Books Read In August

I’ve seen several other bloggers list and do mini-reviews of the books they read the previous month.  I love seeing what other people are reading, so I thought I’d try it, too.

August was a fairly light reading month for me.  I always seem to read less during the summer and then read a lot more during the winter.  I’ll usually pick going swimming with the neighbors over reading in the evening, but there’s not much that can lure me outside during the winter.

So, here are my August books:

The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths.  It’s number 14 in the Ruth Galloway mystery series.  If you like mystery and you haven’t read this series, do yourself a favor and start reading it now.  I always love these books.  I’ve grown very attached to most of the characters, and I love that there’s a little bit of the story from all of their points of view. 

The Locked Room is the only book I’ve read so far that takes place during the early days of the pandemic.  It takes place in the UK, so obviously, it’s a little different than it was here in NC, but I think the author did an incredible job of portraying what people were feeling early on.  It took me right back to all of the how long should I plan to work from home and how much should I change my routine type of questions.  She also did a great job of capturing the early emotional rollercoaster of “this won’t be that bad” to “this is terrible,” and everything in between.  I think, years from now, when someone wants to know what the early days of the pandemic were like for regular people, this book will do a great job of conveying that.  I assume that there will be more and more books coming out that take place during the pandemic, and I’m interested to see if other authors do an equally good job capturing all of the feelings. 

Pandemic writing aside, the mystery was excellent, as they always are with this series, and there was a lot of character development.  After reading the same characters for so long, you wouldn’t think there would be much room for more character development, but they reached new depths in this book.  I gave it five stars.  I’m anxiously waiting for the next book in the series!

If you’re a fan of the Ruth Galloway series, are there any other series you recommend?  I’m on the hunt for another good mystery series.

The Templars: History & Myth by Michael Haag.  We listened to this one on Audible.  One of my coworkers got us hooked on the show The Curse of Oak Island, and there are a lot of references to the Knights Templar.  My entire knowledge base of the Knights Templar came from watching National Treasure, so it seemed prudent to learn more about them.  Nick was interested, too, so it was an easy Audible pick.

I’m sure there are plenty of good and interesting books about the Knights Templar.  Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of them.  It was essentially a very dry list of facts, and the narrator's voice was extremely annoying. 

I tend to read fiction, so I definitely prefer a more narrative type of book.  I tried to factor that into my opinion of this book, but nothing about it was engaging.  It felt like “Fact One, Fact Two, etc.”  I think I would have liked it a lot more if there had been more about some of the people involved and less about building plans for temples, etc.  I gave it one star.  Nick reads almost exclusively nonfiction and said it was definitely on the drier side.  He gave it two stars.

Have you read an interesting and engaging book about the Knights Templar?  I’d definitely like to try another one since I feel like I was too bored to actually learn very much about them from this book.

The Ones Who Got Away by Roni Loren.  Here’s the goodreads blurb on it:

“It's been twelve years since tragedy struck the senior class of Long Acre High School.  Only a few students survived that fateful night—a group the media dubbed The Ones Who Got Away.

Liv Arias thought she'd never return to Long Acre—until a documentary brings her and the other survivors back home.  Suddenly her old flame, Finn Dorsey, is closer than ever, and their attraction is still white-hot.  When a searing kiss reignites their passion, Liv realizes this rough-around-the-edges cop might be exactly what she needs...”

I just couldn’t get into this one.  I started it in July and read a few other books in the meantime, which is never a good sign for me.  It wasn’t terrible, and I didn’t hate the characters.  I just didn’t feel anything for them.  There were a few points in the book where I thought things might take a turn and get more interesting, but they never did.  I gave it two stars, and I probably won’t try another Roni Loren book.  Hers are popular, but I’ve read one other one, and I didn’t like it.  I think maybe her style just doesn’t work for me. 

The Vanishing Type by Ellery Adams.  This is the fifth book in the Secret, Book, and Scone mystery series.  I love pretty much everything about this series.  It takes place in NC, and the main character owns a bookstore.  They’re classified as cozy mysteries, but I think they’re a little more than that.  They’re definitely not overly suspenseful, but I think they’re deeper than a lot of cozies.

There’s a group of four women who are the main characters, and there are some great secondary characters.  There’s usually some kind of literary twist to the mysteries, and there’s a lot of focus on the friendship the women share.  I’ll be honest; I usually find myself wishing I could join their book club and try to befriend them.

Each chapter in the series begins with a quote, and I love that.  Two of my favorite quotes in The Vanishing Type were, “A life with love will have some thorns, but a life without love will have no roses.” (Dr. Seuss).  “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.”  (C.S. Lewis).

Tara also likes the book.

As usual with this series, the mystery was intriguing, and I enjoyed all of the secondary storylines.  I gave it five stars.

If you’ve read and loved this series, are there any similar ones you recommend? 

And that’s everything I read in August.  I told you it was a slow reading month.

Have you read any good books lately? 

Thursday 13

 1.    We’re still working on getting Howard’s blood sugar under control.  It was 419 yesterday, so still very high.  Dr. D. is consulting with Dr. V. (the specialist we like, Duke saw her for his Cushing’s Disease).

 

2.    I did successfully give Howard some of his insulin injections over the long weekend.  The only tears shed were mine. 

3.    Nick and Howard (and, to some extent, Frankie) deserve the credit for my injection giving.  Nick was incredibly patient in walking me through it.  Howard is such a sweetie about it and everything, really.  And Frankie very sweetly cuddled up with Howard (I think for moral support) the second time I did it.

