App Review: Random Mahjong

Random Mahjong

I found this accidentally while I was on Amazon searching for something else. I actually downloaded it through my Android phone, though.

The colors are vibrant, with pretty backgrounds and several different choices of tiles. The board moves as I remove tiles, making the remaining tiles bigger and easier to see and match up. The only downside I've found is that if I get down to the last tiles and can't remove them, the board reloads exactly as it was and I get to try again. I'd rather it shuffle the tiles and give me a new chance. However, that is a very small nitpick and most definitely has not kept me from playing the game late into the night when I'm supposed to be charging my phone. lol

The ad bar across the bottom is barely noticeable, and hasn't distracted me at all from playing.

Update - I've also downloaded this to my Kindle Fire, and it plays beautifully there, too.  It also has the extra plus of being larger.  lol

Book: Rock Hard (Sinners on Tour) by Olivia Cunning

This is billed as erotic romance. I wouldn't describe it that way at all. I did not read the other book first. In fact, I had never heard of this author prior to buying this book. I probably won't be buying the next book.

This is soft-core porn with a plot, and there's nothing wrong with that, if that's what you're paying for.

There's no romance, or at least none that jumped out at me and said, "Hey! I'm romantic!" There was nothing satisfying about Sed and Jessica's relationship and its forward motion (they got back together, that's all the resolution there was). To me, it wasn't erotic so much as sexually explicit. The two are not always interchangeable. There were shining moments in the plot that gave me hope for more, but in the end it those moments just led to more hot sex.

If you want to read a book that'll get you geared up and in the mood, by all means, this is the book for you. Exhibitionism, voyeurism, sex in public places, frank language, group sex, sex with drugs, BDSM. Once I let go of my expectations and read it as is, I was delighted. If I'd continued to think this was some kind of erotic romance novel, I would have been deeply disappointed.

Book Review: Born To Darkness by Suzanne Brockmann

Downloaded this one to my Kindle from the local library after quite the wait. lol Born To Darkness is dystopian futuristic paranormal romance, for lack of a better category. Its US is a dark and dreary place; the US in which these events happen is one I can see coming, and hope like hell I'm wrong about.

I loved this! Brockmann's other books about the SEALs had kinda reached a point where the number of people who merited at least a brief mention was getting just a bit unwieldy. I look forward to seeing more about some of the main characters (I do love my military men and my Troubleshooters!), and it still seems like she's reached a pretty decent resting place for now. It might be interesting if at some point in the future of this series, she's able to tie it back in some way to previous characters.

The cast of this book is fairly large, too, with eightish main characters and nearly a dozen secondary/supporting characters. The characters were written in such a way that they interacted with each other frequently enough that getting to know the characters (and not just as couples) was easy and the transitions between events were mostly seamless. The friendships were wonderfully-written.

Establishing the couples as couples was a bit rushed, particularly in the case of Dr. Z and Diaz. That one went from less than zero to eighty in a matter of seconds, it seemed like. Despite this, each of the couples was believable to me, and I want to see where they go from here. The sexual/physical intimacy these couples experienced was a little off for a Brockmann book. Not that the chemistry felt forced, as another reviewer mentioned, but not as hot as I've come to expect. I think this was due more to the need to build this world and these relationships, and I'm willing to be in this for the long haul. I truly believe that the chemistry will build with subsequent stories as the characters deepen their emotional connections with one another.

Brockmann subscribed to the strength-through-adversity school in creating her heroines, as each has faced and triumphed over some dark and scary stuff. Having said that, those women still have ISSUES, which are bound to come up in future books. I like that these women are real for the future in which this is set, not for today's US or today's science; they are not one-note perky pollyannas but complex women.

Fair warning: there is frank sexual abuse, sexual intimacy without emotional connection and male/male sexual interaction. If any of this bothers you, move along. Born To Darkness does not give us a happily ever after. When it's done correctly, I sometimes prefer the happily enough for now which we get in this book.

