Jenyfer Matthews

This month I’m blogging on behalf of All Romance eBook’s Go Green Read E! campaign in the hopes of getting the word out to readers that eBooks are a cheaper, greener alternative to traditional books. EBooks are the fastest (and perhaps only, given the current economy) growing part of the book market. Once the haven of very steamy romances, you can now find eBooks of all genres. My books, for example, are all offered in eBook format and I write mysteries.

Traditional publishers are increasingly offering readers a choice of eBook or print formats. And, though reading eBooks on a Kindle 2 is lovely (or so I, very jealously, hear), you can read eBooks on just about any electronic device (whatever you’re reading this on will do). If by some reason you’ve missed the news, note that the Kindle software is available for free on iPhones. (Oops, there I go being jealous again. Sorry. Will try to reign in those green tendencies.)

How eco is the switch from paper to electronic books? One pretty exhaustive study concludes that if, over the course of a year, you switched to reading 20 books and two newspapers electronically, you’d save one tree a year. Given all the readers out there, that adds up to a lot of forests. Such an effort would also reduce air pollution from turning trees into paper (less bleach, etc. in the air can only be a good thing). You’d have less fertilizer leaching into groundwater. There’d be less smog from trucking books from place to place, etc. etc. Maybe you don’t read two newspapers a day, but you get the point. (I’d happily give up getting junk snail mail to save some trees, hint, hint USPS!)

Earth Day is coming up. If you haven’t ever read an eBook, why not give one a try? And if you already read eBooks, have some virtual organic chocolate on me.

Liz Jasper is an award-winning mystery author and avid eBook reader, blogging this month for All Romance eBooks’ Go Green/Read e Campaign. Find out more about the Go Green/Read e Campaign. To learn more about Liz Jasper and to read excerpts and reviews of her books, visit her website.

How do two small children use more than a dozen cups in one day? I can’t wait until they are tall enough to start helping with washing dishes!

A few weeks ago I bought some new books by Lisa Kleypas, inspired by the Smart Bitches and Dear Author Save the Contemporary Campaign. I was looking for Smooth Talking Stranger, but of course that wasn’t yet available from Ebookwise. Instead I bought four others by Kleypas – all historicals. I’ve been enjoying them tremendously, but leave it to me to go out looking for a contemporary and come back with a selection of historicals.

My husband is out of town for a few days so last night I decided that I’d rent a good romantic comedy, the kind of money he’d only suffer through for my sake. I admit that I’m very out of touch with what’s what in the movie world. Some titles filter through, impressions, but overall I don’t have that much selection available to me here so I have to take what I can get. I had Maid in Manhattan in my hand and then Meet Joe Black caught my eye. I went with Meet Joe Black. Great movie, but not exactly what I’d call a romantic comedy!

This sort of thing happens to me all the time. Even in my own writing things have a way of getting away from me. My last two manuscripts were planned as a kooky, fun, and lighthearted. While there is much humor in both stories, kooky they are not. My sense of humor is much more subtle. Think Ricky Gervais rather than Jim Carey.

I can’t really complain. I have four new-to-me books that I’m enjoying, saw a good movie, and have gotten great reviews on ALL THE WAY HOME. Sometimes following the other fork in the road can be a good thing.

My family joined in with several other families we know and went to a resort in Ain Suhkna, on the Red Sea, for the weekend. I wasn’t expecting much frankly – I’ve stayed in some real dives in some very nice places in Egypt – but I have to say that this place was a very pleasant surprise. The rooms were a nice size and more importantly, clean! But who wanted to stay in the room when there was a beach, multiple large swimming pools, a playground, and seven tennis courts on the grounds? The only time we spent in our rooms we were sleeping!

(Click any image to enlarge)

A view from the beach

A view of the resort from a jetty built into the water

A line of ships waiting to pass through the Suez Canal

The first two days we were there, it clouded up in the afternoons and got cooler. It even attempted to rain a couple of times.

