Sunday, October 12, 2025

Life: It Goes On - October 12

Happy Sunday! I am dragging today. When I said yesterday that I might not get anything done today, I really thought I was joking, but it was only about 5 p.m. that I accomplished anything other than to feed myself. Well, I did finish a book so I didn't entirely waste the day. 

Headed down to K.C. Friday early morning to help Miss H move. She had rented a truck this time so that helped; but moving from your own one-bedroom apartment into a house with a friend who already has a house full meant a lot of thinking had to go into what was going to fit into her bedroom and what else she could store in the basement. And, of course, what got sent back to our house for storage in our basement. It never ends! 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: I was still listening to Sarah Damoff's The Bright Years when my loan expired. Since then I've been struggling to find something that catches my attention with no success. Instead I've been listening to Jon Batiste and the Beatles on Spotify. 


Watched: All The Bright Places (based on the book of the same name by Jennifer Niven) and Begin Again, starring Mark Ruffalo, Keira Knightly, Catherine Keener, Hailee Steinfeld, and Adam Levine. 


Read: I finished Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall and started Our Spoons Came From Woolworth by Barbara Comyns, as recommended by Ann Patchett. 


Made: Nothing remarkable. We're still harvesting a lot of tomatoes so those are featured in some way in every meal we've been eating. 


Enjoyed: Time with Miss H; even if the physical work of moving her was no fun, time with her is always good. 

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This Week I’m:  


Planning: On finding a home for the things that got sent home with us. Otherwise, it's time to start cleaning up potted plants. 


Thinking About: How I will pay movers whatever it costs to do the heavy lifting the next time one of my kids moves! 


Feeling: Tired yet. 


Looking forward to: Another long weekend and a trip to south. 


Question of the week: What do you think is worse: packing to move or unpacking when you've arrived? 

Thursday, October 9, 2025

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Atmosphere
by Taylor Jenkins Reid
352 pages
Published June 2025 by Random House Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 
Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.


My Thoughts: 
That publisher's summary also calls this book "fast-paced," which I found interesting because I didn't find it fast-paced at all. It starts off with a literal bang, but then we go back in time and find out how Joan found herself sitting at CAPCOM when STS-LR9 was on its mission, which slows things down considerably. Which was not necessarily a bad thing. It gives readers time to get to know Joan, her sister, Barbara, niece Frances, and her NASA friends. But there is also a lot in this book that could easily have been trimmed out; I often felt like Reid was stuck in "tell" not "show" mode. 

Taking readers back to the beginning of the space shuttle program allows Reid a chance to not only dig into the science of that program, but the norms of that time as well. Barbara, who found herself a single mom early, spends the rest of the book trying to get to the life she expected - married woman with an easy life. Joan, on the other hand, has never had any interest in having a man in her life, absorbed as she is in science and the universe, a life that was still new for women in that time. But it's when Joan finally finds love that she really blazes a trail far different from her sister, one that might risk her career. 

I applaud Reid taking that risk in the book (although it's not the first time that risk has appeared in one of her books) and I felt like she had really done her research when it came to the space program. All of the training and things that happened on the flights felt very real. There are some really interesting (for the most part) characters in this book and I really liked "watching" the astronauts come together as a family. As the book reached the climax, I thought I knew how it would end and felt that was the right ending. At the last minute, Reid veered away from that and I'm still not sure I like the way she ended the book. 

Tuesday, October 7, 2025

The Woman in Suite 11 by Ruth Ware

The Woman In Suite 11
by Ruth Ware
400 pages
Published July 2025 by Gallery/Scout Press 

Publisher's Summary: 
When the invitation to attend the press opening of a luxury Swiss hotel—owned by reclusive billionaire Marcus Leidmann—arrives, it’s like the answer to a prayer. Three years after the birth of her youngest child, Lo Blacklock is ready to reestablish her journalism career, but post-pandemic travel journalism is a very different landscape from the one she left ten years ago.

