Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Reviews and Giveaways

Brainiversity – Giveaway

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brainiversity

***And the winners are Shaye and CBS! Congrats.***

I often feel that my brain is going to mush. I’ve tried reading Tolstoy, playing Sudoku, taking extended adult naps, brushing my teeth with my non-dominant hand and many other remedies for getting my brain in shape and improving my memory.

None of these were as much fun as playing Brainiversity, a new brain fitness game from Brighter Minds Media. Full of fun little brain stimulating activities, it gets you thinking on your feet and then tracks your progress as you complete daily quizzes.

I was excited about my progress as I continued to improve my scores from day to day. The excitement wore off JUST a titch when Laylee got on my computer to play by clicking on things randomly since she can’t read or do math and earned basically the same score as I had worked my way up to.

I’ll just chalk it up to the fact that she’s likely a child of unparalleled and even freakish genius, not that I am a moron who’s brain is in a state of rapid decay. Hopefully even if the latter is true, I’ll be able to reverse the effects by keeping up my daily brain-ercises.

If you’d like to keep your brain agile enough to help your kids with their homework, leave a comment on this post and I’ll enter you to win one of two copies of the PC-compatible version of the game. I’ll draw a winner on Wednesday at 10pm PST.

Click to Read My Product Review Policy

The Phantom Experience

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From age 13 when my friend Erin’s family saved pennies in a jar to go to The Phantom of the Opera, I’ve dreamed of seeing the Broadway show. The more I found out about the plot of the musical however, the less I cared about the actual story and the more I wanted to see it simply for the music and the spectacle. Okay, let me be honest. I wanted to pay $50 just to watch the dramatic chandelier drop.

So today Dan and I paid the pennies from our jar and we watched the chandelier fall… in slow motion supported by super-thick wires. The way I remember hearing about it, the chandelier came crashing down on the audience, barely missing people’s heads and falling so fast that everyone screamed in delighted terror. There was no unscripted screaming in the theatre today as we listened to the hydraulics lowering the giant prop smoothly to the stage. No terror at all.

I would have walked out right then and there if it had been intermission and taken a long disappointed potty break out of spite if it weren’t for the fact that the music was so beautiful it made me cry. Now to be honest, I should put the tears in context.

I also cried when I saw Reba in concert… and Dave Matthews… and Dido. I cried at the So You Think You Can Dance live show and last week I cried at the gym when a muted commercial for The Biggest Loser: Family Edition came on one of the monitors.

But still, the music was gorgeous despite the egregious lack of diction from the chorus (we could not understand a word they were singing) and the pathetically un-near-deathness of the chandelier crash. And I got to wear some hot shoes and hold Dan’s hand (mostly because of the love and only partly because of the spiky hotness of the shoes).

The sets and costumes were gorgeous, making me want to light a thousand candles, buy a smoke machine and sew a velvet cloak with a hood to wear whenever Dan and I are cavorting around in underground tunnels bursting into song. I mean, Christine wears a hooded velvet cloak and “strange angel” psychopaths are swarming her practically all the time. What’s not to love about that?

The one question that haunted me as I left the theatre was — what did “keeping your hand at the level of your eyes” have to do with the price of eggs? Would shielding his eyes really have kept Raoul from the noose? Honestly?

Coming soon: The Phantom Experience — According to Dan

Sony Reader Digital Book — Giveaway

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I was so excited to get my hands on the Sony Digital Reader, give it a spin and tell you all what I thought of it. When I supervised the media department at a public library after college, we were always talking about the latest technology in video, music and book readers. This was about 5 years ago and digital books were out there in the market but none of them truly felt like you were reading a book. I thought they’d never catch on.

For a few years now I’ve had the scriptures and a few other books uploaded to my PDA and it’s great for quick reference but not particularly enjoyable to use and I don’t want to feel like I’m reading from a computer. I wanted to review the Sony Reader Digital Book so I could tell you how the technology was coming along and all the reasons it wasn’t good enough.
sony
Well, that was a couple of months ago. The reader showed up at my house and I pulled it out of the box and started using it immediately. And it feels like a book. It’s small and lightweight and the screen is such that it looks like paper, truly. The font and spacing feel like a paperback except that you can CHANGE the font size. I like to keep it somewhere between itty bitty Lord of the Rings font and granny-needs-glasses large print.

