Weekly Round Up: Blogging Debt

 

A weekly round up: life happenings, workouts, watches, and reads, plus everything else.

Friends, I am in serious blogging debt.  There is a lot going on right now, and it's hard to find the time let alone the quiet headspace to start writing it down.  Let's take a shot at it!  Since we last talked...

I Went Places and Met People!

I went on a 10 day trip to California and hung out with San and Julie.  Don't worry, I'll drop all of the deets as soon as I can, but in the meantime you can read their side of the story here and here.

I spent a lot of time walking while I was on the trip, which meant lot of time for all kinds of random thoughts to pop into my head.  One of them was the phrase "if you liked a book don't meet the author".

I can't say whether that's true for books, but it is definitely not true for bloggers.  At least three bloggers that I have either met or hope to meet have books in the works, and something tells me that the saying will not apply to them, either.

Work is Something Else

Work has been intense, but it ramped to even more so while I was on the trip.  While I would prefer for it to simmer down to a normal level and/or for me to either get the gumption to quit or be fired, I'm glad that I didn't let it stand in the way of going to California.  Step one: put trip on calendar, step two: go on trip.  The way that I was able to work while on the trip was the time zone difference.  I worked half days with a few days off, with a couple of extra hours here and there.  I won't remember the work part when I look back on the trip.

No One in My House is in High School Anymore

I timed my trip so that I got back the day before a Very Special Family Event.  Stepson #2 graduated from high school!

I don't want to take anything away from his big night, but the weather was epic.  All the time I was in California there was not one cloud or one drop of rain in the sky.  Meanwhile back home they had nothing but rain, and I came back to several days of unending rain and chilliness.

I was planning to wear a cute little sundress to the graduation, but the moment I got off the plane I started modifying my wardrobe.  At first I thought that I would just add a wrap for some extra coverage, and that I would maybe wear closed toed shoes instead of sandals.

By lunchtime on graduation day I changed my wardrobe to a long sleeved dress and tights.

That night as we were getting ready to leave I put on pants, a dressy top, a heavy cardigan, and took my coat and gloves.  It was still very chilly.

Workouts

In addition to walking one million miles while I was in Calfornia in gorgeous weather, biking season has begun!  It kicked off officially in Golden Gate Park, where I rented a Lyft bike and pedaled my heart out one afternoon.

Then I came home and started working on another bike trail.  Hubs and I still have 30 miles left on the 100 mile trail that we started last year, but between inclement weather and the craze that is the end of the school year, we haven't been able to find any Couples Biking Time.

Over the weekend I saw a chance to get some By Myself Biking Time, so I got Bikey McBikerson out of the shed and back into action.  There is another hike and bike trail that is only 35 miles long (since I do it in out and back sections that means 70 miles total), and I set out at the northern end and got started.

When I reached my planned turnaround point, I felt like I had enough steam to go to the next trailhead, so I did.  And that's how this happened:

Mind you, I was glad to be done, and I'm not sure how much further I would want to go on Bikey.  Once I tried the Lyft bike, I realize how puny Bikey is.  He was built to fold up and go into the back seat of a car and not for the rider's comfort or ease.  Still, he's the bike that I have and the one who fits into my car, so we're sticking together for now.  It will take 2-3 more sessions to finish off this new bike trail, and then I'll find another one.

Watching 

On the Seinfeld front, Hubs and I finished season eight.  How many seasons of Seinfeld are there, you may ask?  Nine, so we're headed into the home stretch.

After I finished The Pitt, I figured that I would check out ER just for funsies.  I might be 30 years late to the party, but it is a great show.  It's hysterical to see Noah Wyle go from the seasoned ER doc in his 50s to a baby doc in his 20s.  Given that I don't have a lot of TV time right now and the show is 15 count 'em 15 seasons long, I think that it is most likely that I watch episodes here and there while I have streaming services for other reasons instead of going all in on it.

