Ribs cooking on the smoker grill

The boys can’t wait to dig in!

The complete meal: homemade macaroni and cheese, ribs, potato salad, asparagus, corn bread & apple pie. It was delicious!

Ok, I love everything Jane Austen, so when Stephanie at Stephanie’s Written Word announced that she was starting an Austen Challenge, I had to sign up!

Here are the rules:

The Everything Austen Challenge will run for six months (July 1, 2009 – January 1, 2010)! All you need to do is pick out what six Austen-themed things you want to finish to complete the challenge.

I LOVE the flexibility of this challenge! You can read Austen’s books, Austen-themed books, or watch Austen movies! How easy is this!?

Since I’ve read all of Austen’s books, and viewed most of the movies, I’m picking Austen-ish books to read, and more recent Austen-ish movies.

Here’s my list:

Books
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance – Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! by Sean Grahame-Smith
Mr. Darcy, Vampyre by Amanda Grange
The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

Movies
Pride & Prejudice
The Jane Austen Book Club
Becoming Jane

I’m really excited about this one! Talk about easy-peasy! Interested, head over to Stephanie’s Written Word and sign up…go on…do it!

Beginning today, I’m joining three teams of bloggers in The Game On Diet Challenge. We learned about this Challenge from Jennifer (aka Book Club Girl) when she embarked upon this challenge a few weeks ago. I haven’t received my copy of the book yet, so I’m pulling information from Jennifer’s blog:

The Game On! Diet is the brainchild of Krista Vernoff, head writer and executive producer of tv’s Grey’s Anatomy and Az Ferguson, winner of the Body-for-Life Challenge. When Krista returned to work after having her baby, she called on Az to help her lose the baby weight. He made her a workout regimen and eating plan that she, well, didn’t follow at all. So Az went back to the drawing board. Knowing that Krista had a VERY competitive nature, he decided to present her with a healthy lifestyle plan in the form of a game, that she could play with a team, and that she could play to win. This appealed to her very much. Rather than the focus being on losing weight, the focus is on winning points, a far more tantalizing prospect.

So how do you earn points? You can earn a maximum of 100 points a day for doing the following:

1) Eating 5 balanced meals a day, every 2-4 hours — 6 points per meal

2) Exercising for at least 20 minutes a day — 20 points

3) Sleeping for a minimum of 7 hours per night — 15 points

4) Drinking 3 liters of water a day — 10 points

5) Adopting a healthy new habit that you practice every day — 10 points

6) Dropping one unhealthy habit — 10 points

7) Communicating with your team members every day — 5 points

You earn penalties (points lost!) for:

1) stepping on the scale more than once a day

2) unsanctioned snacking (you can have as much celery and cucumber as you want throughout the day, plus 100 free calories of whatever once a day, no other snacking)

3) Colluding with the opposing team to get them to break a rule

4) Drinking alcohol (see exception below)

5) changing the healthy or unhealthy habit during the course of the game (you have to pick those and stick to them).

It’s not about total deprivation as you get:

1) One day off a week, when you don’t have to follow any of the rules

2) One meal off a week when you can eat what you want and have one unit of alcohol

3) each day you can have 100 calories of anything as a bonus treat

My habit I’m going to break is logging on to email/twitter as soon as I get home from work, even before we’ve had dinner. I will now wait until we’ve had dinner and enjoyed some time with my family before getting on my computer.

My new habit will be…gasp…reducing the size of my library. It really has become quite overwhelming. In addition to the 4 overflowing bookshelves I have, I have stacks of books all over the house. So, my new habit–with every new book that comes in, I have to get rid of one. By getting rid of, I mean giving away, swapping, etc. A manageable goal that will make my dear husband happy!

Ok, back to the challenge. Here is the line up of the three teams:

The Ding-Dongs:
Julie from Booking Mama
softdrink from Fizzy Thoughts
Amy from My Friend Amy
Jill from Rhapsody in Books
Ti from Book Chatter and Other Stuff

Beth F from Beth Fish Reads
Jenners from Find Your Next Book Here
ME!
Denise from M. Denise C.
Dawn from She is Too Fond of Books

The HoHos:
Kathy from The Brain Lair
two of Kathy’s IRL friends who will be updating their progress on Facebook

I will be posting a few times a week about this challenge. I don’t want to inundate those that aren’t interesting in this challenge, so after I post my first update, all you will need to do is click on the “Game On” button on my sidebar to view my progress.

Thanks for all the support…and wish me good luck!

Congratulations to all the winners! I will be contacting each of you later today to obtain your shipping address. Books will be sent directly from Sourcebooks.

Gavin is a handsome American who heads to Prague to escape financial problems he’s experiencing in the States. He meets Katka, a gorgeous Czech woman, and they fall in love. Like many women in the Czech Republic, Katka is desperate to escape the poverty that surrounds her and her family. So, along with Gavin and her best friend, Simona, they devise a plan to scam buyers of mail order brides. When Gavin is approached by Sal, a man interested in buying Katka he initially declines. When the potential buyer offers an obscene amount of money for Katka, he can’t resist. He and Katka devise a plan for Kataka to escape during a connection in Amsterdam. But when the buyer tells her about Gavin’s financial woes and promises these mistakes will be erased, Katka decides to stay true to the deal and remains with Sal.

Months after the deal, once Gavin that Katka hasn’t followed through with the plan, he is riddled by guilt. It was he that suggested this deal. He can’t help but think of the future they could have spent together. Gavin uses whateve means necessary and tracks down Katka’s location. Instead of living the life that was promised to her, she’s become an dancer/prostitute. She admits to Gavin why she agreed to this shift in the plan-she loved him so much she was willing to give anything for him to be relieved of the problems he was facing back in the States.

Gavin is ultimately put in the shoes of a buyer and must be willing to give anything in order to get Katka back. But what price is he willing to pay?

To be completely honest, Katka was difficult for me to get into. The sentences are choppy and the storyline jumps around from the past to the present. But once I became accustomed to this, Katka became easier to read. It’s a very short read, barely over 100 pages. I think if the author added a bit more depth to the characters (perhaps explain a bit more about Gavin’s reason for fleeing to Prague or about the family for which Katka is desperate to provide) Katka would have been a more engaging read. In addition, I believe changing the format so the scenes flow a little more would be beneficial as well. Overall this is a good read, but I don’t think it does the author’s talent justice in the current format.