There’s no backlight, which may seem like a downside, but what book glows? Not this one. It’s really like you’re reading from paper, only it always saves your place, you can fit hundreds of books in one small device, and most importantly you don’t have that lopsided page flipping problem. You know when you’re lying on your side reading and one side is always more comfortable to lay on, depending on how far along you are in the book and whether you’re reading the left or right page? But then you switch to the other page and you have to flip over on your other side or hold the book in some really weird way?

You don’t have to do that with this book. It is never lopsided and there are buttons on both sides to turn the pages.

If you’re looking for an all-in-one digital blog reader and wireless device, this is not the toy for you. But that’s not what I’m looking for. I’m looking for this. It does also have a black and white picture viewer, an MP3 player, and two storage card slots so you can use it to store and use a TON of media. You can even play music while you read.

It has a long battery life and the screen is viewable even in direct sunlight… like… I don’t know… a book!

There are a few negatives. The books do load slower than I’d like because you know, I like it fast. The software interface for downloading and uploading books is not super user-friendly. I fancy myself somewhat of a techie and I had some trouble figuring out how to get the books on the device the first time. There is no way to use the book while it is plugged in your computer to charge and you have to buy the DC power adapter separately, which I would highly recommend. Sony also doesn’t have the greatest selection of books in the world. They have a good amount of classic titles and a lot of new releases but the selection is not as broad as that for the Amazon Kindle.

However, I prefer the Sony reader to what I’ve seen of the Kindle because I want a book, a real book, but better. I hope they continue to grow their inventory of content.

I waited weeks to do this review because I’m so enjoying using it and because of my advertising contract now I must pass it on to one of you. So weighing in at a retail value of $299.00, I give you the Sony Reader Digital Book. It also comes with 100 free classic titles from Shakespeare to George Eliot.

Now does anyone want to give me one? It’s on my wish list. Oh the joys of carrying my entire library around all the time!

If you’re willing to enter this giveaway, even though the reader is lightly used and has my cooties on it, leave a comment listing 2 non-religious books you’d like to carry around with you everywhere. I know you all love the Bible and the Koran. What else do you love? (I’m willing to ship within the US. Anywhere else, I’ll be happy to send it if you pay the postage.)

I’ll randomly choose a winner Sunday night at 10pm PST. Oh, and Sony wants me to let you know that they’re not responsible if you fall and hurt yourself while reading it or if it self-destructs when you disassemble it to see the little men turning the gears on the inside.

Click to Read My Product Review Policy

Daring Reads — The Host

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Have you read the vampire books by Stephenie Meyer? The teen vampire werewolf romance books by Stephenie Meyer? Me neither.

Okay. I did read them. A bit. Because they’re set in the Northwest and Ms. Meyer went to BYU so I feel some sense of loyalty. I was just going to dip my toes in and read a bit so I knew what everyone was talking about. That was a year ago. In August when book 4 is released, I’m going to Port Angeles with some girlfriends, staying up all night reading Breaking Dawn and tooling around Forks with the other tween wannabe mom-type people, visiting the various spots where Bella and Edward formed their bond of passionate and forbidden vampiric high school love. We picked a hotel in Port Angeles because it had a bookstore nearby that was willing to stay open until midnight on August 1st.

I wouldn’t call the Twilight books great literature but they are incredibly gripping page-turners and something about them makes me squeal like a wee girl, all the while rolling my eyes and saying, “I’m way too old for this.” And then I do things like book hotel rooms and beg bookstore owners to stay open until midnight.

Anyhoo, I recently read Stephenie Meyer’s first attempt at Adult Fiction, The Host and I was pleasantly surprised. While the teen series was fast moving and an engrossing narrative, it felt like purely a brain vacation. Packed with adjectives about the magnetically attractive hunkishness of Edward’s each and every bodily feature, from his chiseled passionately pulsing pectorals to the oh-so-steamy third-from-the-center eyelash over his liquid-gold left eye, I would classify the series as fun fluff.