Luckily for us, this is about as much rain as I’ve ever seen in Egypt at one time!

Who needed sand toys when there were sea creatures to play with? These jelly fish look pretty serious to me, but in fact were pretty harmless. The children were picking them up and tossing them like frisbees!

We did encourage the kids to let this lovely starfish go back into the water.

All in all, it was a wonderful weekend. I would have been happy to stay a few more days! Since it’s only an hour and half away, I’m already scheming on when we can go back again…

Thank you, Jenyfer, for allowing me to visit your blog today. As part of the “Go Green, Read e” program, I’ve been part of an effort to make people more aware of what we can do to make wise use of our resources.

Although the inspiration for the program might have been to raise awareness of e-books as an alternative (note—alternative does not mean replacement!) method of reading, the concept of “green” is much broader, and covers every aspect of our lives.

Since I live in central Florida and Jenyfer lives in Cairo, we thought it might be interesting to compare some of the ways our respective countries and communities address the serious problem that there are only so many resources on the planet. And things like carbon footprints, global warming, and conservation should be dealt with on a planetary basis—we’re all in this together, after all.

Something we can all participate in: Recycling.

Terry
Recycling. Our county provides residents with two recycling bins. One is for newspaper, and recently they’ve added catalogs and magazines (at last—a way to get rid of all those mail order catalogs that show up daily). The second is for glass, cans, and plastic. At the moment, they will only accept plastics with a recycling label of “1″ or “2″, but perhaps this will expand in the future. When the program started, they took only newspaper and only specific types of plastic containers rather than anything with the correct code. (images of codes)

Jenyfer
Unfortunately, there are no formal in-home recycling programs in Cairo. Still, I do what I can: we reuse empty glass jars and plastic containers for food storage, I wash and reuse plastic zipper sandwich bags, and unneeded print outs become scrap paper for drawing. We use reusable water bottles for school lunches and have our water delivered in five gallon bottles which we trade in when they are empty, cutting down on the waste. Even our beer bottles are returnables! (I wish they still did that in the US!)

But that isn’t to say that recycling doesn’t exist in Cairo. There is a community of people called the Zabbaleen who live in the Mokattam hills. They collect about a third of the city’s garbage, take it back to their homes, and sort it for recycling. They not only recycle things like glass, aluminum, and plastic, but they also compost or feed the wet food scraps to their pigs and take cotton scraps and make things like mattress wadding, colorful rag rugs, and even quilts to sell. All in all they manage to recycle up to 80% of what they collect. No small feat in a city of nearly 20 million inhabitants!

Terry
Grocery stores have collection containers for plastic bags. More and more are encouraging customers to bring their own bags, and some even give modest rebates for doing so. So, when the bagger says, “Paper or Plastic?” your answer can be, “No, thanks” as you hand them your collection of canvas bags.

Jenyfer
If I am doing a small shop, I will tuck my purchases into my large canvas carry all. Often when I do a larger shop and request home delivery, my items arrive loose in a large cardboard box. Otherwise, I take the plastic bags that I am given and then reuse them as can liners for my small trash cans.

Terry
It used to be, any food product listed the ingredients. As we became more health conscious, the labels expanded to show nutritional analyses so we know how many calories, grams of fats, carbs, proteins, as well as sodium content and more. With more green awareness, we have another thing to consider when we look at packaging. Does it have the recycling symbol? It probably tells what percentage of the product is made of recycled materials.

Jenyfer
I prefer to buy food products with sensible packaging. Why buy something in a plastic or metal container when a simple cardboard box will do?

Terry
Some companies are getting creative. I was shopping recently, and found doormats made from recycled flip-flops.

Jenyfer
I bought a purse recently, entirely made from plastic fibers created from recycled materials! The Zabbaleen also make handmade paper for notebooks and tablets from a portion of the paper they collect.