It's apparent to me that there will be more to this story, and I for one am looking forward to it!      

Yoplait Lactose Free yogurt coupon

I haven't tried this one yet, and I'm looking forward to it.  Yoplait is already my favorite yogurt, and I'd really like to try the lactose-free offerings.  In the meantime, here's a coupon, courtesy of MyBlogSpark.


Yoplait recently announced its new Yoplait® Lactose Free yogurt.  Inspired by the Yoplait yogurt we know and love, Lactose Free comes in four delicious flavors - Strawberry, Peach, French Vanilla and Cherry - and contains 50% of the recommended Daily Value of calcium, with vitamins A and D in every cup. Lactose Free contains NO artificial sweeteners and can be used in some of your favorite recipes - like chocolate crème brulee and strawberry cheesecake.

Lactose intolerant or know someone who is? You can visit http://bit.ly/IiJBKU to download a printable coupon for $0.30 when you buy any flavor of Yoplait Lactose Free yogurt cups. 

*The coupon offer for Yoplait Lactose Free yogurt is not valid in some states, including Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota and Tennessee.

Reviewers to trust, or to avoid

When you are looking at cookbooks on Amazon, look for reviews by either "Gramma" or "Lucy Ditty."  I've noticed each lady tends to give fair, unbiased reviews featuring her own honest opinion  Both ladies have apparently been cooking a long time, and review a LOT of cookbooks.  Gramma's profile says she owns something like 600 hardcopy cookbooks, and who knows how many digital.   Even though the vast majority of books I "buy" are free for my Kindle, I have begun to look for a review by either lady before I'll bother getting the cookbook.

On the other hand, "Harriet Klausner" reviews other books, fiction mostly.  She reviews so many every day, I cannot imagine how she has time to read, much less the two books a day her profile states.  Very few of her reviews show less than four-star ratings, and I'd take her opinion with a large grain of salt.  I've noticed that she's started posting reviews as "A Customer" and then signing her name at the bottom of the review.  I see her name and I just don't even bother reading.

Blockbuster DVDs at home for Dummies (well, this one, anyway)

Had a free two-month deal with Blockbuster for DVDs at home, with unlimited exchange in-store.  It ends tomorrow.

The first week, I got DVDs three times - one day turnarounds.  Keep in mind I live in Dallas, where there is most assuredly a Blockbuster warehouse for this service.  Nonetheless, I was impressed by that.  After that first week, I was lucky to get DVDs once a week.  It would take two days to get to them from me, then another day to check in and sometimes another day to mail out whatever was next in my queue, and sometimes two days to get to me after they said it was mailed.  

In addition, after experiencing the selection wonderland that is Netflix (granted, more than four years ago), I was sorely underwhelmed by Blockbuster's DVD selection.  At least half a dozen times, I searched for something that was fairly recent, and they didn't have it.  Online, I'm talking, not in-store.  

There is no Blockbuster anywhere near me, so those unlimited in-store exchanges were worthless to me.  Totally wish I could have taken advantage of that, because that would definitely have added to the value.  

The queue interface is not as intuitive as I remember Netflix being, and it's really easy to get the queue disordered accidentally, and have to spend an hour fixing it back to the right order.  It's a three step process to add TV seasons to the queue, and to make certain that each series comes in order, one series at a time.  How to do that is nowhere in the help information - I had to chat with a customer service rep to learn how to do it, and then only after I'd gotten Season One, DVD 1 and Season Two, DVD 1, of the same series, both at the same time.  The reasoning behind that particular thing is both irritating and ridiculous.

Bottom line for me:  slightly more expensive than Netflix for poorer service and a lackluster selection.  Not worth my money.  Cancelled.  Cancelling took me to ELEVEN screens, wherein Blockbuster asked me three separate times if I was sure I didn't want to pick another plan instead of cancelling.  

Maybe someday, if I live next door to a Blockbuster, this might be worth it.  But by the time that happens, there probably won't be any Blockbuster stores left in the state.

