What I'm reading Wednesday...

Forty-fourth challenge finish of the year.

I knew exactly which book I wanted to read for this prompt, as it technically has zero letters in the title, just numbers.  :)  This one has been on my Kindle since 2013...11/22/13 to be precise.  They must have offered it at a special price on the fiftieth anniversary of JFK's assassination (I paid $2.95).  

I've read a lot of long books over the years: all of Jean Auel's Earth's Children series books, all of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series books, AND all five of the Kingsbridge series books by Ken Follett, four of which were over 900 pages each (and one of those I've read three times).  But I don't think I've ever read as many long books in a single year as I have this year!  This one came in at 877 pages, and I loved every one of them!

You may ask if I loved it so much, why did I only give it four stars?  Well, because I only give five star ratings to books that I love so much I want to read them again sometime in the future.  The majority of the books I've read this year I have rated four stars.  That kind of amazes me, usually I have more clunkers mixed in.

(Wouldn't you know that as I was refreshing my memory as to how many books were in Ken Follett's Kingsbridge series and their lengths, I see that he has a new book coming out in September of this year which will be 704 pages, and is a novel about the building of Stonehenge...right up my alley!  So there may be another fairly long one in my reading for the year.)

2025 Frugal Friday File, July 18...

 

1.  I came across two puzzles from when the grandkids were little that I thought I could donate to the library if all the pieces were in their boxes.  One was less than 50 pieces, and featured Elsa and Olaf from Frozen.  I put it together, and it was missing one piece.  :(  The other was a round puzzle with 101 pieces and was an image of a U.S. penny.  I started putting it together and found all the edge pieces.  When Carey came in, he finished putting it together, and all the pieces were there.  As he was dissassembling the puzzle and putting the pieces back in the box, he turns to me and says, "You know, it would have been a lot quicker to just count the pieces instead of putting them together."  Head slap moment!  

    Oh well, the one with all the pieces can be donated to the library now.  LOL

2.  I did a rough inventory of the chest freezer.  I had a sale turkey from 2024 holiday season in there taking up a good portion of the space.  I decided to bite the bullet and roast it and use the FoodSaver to prepare small, usable amounts of the meat, and freeze them ready to use  for casseroles and salads and sandwiches.  

     Additionally there is 20 pounds of flour in the freezer, along with several packages of bacon,  sausages, a couple of large bags of pecans from Costco, various bags of frozen vegetables, and three Dreamsicles.  

      In my opinion upright freezers are much more efficient to organize and access, and the most useful thing about a chest freezer would be a scenario where you might have a dead body that need's hiding. I would dearly love to have an upright freezer, but as long as this one does the job it can stay. 

3.  Grocery total this month is lower than expected.  I'm not sure why, but I've been a little creative in cooking with what we have.  Mostly because I don't want to go out into the heat to restock.  

4.  Frugal fail: Carey took the new car in to get an estimate on replacing the passenger side external rearview mirror.  Wish I didn't have to claim responsibility for that one...it was sheared off by the menu board/speaker while I was backing out of a Sonic parking spot.  $1,200+.

5.  Frugal fail: I caved and resubscribed to Audible.  I have projects to do, but I need to be reading!  I checked the library for the audio book, but I was something like 21 on the waiting list.  :(  Now if I can just find my earbuds.  Found 'em!  :)

On the menu this week:

Saturday:  Family supper at Kasey & Beau's

Sunday:  BLTs

Monday:  Quiche (red onion, bell pepper, broccoli, cheddar & parm)

Tuesday:  leftovers

Wednesday:  Turkey Penne Casserole

Thursday:  out for Tex-Mex

Friday:  leftovers

What I'm reading Wednesday...

Forty-second challenge finish of the year.

This is another one that has been on my Kindle since 2014.  Subject matter was about the sudden death of a man, and how he and his family grieved the end of life as they knew it, and grew through their grief.  It was okay.  The formatting was a little confusing.  

Forty-third challenge finish of the year.

When I chose this book (on my Kindle since 2023) I had intended it for the 'starts with the letter M' prompt, but before I got to the first page, I realized that it had an epigraph and that that prompt hadn't been filled yet either.  There were others on my Kindle that started with an 'M' so that prompt got put on hold for a bit.

I enjoyed it.  The story started in early 2020 with the beginning of Covid.  The two main characters were a resident of an assisted living facility and a nursing assistant at that same facility.  Both were in difficult personal situations, and the pandemic brought them together.

It's amazing how I had blocked the beginning impacts of Covid from my mind...the toilet paper, disinfectant, sanitizer, and mask shortages...the quarantining of the aged in facilities...the effects on essential and non-essential workers...the lack of hugs.

2025 Frugal Friday File, July 11...

 

1.  My first grandson's birthday was this week, and we celebrated it on Saturday night at Kasey and Beau's.  I made him a card, a batch of Snack Crackers, and a pair of funny socks I had put back for him.  He works with special-needs kids, and him wearing funny socks is one way to engage them.

2.  Drove 500 miles to spend my sister's birthday with her.  She broke her wrist a couple of weeks ago, so I was hoping I could be helpful to her, but she didn't let me do much.  It was very nice to visit with her, and I loved getting to see her grandson (whom I hadn't seen since he was a little guy) and got to meet his wife and kiddoes.

    My sister had supper planned for all of us, and only needed a little help in the kitchen.  I had baked a cake at home before we left, and took it to have.  I also took a couple of homecooked meals from our freezer, so she could take a couple of nights off from cooking when she wants to.  Went back to see sis again, and got in another afternoon visit before heading back home.

