Sunday Update - Week 8

Eight weeks into the new year.  I'll admit my resolve fell down already, but I kicked my own butt and I'm back on track again.  Mostly.

I haven't written any new words, but I'm editing along nicely again.  I worked through about 90 pages of line by line edits.  Almost made myself cry at one point - the story not the editing.  Jeni's nieces and nephews are too damn cute to have had such a shitty dad.  Anyway, I've got about 45 pages left to go and then a quick read through to make sure I didn't leave any huge errors. 

I finished out the marketing for the Once Upon a Djinn series with 8 sales - 2 each - and no page reads yet.  Oh well.  I tried.  Once I get some new books out into the world, maybe sales will improve.

My reading week was pretty good.  I finished three and only DNF'd one, and I ended the week yesterday with an awesome Mickey Spillane.  (Awesome Mickey Spillane is redundant.)

On the activity front, I did 4 out of 7 days - three days straight of the yard expansion project and then 3 days off with a mile or so walk yesterday and kneading rolls.  Yeah, kneading counts as exercise when you do it for 8 minutes straight.  I was burning calories like crazy there, folks.  Upper body workout like you wouldn't believe.  Anyway...  I'm back at 179.0 again.  Roller coaster time.  Wee.

Speaking of rolls, I was trying a new recipe yesterday.  Iranian Barbari rolls.  It sounded easy.  Umm...  It was more effort than it was worth, so let's not talk about that, k?  Earlier in the week I made oatmeal cookies, though, and that recipe always works.  Yay.  Today, I'm thinking maybe a chocolate cake is necessary.  We'll see.  I was going to make more applesauce bread, but Hubs has been eating the applesauce straight, so there isn't enough left for bread.  Next time I hit the Wallyworld, I'm gonna buy an economy size vat of applesauce.

The yard expansion project is as finished as it's going to get until Spring.  Hubs did the last of the clearing crap out on Wednesday.  It looks pretty good.  Barren, but good.  Now green things can grow.  There about 6-8 little trees - 3-5' tall - growing in the new yard area.  Once those leaf-out, we'll see which ones get to stay and whether any of them can go.  They might all stay.  We'll see.  The most satisfying part was getting the vines off all those trees.  A couple poor sycamores were being killed by those damn vines.  No more.  Fingers crossed the sycamores recover.  I like sycamores.

It's been too cold to go fishing, which is driving me nuts.  I need to sit by the lake and drown worms for my sanity.

Alright, I've said more than enough for one Sunday.  How are things with you?

Saturday Reading Wrap-up - 2/22/20

Hello again.  Welcome to my Saturday Reading Wrap-up, where I talk about the books I've read or tried to read in the past week and what new things I've bought for the days ahead.

Not a bad week this week with some fun reads and only one dud.

I picked up 3 new ebooks this week - a YA adventure, a mystery, and a romantic suspense (already read that last one).  No new hardcopies this week, for which my shelves thank me.

Books Read:

18) Death on the Danube by Jennifer Alderson (2/20/20) - Mystery*# - 4 stars.  New to me and underappreciated.  Got for free from the Reading Deals newsletter.
Review: "A fun little mystery with loads of interesting information about Budapest, if you're into travel and stuff."
Note:  It was a bit too much travel stuff for me, so I flipped past it, but I think many readers would enjoy the details.  And it wasn't as if the writer was throwing details in because she didn't want to waste research (we've all read those books).  It was just more info than I was looking for at that time in a mystery.  

17) Fighting for Elena by Silver James (2/19/20) - Romantic Suspense* - 5 stars.  Not new to me and a new release so not much appreciation yet, but it'll get there.  Paid full price - $3.99.
Review: "Wow. What an amazing story. I loved Pops and Elena - separately and together. And of course, I love Joy. And it was awesome having characters from Silver's other series swoop in to save the day. Cuz the Wolves are like that. =o)"

16) Never Date a Siren by Byrd Nash (2/15/20) - Paranormal*# - 5 stars.  New to me and underappreciated.  Picked up for free off the Book Barbarian newsletter.
Review: "Fun! I loved the world. I loved the premise. I loved the characters. I'm so glad I picked this book up."