To sleep, to sleep

For about the last two years, I've had a weird sleep schedule.  At first, it was just that I was up late, sometimes not going to bed until three or four in the morning.  It progressed over time until I *couldn't* sleep until five or six in the morning.  By the time Baby Potatohead came along, I couldn't sleep until after the sun came up.  Since all the Potatoheads were night owls, and they lived with me, this was not really an issue, other than sleeping so late in the day that I could not get normal daytime chores, like going to the Post Office or the bank, done during working hours.

Things leveled out some after I moved out of the apartment, and couch-surfed with a friend for three months.  I was still a night owl, with occasional nights where I didn't sleep until five or six in the morning, but mostly, I was going to sleep by two or three.  That may have been because said friend has a school-age daughter and their morning routine would frequently interrupt my sleep long enough that I couldn't go back to sleep, thus making me tired earlier that night.  It may or may not have had something to do with having cable on the TV.  I am used to going to sleep with the TV on the Law and Order channel, and in absence of TV, then a DVD movie.  I cannot count the number of times I've gone to sleep to Speed or Armageddon or Die Hard.  Yes, the movies have to be blow-shit-up for me to sleep to them.  Don't ask me why.

Now, though, my sleep schedule is so messed up that it's actually creating extra stress for me.  I don't sleep every day anymore.  That's right, I don't sleep every day.  I try to.  I get tired.  I go to bed.  I read boring books.  I close my eyes and meditate.  I do any number of things that have worked for me before and no joy. One night last week, I went to bed early because I was tired.  9PM is very early for me.  Six hours later, I realized I had finished three books and was still awake.  I tried sleeping to a favorite TV episode on my Kindle Fire.  I barely dozed for a few minutes.  I meditated, my usual four-four meditation.  All that, and I didn't actually get to sleep until nearly ten the following morning, thirteen hours after I went to bed.  Then, I didn't sleep but about five hours.

So now, I sleep one "night," then am awake for the remainder of that day and all of the following day, finally falling asleep sometime in the late wee hours of the third day.  In other words, let's say I sleep Monday morning, from about six until about two in the afternoon.  Then, I'll be awake the rest of Monday, all of Tuesday, and finally be able to fall asleep sometime around five or six on Wednesday morning, if I'm lucky.  Sometimes, it's actually much later than five or six.  Basically my wake time is at least thirty-six hours.

It's driving me crazy.  Crazier.  It's a serious struggle to drag myself out of bed on the occasions when I DO have something to do that requires me to be somewhere before noon.  Heaven forbid I have to be somewhere at eight or nine in the morning, particularly since that also requires me to build in an extra two hours for the bus ride.  Grrr.

On top of this sleep schedule weirdness, I'm also not sleeping well.  Once I'm asleep, I don't wake up.  That's not the issue.  I just wake up five to eight hours later, and feel like I haven't slept at all.  I think it would be a thousand times worse if I weren't using my CPAP, but frankly, I'm afraid to sleep without that thing.  I dread the idea that the machine might have a mechanical issue, because I haven't had insurance for four years.  I have no means of replacing the little bits, like the mask or the hose, much less a machine that costs in the neighborhood of $800.

My landlord/roommate thinks it's just an oddity about my circadian rhythm that I have to adjust to.  Who knows?  Depression?  Menopause?  Anxiety?  Stress?  My body resetting itself?  Some health issue about which I'm clueless?

While I don't know what's causing it, I do know that it's causing me frustration and irritation.  I'm cranky enough normally.  Me uber-cranky is just not pleasant.  Not for other people and not for me.

Dreams

Had the strangest dream today (yes, I didn't get to sleep until after 0600, so it was today).  This was one of those rare occasions when I was dreaming, then wake up, do something, and go back to sleep and slip right back into the exact same dream.  Brendan Fehr (Michael Guerin, Roswell) represented my brother (worst casting EVAR, brain!) and it was full of the most bizarre and wonderful events.  The dream left me with something important to my waking life, and all I can consciously remember are Brendan as my brother, a vague recollection of having a sister and a welcome and much-needed hug from a real-life friend I haven't actually seen in person in fifteen years.  Oh, and the word "skin," imbued with great importance, though not related to the story-arc of Skins on Roswell.