The chateau on the shores of Lake Geneva is everything Lo’s ever dreamed of, and she hopes she can snag an interview with Marcus. Unfortunately, he proves to be even more difficult to pin down than his reputation suggests. When Lo gets a late-night call asking her to come to Marcus’s hotel room, she agrees despite her own misgivings. She’s greeted, however, by a woman claiming to be Marcus’s mistress, and in life-or-death jeopardy.

What follows is a thrilling cat-and-mouse pursuit across Europe, forcing Lo to ask herself just how much she’s willing to sacrifice to save this woman...and if she can even trust her?

My Thoughts: 
This is my eighth book by Ware. I found myself, from the start, wondering if it might be my last. 

It's a sequel of sorts to Ware's hit, The Woman In Cabin 10, in which Lo Blacklock finds herself locked in a cabin on a boat, certain she is going to die there. This book opens giving readers the belief that the same thing has happened to Lo again. And that's where Ware first lost me. Could this woman seriously have found herself in exactly the same position ten years later? Didn't Ware have any better story ideas than to rehash the same story? 

By the time this story finally caught up with the teaser opening chapter, I had spent too much time being frustrated with idea that this would be the same story to be very much relieved that it wasn't. 

I will say that the story picked up and I did find myself racing through it. Did I figure out all of the plot twists? No, I didn't; although to be fair to myself, that was partly because some of the plot points felt so preposterous that they never would have occurred to me. But also, yes, I did figure out some of the twists and you'll know by now that if I've figured it out ahead of the denouement, it's pretty obvious. Another problem I had with the book was that there were so many loose threads. Now you might say they were red herrings, but they didn't feel like that and they never got explained away. 

Overall, a disappointment. But let's be honest, I've like Ware enough in the past to give her another chance when her next book comes out. 


Monday, October 6, 2025

Life: It Goes On - October 6

Happy Monday! Had to wait until today to type this because I absolutely could not type yesterday. You know you're getting old when you can manage to hurt your wrist so badly while you're sleeping that it's all  but useless the next day. It's bad enough to have had that happen, but not be as productive on a weekend day as I needed to be was frustrating. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: I finished The Wife Upstairs and started Sarah Damoff's The Bright Years


Watched: Football, volleyball, The Voice, and Only Murders In The Building. The usual. 


Read: I'm hoping to finish Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid tonight and then I think the next book in my giant book of library books (I have seven physical books right now!) will be Broken Country, by Clare Leslie Hall, which I just picked up today. 


Made: Biscoff blondies. If you like Biscoff butter or Biscoff cookies, you'll like these. But they are so rich! 


Enjoyed: Saturday we went to a craft fair to support Mini-him's fiancee (weirdest craft fair I've ever been to and definitely not the usual crowd you see at a craft fair but they did have drinks!), then we ate Cajun food at a place we've been meaning to go to for years, and ended up at an event where the mayor and his wife were in attendance. That in itself wouldn't have been a big deal, except that the Big Guy was in a group of four that spent about 45 minutes talking to the mayor and his wife came at sat with me for about that long. Does that mean we're in the in crowd now? 

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This Week I’m:  


Planning: I have to get some dresser drawers painted in the next day or two because we'll be helping Ms. H move this weekend and she needs to have a temporary dresser while we repair her current one, which was her great-grandmother's. 


Thinking About: Usually about this time of year we're pulling the tomato plants because we've had a freeze. Not this year. In fact they're still producing, which is great except that I'm running out of ways to use them! 


Feeling: It's been grey and rainy the past couple of days and my mood on these kinds of days makes me certain I could never live in the Pacific Northwest. 


Looking forward to: Seeing Ms. H this weekend and another Shep siblings dinner. 


Question of the week: What are you reading these days? Are you deep into the spooky reads for the season? 

Thursday, October 2, 2025

My Friends by Fredrik Backman

My Friends
 by Fredrik Backman
448 pages
Published May 2025 by Atria Books

Publisher's Summary: 
Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art.

