Life: It Goes On - January 11

Happy Sunday! Boy did the last week get away from me, blogging wise. I had everyintention of sitting down to create posts and even have a couple of books to review already. I'd like to tell you it was because we were extremely busy. But we weren't. Just struggled trying to find the motivation to do anything and still was taking down Christmas. There was a part of me that just wanted to toss half of it into boxes to haul off to charity. It's finally back where it belongs for 11 months of the year and the house is finally back in order and I'm feeling better now that things are back to normal. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: I finished Lara Prescott's The Secrets We Kept and Catherine Newman's Wreck and am almost done with Diane Keaton's Brother and Sister. 

Watched: Loads of sports - college and professional football, college basketball - men's and women's, and pro volleyball. We also finished season five of Only Murders In The Building (can't wait for season six to be released), started watching Chad Powers (which the Big Guy is enjoying but I could live without), and I watched the first three episodes of The Morning Show with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon (I'm late to the party with this one but am really enjoying it so far). 

Read: Anna Quindlen's latest, More Than Enough. I have several books on Netgalley I want to get to and also have picked up three books from the library - let's hope this reading mojo I seem to have picked up again lasts. 

Made: Steak and baked potatoes, Philly steak sandwiches, steak salads, chicken nachos, lima beans and chicken. In other words, we thawed meat and then used it throughout the week. Today I'm making Rice Krispie treats because in cleaning out the pantry last week, I discovered that I have a bag of marshmallows that has become one sticky mess. Those will go into work - we are trying to de-junk food this place! 

Enjoyed: We had met a couple many years ago, through my sister, and always thought we should get together. Friday we finally did that and spent a couple of hours talking and forgetting to eat, discovering we have even more in common that we thought we did, including both knowing a couple that we were friends with years ago but drifted apart from (they spent a lot of that time living overseas). We are so hoping that we can make contact with that third couple and the six of us can get together. 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: It's time to tackle a lot of paperwork that has been piling up. 

Thinking About: How I'd be happy if winter just went on being snow free. We had quite a lot of rain the other day and I'm just fine if that's the way all of the moisture we need comes to us over the rest of the winter. 

Feeling: I'm cleaning off my dad's phone so I can pass it on and it's really stirring up the feelings. Who would have thought looking at someone's Amazon account would bring tears. 

Looking forward to: My brother is coming to Nebraska this week for a quick trip and we'll get to see him when he spends the night here one night. 

Question of the week: I've been working on setting up my 2026 journal/calendar. I still live almost entirely on paper when it comes to those kinds of things and I love it. Are you a digital calendar/to-do list person or do you still use paper? 

Washington Black on Hulu

Based on the book by Eli Edugyan, Washington Black (my review here)has been adapted into a mini-series which began airing on Hulu on July 23rd. I loved this book when I read it six years ago so you can imagine how thrilled I was to find that it was being adapted, especially considering that Edugyan is a co-producer and actor Sterling K. Brown is an executive producer and acts in it. 

Reviews are mixed. Variety says it falls short of the book, but whoever writes for RogerEbert.com was very impressed. I'm only one episode in and I'm enjoying it so far. In this episode, we're introduced to Wash in his life in Nova Scotia, with flashbacks to him as a child living on a plantation in Barbados. I'm not sure the horror of the plantation is as great here as it was in the book; we'll see if that aspect picks up as the show continues. The acting, so far, is good and the costumes and sets are wonderful. 

Since I didn't let the Big Guy in on the first episode, I'm going to have to watch the rest of the series without him or watch the first episode again. I think I prefer the first, giving me the chance just to immerse myself in the story without interruptions. I'll give you an update once I'm finished watching so let you know my final thoughts. In the meantime, if you haven't already read the book, I highly recommend it. 

Life: It Goes On - August 3

Happy Sunday! I'm dragging today and not getting much done. May have something to do with having had more to drink the past couple of nights than I've had to drink in the past couple of months! 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: Marie Benedict's Carnegie's Maid, which I will probably finish today. Not sure what's up next since I have nothing on hold that's even close to being ready. 

Watched: I watched the first episode of Washington Black and My Oxford Year. 

Read: I finished My Friends by Fredrik Backman and started Sarah Vowell's The Partly Cloudy Patriot and Paul Harding's Enon. 

Made: A lot of salads including caprese, cinnamon rolls, some dips, and we grilled burgers and hot dogs. 

Enjoyed: My niece's two little guys - they are busy but well behaved and the oldest became buddies with the Big Guy who got talked into playing jai alai and football quite a bit. We all had so much fun that not a single one of us took a single picture. 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: This week will see me spending an hour or so a day talking care of Mini-him's and Miss C's cats while they are in Alaska, which will mean less will get done around here. I am hoping to get back to some genealogy research this week. 

