The weather here was beeeeeeautiful today. The sun was shining all day and I believe it almost hit 80! This was the first time it has actually felt like spring here. So after clearing out all the leaves and debris that have accumulated on the balcony since winter began, Gizmo and I relaxed out there most of the morning, soaking up the sun and nature-watching (our balcony faces out to a wooded area). Gizmo LOVES being outside, as you can see (the air smells SO good!).
I had wanted to get my balcony garden going too, but since this is Rochester, NY, the weather can change at the drop of a hat and, apparently, will be doing just that on Tuesday when it is expected to dip back down into the 40s with SNOW! Uncool, I tell ya. So sadly, the balcony garden will have to wait a bit. The rest of this weekend was spent with the usual cooking, laundry, cleaning, etc. I have been making an effort to try out new recipes for the most part each week from my Pinterest boards, because I currently have about 800 trazillion recipes pinned and continue pinning more on a daily basis. At least if I'm trying them out then I feel somewhat justified in my continued pinning. This weekend's recipes were all new and all came out soooooo good!! There was a huge trend in the recipes, namely cheese, and also beef (every recipe except for 1 used beef, and they ALL used cheese!). So no wonder we loved all of them, since we are huge cheese lovers (and are quite cheesy ourselves)!
This weekend also consisted of baking of dog treats and assembly of a dog gift basket. The company I work for is involved in several charities and conducts fundraising activities/events throughout the year. Right now we are engaging in the United Way campaign and this week there will be a week-long auction of various gift baskets. As I was already making a couple similar dog baskets for a raffle at a cancer benefit for a friend last weekend and had a lot of extra stuff, it would be silly for me not to make one for this too! 
As for reading, it seems it's been quite a while since I've updated on here regarding my completed entries. Labor Day was a good one. It was a captivating story and had me hooked from beginning to end. While reading it, I noticed that I kept envisioning the characters as the actors portraying them in the film version (though I have not seen the film yet...having a preference of reading the books first), and thinking what a superb choice Kate Winslet must be for this role. She masters her depressed/troubled/borderline crazy roles (The Reader, Revolutionary Road, Carnage, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). Surprisingly, the only thing that bothered me a little about the book was the ending felt drawn out, trying to wrap everything up neatly in all areas. I know, I know, I'm always complaining about endings that felt rushed, however this was the other extreme and almost felt a bit contrived. Overall, though, I really enjoyed the book. So much so, in fact, that I was eager to read another Joyce Maynard book, and so chose to read After Her... though my experience with this one was nothing like that with Labor Day (except for the ending! Same kind of drawn out, tidy everything up in a nice package to try and make the reader happy). It did not have the same flow and felt like the book had been written all over the place out of order, as there were certain things explained several times (when it had already been explained, in almost the exact same words, several chapters ago). At times it just felt like a checklist for the number of victims being tallied up and felt really overly drawn out, like a good chunk of the book was just space-filler. It just felt like a mess and was not something I would recommend or ever read again.
Lastly, The Graveyard Book. Also somewhat disappointing for me, after having come off The Ocean at the End of the Lane, another of Gaiman's which I absolutely loved. It's not that I didn't enjoy this one... I mean it's still the same beautiful and elegant Gaiman writing. The issue may have been as simple as the fact that this one is one of Gaiman's children's books. It was eloquent and masterfully written, but it just wasn't the same experience as others of his. Had I read this one as a child, however, it probably would have been one of my favorites. It just seems like one of those books that would be so much better if reading it when you were younger.
And that leaves us in the present, in which I am reading The Cuckoo's Calling by J.K. Rowling, writing under her pseudonym Robert Galbraith. It's a crime novel, and so far that's all I really know. We'll see how it goes. I would say keep the pages turning, but have been told that is Ilya's sign-off (and so is basically copyrighted). Sadly, I'm not clever enough to come up with anything brilliant so....
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