My Thoughts: 
I've been going back and forth on this one. On the one hand, it is very much what readers expect from Backman. On the other hand, it's a very different story from his usual stories. I've seen some readers say that it's their favorite of his books. For me, it's not, which is not to say it's not a very good book that will give Backman fans much of what they want from his books. 

Like Backman's other books, My Friends deals with loss, grief, friendship, and the ways life can be hard and complicated at times. While this book has plenty of Backman's usual humor, it felt to me that it was more weighed down by life's difficulties than his other books. 

The book is told from two time periods and two points of view through most of the book. In present time, we are following Louisa who has led a really tough life, including the recent death of her only friend. Her only solace is a postcard of a famous painting, a painting she finally gets to see in person. In the past, we follow four friends, who live equally difficult lives, as they live their final summer together, the summer that resulted in that famous painting. Their only real joy is the time they spend together, time that ends each evening with the word "Tomorrow," a promise to each other. 

Louisa's life becomes intertwined with one of the friends and as the two of them travel across the country, the friend tells Louisa the story of that summer. Finally we come to the town the friends grew up in and Louisa is given the chance to restart her life, with new friends and opportunities she never would have had without that postcard. 


Tuesday, September 30, 2025

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

Memorial Days
by Geraldine Brooks
224 pages
Published February 2025 by Penguin Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 
Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz – just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy – collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.

After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha’s Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at the beach. But all of this ended abruptly when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf.

Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the various ways in which cultures grieve and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony’s death.

A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls that exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.

My Thoughts: 
""Is this the home of Tony Horowitz?"
   Yes. 
   "Who am I speaking to?"
   This is his wife. 
   That is exact. The rest is a blur.
   "Collapsed in the street...tried to resuscitate at the scene...brought to the hospital...couldn't revive him..."
   And, so, now he's in the OR. And, so, now we've admitted him for a procedure. And, so, now we're 
   keeping him for observation.
   So many things that logically should have followed.
   But she said none of these things. Instead, the illogical thing. 
   He's dead. 
   No."

How's that for packing a punch to open a book? 

I'd forgotten that this was a memoir when I started it. As I read these words, I was thinking to myself, "Wow, this is the way to make the death of a loved one sound real." Well, of course it was. Even so, I'm so impressed by Brooks' ability to make that moment, six years ago, still feel so very real and raw. 

Brooks writes about her own grief, about helping her sons and in-laws deal with their grief, about trying to understand how a person as healthy as Tony appeared to be could die so suddenly, about their lives together. She didn't make a saint of him. All of it brought Tony to life and made it even easier to understand why his loss was so difficult to bear. 

This book really resonated with me, for the storytelling, for the writing, and because I could so relate to it. No, I have not lost my husband. But I have faced the diagnosis of my husband's cancer and lived through figuring out how to tell my children, how to comfort them while also facing my own possible future, of having to manage the shock and sadness of others. I have dealt with the very sudden loss of my mother and all of the strategic decisions that had to be made for months afterward that put off of my own grief to an extent. I could understand the need to step away from it all to have time to allow myself to feel everything. 

Brooks did all of that while trying to finish the novel she was working on at the time of Tony's death, Horse. Because life moves forward, no matter how much we need it to stop for a little while. 


Sunday, September 28, 2025

Life: It Goes On - September 28

Happy Sunday from sunny Omaha! We're looking at a beautiful fall day here, which we'll cap off with an outside concert later tonight. Not that I'm not looking forward to this concert, but it's one of those decisions I made after a couple glasses of wine that I'm now second guessing. I mean, I never do something on a school night that gets me home as late as this will! I am such a slave to my sleep schedule these days that late nights find me really dragging the next day. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: Rachel Hawkins' The Woman Upstairs. Up next is Sarah Damoff's The Bright Years.


Watched: Volleyball, football, The Voice and Only Murders In The Building.