DNFs:

2/16/20 - biography.  50c hardcover at the thrift store.  I thought it would be interesting, but the writing was poor and the story didn't flow well.  Plus, it sounded a bit preachy.  I like to think if the subject had still been alive, he wouldn't have wanted his biography to come off that way.  =o(

Currently reading... A plucked one of my unread Mickey Spillane 'Mike Hammer' paperbacks off the shelf.  Love me some Mike Hammer.

What was on your reading list this week?  Anything good?  Got anything you're looking forward to?

Thursday This n That

I had a really great idea for the beginning of this post, but by the time I got over here, it was gone.  This is the story of my life.  LOL

Saturday, I ordered a new Foreman Grill and a pastry cutter from Amazon.  My Foreman is getting too old to clean well enough to feel safe about cooking on it and I don't own a pastry cutter (silly, I know, considering how much baking I do).  Anyway, Amazon tracking said the package would be delivered Thursday or Friday of this week.  When I checked tracking on Wednesday, It said it would be delivered that day, but it wasn't showing 'out for delivery'.  It was showing that it's here in the area - in Hollister, so about 75 minutes from here* - so I was thinking Thursday.  Then Hubs reminded me it has to go through our local post office.  That adds a day usually.  So Friday.  48+ hours to get a package about 40 miles.  Woohoo.  (Update: My mistake... it actually arrived yesterday afternoon, but it came UPS, which explains why it was here on time.)

*Google maps says 52 minutes but I've never made that drive in less than an hour and a quarter.  And people wonder why I don't visit Branson more often.  (Well, distance plus it's all peopley there.)

Speaking of that, people are amazed about a lot of places around here I've never been to.  Harrison, Rogers, Bentonville, Joplin...  I've never even been in Springfield proper.  Only to the airport, which is on the west side of the city, so I never have to actually cross into the real city to get to it.  Cities... blerg.  They're so peopley.  I can't imagine the lure of being in a space with all those people.  And don't get me started on traffic.  Here there's a traffic glut if 5 cars are at the four way stop at the same time or if I have 3 cars behind me when I'm on the highway.  (In cases of people behind me, I often pull off somewhere and let them pass just to get away from them.)

For the past 7 years, I've talked about going down to Beebe, AR to visit the graves of my great-great-great? grandparents (Mom's Dad's Dad's Mother's parents).  I've also talked about visiting her great grandfather's (her Dad's Dad's Dad) grave over in Coffeyville, KS.  They're each only about 125 miles from here, but I can't seem to muster the will for traveling anymore.  And poor grandpa Frank is laying over in KS all by himself after a horrible accident where he was smushed between two trains.  (The grisly part of genealogy is learning the gruesome ways our ancestors died.)  His wife took the kids, remarried and moved down to OK where I lost track of her, but I know none of them are buried near Frank.  =o(

My new Foreman Grill is the kind with removable cook plates for easier cleaning.  They can be put in the dishwasher, but I'll wash them by hand so they last longer.  All I know is when I did the pre-use wash, it was easy peasy.  Cleaning the old one was a pain in the buns.  I love the cautionary bits in the instructions - make sure plates are completely cooled before removing.  Umm, duh.

And that's more than enough out of me today.  What's up with you?

I'm Too Old for This Crap

I wrote a big, long, ranty post the other day.  It's still sitting in my drafts, but I think now that I will never post it.  When I was young, I was willing to debate and argue and try to persuade people to see reason.  Now?  I'm too old. 

I keep seeing stuff about looking at things from other viewpoints.  I've seen a variety of other viewpoints ad nauseum, and I didn't like the view.  And really, after spending a lot of time considering the viewpoints of others, I can spot where they're coming from a mile away.  Why exactly would I want to see that again?  Been there, done that.

Trying to convince others is tiresome.  Oh, I give full points to those that are still out there fighting the good fight, trying to change things, but I am so tired of it.  The chance of changing someone else's mind is so slim, especially these days, that I don't see the purpose of expending so much effort for so little reward. 

Oh, there's always a chance I'll change my mind about something - if presented with facts and logic and reason that I can independently verify.  The problem is there's so little of those things floating around in any argument contrary to what I know that the chance is super slim.  These days it's all about feelings and assertions we're all supposed to just accept on faith.  That's not how I work. 