3.  A great friend of mine lives near my sister, so we got to meet for lunch while I was there, and talked non-stop.

4.  While we were gone, Jared took care of Rudy for us.  

5.  Picked up sewing machines (2) from repairman yesterday.  Not cheap, but worth it; and I'm really pleased to have found a good repair option.  I have a backlog of projects to get going on.

What we ate this week:

Saturday:  Family supper at Kasey & Beau's

Sunday:  leftovers

Monday:  supper at my sister's house

Tuesday:  big lunch out w/ friend, so skipped supper

Wednesday:  Tuna Salad Sandwiches

Thursday:  Tuna Salad Sandwiches again (we love them)

Friday:  Green Salad w/ remainders of vegetable tray I took to book club today.

**designates meatless meal

What I'm reading Wednesday...

 

Fortieth challenge finish of the year.

Has been on my Kindle since 2019.  I'm not sure how to describe this one.  I did enjoy it, because the four main characters were so entirely likable.  Well, one of the four might not have been entirely likable, but his relationship with his dog kept him in the likable category for me.  :)

The title character was terribly injured in a fire when he was sixteen years old.  The relationships around him deal a lot with loneliness, grief, and self-imposed solitude; and yet it is told with humor.  Since one of the main characters is a nurse (as was the author), there are some stories of strange hospital/patient happenings.

Forty-first challenge finish of the year.

I read somewhere recently about how much someone (I can't even remember who it was) loved Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell, so I looked to see if it was available through our library, and it was available, so I decided to fit it into the challenge reads.  I enjoyed it.  I've read some of Shakespeare's sonnets and a few of his plays, but didn't really know much about about him or his family.

This is a work of fiction, but was engaging and made me think about the life (and times) of Shakespeare the man.  The author did a good job of presenting him in an interesting and entertaining way, as long as one remembers that it is not necessarily all fact.

2025 Frugal Friday File, July 4...

 

Happy 4th of July!  Hope everyone has a fun and safe long weekend.

1.  I've mentioned before that our phone/internet/cable are provided by a co-op which we have belonged to since 1999.  They just had their annual meeting, and released their/our capital credits which they apply to our account.  Last year the capital credits paid for all but $10 of our June 2024 bill.  This year it paid for ALL of our June bill ($236.22), and carries forward a credit of  $28+/- to pay toward next month's bill.  It's not all rainbows and sunshine with this co-op, but it's the only game in town, so I'm always glad to get credits applied to the bill.  Husband insists on keeping cable, and I'm keeping landline, just because who knows what is going to happen these days.

2.  Speaking of phone bills...back in the day, my sister and I would have to try to never let our husbands get the mail for fear they would see our phone bills.  Those were some big phone bills.  In the past week, I have talked to her for about three hours (combined total), and to the other Kathleen for about an hour and a half (combined total).  I am SO very happy we have unlimited talk and text nowadays. 

     I don't care that Carey gets the mail these days.  Because not only are the phone bills lower now than they used to be, the bills come to my email inbox not the post box.  LOL

3.  There wasn't anything on the calendar this week, so mostly hung around the house; read,  laundry, repeat.

4.  I've been using the dregs of a bottle of shower gel (diluted) to clean the toilet.  I don't do that if the toilet gets really dirty, but as per my FlyLady days, if you 'swish and swipe' the toilet daily, it never gets really dirty, and she also said "Soap is soap, so use up what you have."

5.  I've kept the houseplants that I bought in spring 2024 alive for over a year now.  My son thought all this time that the large monsteras (2) in the living room were artificial!  He has not paid attention to how much they've grown!  I saw a really large monstera either on the web or tv recently, and it scared me how big they get!  If mine get much bigger, I may have to adopt them out to new homes before we have to carry machetes to hack our way through the jungle.  :)

What we ate this week:

Saturday:  Family supper at Kasey & Beau's

Sunday:  Tortilla Soup

Monday:  leftovers

Tuesday:  takeout fried chicken

Wednesday:  leftover Tortilla Soup

Thursday:  takeout sandwiches

Friday:  Chicken Curry

**designates meatless meal

What I'm reading Wednesday...

Thirty-eighth challenge finish of the year.

You may remember that I found this at our library's used book section awhile back.  I don't think the author would necessarily consider himself a celebrity, but he is very well known for an act of heroism one tragic day in Texas, and one of the facts that I learned about in the book is that he and his wife were portrayed in a movie about the event, so I think that counts as enough of a celebrity to use for this prompt (even though he thought the movie was so bad that he and his wife sued over the inaccuracy and the racially stereotyped portrayal of his wife in the movie).

I really enjoyed reading this one!  I knew parts of it from talking to the author.  We met a couple of times years ago and talked about spending time in a common location...him working in the location on a case, and me living nearby...so it was really interesting reading more about his work there.  And I was impressed by how well written it was (unlike my crazy run-on sentences in this post); as I understand it, he did the writing himself.  It was very well organized and presented, and I enjoyed it a lot.

Thirty-ninth challenge finish of the year.

This one has been on my Kindle since 2014.  The first half was good.  The second half I kept rolling my eyes, because these characters never seemed to learn from their experiences!  Then the ending was infuriating.  The main character--The Flyer--was in the middle of an air battle, and it ended.  I'm giving a HUGE spoiler here, but I do NOT recommend anyone read this book, so I just don't care.  He was almost in range of his enemy target--he gripped his trigger--and that is where the damn thing ended!!!  Was he beamed up by aliens?  Geesh!  Then it went to an epilogue where he was just missing, and a couple of othe characters were discussing him.  It did have a slight sense of closing at the end of the epilogue, but what a CHEAT!  

I gave it 2½ stars because I liked the first half, but boy was the second half lame, and I hated the ending.  I will NOT be reading the sequel.

I'm about halfway through my current book, which has also been on my Kindle for years.