Read: Taylor Reid Jenkins' Atmosphere.


Made: A couple of batches of spaghetti sauce with roasted cherry tomatoes from our garden. We are having a bumper crop of those things so we're having to get creative finding ways to use them. There are only so many frozen tomatoes that we'll need over the winter. 


Enjoyed: Happy hour with friends on Friday and family time at the Big Guy's sister's house yesterday, catching up with our niece, who was up from Arizona. 

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This Week I’m:  


Planning: I think we have a quiet week this coming week which should give me plenty of time to work on some projects. I need to get a dresser repainted for Miss H to use temporarily, I have a table I want to get sanded and oiled, and that garage needs to get tackled before it's too cold to work out there. 


Thinking About: I'm seeing all of the home accounts I follow gearing up for Halloween and I'm wondering why that's a holiday that I have less and less interest in decorating for as I get older. I'm not even sure I'll get out my witch collection this year. 


Feeling: I have a couple of Fridays off this month, but we'll be busy on both of them. What I really need is a few days off just to do the things that I want to do - read, thrift, knock off a decluttering project. 


Looking forward to: Seeing Jon Batiste with Andra Day tonight. 


Question of the week: As much as I like live music, I tend to not go to concerts these days for a number of reasons. Are you a fan of live music? What's the best concert you've ever seen? 

Wednesday, September 24, 2025

Life: It Goes On - September 24

Happy Wednesday (just barely still Wednesday)! We were out of town until Monday evening and by the time we unpacked, did laundry and fed ourselves, I didn't have the energy to write a post. Last night was time for a visit to see my dad since it had been almost a week and this evening it's been about getting things done around the house that usually get done on the weekends. Tomorrow may be an evening to just relax and get the reading done that I thought I'd get done in the car over the weekend, but didn't. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: M.C. Beaton's Death of A Smuggler, some of Javier Zamora's Solito (it's a tough listen and I can only do a little at a time), and yesterday I started Rachel Hawkins' The Wife Upstairs, which I didn't know was a reworking of Jane Eyre.


Watched: Saturday we watched the Nebraska football game at my niece's home in Wisconsin (her husband was a real sport and cheered along with us). Their three-year-old son took a shine to The Big Guy and was his shadow, watching the game sitting right by his side, watching BG to make sure he was reacting to every play the right way, and echoing everything BG said. Given the outcome of the game, I'd definitely say watching those two guys was the better option of things to watch. 


Read: I got very little reading done over the weekend, despite the long drive. I spent a good chunk of the time driving and had to navigate much more than I usually do, thanks to heavy traffic, rain, and thick fog. Tonight I'll finish Charlotte McConaghy's Wild, Dark Shore. Next up will be Taylor Reid Jenkins' Atmosphere


Made: A caramel apple dip that didn't travel well, but tasted delicious. I'll make it again but when the person I got the recipe from said it needed every bit of the sugar she was putting in, she was lying. I'll cut the recipe in half, cut the sugar by about a third, and put the toppings on just before serving. 

It was a grey but fun day! 

Enjoyed:
 Time with family, including finally getting to meet my 17-month-old great-niece and a drive along the north shore of Lake Superior, including revisiting the site of one of my mom's favorite ever vacation experiences. 

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This Week I’m:  


Planning: On, hopefully, getting BG to work on the garage this weekend while there's no football game to distract him and it's still warm enough to be out there. 


Thinking About: Miss H is moving soon and we'll be headed to KC a couple of weekends to help with that. Since she'll be living with a friend for a few months, instead of own her own, we're having to figure out what to do with the rest of her furniture. 


Feeling: I forgot my blood pressure meds over the weekend, which seemed fine over the weekend; but now I'm suffering the consequences so I'm off to bed shortly. 


Looking forward to: Going to see Jon Batiste with friends on Sunday evening. 


Question of the week: I was so happy on the beaches this weekend, even if it was too cold to swim. I love just listening to the waves. Are you someone who prefers time on the water or do you, like BG, prefer the mountains? 

