Hardworking Hubby is the amazing, 20-something husband of Anne, The Megalomaniac Mommy.
When he’s not busy working his full-time job at The Paint Palace, shuttling kids around, spending time with the family or catering to his wife’s every need he enjoys spending time playing video games on both his custom self-built gaming rig (computer) and XBOX360, reading books by George R.R. Martin, Orson Scott Card, Rick Riordan (just to name a few), checking out the latest movies based on super heroes, and drinking good beer accompanied by the occasional cigar!
If you’re a Muay Thai aspirant and willing to master the art of Muay Thai, then you should join one of the various Muay Thai Training camps as soon as possible. Thailand is considered as the best place in the world to join a Muay Thai traning camp, but why?
No doubt, Muay Thai has turned to be an international craze and people from all parts of the world are showing good interest in Muay Thai. Suitable and even better quality infrastructure is available in developed countries. So, why people many people prefer Thailand for joining a training camp to learn Muay Thai such as Suwit muay thai training gym. This is because; Thailand offers an extremely special status to Muay Thai. For obvious reason, this form of martial art has originated in Thailand . The sport enjoys a semi-God like status with almost every Thai going crazy for it.
The passion and status of Muay Thai in Thailand is clearly visible from two things
– First, the huge number of Muay Thai events that you will witness round the year and across country.
– Second, the level of craze that these events enjoy. In fact, you will find people love to give overwhelming response to Muay Thai events even in small towns of the country.
You will find that every single Muay Thai fighter in the country is treated like a very special person. Due to Muay Thai’s popularity in other parts of the world too, these fighters are enjoying high social status in other countries as well. However, there is no match to the honor and respect that you will enjoy for being a Thai fighter in Thailand.
Without a doubt, a state of the art Muay Thai training camp in another country will also offer you facilities and necessities that you will need to become a successful fighter. However, the ambience and feel that you will get while learning Muay Thai in its land of origin can significantly boost your confidence and energy level.
Around this time of year, anyone with the vaguest interest in horse racing over the jumps gets really excited – that’s because the Cheltenham Festival is right around the corner. The Festival is for the absolute cream of jumpers and hurdlers from all around the planet – and takes place in Cheltenham, England, for four days each March. This year’s Cheltenham Festival will be held from the 11th to the 14th of March.
The whole of the jump racing calendar really revolves around the Cheltenham Festival in the British Isles. It includes 26 races in all, with 12 Grade 1 chases or hurdles races.
The main event on the Tuesday is the Champion Hurdle. This sees the best two-mile hurdlers in the world competing for the trophy – and it’s usually run at a break-neck speed. Last year, Hurricane Fly became the first hurdler to regain the race having lost it since the famous Comedy of Errors did so way back in 1975. The horse is currently ante-post favorite win the race for a third time in 2014.
Of course it goes without saying that gambling at Cheltenham is absolutely huge – with around $420 million being gambled in the UK alone each year. Each year sees Betfair, the world’s biggest gambling exchange which is based in the UK and sponsors a lot of horse racing both over the sticks and on the flat, taking an ever greater chunk of the betting market.
Wednesday is Ladies’ Day at Cheltenham and sees four Grade 1 races, with the National Hunt Chase (an event for amateur riders only) starting proceedings, followed by the Queen Mother Champion Chase (the day’s main event for the best two mile chasers).
But the main event of the whole Festival is, of course, the Cheltenham Gold Cup on Friday – the most prestigious chase in the world run over 3m2½ furlongs.
As the great Kauto Star and Denman have now retired, 2013 winner Bobs Worth is currently favourite to regain his crown – but whatever happens, it promises to be one of the greatest festivals ever.
–Emma, 41, is a UK-based freelance journalist, jump racing aficionado and mother of two.
“Here’s your Coke,” she said at last, spilling some of it as she handed it to me. I sighed. Harry seemed not to notice. I bent the straw and slipped it into the cup and watched him drink. I excused myself to go to the bathroom, making it very clear to him that I would be right back.
NAVIGATING THE MIND FIELDS OF FAMILY, LOVE AND ADVERTISING
The 21st-century business novel has arrived. “I’ve often wondered why there aren’t more strong works of fiction dealing with the business world,” mused New York Times reviewer Bryan Burrough in a recent column he wrote for, Off the Shelf. Steven C. Eisner heeds Burrough’s call as he shares the champagne victories and bitter-grape defeats of life in advertising, based in part on his own experiences, in his new novel THEMINEFIELDS (When Words Count Press, March 13, 2012).
Situated smack between the cigarette-and-martini days of Mad Men and the nihilism of House of Lies, Eisner paints a classic roman a clef in stinging detail. Protagonist Sam Spiegel is the Golden Boy with the New York business world at his feet when he is called home to Philadelphia just as he has begun to make his mark. His father, Holocaust survivor Harry Spiegel, is ailing and it’s with reservations that Sam takes on the challenge to grow his father’s firm, Spiegel Communications, into national prominence. The complex themes of the father-and-son relationship, like those found in the works of Chaim Potok and Mario Puzo, are brought vividly to life as Sam and Harry battle over the future of the family legacy.