I have new insight into the importance of hugs in my life, and the strange idea that I've been hugging wrong.

Book: Underground Guardians: Protector by Lisa Renee Jones

I read the first third and it was rough and slow reading.  Then I took a break to read several other books.  I came back to this book, night after night, and would read a few pages and just give up and pick another book to read.  At the end of each book, I would try to read this one again.

Mason is tortured by his belief that he is Arion (and yes, this was purposely styled after the Aryan Brotherhood of Nazi Germany), by his belief that Holly won't love him if she knows (something), by his belief that Holly needs to love him of her own free will without knowing that he has Mated her as an Arion.  There were several times that I was disgusted that this educated and seemingly strong woman would just knuckle under to Mason's orders, particularly when it related to matters of trust - hers for him or his for her.  He would basically say, "No, we're not going to talk about it, we're going to screw instead."  I paraphrased, of course, but it was pretty much the same result every time.  She would want to discuss whatever he was keeping from her, and he would insist on having sex instead.  And she would give in.  Again.

The sex scenes were blah, and it seemed more like some chemical reaction that made them need to rut constantly than a passionate need to touch each other.  I get being in love and this wasn't it for me.

I got to 83% and finally decided in the middle of a paragraph that I really just didn't care what happened to any of the characters or care how the book ended or care that I was leaving a book unfinished.  I just felt relieved to be done. I skimmed through the rest of the book, and what few things caught my eye were more tortured Mason, tell instead of show about the Arions, and Holly being overpowered by Mason yet again to have sex.  She's crying desperately over something and two paragraphs later, she's screaming in ecstasy.  Oooookaaay.

So, your mileage may vary, and it was definitely not one I enjoyed.

This was a free Kindle download.

Book: Abduction of Mary Rose by Joan Hall Hovey

This is a fairly good mystery, with decent suspense in places.  Hovey's work here verges on very good, but never quite makes it.  I see evidence that she can (maybe will, maybe already is) be a great writer, as the bones of the story are wonderful.

The opening hooked me right in, and the first third of the book kept the momentum going.  As the story progressed, though, the suspense lessened, the dastardly villain was revealed (about halfway through) and the instances of proofreading errors increased greatly.  It became more of a chore to keep going, and just about the time the mistakes made me consider quitting, the book reached its climax.  The 3/4 in place of dashes, starting with the first page and continuing through the entirety of the book, were especially annoying.

I did keep reading to the end, because I had come to care a bit about the main character, Mary Rose's daughter, Naomi.  As far as characterization goes, Naomi was definitely most fleshed out and easiest to understand.  Secondary characters were less consistently well done and in some cases, not well at all for their importance to the continuity.

This book was not a dog, but wasn't great, either.  Solid three stars for keeping me interested in what happened to Naomi long enough to ignore the other stuff.

This was a Kindle edition that I downloaded while it was free.

Book: Second Star by Dana Stabenow

I found this book on one of my searches for free Kindle downloads.  I put off reading it because I just have so many Kindle books on my phone!

One I started, I had a really difficult time stopping for little things like eating, and I did not go to sleep until I finished it.

This is hard science-fiction, no fantasy here.  Wonderful characters about whom it was easy to care - I cried in at least two places, so much did I care about the characters.  Even though much of the book is basically "a day in the life," it was far from mundane.  When the story heated up and the real action got started, it was even more fascinating.

Polished writing and professional editing.  I did not find a single editable error in the entire book.  Considering the state of many of my Kindle reads lately, I'd almost give an extra star just for that, if I could.  :)

My two regrets:  I did not find this book, or its sequels in the 90s, and the two Kindle sequels are completely out of my budget.

Suitable for about 13 and up.  There are a couple of sexual situations alluded to, but not actually put on paper (so to speak).