Thursday, September 18, 2025

The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable

The Instrumentalist
by Harriet Constable
Read by Emilia Clarke
10 hours, 55 minutes
Published August 2024 by Simon and Schuster

Publisher's Summary: 
Anna Maria della Pietà was destined to drown in one of Venice's canals. Instead, she became the greatest violinist of the 18th century.

Anna Maria has only known life inside the Pietà, an orphanage for children born of prostitutes. But the girls of the Pietà are lucky in a sense: most babies born of their station were drowned in the city's canals. And despite the strict rules, the girls are given singing and music lessons from an early age. The most promising musicians have the chance to escape the fate of the rest: forced marriage to anyone who will have them.

Anna Maria is determined to be the best violinist there is-and whatever Anna Maria sets out to do, she achieves. After all, the stakes for Anna could not be higher. But it is 1704 and she is a girl. The pursuit of her ambition will test everything she holds dear, especially when it becomes clear that her instructor, Antonio Vivaldi, will teach Anna everything he knows-but not without taking something in return.

From the opulent palaces of Venice to its mud-licked canals, The Instrumentalist is a “searing portrait of ambition and betrayal” (Elizabeth MacNeal, author of The Doll Factory). It is the story of one woman's irrepressible ambition and rise to the top. It is also the story of the orphans of Venice who overcame destitution and abuse to make music, and whose contributions to some of the most important works of classical music, including “The Four Seasons,” have been overlooked for too long.

My Thoughts: 
I first heard about this book last month when some friends and I attended the Omaha Public Library's annual Book Bash. Historical fiction that focuses on classical music, particularly Vivaldi? Count me in! I requested the audiobook while I was still at the event. 

Let's get the one thing that kept me from liking this book as much as I wanted to out of the way. It was, as is so often the case, a matter of editing. I felt like there was quite a bit of repetition in the book and some things that could easily have been left out with no loss to the story. Oh, and one other thing: since this was an audiobook, I really wish there would have been more actual music involved. 

And now the good. It's not surprising to so often pick up books that teach us about something in history we know nothing about; even the most well educated historians don't know everything. But I'm always excited to read a book showcasing women making the most of their power, even in times and places where they had so little of it. 

Anna Maria della Pietà was a real person, who actually did grow up in the Pieta, study under Vivaldi and have some of his compositions written especially for her, and become a maestra. The Pieta was a real place where orphans were taken in and raised to be useful to society. The girls with musical talent were encouraged and the best of them placed in the figlie di coro. The figlie was widely admired and the members received extravagant gifts as well as brining in funds for the orphanage. 

 Constable takes that history and gives Anna Maria a beginning and a full life, filled with friends, sadness, betrayal, immense talent and even greater ambition. My beloved Vivaldi doesn't come off looking too good, but I was ok with that, given that it meant that Anna Maria could rise up and bring along with other girls with her. As in real life, Anna Maria first shows her talent at the age of eight, so what we see is a young girl desperate to use that talent to make something of herself while being too young to see how she is hurting herself (and others) even as she ascends in the figlie. The ending worked perfectly for me, with happiness for Anna Maria while still recognizing the limitations on her life and the other women. 

Tuesday, September 16, 2025

Ripper by Isabel Allende

Ripper
by Isabel Allende
Read by Edoardo Ballerina
14 hours, 28 minutes
Published January 2014 by HarperCollins

Publisher's Summary: 
The Jackson women, Indiana and Amanda, have always had each other. Yet, while their bond is strong, mother and daughter are as different as night and day. Indiana, a beautiful holistic healer, is a free-spirited bohemian. Long divorced from Amanda's father, she's reluctant to settle down with either of the men who want her-Alan, the wealthy scion of one of San Francisco's elite families, and Ryan, an enigmatic, scarred former Navy SEAL.