Thinking About: What I'm going to do with all of the tomatoes we have coming ripe. We'll eat as many as we can but I'll end up with well more than we can eat fresh. 

Feeling: A little disappointed - we were meant to be having the Shep siblings and their spouses for dinner on Saturday as well, but the family patriarch wasn't feeling well so that had to get postponed. 

Looking forward to: I've been so focused on what needed to be done to get ready for this weekend that I haven't even looked to see what's coming up this week. 

Question of the week: It's been a gorgeous weekend here (except for some grey skies), with highs in the mid-70's. We've spent hours and hours that past two evenings on the patio and it's been so much fun and so relaxing. My brother and sister-in-law arrived Friday evening and were here about 24 hours, my brother-in-law has been here since late Friday, and my niece and her family arrived mid-day yesterday and spent the night. So much talking and laughter! 

Life: It Goes On - July 13

Happy Sunday! What a noisy week we've had here between several nighttime thunderstorms that woke us up and work being done in the kitchen for three days. One night we had no water in the kitchen, the next we had no stove or microwave, every thing that's normally in the top drawers or out on the counters is in boxes in the dining room. I don't know how people survive months long renovations! 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: Henning Mankell's Faceless Killers. Next up is Robert Edsel's The Monuments Men...I think. At least I'm going to start it on audio, but I'm wondering if it might be one I'd be better off reading digitally. 

Watched: The first season of Running Point, a couple of episodes of Only Murders In The Building, and Wicked. 

Read: I'm still reading Elin Hilderbrand's Summerland, but I'm going to have to get that one finished up soon because Friday I picked up Fredrik Backman's My Friends, which I'm anxious to get to. I wanted to get the audiobook version but I'd be waiting months for it yet. 

Made: I haven't cooked a single thing all week! The Big Guy cooked a couple of nights and we've eaten out the rest of the week. 

Enjoyed: Guys, I picked out the materials for our kitchen weeks ago and since then I've been afraid that I wouldn't like them or they wouldn't look good. Now that everything is in, it makes me so happy to walk into my kitchen! 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: It's not that we weren't planning on painting the kitchen walls, but now that the new tile is up, I'm going to have to paint sooner than later. Luckily we already have the paint so we can get started today. 

Thinking About: Paint colors for the cabinets. Because we can't stop once we've started! 

Feeling: Not as relaxed as I had expected to feel after a four-day weekend. When I scheduled these days off, there was nothing on the calendar and I thought it would be a nice, quiet time. Instead, because BG was off visiting clients the better part of the time people were here, I had to be "on" AND it was non-stop noisy for the big chunks of the past three days. I'm going to need to schedule another long weekend soon. 

Looking forward to: Book club this week, where we'll be discussing Remarkably Bright Creatures. 

Question of the week: Now that we've past the half way point of the year, what's your favorite book so far in 2025? 

Life: It Goes On - January 14

Happy Sunday from arctic Nebraska! I know the Rodger's and Hammerstein song says that the wind goes sweeping down the plain in Oklahoma; but let me tell you, it's been sweeping through all of the plains the past couple of days, making already frigid temps that much worse. We'd had almost no winter weather at all until Christmas Day, but it's definitely here now. We've had about 14" of snow this week. Fortunately, it was warm enough last Monday that the snow was melting as fast as it fell so what's left is not 14" deep...except where the wind has created giant snowdrifts, some several feet tall.  I haven't left the house since Thursday; I'm not looking forward to going outside in a couple of hours! 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: I'm back to Mary Doria Russell's Children of God. I had such high hopes for it, having loved The Sparrow, but this one bounces around all over the place, making it hard for me to settle into it. 

Watched: Football, college football, the first episode of season 6 of The Crown, and the first episode of Northern Exposure (a show, set in Alaska, that we loved when it first aired in the 1990's). Of course it comes out on Amazon Prime now...we just bought the DVD set for our Alaskan kids. 

Read: Caitlin Moran's latest, What About Men (Moran always makes me laugh AND gives me a lot to think about) and I started Melanie Benjamin's latest, California Golden, this month's book club book. I think I've read all of Benjamin's books and I'm always impressed by the variety of stories she finds to tell. Have you seen the trailer for Feud: Capote vs. the Swans? It's based on a different book but I'm looking forward to seeing it, having read Benjamin's The Swans of Fifth Avenue. 

Made: Apparently all it took to get me cooking again was a good cold snap. Friday I made two soups: ham and potato (possibly the best potato soup I've ever made) and turkey and noodle (which we will have today for the first time). Yesterday I used up a couple of sweet potatoes to try a recipe I found on Instagram; it's definitely one we'll do again, although it's a little tedious to make. While that was cooking, we tossed in a couple more sweet potatoes and those will get turned into sweet potato soup today, something we've never tried before. 