Book: Ten More Bodies by Connie Triplett

I made myself finish this one, because the last book I tried to read, I had to give up, and I refused to give up on two books in a row. I'm giving it three stars because it was a good story that could have been great. FBI agents, serial killers, small-town law enforcement, southern settings, maybe a touch of romance. All things I love in a book. I took a chance on a book with only two reviews, with one being from the alleged proofreader, and thought I couldn't miss. Boy, was I wrong.

The writing was high school level, with awkward sentence structure, grammar errors and an inexplicable dearth of commas where they really should have been. Gads! Chapters were rife with short sentences, quotation marks around conversations with no idea who was actually speaking, and thought processes that seemed more suited to high school students than trained FBI agents. There were characterization issues and problems with realism: federal agents don't hop on planes on a whim, or visit death row prisoners just because they ask. Nor do they conduct entire investigations without reporting to a supervisor. Trained federal agents who happen to be female and "serial killer specialists" don't scream like ten-year-olds and give up on life just because there is no immediately obvious way to get out of a dangerous situation without a male agent readily to hand.

I'll give Ms. Triplett credit for an intriguing idea that could have kept me immersed, but not for writing a good book. The end leaves room for a sequel. Unfortunately for this author, I won't be looking for it.

If grammar errors don't bother you, feel free to read this book - you may just like it. Otherwise, steer clear.

This was a free Kindle edition.

Book: Killer Temptations, volume 1 by Danity O'Shae

I enjoyed this book, a little bit.  I wanted to enjoy it more, but the plot kept getting interrupted with sex scenes.  Don't get me wrong.  I LOVE sex in my books - the more graphic the better, though I prefer tastefully graphic, rather than prurient.  But in this case, the sex scenes were fairly short, not really very appealing, and were stuck in right when the story itself was starting to get interesting.  Some scenes were necessary, considering the subject and plotline.  Necessary or not, they nearly always felt intrusive rather than important to forwarding the movement of the plot, and the attraction between the two main female characters seemed contrived and was never convincing to me.

There is a really good story lurking here, about the underground S&M club scene, and the women who get into it, for whatever reasons.  It just never lived up to its potential.  The relationships were good, but not really great, not enough to make me really care about following these women into the next book.

Supremely annoying was the author's use of the word breast, always referring to both breasts.  She would say nipples or titties, but the word breast was always singular.  The first couple of times, I just thought it was a typo, but it continued to happen.  She used it a lot, and I got so tired of it.

At the time of this review submission, I'm the sole dissenting vote in a small field of five-star ratings, so your mileage probably will vary.

This was a free Kindle edition of the book.

Book: Embers of Hope, Flickers of Passion by Kristen James

Gag me.  With a spoon.

The writing level in this book is someone taking college courses, writing a novella for a class assignment.  Poor sentence structure, mixed up words, bad grammar, and so on.  It needs a solid once-over from an editor/proofreader (the author's blurb claims she is one, but if so.....) to clean up the mess.  I was mentally rewriting the book while I was reading it.

The premise was good - a woman moves to Texas from Oregon, meets a guy, marries him, has a baby with him, then comes home because her best friend's husband died.  The woman has secrets about her time in Texas, things she didn't tell either her best friend, Cassie, or her mother, Margaret.

To the book's detriment, therein lies much of the conflict in the story - Savannah reconciling her secrets within herself, and sharing them with her friend and her mother. In what could have been an interesting twist, turns out that the guy Cassie sends to pick Savannah up at the truck rental place when she hits town is Cassie's dead husband's best friend, and is also the firefighter who rescued Savannah from an apartment fire two years ago.  Unfortunately, Cassie is angry at Jason for killing her husband (not that he actually did), and the chemistry between Savannah and Jason is tepid, at best.  The enmity between Cassie and Jason is the remaining conflict in the story.  There's a small B arc with Savannah's ex-husband suing for custody, but it's not even really interesting.  That B arc did have the most glaring mistake in the book, so wrong that it stuck in my mind.  A woman CANNOT keep a man from seeing his children just because he is not paying child support.  CANNOT.  In the eyes of the law, paying child support and spending time with your children are two completely disparate things.

