitude, good or bad. Starting my day with my Good Morning mug is important; brown sugar honey breakfast sausage is a major plus!

Midnight was the official end of Nanifest XLVII, thank you Edna for the festival wishes! This year was a one-week festival as Naniday was last Monday, but I’ve been giving the festival dates some thought this year. With my physical limitations, that is since I don’t drive, I have less access to meeting friends or even getting to Pop’s house during a one-week festival. David and I are making plans to go to Pop’s in the next week or two for grill and cake. He told me he and Aunt Judy would take care of dessert for my birthday and not to bring anything this time. Sheri will be out for a girls' day at the end of the month and Heather, Tracy and I are trying to line up schedules for lunch. I think I need to make a disability rider for my festival that states that any plans made during my festival count as festival events. It adds a few random days later in August to the festival but that makes up for the days during my festival that I stayed home and didn’t see anyone. So I’m going to consider any plans made during the festival to be Satellite Festival Events on the Disability Rider. I don’t consider this “milking the disability.” It’s milking my birthday!

Now we joining Heather at Acting Balanced and Wayne at Touristic for the Monday Quiz About Me!


1. Do you prefer brain games or games of chance?

My favorite board games are the brain games and the creative games.


2. How often do you misplace your keys?

I’m usually pretty good with the keys but on the occasion when I do misplace them it’s a traumatic event.

Now David misplaces them a bit more often. That’s a traumatic event too. I got him a key fob and remote finder for them for Christmas last year, but I think he misplaced it.


3. It's National Clown Week! If you were a professional clown what would your name be?

I think Nani the Clown would be a decent clown-name.


4. What is the strangest conversation you had last week?

Just yesterday David and I were trying to figure out if 2011 was a prime number to explain why The Reds didn’t get to the playoffs in 2011. (using Nanilogic)

2011 IS a prime number so that explains why the Reds didn’t make it to the post season in 2011. They were World Champions in 1919, 1940, 1975, 1976 and 1990; none of which are prime numbers. Since 2013 is divisible by three, they should be able to get to the post season this year.

Now don’t you wish you hadn’t asked me about strange conversations??

And now my final question for you…

5. An ear worm is when a song gets stuck in your head and won’t go away. Sometimes you know where it came from other times it makes you crazy because you have no idea how the song got planted in your head. What song was the last ear worm you had. Is it a song you like?

Just this morning I got an ear worm from word art in a scrapbook page I was viewing at Ginger Scraps. The word art says “Boys-Boys-Boys” and the Lady Gaga song Boys, Boys, Boys from her first CD got lodged in my brain and is still going. At least I do like the song.

Saturday, August 3, 2013

The Spice of Nani

Daily Random

I have commitment issues. Yes, the whole love and marriage thing happened later in life for me and I say that’s commitment issues, but I say that jokingly. That wasn’t a problem committing; that was me staying committed to myself and not settling. Maybe that’s what the current issue is.

I am desperately and probably irrevocably behind on this year’s 365/52 project. After my success last year journaling a few lines every day and scrapping a page for each week I thought writing and scrapping a page a week on different topics would be easy. Not so. It’s been a good year for other goals I’ve wanted to accomplish, but not with the 52 topix idea.

I wondered what made writing 1-3 sentences about whatever in my life every day easy to keep up with that writing a paragraph about an assigned topic every week difficult. That’s easy; randomness! In 2010 I tried photographing something coffee every day. The photos were fun and the pages interesting, but that interest dwindled after about May. Again coffee every day while fun was not random. Real life is random. No matter how hard we may try to structure, it’s the random things we don’t expect that make it interesting.

I am putting away the 52 topix idea. I think I may use those layouts that I have done with the completed coffee layouts from 2010 and the completed layouts from the unfinished Patch 365 from 2009 and add some pages to make a “Nani’s Unfinished Symphony” book. Hmmm, maybe I’ll do it in a softcover and leave some blank pages to add some other unfinished things Smash-style and make it a multimedia art thing. Or maybe I’ll just get the pages printed and assemble it traditional scrap-style. I’ll give this some thought.

What I started doing on August first is adding an image a day to a folder called “Daily OPs.” (Other people's, places, possibilities, etc...)  I’ve done an image search for whatever flashes into my mind at the time and choose an image that inspires me or strikes my fancy on that day at that time. I’m not 100% sure where I’m going with this yet, but maybe for next year I’ll mix up photos I take, a few lines of journaling and a random image to suit my mood each day, any or all of them. I’ve got a few months to decide on next year’s project.


Life With Marco

It’ll be two weeks tomorrow since Marco came home. He has every bit the spunk Kaline did as a kitten, unfortunately Kaline doesn’t remember being that kitten! But the growling and hissing is already down and the girls are getting somewhat used to him and he to them. The interaction is interesting. Kaline and Carla will get close enough to give him a good sniff when he’s tired. They want nothing to do with him when he’s frisking around the house. When he runs into Carla’s face or jumps on Kaline’s back, that’s when he gets hissed at or swatted, but when he’s mellowed out they’ll ignore him or even let him get close! Believe me, that’s progress in cat relations after only two weeks!

Now he has some habits I love him to let go of including human leg climbing. He attached himself to jeans and climbs up all the way to the shoulder if he can. He usually doesn’t get that chance because in order to do it, he has to anchor his sharp claws into the legs he’s climbing. For David that’s painful and for me, with thinner fabric in pants, it’s awful! My legs and even my chest, to a little lesser degree, look like I’ve beet pelted with buckshot! I look positively broken out from all the little red-mark puncture wounds!

We got the kitten package for Marco that includes all his shots, healthy kitten checkups and his neutering. He gets 2 claw-trimmings in the package too. We decided not do it on his first visit because he wasn’t jumping yet and was climbing to get around. On Kaline’s birthday everyone goes to the vet, I know crappy birthday present, but they’ll get a salmon and crab party that night. Carla and Kaline will get their annual checkups and shots and rest assured Marco will be getting his first claw trimming!


The Cloud Is Raining On My Creative Parade

I was visiting Miss Edna’s Place where Edna mentioned her displeasure with Adobe and their new “Creative Cloud.”  You essentially lease your software instead of owning it. You pay a monthly fee to have the software and updates are automatic instead of buying an upgrade when a new version comes out, just give them your credit card number and they’ll automatically take out the charge every month. If you don’t sign on and let the license be updated monthly on your software, it just quits working. I’ve known about it for a while and I’m beyond “not happy” about it.

I was actually trying to find out if I could buy an additional license for the software I have. It comes with 2 which is one each for David and me, but I wanted to put it on a smaller laptop for travelling. I can’t add a license to PS CS5, but I could get the Cloud and pay for three a month. I did the math and since two licenses came with the old way of doing it and figuring in a student discount, after 2 years I’d have paid for the software and it’s all just monthly profit for Adobe after that.


I did find out that I can just keep my Photoshop CS5 but they won’t be updating it. Conceivably that means it won’t work with Windows 9 or 10 someday. Maybe they’ll have changed their ways by then and the average consumer will have a choice of the Creative Cloud or just buying the software. Or maybe there will be a decent competitor with a better offer.