Enjoyed: Because of the weather, I opted to work from home on Friday. Except that the internet was hit and miss. So I only ended up working a couple of hours and got most of the day as an unexpected day off. I love days like those. I decided to take full advantage of the time to get a lot of little things done. 

This Week I’m:  

Planning: We have pretty well locked down plans for my dad's move to his new place. Now it'a a matter of sorting through his things to decide what's going to make the move so I'll be going over to his current apartment a couple of times this week to get those decisions made. 

Thinking About: Remember last week, when I hushed my family room? I'll be honest, the emptiness of the room made me a little twitchy. But it was a great chance to really rethink what was in there (although it took me a stupid amount of time to get it put back together again!). Now I'm thinking about what room to do next, which room I'd most like to refresh. 

Feeling: Much more relaxed, now that we have a plan in place for my dad. 

Looking forward to: Book club on Tuesday. And also April, because I'm already over winter. 

Question of the week: If you found yourself with an unexpected day off, how would you choose to use it? Would you take advantage of it to knock off chores you haven't had time for or would you use it as a day to just relax, to read a book, watch a Netflix series, paint a watercolor? 

100 Places To Visit After You Die by Ken Jennings

100 Places To Visit After You Die by Ken Jennings

Published June 2023 by Scribner

320 Pages

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley

Publisher's Summary: 

Ever wonder which circles of Dante’s Inferno have the nicest accommodations? Where’s the best place to grab a bite to eat in the ancient Egyptian underworld? How does one dress like a local in the heavenly palace of Hinduism’s Lord Vishnu, or avoid the flesh-eating river serpents in the Klingon afterlife? What hidden treasures can be found off the beaten path in Hades, Valhalla, or NBC’s The Good Place? Find answers to all those questions and more about the world(s) to come in this eternally entertaining book from Ken Jennings. 

100 Places to See After You Die is written in the style of iconic bestselling travel guides—but instead of recommending must-see destinations in Mexico, Thailand, or Rome, Jennings outlines journeys through the afterlife, as dreamed up over 5,000 years of human history by our greatest prophets, poets, mystics, artists, and TV showrunners. This comprehensive index of 100 different afterlife destinations was meticulously researched from sources ranging from the Epic of Gilgamesh to modern-day pop songs, video games, and Simpsons episodes. Get ready for whatever post-mortal destiny awaits you, whether it’s an astral plane, a Hieronymus Bosch hellscape, or the baseball diamond from Field of Dreams. 

Fascinating, funny, and irreverent, this light-hearted memento mori will help you create your very own bucket list—for after you’ve kicked the bucket.

My Thoughts: 

Yes. THAT Ken Jennings. Which made this one interesting to me even if the title and description hadn't intrigued me, which they did. 

Yes, this book is funny and irreverent and light-hearted. Which made me so happy - I was so hoping that Jennings would be just as humorous in writing as he seems to be on t.v. And, no surprise, just as smart. There are, actually, one hundred entries in this book, in seven different categories. He includes references to the afterlife in mythology, religion, books, movies, television, music and theater, and a miscellaneous group. Yes, I know it says 100 in the title, but I didn't seriously believe that there would be 100 different ways that Jennings could refer to the afterlife. I don't for a minute believe that Jennings pulled these 100 references off the top of his head, but he had to have had a pretty good number to start with or he wouldn't have even considered the idea for a book, right? 

This is not a book to be read straight through; it's a book to read a couple of chapters at a time, especially in the mythology and religion sections. There's a lot to be said about all of those references and if you read too many at once, it's for it to begin to feel a little repetitive and (for me) a little boring. But read a bit at a time, the humor holds up much better. As does your ability to refresh your memory in one of those areas; or, as I did, learn new things. 

Of course, when we got to television, movies, and books, I was more in my element...and the chapters were shorter and more diverse so it became easier to read a few more chapters at a time. Also, those chapters were a lot less gruesome. Those mythology and religious afterlives can be crazy gruesome! Not that Dante wasn't every bit their equal. 

Where can you choose to travel to in the afterlife? Hades and Valhalla (of course), the Bardo, Limbo, Nirvana, Johanna and Jannah, the Three Kingdoms of Glory, Aslan's Country, King's Cross, Pandemonium, the Bogus Journey, Hotel Hades, Iowa, the Bad Place, Robot Hell, Hadestown, Rock and Roll Heaven, and the Outer Planes. 

It's great fun and it's definitely one I'd recommend. Just put it on your coffee table or nightstand, and read a chapter or two every night for maximum enjoyment! 