Jason resists getting sexual with Savannah (with one maddening exception) for over 80% of the book, for reasons that didn't make sense to me at all.  When they did finally consummate, there was a lot of ear-nuzzling and back-rubbing, leading to the least satisfying sexual experience I've read in quite a long time.  I mean, they were talking throughout their encounter!  If the sex is good, conversation with full words is damn near impossible.  The one sexual encounter about halfway through the book happened on the couch with the toddler playing in the kitchen.  Every mom I know lets her kid play in the kitchen unsupervised.  And every mom I know thinks that you can indulge in some heavy petting on the couch and the kid won't even notice the noise.

I would have like to have enjoyed this book, but I really didn't.  Too bad, because it could have been a really good story.  I might give Ms. James another try in five or six years, in the hopes that her writing has matured, or she has a better editor.  But since there are so many books out there to read, probably not.

This was a free Kindle edition.

Book: Jenna's Cowboy by Sharon Gillenwater

Love a man in uniform, especially when he's a cowboy, but...

For the most part, I really enjoyed this story.  It was well-written, a very pleasant change for a Kindle edition, with great characterization and colorfully scenic backdrops.  Laughably accurate as to high school football in Texas, particularly in small towns.  It was a sweet love story, with a sweet ending.  Nonspoilery comments: there is no cursing and no sex, only some very tame kisses, and a scene or two with fairly frank descriptions of a man struggling with battle fatigue.  That's as untame as it gets.

Ms. Gillenwater set this book (and future books, I presume) in West Texas (not to be confused with West, TX, lol) on a working ranch outside of a small town.  The small town is named after the heroine's family.

Descriptions of work done on the ranch, and on the neighboring cotton farm, were accurate, to the best of my knowledge, but glossed over a few things, maybe because such descriptions of spring roundup activities, for example, would have been inappropriate for the christian audience.

PTSD is a serious issue, not just for many of today's returning Armed Services veterans, but for those who have been back for years, or even decades.  Good work on that front, too, Ms. G.  Great foundation for further information in the upcoming books, since PTSD is not a "curable" thing, but an ongoing struggle.

A minor quibble is that the two-year-old in the story, the heroine's son, was asking questions of his uncle at the wedding.  They were cute questions, but I found it difficult to believe that two such conscientious parents (and yes, I'm including the hero) would have gotten to the wedding stage of the game without having a talk with the toddler about the changes they were making to his life.  Talk about just asking for a temper tantrum!

What strained my credulity, almost to the breaking point, is the idea of a town where every character described is a devout christian, even random people just visiting the town.  Seriously?  Not real, not even in a small Texas town.  Then, to be even more unbelievable, the hero of the story was a grown man, nearing thirty, as far as I could gather from the descriptions of his life both before and after his military service.  I have never met a grown man, however plain, however devoutly christian, nearing thirty, who had not only never kissed a girl/woman (at all), but had never even dated.  Not once.  Uh-huh.  And from all accounts, he was far from plain.  Sorry, Ms. G.  Ya totally lost me there.

I finished the book, and if christian fiction were my bag (how I wish I had known what this was before I "bought" it!), I probably would have loved this story.  I did recommend it to several christian friends of mine, who I imagine will think it eminently readable.  For me, though, the praying and talking to the Lord and God will provides and all that was overkill and, along with the above issues, took two stars away from an otherwise wonderful story.

Trying something new...

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Freebie: A Cold Creek Christmas

In my capacity as a Harlequin Ambassador, I received five copies of A Cold Creek Christmas by RaeAnne Thayne.  Just got the package today, so I can't review it yet.

Here's the back cover.