Terry
What about electricity? Here, fluorescent light bulbs are touted as energy savers, and they’re becoming easier to find, and available in more varieties so we can replace the older incandescents in more fixtures. Remember when they were only available as long tubes, and pretty much relegated to the kitchen or garage? And now, LED is offering another alternative.

Jenyfer
I was pretty excited to see long life light bulbs available in my local grocery last time I looked. In addition, I use rechargeable batteries as much as possible, turn off lights when leaving a room, and always turn off my computers over night – an idle computer still uses a tremendous amount of energy.

Terry
Cars? Here in my neighborhood, gas is hovering around $2 a gallon. I park my little Honda Fit at the Y and it disappears amid all the bigger minivans and SUVs. It’s not unusual to see the occasional Hummer. And everyone drives. We have very limited mass transit, so rush hour traffic is inevitable. Unfortunately, the attitude seems to be, ‘if I can afford it, it’s might right to drive it.” I never saw gas-guzzlers when I visited my daughter in England, or on my trip to South Africa.

Jenyfer
Cairo is a tremendously large city and nearly everyone drive, making traffic a nightmare not to mention contributing to high levels of air pollution. My family does not currently own a car. I walk nearly everywhere I want to go. For trips further than I want to walk, taxis are plentiful and inexpensive – most trips across my section of town cost me about $1. There is also a mass transit train called the Metro with a stop near my home. I can take the train into downtown Cairo for about $0.20, arriving in less than half an hour (taking a taxi would not only cost more but I’d be stuck in traffic breathing exhaust for at least an hour)

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Those are just a few of the comparisons. Thanks again to Jenyfer for sharing this blog with me.

Terry Odell is a romance author and avid eBook reader, blogging this month for All Romance eBooks’ Go Green/Read e Campaign. Learn more about the Go Green/Read e Campaign, and to learn more about Terry, visit her website at . You can find Terry Odell’s ebooks and thousands of other eBooks on-line at All Romance Ebooks.

Every year the children’s school has an Easter bonnet parade. I have done my best to ignore and generally wiggle out of any need to participate in this activity in the two years they’ve attended school there. Last year I gave them dinosaur baseball hats to wear as they were walking out to the school bus. My daughter informed me earlier in the week that that wasn’t quite good enough for this year.

So, I went out on Tuesday and bought two plain straw hats to decorate, and yesterday I gathered supplies – Easter grass, plastic eggs, and small stuffed animals (fyi, that’s the bunny from the classic book GUESS HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU). I was fairly pleased with the assortment, actually. When they got home from school, I told them that we could decorate their Easter bonnets anytime.

My daughter looked at me in surprise. “But I already made a crown at school today!” She looked at the hat and the items I’d assembled and insisted she’d rather wear the crown she made. My son picked out what he wanted to put on the hat – and then left me to it.

And guess who got to decorate their hard boiled eggs for the egg races as well? I stuck temporary dinosaur tattoos to the shells, wrote their names on them, and called it good.

It’s not as if they did a lot at school this week. From what I can tell they spent plenty of time coloring pictures of Easter eggs, so I’m not sure why they didn’t ALL just make crowns at school and leave me out of it. They want them to bring eggs for egg races? Call it a cookery class and have at it!

It’s not as if I don’t have enough to do. My family will be getting out of Cairo for a few days and spending the weekend in Ain Suhkna, on the Red Sea and I have to organize and pack! Author Terry Odell will be blogging with me over the weekend and we’ll be discussing how we can all do our part to keep the planet healthy: recycling. So please stop by and share your own tips with us.

And have a Happy Easter!

A watched pot never boils – but walk away and you’d be surprised by how fast the water boils off! My poor tea kettle…it’ll never be the same…

Anyone know who said this? I’d like to shake her hand…

Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater. If you give her sperm, she’ll give you a baby. If you give her a house, she’ll give you a home. If you give her groceries, she’ll give you a meal. If you give her a smile, she’ll give you her heart. She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her. So, if you give her any crap, be ready to receive a ton of sh*t.

