Preview of what's to come

It's been a good year and I've achieved a lot over the past 12 months. I've also learned a lot about myself but the thing that has been completely clear is that I am a total bookworm. I also learned that I like to keep in shape as well (sorry sister, no six pack yet though). My wife has definitely confirmed her skill and love of drawing as well as she's been studying practically non-stop all year.

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I am not much of a goal guy and so last year I didn't really set any goals for myself at the beginning of the new year. However, in about March I decided that I wanted to read 250 books for the year. I achieved that goal! As of right now, my total is at 262 and I suspect I'll add a few more to that number before the end of the year.

Having read so many books, I have written a lot of reviews, and if you want to look through them all, then here you go. However, like last year, I'll be putting together a few different lists over the next couple of weeks, so here's what you have to look forward to:

• Top 5 audio books


• Top 5 series (at least 3 books)


• Top 10 books

On top of my posts for reading, I will be adding a couple of other posts:

• 2011 goals (I'm actually setting some goals this year)


• Top 5 movies (maybe I'll make it 10 if I can remember them all)

I look forward to some more blogging and you'll see that reflected in my goals for 2011.

Joining the century: Part 2

It has been a few months since I've written here as I've been busy working on my reading goal for the year (more to come on that later). I plan to write more consistently as the new year comes. I wanted to make a quick post to share a deal that my wife and I just got in on.

If you've been following my blog very long or looked at my older posts, you might remember that about 2 years ago we joined the century. After a couple of years with T-mobile, I was ready to get out of our contract. We are now with Virgin Mobile (which uses the Sprint Network). Not only that, but we are now part of the real century - that's right, we own Android phones!


One major reason we switched to Virgin - price/cost:
With T-mobile:

• 2-year contract


• 700 minutes


• 400 text messages each (800 between the two phones)


• $80 a month (ok - $70 but with all the fees and stuff it was a consistent $83)

With Virgin Mobile:

• No contract. Prepaid phone.


• 300 minutes each (600 combined)


• Unlimited texting and data (yes, unlimited data)


• $50 a month ($25 per phone which is actually like $26.50 with tax)

So we lost some minutes in the deal, but but we are saving $30 a month. The other thing was that we had to buy the phones. We got in on this deal. So that was $400 to get the phones (Christmas gifts), but in 1 year we will have saved $360 ($30 a month over 12 months) and actually a bit more because we are going to disable one of the phones for a few additional months during the summer. So as long as we have our phones for a year, they will pay for themselves. If you interested in the other Virgin plans, here they are:

(yeah, we could have gotten more minutes for the same $80 we were paying for T-mobile)

Oh yeah, and my phone is all setup with my Google Voice number with a flawless integration. So far, loving the phone.