Life: it Goes On - January 27

Yesterday at 7 p.m. it was still 37 degrees. This morning it's 19. This is much better than my family up north is dealing with but still, I hate winter.

I haven't necessarily been Marie Kondo'ing my entire house but I've certainly been taking inspiration from her. I finished moving all of our DVDs into binders which has allowed me to move all of the albums back into the family room. And now I have a whole shelf open in my office. I'm leaving both it and the empty shelf on my family room shelves open for a bit while I think about exactly how I want to use them.

Last Week I:

Listened To: I FINALLY finished The Woman's Hour and I'm back to The Woman In The Window. I've got 7 hours of it left and only 2 days so I'm doubting I'll get through it before it has to go back and then I'll have to wait for it again. This is not the best way to listen to a book!

Watched: I've had a fair amount of time this week by myself so I've also had the television to myself. This means I've finished Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, watched some Queer Eye, rewatched Under The Tuscan Sun, started You (this one's a watch-in-the-daytime show!), and started season 5 of Grace and Frankie. How I've missed those ladies!

Read: I read In The Ground, which I reviewed, and started Pam Jenhoff's The Lost Girls of Paris which I'll review this week. I'm really enjoying it so far.

Made: Chicken enchiladas, triple chocolate brownies, chicken noodle casserole, chocolate chip cookies, street tacos.

Enjoyed: Helping Miss H work on her closet - we didn't so much try to see if things sparked joy so much as we were trying to leave her with only a wardrobe of things that fit and work for her right now. It felt good to make things work better for her but, even more, I enjoyed getting to spend a couple of hours just the two of us talking.

This Week I’m: 

Planning: On doing that painting I didn't get to last week and moving some furniture around.

Thinking About: Getting back to putting together a weekly menu. We've been doing entirely too many what-should-we-have-for-dinner conversations at 5:30 p.m. lately.

Feeling: Like I need to tweak things around here - I'm already tired of the winter decor. I brought in some fresh yew for some bright green color. My cat immediately thought she might need to nibble on it. I disagreed.

Looking forward to: Family dinner to celebrate BG's birthday tomorrow night.

Question of the week: For those of you battling snow and extreme cold lately, what things are you doing to keep yourself from going stir crazy? Or are you one of those people who just bundles up and enjoys the things you can only do this time of year?

Fairy Tale Friday - Perhaps You Grew Up With The Fractured Version?

I have the draft of a very serious post about the marketing of fairy tale princesses that I was going to polish for this week's post. But when I decided to search Pinterest to see what kind of fairy tale images I could find there, I came across this:

I was completely sidetracked. While I may have grown up reading Andersen, Grimm Brothers and Perrault fairy tales, I also grew up with The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. One of my favorite things about the show was Fractured Fairy Tales. All of the episodes was written by A.J. Jacobs and narrated by Edward Everett Horton. Jacobs took classic fairy tales and turned them into parables with a satirical twist. You can watch several of the episodes on YouTube, buy DVD's of them, and, I have just discovered, you can even buy a book of the stories with illustrations of the animation from Random House. Ssshhh - don't tell The Big Guy but I think I just found one of his Christmas presents! If you never watched the show, or if you'd like to take a trip down memory lane, here's a little treat for you.

Sunday Salon - November 16

I know, I know--it's not Sunday...again. But I was so wrapped up in football and AMC's "The Prisoner" that I just couldn't tear myself away from the television long enough to get on the computer.

I first found out about AMC's mini-series of "The Prisoner" one evening when I was channel surfing and came across episodes of the original television program "The Prisoner" on IFC. I had to watch the episodes. It was a flashback to my childhood. My dad and I watched it together when it was on in tv in 1967 to 1968. It certainly doesn't seem like the kind of show a kid would watch, but there were only four channels in those days and none of them catered to children's programming in the evening, only family shows. We also watched "All In The Family" and "I, Spy" with Bill Cosby and Robert Culp.
My dad read to my siblings and me at bedtime. I remember us as always sitting in the hall; I have no idea why we didn't sit on the sofa except that the hall spot was right by our bedrooms. In particular, I remember Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." My dad didn't just read the books to us, he performed them. Which must have been quite a feat with three little bodies pressed in against yours.

I've mentioned that my dad is an avid reader. He is also a tremendous lover of music. All kinds of music. So that while classical music was on the car radio almost exclusively when he could find it, I also remember listening to "Woodstock" on our console stereo and one night being allowed to fall asleep on the living room sofa listening to The Chambers Brothers' "The Time Has Gone." It seems an odd choice in retrospect, but I remember it being very soothing.

As the holidays approach, I always find myself thinking of the past. At Thanksgiving, in particular, I am grateful for the very normal upbringing I was given along with the twists that made our life uniquely our own.