Thursday This n That

 I obviously have no idea what day it is.

This coffee is strong this morning.  Yay!  (Of course, I made it, so yeah, not surprising.)

The toadiness is strong with me.  Is it my superpower?  Slower than a sleepy snail, weaker than a reused teabag, able to ignore all tasks with a single yawn... It's ToadLady!  :ribburp:

Anyway...  

Ever since I cancelled DirectTV, they've been sending stuff to us in the mail.  Kinda reminds me of an abusive, old ex-boyfriend - 'I still love you, I'm sorry, I've changed, I can do better, I'll do anything to get you to come back to me'.  Meh.  Like I told the guy on the phone when I cancelled, there is nothing they can offer me that's better than free.  Unless they want to start paying me to have their service.  Wouldn't that be something?  Heh.

I saw something this morning... a teacher who was told she can't mark the black kids as tardy anymore because 'it's part of their culture'.  Wow.  You have to laugh at this stuff or you'll spend your life crying.

It's Labor Day Weekend.  I got all my shopping done early in the week because there's no way I want to be anywhere near town right now.  Vacationers abound, getting in their last hurrah before fall settles around us.  Go forth, ye weekend people, get it out of your system for another year.  See ya after Memorial Day 2026.  Woot.

Someone let two geese roam around the neighborhood.  There was a gray one and a white one, and they had trouble staying out of the road.  A few days ago, Hubs pointed out the profusion of white feathers that started just south of our driveway and ran for about a hundred feet south of there.  No blood, guts, or corpse, but I doubt the goose survived the encounter.  It either got hit and something dragged it off, or it got attacked and the winner took the spoils.  I'll say again... people shouldn't let their domesticated animals wander free in the wilds.  It never works well for the domesticated animal.  I have a feeling it's the same dude who let his guinea fowl roam.  (Btw, he no longer has any guineas left... wonder why?)

Okay, I'm starting to wake up.  Thanks for being around for the process.  Have a great day and an awesome weekend.  Stay safe.  :hugs:

At the Movies with B.E.

It was a slow week for movies, so I'll add in some other stuff.

Murder by Death (1976) - with all-star cast, this pokes fun at all the major sleuths of the early twentieth century - Miss Marple, Charlie Chan, Nick and Nora Charles, Sam Spade, & Hercule Poirot - but in an almost homage kind of way.  There's still a mystery to solve and a surprise ending, so loads of fun.  Hubs hadn't seen this before and he seemed to enjoy it, despite its occasional camp and cheesiness.  Me, I'm all about camp and cheesy sometimes.  ;o)

Here are some non-movies we've watched or are currently watching:

Emily of New Moon (1998) - I added this to my save list because we really enjoyed Anne of Green Gables, and this was also LM Montgomery.  What could go wrong?  OMG, this was so sad - first her mom dies and then her dad dies, she's forced to live with a nasty aunt who kicks her cat out of the carriage in the middle of the woods.  I hoped in other episodes the story would get better, but I went through the first season looking at each episode's synopsis, and nope.  Every episode was tragic.  We vetoed watching anymore.

A Touch of Frost (1992) - We are super enjoying this series.  I love DI 'Jack' Frost.  The writing is good, the characters are awesome, the plots are thrilling. Good stuff all the way around.

The Last Detective (2003) - Also super enjoying this series.  DI 'Dangerous' Davies is the nice guy who finishes last.  He gets all the nothing cases, but he's a good man and a smart detective, so he manages to solve each of the nothing cases that ends up being a something case.  Smart and funny, with heart.

Life (2007) - this series stars Damian Lewis (who played Dick Winters on Band of Brothers).  I'd seen this advertised way back when it was on TV but, at the time, I didn't want to see this actor on a show like this.  I'm glad I got over it.  So far, it's been a pretty good series.  I was afraid they were going to insert a romantic thing, but from the last episode we watched, I think they kyboshed that.  We'll see.

I'm still watching too much TV, but it's getting better.  What things have you watched lately?

Marketing Monday - Song of Storm and Shroud

Starting today, SONG OF STORM AND SHROUD is free.  (Always free with Kindle Unlimited.)  This epic, coming of age YA fantasy is filled with magic and daring.  Get your copy today!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09W745M6P

Yesterday, I used Grok to make a better picture of the dragon.  Here's how I see her (although the wings should be darker... it's an imperfect AI thing):

That's her on a good day.  Here's her when she's pissed:

(Please ignore the leg coming out of her butt.  The last person who commented on her butt-leg lived in the village below.)

Sunday Update - 2025 Week 34

 :blink blink: Oh.  Hello.  It's Sunday again, isn't it?  I woke up thinking it was Tuesday.  Days of the week have little meaning to me anymore.  I feel like, at this point, I ought to have reached a higher plain of consciousness, but I haven't.  I've reached a higher plain of unconsciousness, maybe.