Following Harry’s death, Sam and his wife and partner, Amy, are determined to create a firm as profitable as it is admired. They agree to hire a financial pit bull as their chief executive officer and an award-winning creative director who had trained under Sam’s own mentor. Before long, Sam realizes that this team of high-priced talent has their own agenda.
Sam’s swift ascent and eventual fall mirrors the events of the author’s life when his homegrown agency, Eisner Communications, fell into serious trouble just weeks after being named the most creative mid-sized advertising agency in America. “The field is precarious by nature – one day you’re up in the clouds and the next the same account can cause you to crash,” says Eisner.
Eisner reveals an insider’s knowledge of the world of advertising in the 1980s and ‘90s, including the Art of the Sell and the Baby Boomer philosophy of play now, pay later that foreshadowed our current economic woes. Sam must reach into his core and connect to his father’s wisdom on survival as he learns that some of his most bitter enemies lie within his own business – and family. Candid, colorful and tinged with humor, this is the business fiction readers have been waiting for.
Overall, I found this book to be quite enjoyable. I have never watched the TV show Mad Men but now knowing that this book was influenced by that show, I may need to check it out. It was an easy book to get into that grabbed my attention and was a quick read.
Be sure to click on the book cover above to participate in the book tour and find an excerpt every day!
Disclosure: I received an advanced copy of this book at no cost to me in exchange for my complete and honest review All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Hardworking (and EXTREMELY tired) Hubby here bringing you another book review. This time it is for the espionage thriller Sleeper’s Run from Henry Mosquera.
A former special ops veteran who now suffers from post traumatic stress disorder is drinking and fighting his way through all the bars in Miami when a chance encounter helps him get out of his rut. This new friend helps him find a new high powered job that allows him to travel and they send him to his home country in Central America. But this wonderful new job and new friends are not what they seem and he now finds himself in the middle of a CIA plot to overthrow this foreign president and he is the scapegoat. He escapes and the chase is on.
Very thrilling and well written. Reads like a Bourne movie.
Sleeper’s Run is now available for purchase in a variety of formats through Amazon.
Disclaimer: I received an advance copy of this book in exchange for honest review. All words and opinions are my own.
Annie is busy and really doesn’t have that much time to read. Or I could say that she is a really slow reader and it takes her an absurd amount of time to finish a book if she ever does. So this typically means that whenever she is given a book to review it comes to me to read. So I will be writing this wonderful review for Pretty by Jillian Lauren.
The first thing that struck me about this book is that, at least by the picture on the back, it was written by a pretty (get it, ‘pretty’….like the book title…wow I really haven’t got much sleep lately) brunette with two first names. People with first names for last names just bother me for some reason although the fact, which I found out later, that she is a former stripper did help me read the book. No I am not really that shallow, I am just reaching for some form of humor to go with this very serious book.
The book is about a young woman name Bebe Baker who is an ex-everything dealing with profound emotional issues stemming from an awful accident and a hereditary issue with addiction. This is definitely a book that I would never have read without the constant prodding of a wife who is pregnant so I need to humor her in all things so as not to have my head cut off and/or be castrated. So I read the book and although it was not my cup of tea, I can see how it would be quite enjoyable to the crowd that enjoys these looks into how those with substance abuse issues, and other forms of psychological issues that have acronyms, have gotten that way and how hard it is to dig themselves back out of that pit.
The various characters are well written and fleshed out nicely so as to make you feel that you have met them, or someone very similar, in the past. No matter what circles we run in, we have friends, family members, or even mere acquaintances who have at one point in time or another come face to face with some, if not all, of these issues.
It really is an eye opener that gets into the nitty-gritty of what it is like for these women. It did have a slow moving plot but that is by design more than indifference and almost reads more like non-fiction than fiction.
I would like to recommend this book to those who want to know why a gorgeous young woman could end up in a halfway house, taking cosmetology classes, and dating the craziest of the crazies who are truly more sane than many of the rest of us.
If you would like the opportunity to read this book, we are offering a copy for giveaway!
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Check out @jillylauren’s new book, Pretty- http://www.amazon.com/Pretty-Novel-Jillian-Lauren/dp/0452297346 I just entered 2 WIN @ http://bit.ly/mXst27
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This giveaway will begin on September 27th 2011 and end on October 11th 2011 and 12 NOON CST and is open to US Residents Only. Winner will be notified via email and will have 48 hours to respond and claim prize. For more information on giveaways hosted by The Megalomaniac Mommy, please read the Policies page.
Disclaimer: I received an advanced copy of this book at no cost to me in exchange for my honest review.
