Last year I was a very bad reader, but this year I'm furiously making up for lost time thanks to iBooks and the Kindle app.

I never thought I would find electronic books so easy to use or even likable since I've always loved the smell of paper (both old and new) and the almost intimate relationship between reader and print book.

But the idea of being able to carry around so many books in my pocket, whipping out my device to read wherever I'm stuck waiting or in unexpected need of a good book...well, that's something. And through ebooks I've discovered surprisingly good writers like Q. Kelly, the author of the very quirky Miss Lucy Parker & Other Short Stories (just 99 cents through iBooks.)

I'd write more, but I'm too busy reading right now:) 

A certain ambience?

It's late and I'm eyeing the Ambien pill on my kitchen table, not sure if I'm brave enough to take it. I've tried so many different ways to find the perfect sleep and have failed to catch on to something that works well. For so many many of us who suffer from insomnia there is probably very little we wouldn't do to get some decent rest.

My friends who take it rave about Ambien, but I've heard the horror stories, about people waking up the next day to find they've eaten the entire contents of their refrigerator, that (in some more bizarre, drastic cases) they've gotten into their cars and driven across town on some errand they later cannot recall. Other stories mention people calling, emailing or texting relatives in the middle of the night, making little sense and having no memory of doing so the next morning.

I've combed dozens of articles and message boards and for every positive experience, there's one that counters it. And several people warn against taking Ambien if you live by yourself, with no one to try and wake you up asking, "What the hell are you doing?"

I don't drink (at all) for the very reason Ambien scares me: what if I wake up somewhere else the next morning with no idea what I've done?

Maybe I'll stick with melatonin and try and make my relationship with it work...however, if I'm back in a few hours going on and on about Smurfs, zebras and wild white ponies, you'll know I took some.

I wish you sweet dreams and good rest!! :)

Do This, Not That...

Kate Moss once said, "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels." I remember being outraged at the time, thinking (probably irrationally, now that I look back) it would be some kind of impetus for thousands of girls across the country to start dieting, even if they didn't need to.

Now, as my fortysomething metabolism slows down and I find eating half of what I used to eat barely helps with maintaining my within-range-of-normal weight, I wonder if she might not be right. Sure, that picture of a burger and fries from BGR makes my mouth salivate and my hungry wolf instincts kick in, but there's a higher power I recently discovered.

Invisalign! Some of my friends and I have joked (half seriously) that the popular braces have done more for cutting back on impulsive snacking than anything else we've tried, making the expensive product (often at over $5,000) a better weight loss product than whatever else we've tried.

I kid you not! By the time you factor in the limited time you're allowed to have them out (2 hours or less for the whole day!) and the trouble involved brushing your teeth thoroughly and flossing and water picking, then putting Invisalign back in, you hardly want to bother with food.

And since you're not supposed to eat anything when the braces are in...well, in the past, when someone offered me something to eat and I said, "No, thanks," they'd keep it up. But now, all I have to say is "I have my braces in" and they don't repeat the offer.

This isn't scientific theory (obviously) and as far as I know no one has ever drastically lost weight on a "Invisalign diet," but it certainly seems to help in not gaining weight, which is more my goal these days anyway....

Nostalgia Rains

There's a good chance if you're a child of the 80s, you will really really like Moment Bends, an album whose first song merges a little bit of Wham with a little bit of Matthew Wilder. Going nostalgic like it's done here is kind of extra nice, whether it's on the opener "Desert Island," the Prince/Paisley Park pop sounds of "Denial Style" or the Culture Club-infused "Sleep Talkin'."

But there's also something for those with more modern tastes, especially on tracks like "Escapee" (sounding eerily like Passion Pit), "That Beep" (highly addictive and very danceable, reminiscent of No Doubt if you merged them with The Bangles) and "B43D" (Lenny Kravitz meets Gnarls Barkley.)

With the exception of "Contact High" (too Owl City-like for me) I truly love every track on Moment Bends and put the whole album onto my iPod, something that doesn't always happen in the piecemeal digital music world we live in right now. If you like albums that make you smile and your feet move a little bit faster, you just have to check this out!:)

I've always thought Wham's (okay, George Michael's) "Careless Whisper" was a beautiful song that perfectly reflected the pain and aftermath of hurting someone you love. But after hearing Seether's take (almost three years old and yet it's new to me) I have to say that _this_ version nails the heartache and the inner rage that never quite go away once guilt has got its hooks in you.

There is no point in doing a cover unless you're going to add your own spin and that's what Seether does here. They take a classic and make it sound just as good (in its own unique way) as Wham's. In some ways, it's better because Seether makes the song so raw and exposed whereas Wham sounds just a tad too polished.

Beauty comes in all forms, Wham's view was pristine (almost kind of too polite), Seether's cuts to the bone and is really quite unforgettable.