Contrary to the post I had up over the weekend, I have another busy week ahead of me with very little fun time scheduled. I participated in a craft sale yesterday, I have to work at the library two days this week, my daughter has a class play on Tues, I many and sundry errands to run – including as my sometimes alter ego the Easter Bunny, and I have to go out and find a couple of straw hats for my children to decorate for a 10 minute Easter bonnet parade at school on Thursday. (Apparently the dinosaur baseball hats I slapped on their heads as they walked out last year didn’t satisfy them)

This is the last week of school before spring break and I’m pretty much ready. Yes, I’ll have to entertain the little creatures at home, but at least I won’t have to wake up with alarm every day!

As for spring – I’m not sure what happened to it. It has been hot for the last couple of days. Upper 80s, creeping up to 90F. A couple of nights ago I was wearing layers to watch tennis lessons after the sun went down, now I’m sweating and slapping at flies. Today it’s hazy. It’s only a matter of time before the sandstorm season starts. Yippee.

My friend sent me this by email and with the weekend here, I thought there was no better time to share it with you. I certainly know that my life just keeps getting busier and busier and I’m constantly putting things off. Maybe it’s time to play hooky and just do something fun…or nothing at all!

Too many people put off something that brings them joy just because they haven’t thought about it, don’t have it on their schedule, didn’t know it was coming or are too rigid to depart from their routine.

I got to thinking one day about all those women on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night in an effort to cut back. >From then on, I’ve tried to be a little more flexible.

How many women out there will eat at home because their husband didn’t suggest going out to dinner until after something had been thawed? Does the word ‘refrigeration’ mean nothing to you?

How often have your kids dropped in to talk and sat in silence while you watched ‘Jeopardy’ on television?

I cannot count the times I called my sister and said, ‘How about going to lunch in a half hour? She would gas up and stammer, ‘I can’t. I have clothes on the line. My hair is dirty. I wish I had known yesterday, I had a late breakfast, It looks like rain.’ And my personal favorite: ‘It’s Monday.’ She died a few years ago. We never did have lunch together.

Because Americans cram so much into their lives, we tend to schedule our headaches. We live on a sparse diet of promises we make to ourselves when all the conditions are perfect!

We’ll go back and visit the grandparents when we get Steve toilet-trained. We’ll entertain when we replace the living-room carpet… We’ll go on a second honeymoon when we get two more kids out of college.

Life has a way of accelerating as we get older. The days get shorter, and the list of promises to ourselves gets longer. One morning, we awaken, and all we have to show for our lives is a litany of ‘I’m going to,’ ‘I plan on,’ and ‘Someday, when things are settled down a bit.’

When anyone calls my ‘seize the moment’ friend, she is open to adventure and available for trips. She keeps an open mind on new ideas. Her enthusiasm for life is contagious. You talk with her for five minutes, and you’re ready to trade your bad feet for a pair of Roller blades and skip an elevator for a bungee cord..

My lips have not touched ice cream in 10 years. I love ice cream. It’s just that I might as well apply it directly to my stomach with a spatula and eliminate the digestive process The other day, I stopped the car and bought a triple-Decker. If my car had hit an iceberg on the way home, I would have died happy.

Now….go on and have a nice day. Do something you WANT to……not something on your SHOULD DO list. If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?

Have you ever watched kids playing on a merry go round or listened to the rain lapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight or gazed at the sun into the fading night? Do you run through each day on the fly? When you ask ‘ How are you?’ Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done, do you lie in your bed with the next hundred chores running through your head? Ever told your child, ‘We’ll do it tomorrow.’ And in your haste, not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch? Let a good friendship die? Just call to say ‘Hi?

When you worry and hurry through your day, it is like an unopened gift….. Thrown away….. Life is not a race. Take it slower. Hear the music before the song is over.