The Host had a different feel. Although romance was a big factor and the book had its fair share of hot moments, it focused on deeper themes. War, intolerance, human cruelty, and alien medical procedures are just a few. The book made me think and feel and consider how I treat people. It was also really inventive and kept me guessing what would come next.

Stephenie Meyer kicked it up a notch as a writer and storyteller in the Host, which made the Twilight series seem like a warm-up exercise. I’m excited to see what she does next… that is after she’s finished writing a gazillion sequels.

Daring Reads – The Vaccine Book

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The Vaccine Book by Robert W. Sears, M.D., F.A.A.P.

Dr Sears III or IV or something (I’m pretty sure it’s not the original Dr Sears.) has written a guide to Vaccines that is thorough, informative and not fear based. When it came to vaccinating my kids, I was terrified to proceed because of all the scary literature out there about possible side effects.

Friends called to warn me about the great harm I was doing my children by vaccinating them and how if I chose to do so, I could be responsible for their health problems later in life, including but not limited to autism and eventually painful death. I was freaked out. If I didn’t vaccinate, I could be ushering polio back into the world. If I did vaccinate, I could be saving the world, while sacrificing my child’s safety.

Every pediatrician I talked to said I MUST VACCINATE while every book and website I read said to vaccinate was practically child abuse.

In the end I decided to go with the collective wisdom of the medical community as delivered to me by my trusted advisor, a pediatrician I adored. She explained that the possible effects of the diseases far outweighed the possible side effects of the vaccinations and assured me that none of the clinic’s vaccines included mercury. I chose to believe her since I was too overwhelmed to sift through all the conflicting information myself.

What I like about Dr Sears’ book is that it explains that the decision to vaccinate is not an all or nothing choice. He goes through each vaccine individually, explaining how it’s made, what it contains, what it prevents, how serious and common the disease is and what side effects can be realistically expected as a result of the vaccine.

I really feel much more informed and am on my way to developing a detailed vaccination plan for my kids, a plan which may involve delaying or skipping certain vaccines or asking for specific brands to control the ingredients been injected into my kids’ bodies.

This book is definitely worth a perusal by any parent who has questions or concerns about vaccine safety. Although it seems obvious that Dr Sears supports the use of vaccines, I think he does a fairly good job of laying out the information impartially.

Click to Read My Product Review Policy

Black History Month with the Darings

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We had our prelude to Black History Month in January where we learned all about Martin Luther King, Jr. and how to get people to be nice by giving them a sharp civil rights to the kidney.

This month we continued the celebration by playing GEEBEE’s Black History Memory game. I have pictures of us playing the game but… you know… the internet being down and all…

So the game arrived in the mail and the kids were stoked. You could send them a package of lentils in the mail and they’d be excited because it was a PACKAGE! They were pleased. I decided that the best way to teach them about black history was to tell them about these amazing people without bringing up the issue of race.

I wanted to raise them to be colorblind. So I told them we were going to play a game about heroes. The box includes a matching game and a booklet that gives a little bit of background about what made these artists, historic figures, scientists and inventors important. For example. Do you know anything about Buffalo Soldiers besides that they were dreadlock rastas, stolen from Africa, brought to America, fighting on arrival, fighting for survival? I didn’t either but now I do. The game also has a small section on culture where we learned about the history of Kwanza.

We started the game about heroes with no mention of their race and I was thinking I was pretty smart. My thought was that their accomplishments were pretty impressive on their own without the caveat of, “Oooo. Look what she accomplished even though she was black!” I wanted to just say, “Oooo. Look what she accomplished! What a great woman!”

But as we continued to play, I was truly affected by their stories not just because they were amazing people but because they were amazing people despite the way they were treated. The handicap was not the color of their skin but the way people treated them because of the color of their skin and that’s a lesson that needs to be taught. I decided to bring race to the forefront of the game.

My kids need to hear about race relations and they need to know that amazing men and women worked their way out of slavery and then went on to make a positive difference to the world. They need to know that Harriet Tubman was not content with her own freedom but worked to help thousands of others as well. They need to know that these people were black and how they were treated because they were black and they need to work to never let something like that happen again.

The sad thing is that it’s still happening. People are not considered equal in this country, not truly. Every time I fill out a form that asks for my race, I feel twinge of discomfort. I am Caucasian. My race shelters me and makes things easier for me in ways I’ll never fully understand and how is that fair?