While her mom looks for the good in people, Amanda is fascinated by the dark side of human nature, like her father, the SFPD's Deputy Chief of Homicide. Brilliant and introverted, the MIT-bound high school senior is a natural-born sleuth addicted to crime novels and Ripper, the online mystery game she plays with her beloved grandfather and friends around the world.

When a string of strange murders occurs across the city, Amanda plunges into her own investigation, discovering, before the police do, that the deaths may be connected. But the case becomes all too personal when Indiana suddenly vanishes. Could her mother's disappearance be linked to the serial killer? Now, with her mother's life on the line, the young detective must solve the most complex mystery she's ever faced before it's too late.

My Thoughts: 
I used to devour Isabel Allende books, starting with The House of the Spirits, more than forty years ago. Her story telling was so good that I accepted the magical realism of it. It's been years now since I read any of Allende's works (not sure why) so when I was looking for something to listen to recently and this came up, I decided it was time to get back to her. 

I'm sorry to say that this one was a disappointment. Despite the publisher's pitch that this is a fast-paced book, it dragged for me, focusing so much on introducing so many people in Indiana's life and less on Amanda's and her friends' investigation into the recent murders in San Francisco. Allende asks readers to believe that a deputy chief of homocide would be willing to release details of murder investigations to his former father-in-law and his daughter, which I never bought into. We were at least two thirds of the way through the book before things finally really started to pick up and I became truly interested in finding out how this would play out. You knew the murderer was going to be someone we'd been introduced to, but I'll give Allende due credit for giving that reveal a real twist I was not expecting. In the end, all of those people finally came together but I still felt like too much time had been spent on fleshing them out. 

Edoardo Ballerini, as always, does a fabulous job with this one and was a real saving grace to keep me listening. I could recommend a lot of Allende's books to you; unfortunately, this isn't one of them. 

Sunday, September 14, 2025

Life: It Goes On - September 14

Happy Sunday! Wow, how are we already half way through September?! Also, how did I not manage (again!) to get a single book review posted. I am happy to say that I've been reading, although I must say that most of what I've been reading would be now higher on a grading scare than a C. Still, that hasn't killed by desire to read and I've been taking advantage of some nights on my own to turn off the tv and just read.  

Last Week I: 

Listened To: I finished The Instrumentalist and started Gabrielle Stanley Blair's Ejaculate Responsibly and Javier Zamora's Solito which is the Omaha Reads selection for 2025 and my book club's selection for this month. 


Watched: Lots of sports and not much else. 


Read: I finished Ruth Ware's latest, The Woman In Suite 11 and started Charlotte McConaghy's Wild Dark Shore. I continue to read Paul Harding's Enon when I'm not carrying a physical book with me. Lately, though, I find I'm more likely to prefer having a real book in my hands. 


Made: Enchiladas with a mole sauce, our usual Monday pasta with fresh tomato and basil, and a BLT salad. 


Enjoyed: Two things this week: 1) Mini-him and I went to see the movie version of Hamilton Wednesday. I am truly blessed to have children that have similar interests and enjoying doing things together. Last night, as part of Omaha Restaurant Week, we went with friends to Dolomiti for their special prix fixe dinner. Started rough, thanks to a very loud party table, but once they left, we enjoyed delicious food and excellent company. The owner even gave us starts of the sourdough they use to make their pizza crust! 

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This Week I’m:  


Planning: A little getaway. 


Thinking About: The events of this past week and hoping that the initial reactions from it calm down before we can't come back from the aftermath. 


Feeling: I'm feeling a little burnt out from work lately. At some point in this calendar year, I'm supposed to be taking a full week off and I'm thinking I need to schedule that sooner, rather than later. 


Looking forward to: Book club on Tuesday and meeting my great-niece for the first time this coming weekend (and seeing her brother, parents and grandparents, too!). 


Question of the week: Do you like to try new things at restaurants or do you prefer to stick with the tried and true, knowing you'll enjoy what you get?