Anyway...  I didn't write much this week, but I did write.  DN3 has rolled over 20K words, so that's something.  I'm hoping to have news of more words by this time next week.

The marketing didn't go great.  I started out okay, then I lost the will.  Thus, Unequal only moved 16 copies. :sad trombone:  Song of Storm and Shroud will be free starting tomorrow.  Then the month will end and along with it, my current 90-day span of Kindle Select.  Starting Labor Day, I'll have a whole new 90 days to market stuff.  Woot.  Here's hoping next month is better for sales than this month has been.

Oh, and I spent some time yesterday morning screwing around with Grok, building a sorta-kinda new cover for SSS.  It looks pretty snazzy until you realize the dragon's left back leg is coming out of it's butthole and it's front left leg is spindly and warped.  AI still has a lot to learn about how living things are put together.  No creature - real or imagined - can walk with a leg coming out of it's butt.  Jus' sayin'.

In reading news, I finally finished that Hercule Poirot omnibus.  Yay.  I'm a third through another book.  Also yay.  And I bought 6 new used books to dive into.  Woot.

It was a busy baking week.  I made banana-raisin muffins, pizza, and bread pudding.  The pizza was the only thing that turned out right, but the other two were tasty, so it's all good.  Too much banana in the muffins and I forgot to add sugar to the bread pudding.  :shrug:  Even the best bakers can screw stuff up, so I'm not flagellating myself.  

On the activity front, I was still something of a toad.  One day, I did the dancercizorama thing 5/4/5 (5 minutes dance, then 4 minutes exercise, then another 5 minutes dance).  That's way down from what I used to do, but I'll have to work my way back up to that.  And as my mom reminded me, I'm older now than when I did 20/10/20.  Another day, I walked three-quarters of a mile.  Weight? No clue.  Chonky.

The fawns are getting big and their spots are starting to fade.  We've named Sissy's fawn 'Scout', which'll work for a doe or a buck.  I'm thinking Scout is a buck fawn because it's big for its age.  (Buck fawns are typical larger than doe fawns.)  I need to come up with a name for the twins.  I've already used Dot and Dash, but since I almost never know which deer is which once they turn into adults, I can reuse those.

Okay, on that note, I'll let you go.  Have a great day and feel free to drop a line or two about your week.  =o)

Saturday Reading Wrap-up - 8/23/25

I know I haven't been the best reader lately.  I have been the best anything lately, though, so it's not too surprising.  Anyway, let's get to the books...

I picked up 6 new hardcopies - 2 hardcover and 4 paperback - and one new ebook this week.  The ebook is paranormal romance.  The hardcovers are both romantic suspense and the paperbacks are mystery, crime noir, western, and NF.  I found an Agatha Christie I didn't have and hadn't heard of, a Zane Grey, a Don Hamilton, a Victoria Holt, a Phyllis Whitney, and the NF is by J. Edgar Hoover about the Communist menace.  Should be interesting.

Books Read:

29) Five Complete Hercule Poirot Novels (8/18/25) - mystery - 5 stars.  Neither new to me nor underappreciated.  I picked this one up in June of 2024 from a thrift store.  It was 50c.
Review: "This took a while to get through, because I was reading other books between stories, but it was an excellent collection for this Poirot-lover."

No DNFs this week.

Currently reading... a SF I'd been looking forward to for a while but didn't have the budget to buy.  Then the author put it on sale for 99c.  Woot.  So far, it's pretty enthralling.

What have you been reading lately?

At the Movies with B.E.

It wasn't the most jam-packed week for movies*, but this is what we watched.

Much Ado About Nothing (1993) - starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson.  I love Shakespeare, but this is particularly good.  If you haven't seen it, I totally recommend it - even if you aren't that into the Bard.

Death Wish (2018) - Okay, so I swore I wouldn't watch this because I'm generally against when Hollyweird remakes old favorites. Then I saw that it starred Bruce Willis and I love Bruce, so I gave it a whirl.  I'm glad I watched.   It was awesome.  This movie was definitely not harshing on the Charles Bronson version and it was also totally not-woke.  I liked the juxtaposition of Bruce as a mild-mannered, peaceful surgeon before his family was attacked and the man he had to become to gain justice.  The end was satisfying and cool.  Yay.

I tried watching a couple other things, but they were duds, so I stopped.  Nothing worth mentioning here, even to pan it.

Have you seen either of these?  Did you watch anything awesome this week?

*we ended up watching several new-to-us TV shows instead.  If you want to hear about those, let me know and maybe I'll add those to the ends of these posts.

Marketing Monday - UNEQUAL

It's Monday and you know what that means - Marketing!  Today, we're focusing on UNEQUAL... if it's possible to focus on anything at 4am. lol

Starting today and going through Friday, UNEQUAL is free. This dystopian suspense focuses on a future where everyone is 'equal' and anyone who is better or worse than the average is labeled Unequal and is then disappeared by the government.  Pick up your copy today.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07LDVFWBS