It's like this gal who used to live here.  She was big on going around telling people stuff that just wasn't true.  But believable because she spoke with such authority and she was older so it might seem like she knew what she was saying, you know, if you're someone who doesn't rely on facts and proof.  And I spent some time refuting the things she said when someone else would bring it to my attention. (She stopped trying to talk to me, but I still heard about it.)  Tiring stuff, but I hate lies and now that she's moved on, it's so much quieter here. 

And then there's the 'news'.  So much misinformation is being spread around under the guise of truth when it's not truth.  And it's getting tough to know who's got the facts and who doesn't. 

Anyway, these days I'm most likely to just walk away when someone starts spouting crap.  In real life, it means ignoring them and not associating with them anymore.  Online, it's unfollow, unfriend, block.  Life is too short to spend my time trying to parse the good stuff they might have to offer from the bad stuff they are passing along like a venereal disease.  I give a little more leeway to people I've known for a long time, but even then, when the crap piles high enough for me to continue to see the good in them, it's time to walk away.  Which makes me kind of sad, but in the long run, my mental health is better for it.  So's my blood pressure. 

How about you?  Still fighting the good fight or are you tired, too? 

Sunday Update - Week 7

It's Sunday morning and here I am typing the Sunday Update post because, yeah, I forgot to write it out and schedule it.  This does not bode well for the week.

No writing.  I'm up to page 75 in editing on Ugly and the Beast.  I start the week with the best of intentions, but then... piffle.

I did my marketing thing for the OUAD sale.  8 sales - 2 of each book.  Yay.   The sale is still ongoing, so fingers crossed I sell some more books before it ends.  And then get some page reads afterwards.

Not a banner reading week.  I finished two old paperbacks but actually finishing an ebook was a bust until late yesterday afternoon.  That was a fun one. 

I made another loaf of applesauce bread.  That stuff is awesome.  Then for Valentine's Day, I made a pineapple upside-down cake from scratch.  I thought the cake was too dense, but Hubs declared it a winner.  I'm still going to tweak the recipe before I post it, though.  If you want the easy way, put a sliced up stick of butter in your 9x13" cake pan and put the pan in the oven while the oven is preheating.  When the butter is melted, take the pan out and stir in 2/3rds cups of brown sugar until it's all wet and gooey.  Then stir in one can of pineapple - crushed or tidbits works best for me - making sure the pineapple and the goo are evenly distributed.  Pour your yellow box cake batter - made according to box directions - evenly over the pineappley goodness.  Bake 30-35 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.  Voila!  You're supposed to turn the whole cake over to serve, but what a pain.  I leave mine in the pan and flip over the pieces as I serve them.  The effect is the same.  :shrug:

It was a pretty good week for activity - 5 out of 7 days - with most of it being outside 'woods work'.  But I gained a pound back - 180.6.  :shrug:  Probably the bread and the cake. 

Speaking of woods work, Hubs and I decided to expand our yard to the south - a previously untouched portion of woods and overgrown old yard.  What a mess.  Seriously.  The property owner before us had no issue with throwing garbage in the woods.  We got all that picked up except for a pile of white tile I discovered under the weeds and behind a rose bush.  Ugh, rose bushes.  They're everywhere over there, so it was quite the battle.  I was going to try taming them back and leaving them, but they were so aggressive they had to die.  And we also have these wild bushes all over that propagate by shoots.  They pull right up out of the ground, but when you pull one the runner leads to the next one and the next one and... I probably pulled a few dozen up over there.  We're leaving the trees that have grown up over there since we bought this place.  Once they have leaves again, I'll figure out what they are and whether they get to stay.  And of course, we already know which ones are cedars.  Those stay.  We also have various vines to battle - Virginia creeper, climbing rose, and wild grape. And this one vine with ouchy spikes and spade shaped leaves of mottled green.  That last one is nasty.  Oh, and somewhere in there is poison ivy.  I think I already killed most of it in previous summers, but I won't know for sure until it leafs out. 

Anyway, that's my life right now.  This is a whole new week with new possibilities.  I hope to make the best of it.  Like I said, I start the week with the best of intentions.  Then again, my father always said 'intentions are for shit'.  :shrug:

How did your week go?  Do anything interesting?  Bake anything good?  Accomplish anything worthwhile?  Talk to me, people.