I wasn’t honestly sure how much of the teaching was getting through to them as they enjoyed collecting matches and laughing together and only half-listened to the stories I was reading between turns.

But when we finished Laylee touched me on the arm and said, “I’m glad I wasn’t alive when there was slavers. I wouldn’t ever want to have been alive back when people cared about skin whether it was light or dark.”

I’m sad that she will grow to find out that some people do still care about skin but I’m glad to be teaching her what I think about it. If I raise the kids to be blind to differences in skin color, then someone who’s less blind to those differences will get the chance to teach them and I’d rather have the chance to let them know that their only “racial intolerance” should be towards inequality.

You can find this and other Black History games and puzzles at Wal-Mart this month or at Pressman Toy.

Click to Read My Product Review Policy

Shelfari is LIKE a Virus

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Lately I’ve received a few invites to join the social networking site Shelfari and share my book preferences with friends. So tonight I decided to sign up. It sounded fun. I went to the page and it asked me for access to my email account so it could farm addresses to send comparison invites to. I gave it access to my personal email account, not the one I use for blogging. It showed me my entire address book and told me to click on the contacts I wished to send invites to. I picked THREE people I wanted to compare books with.

The Safari website proceeded to send email invitations to EVERYONE IN MY ADDRESS BOOK — TWICE!!!!! This includes business contacts, filmmaking contacts, former college professors, friends, church leaders, people who’ve done work on our house, EVERYONE!

One of Dan’s coworkers emailed him to ask if I had a virus because he’d just received 2 emails from me. Ummm… yeah. I think I have a virus. It’s called Shelfari and I’m mortified. If you got one of those emails from me, please do not follow the link. I’m sorry for wasting your time.

I want to go back and delete my account or complain to the administrator but I’m afraid to log on to their buggy site again.

***Updated – see comment from Shelfari employee below. I’m glad to hear that there’s no malicious intent with the company, but I still want to steer clear. With bugs like they apparently have, I’m really wary of using their service or giving them any of my personal information.***

My Pore Cleaner Sucks

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pore-cleanerWhile I was “researching” the Harriet Carter catalog for blog fodder, I came across a pore cleaning device “as seen on TV” and felt it was ridiculous, possibly useless, and I must have it. However, I was unwilling to pay $7.95 on the off chance that one of my pores could be cleansed of impurity.

Then, the stars aligned and by some miracle the DOLLAR STORE got in a shipment of the coveted pore cleaners. These particular cleaners were not “as seen on TV” per se, but they were as seen at the DOLLAR STORE, which meant that they would only cost approximately one dollar. I dug into my piggy bank and indulged.

The box claimed that the device would provide a personal spa experience. I am a person and I like spas and experiencing things. Great-o.

Inside the box there were no instructions, just this helpful warning insert.

pore cleaner

There are a few things I love about the insert.

1. The CAUTION — “Purple spots or scars may appear on your skin.” With the use of this device, you must forever choose between dirty pores or purple spots and scars.

2. The fact that PORE CLEANER is always typed in ALL CAPS.

3. The part where it says “do not use PORE CLEANER if you have pimples or any skin inflammation.” What exactly are you supposed to clean out of your pores if you’re not someone who’s prone to pimples or skin inflammation? Also, if the cleaner does what it says it will do to your skin, everyone who uses it will have skin inflammation. Maybe you can only use it the one time, until your skin becomes inflamed and then you have to stop. Or maybe you can only use it once on each patch of skin until your entire face turns purple and then you have to stop. Maybe you can only use it on that really soft part of your skin right behind your earlobes.

4. That you cannot use the PORE CLEANER for more than one minute around the nose or 4 minutes around the cheeks, chin or forehead. You cannot use it ever around your eyes, the top of your nose, head, hairline border, or on areas of thin skin, or on the same point more than twice.

After all this I put a battery in, started her up and pressed her to the very thick and unblemished tip of my nose. Nothing. Nada. Not even the promised purple polka dot.

Well that’s just one more thing I’ve seen on TV that I’m not willing to spend a dollar on. For a real spa experience, I guess I’ll need to shell out at least a buck and a quarter.