Last but not least, I went to the town and then I saw the movie!  Juile tipped me off that Lady Bird has a lot of Sacramento locations, so watching it was an exercise in nostalgia for my trip.  I would not have gotten the significance of "a house in the 40s" if San hadn't suggested that we drive through that neighborhood on the way to dinner.  Hey, early on they describe Sacramento as being "the midwest of California" so no wonder I felt so at home there.  

Reading 

It is no surprise that here is where we have the most catching up to do.  TL;DR all of these books were recommended by Cool Bloggers and all of them hit it out of the park.

I was in a reading dry spell when Nicole wrote about a book called Caroline: Little House, Revisited which is a retelling of the Little House story from Ma's perspective.  Say no more, and it was on Libby for the taking.

I don't know what I expected from a Little House retelling, but I was not expecting the voice of the book to be an exact replica of the original.  It threw me off for a minute - um if the style is exactly the same shouldn't I just reread Little House?  But on something like the second page we get our first encounter with the China Shepherdess and it was like I was back home and I was All In.  The story is about the family's first move out west, told according to the known timeline which is a little different than Laura Ingalls Wilder's fictional timeline.  No one ever uses the bathroom in all of the Little House books, but Caroline goes into more detail about stuff like this.  My verdict is that if you were at all into Little House and you are now an adult, you will probably like this book.

But wait!  In the meantime Elisabeth was raving about an Ernie recommendation called Go As A River, which she decribed as "a mashup of The Grapes of Wrath and The Berry Pickers".  WHAT????  I needed to read this book immediately if not sooner, so I stopped in the middle of reading her post to check out a copy.  Then I hit a busy patch and didn't read for a few days, and when I got back to it I saw that I would have to pause Caroline for River, since River had the earlier due date.  I belong to two Libby libraries.  One has a two week checkout and the other has a three week checkout.

There are no problems, there are only solutions.  I gobbled down Go As A River with pleasure, and then got back to Caroline.  

No sooner had I finished Caroline when the next book came in.  A while back Kim read a book that was about a woman who had a fetish for plane crashes, with the caveat that it was not a book for everyone.  Oh no worry, I knew it was for me!

So look with a name like Sky Daddy...this is basically a quarter life crisis book about a woman working a dead end job who has a thing for planes.  And I do mean a thing for planes, in the NSFL (not safe for Lisa) sense.  It is the story of what happens when she gets out of her normal routine of flying out of SFO as often as she can get the plane fare in the hopes that she will crash and accepts a friend's invite to a vision board party.

This book was twisted enough and well written enough that it would have been good no matter what but YOU GUYS IT'S SET IN SAN FRANCISCO AND SFO AND I WAS IN SAN FRANCISCO AND FLYING OUT OF SFO!!!  

I was about half finished when it was time to leave.  Did I read the rest of the book about someone who has a fetish for plane crashes on the plane coming home?  Why yes, yes I did.  It was the perfect book read in the perfect place.

Again, Sky Daddy is not a book for everyone, but it was a 😻😻😻 book for me.

So what book could possibly be out there that could top Sky Daddy?  Well, I'll let you know when I find it but here is the book that I am reading now.  The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More is a gem that I learned about from San.  It's a book written by someone who knows how to talk: a lawyer.  His podcast is very much worth checking out as well.  Normally I prefer audio for non fiction, but I knew that it would go in one ear and out the other, so I got the Kindle version so that I could take my time (and some notes).

Can You Recommend Some Random Free Stuff?

Sure, no problem.  I've got two Things on The Internet That I Tried IRL to report back on.

• The TripIt app as reported by Purple to organize your trip itinerary.  All that you do is to email receipts to the app as you book things.  It was very handy to have everything in one place.
• Everyone needs a free word game that's kinda like Wordle and doesn't need a lot of explanation.  Lesley was the hookup for Waffle.

That's a wrap for now.  I'll be back as soon as I can to start dishing the deets on my California trip.  The TL;DR version will be to get a plane ticket and see if for yourself.

Have you ever met an author or heard the saying "if you liked a book don't meet the author"?  Agree or disagree?

Who has more than one library card?

Who plays Waffle?