Saturday Reading Wrap-up - 2/15/20

Hello.  Sorry I'm late.  I forgot to finish this and schedule it last night. 

Welcome to the Saturday Reading Wrap-up.  If you've been here before, you know how this goes.  If you're new, this is where I wrap-up all the book stuffs from the week before.  (For a complete list of all the books I've read this year, go here.)

It was a DNF-o-rama for me this week - every day a new DNF until I picked up an Agatha Christie to cleanse my reading palate.  Then another DNF.  But despite the depressing nature of DNFs, I did pick up some new ebooks - romance, SF, fantasy.  There's always hope.

Books read:

15) The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie (2/13/20) - Mystery Short Stories - 5 stars.  Picked up at the thrift store 8/$1 last November.
No review.  You all know how I feel about Christie.

14) The Hungry Gun by Steve Thurman (2/8/20) - Western# - 5 stars.  Never heard of the author or the book, and apparently neither has pretty much anyone else.
Review: "An excellent western I picked up at the thrift store. I'm a little sad that it was so unheard of that I had to make a Goodreads listing for it, because it deserves more people to love it. It's filled with plenty of twists and turns, romance and excitement, and a mystery to thrill even the biggest mystery fans like myself. The revelations at the end... I never saw those last pieces of the puzzle until they fell into place."


DNFs:

2/13/20 - UF - free.  From the start, I got the distinct feeling that I was too old and square for this book and the more I read, the older and squarer I felt.  Anyway, it had a very hip (do they even use the word 'hip' anymore?) and trendy feel to it that made me feel every inch of the fifty that's creeping up on me.  Don't need more of that.  Bleh. 

2/11/20 - mystery that I picked up for 25c at the thrift store.  It sounded cute, but it was meh.  Into the pile to go to St. Vinny's it went.

2/10/20 - thriller with a strange semi-supernatural bent.  free.  Yeah, it was thrilling and probably would've made a good story without the added supernatural thing, which just made it weird.

2/9/20 - uf/sf/f... huh? - free.  It started off pretty good with shady govt characters chasing a girl who had strange powers and then it got weird and ended up on another planet where there were dragons and wizards and magic.   It felt like the author was trying too hard to make everything different, but making cows bigger and different colors of the rainbow doesn't really make it different or make me feel like I'm somewhere magical.  Maybe magically delicious.

2/8/20 - mystery - free.  Gah.  You do not need to name each character every time you refer to them - in dialogue or otherwise.  And the characters were all juvenile and annoying.  I gave up after only a few pages.

Currently reading... a cute paranormal.  I can't exactly put my finger on the genre, and I think it's like what they call 'New Adult' since the MC is college aged, but it's a fun story, so I don't really mind not being able to pigeonhole it.  

How was your reading luck this week? 

Thursday This n That

Under the heading of things I did not need to know, I heard on TV the other day that koala poop smells lovely.  Apparently, it's all the eucalyptus they eat.  I would think that would make it smell like cough drops - cue the ewww - but that's me.

In college, I took a class called The Psychology of Sexual Behavior.  It was taught by a woman who looked like she ought to be home baking cookies for the grandkids, which made talking about sexual subjects kind of weird.  Anyway, the only things I remember from the class were the factoids she would drop at the beginning of class - like a sperm whale's penis is twelve feet long and three feet in diameter at the base.  =oO

The hardest part about quitting ice cream is that I have the urge to make chocolate cake but chocolate cake without ice cream is just wrong.  It's been 39 days since I last ate ice cream and I only miss it a little.  Sometimes.  A lot when I'm having a rough day.

Yesterday, I had to run a quick errand and on the drive, I got a sudden craving for chocolate.  Would you believe the dollar store has already changed over to Easter candy?  Those unromantic bastards.  Anyway, I snagged a Russell Stover Maple Cream egg and assorted non-holiday chocolates.  I inhaled the egg when I got home.  So fluffy!  Yum! 

I also picked up a Dr. Pepper, which I hadn't had in years.  I also haven't had a carbonated soda in months.  I might've drank a third of it.  It was interesting.  Definitely burpy.  And I definitely don't miss it.

Okay, I think I've chewed your ears enough today.  What's on your mind?