Just back from a tour of duty, all Major Brant Western wanted was a hot meal and a warm bed.  What he didn't need was the stunning socialite in disguise who'd just shown up at his family's Cold Creek ranch.  Scandal trailed bad girl Mimi Van Hoyt - aka Maura - everywhere she went.  But once Brant discovered her secret, how could he turn her away?

Being stranded in the middle of nowhere in a blizzard was not Mimi's idea of a fun time in the Tetons.  Then why was she starting to think this sexy soldier could be more than her shelter from the storm?  And the more determined Brant was to protect her and her unborn child, the more she believed that this honorable, irresistible military man was the only man for her.

OK, so a man in uniform, mountains, snow, and a baby.  What more could you ask for in a book?  lol

It looks like there are actually several books by Ms. Thayne that are set in Cold Creek, so if you like this one, there are others in the series, possibly with some of the same supporting characters.

Let me know if you think you'd like to read it.

BzzCampaign: Kroger Private Selection - dessert

I am part of the Kroger Private Selection BzzCampaign on BzzAgent, and got coupons to try several Private Selection products for free, and to purchase others at $2 off.  (I could share the coupons, too.  Anybody want one?)

In addition to the ice cream bars I've already reviewed, I picked up Northern Spy Apple Crisp, using one of the $2 off coupons.  It sounded interesting, and I wanted to try something else that wasn't ice cream.

These mini-dessert bowls come two per package, and I guess I misread the package, because I thought there were four, and was disappointed when I opened it.  At the shelf price of $4.59, these are fairly expensive desserts, and I would not ordinarily pay that much - particularly when I can get an entire apple pie for about a dollar more.  Or, you know, make one.  lol

That said, the apple crisp was really good!  The spiced apple pie filling was perfectly seasoned and the crispy topping was just the right amount of crunchy.  With a small bowl of vanilla ice cream, I think this would make a really great dessert for a single or couple who want a tasty dessert without much effort.  And if your food budget is bigger than mine, then the price is probably reasonable.

This dessert gets a thumbs up from me!

BzzCampaign: Kroger Private Selection - appetizer

I am part of the Kroger Private Selection BzzCampaign on BzzAgent, and got coupons to try several Private Selection products for free.

When I was at the grocery store the other day, one of my selections was the mini-quiche appetizer.  There are nine per package, and the shelf price was $6.79.  Under normal circumstances, I would not pay that much for an appetizer, and consider that price to be much too high for a package of nine.

My package, when I opened it today, contained only eight.  Lucky me.  lol  Had I paid for this purchase, I would complain.

I prepared the quiches as instructed on the box, and let them cool a couple of minutes.  The crusts were pretty good - flaky but not crumbly, and didn't taste floury.  A good-tasting crust is hard to make.  So, thumbs up on the crust, Kroger chefs.

As for taste, they were good, but not great, and I wasn't really impressed.  The mushroom quiches were a bit overpowering.  I think they would have tasted better had the mushroom bits been distributed into the egg mixture, rather than all sitting at the bottom.  The spinach quiches had more spinach than egg, and though I like spinach, I didn't particularly like this flavor at all.  The florentine quiche was the best of the three, with a good balance of ingredients, spiced well (as in neither bland nor heavily seasoned) and was actually the most attractive visually.

All in all, this product did not make the cut, and I am not likely to repurchase them, nor can I recommend this specific appetizer to friends or family.

Review: Aveeno Hand Cream

I have got the driest hands on the planet I think.  Not just regular dry skin, but creepy, rustling snakeskin husks on the ends of my arms.  I have found a hand lotion that is just about perfect: Aveeno Intense Relief Hand Cream.  If I use it, even just once a day, my skin doesn't get all dry and flaky and just plain gross (in my mind, anyway).  It soaks in quickly and holds up to my obsessive hand-washing habits.  It is really good stuff.  And no, I'm not getting a farthing for this, just turning you on to some fantastic hand lotion.  I wish they had it in bigger sizes so I could use it on my legs.  Yes, if a white girl's legs can be ashy, mine are.  :D