4.    I’m still pretty nervous about giving Howard his injections, but I know I can do it now.

5.    My car was ready to be picked up from the body shop on Tuesday, and I was delighted to return Satan’s SUV to Enterprise and start driving my car again.

6.    We tried a pineapple cheese casserole for the first time over the long weekend.  Nick wasn’t a fan.  He thought the texture was a little weird.  I loved it!  I think I’m going to make one with Thanksgiving dinner this year. 

 

7.    For anyone else counting down, Thanksgiving is only eleven weeks away!

8.    Yes, I am already thinking about Thanksgiving and getting excited about all of the cooking and fun.

9.    I’ve been crocheting again.  I hadn’t done it in over a year.  After making so many mask adapters in 2020/2021, I was a little burned out.  I didn’t mean to take such a long break, but things got busy, as they so often do.

 

10. Now that I’m back to crocheting again, there are so many projects I want to try.  If only my talent matched my ambition!

11. My job has given us the option to request a third work-from-home day.  We’re currently allowed two, which I opted to take.  I wasn’t sure about taking a third telework day, but one of my coworkers pointed out that I wouldn’t be penalized for getting it approved and not taking it.  So, I asked for it.  We’re still waiting to see if our requests are approved or not, so I’m not sure if I’ll get it. 

12. One of my coworkers and I decided to start a book club.  We both enjoy reading, and she has been struggling to meet people here, so we thought a book club might be fun.  We had our first meeting on Tuesday to choose a book.  There were only three of us (the other two had to cancel), but we enjoyed talking about different books and what we like to read.  I’m hopeful that this is going to be fun.

13. Our hydrangea is still blooming.  So is our yellow rose.  I know we won’t have things blooming much longer, so I’m very happy to see them right now.

 

 

What have you been up to this week? 

Thursday 13: Catching Up

I thought a Thursday 13 was in order since it has been so long since I’ve posted anything.  As usual, not all of the photos are related to the post. 

Tara

1.    We’re still working on getting Howard’s insulin regulated.  He’s up to six units twice a day.  He had a glucose curve done last week, and Dr. D. increased his dose from five units twice a day to six units twice a day.  He goes next week to have his blood sugar checked again. 

2.    I still haven’t given Howard an insulin injection.  Nick has been doing them.  We’ve decided that I am definitely going to do it over the long weekend. 

3.    We went to Dollywood two weekends ago with our neighbors.  They have a season pass and invited us as their guests.  Between their family, one of the boys bringing his girlfriend, and us, we had eleven people in our group.  It was so much fun!  There was always someone to ride any ride with, and there was always someone to hang out with if there was a ride you didn’t want to go on.

4.    Bumper cars are so much more fun when you know most of the other people in the cars.  It’s much more fun to ram a friend than ram a stranger.

5.    I can no longer go on rides that move in a constant circle.  I used to be able to if I took Dramamine, but it’s a definite NO now. 

6.    I got a new laptop.  So far, I really like it.  I loved my old one, but it’s almost eight years old and has really slowed down.  The new one is a Lenovo.  I use a Lenovo ThinkPad at work, and I love it.  Those are out of our budget, so I opted for a Lenovo laptop.

7.    I’m hoping that with a faster laptop, I’ll be able to post more often.  I always miss blogging whenever I don’t do it.

Howard, modeling his stylish ultrasound trim.

8.    I also purchased more Google storage, so I’m in the process of moving all of my pictures from the old laptop to my Google drive.  I take a lot of pictures!

9.    In the Ford versus Chevy debate, I am 100% team Toyota.  My Camry is in the shop, and the rental is a Chevy Equinox.  I have been referring to it as Satan’s SUV if that gives you an idea of how much I dislike it. 

10. Nick doesn’t hate Satan’s SUV like I do, so after I drove it once, we switched.  He’s driving it, and I’m driving his car.  His is a Honda, so everything is very similar to my car.  Nick says he has had more time to get used to how different everything is because the car he drives at work is a Chevy.  He also handles change much better than I do.

11. Last month, we went to Fleet Feet in Greenville, SC, to get fitted for shoes.  My sister did at the beginning of 2020 and has been recommending it ever since then.  They’re the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever worn in my life!  I ended up with a pair of Brooks, and Nick ended up with a pair of Hokas.  Our feet didn’t hurt at all after the Dollywood trip.  Neither one of us could remember the last time we’d done that much walking (my step count was over 23,000 for the day) without our feet hurting.

12. I started a Zazzle store.  I love notebooks, so I’ve been putting my photos on notebooks. 

13. Walgreens’ text messages about pet prescriptions are hilarious.  I especially love the one instructing Duke the dog to pick up his prescription. 

So what have you been up to lately?  

We Have a Refrigerator!

I think a refrigerator is definitely one of those things that we tend to take for granted.  Sure, we use it every day, and it’s probably the biggest thing in the kitchen, but as long as it’s doing its job, it’s not something you really think about.  Take it away, though, and that’s very noticeable.

I’m very happy to say that our new refrigerator arrived on Thursday as scheduled.  And it is delightfully cold!  That is definitely the most important part.  Aesthetically, I’m not one hundred percent sure I love the stainless steel.  I think I may prefer white appliances overall.  Though I’m never quick to embrace change, so I may eventually love the stainless steel.  The front of the refrigerator isn’t magnetic, which I do like.  A lot.  I think it looks much neater without a bunch of stuff on the front of it.  The sides are magnetic, so we can still put some things on it. 

I love that the freezer has a solid shelf instead of a wire one.  The old one had a wire shelf, and it seemed like things were always getting caught in it.

This refrigerator only has two drawers, so I’m probably going to end up getting some more bins or baskets to help keep things organized.  I’m very happy that the two drawers can be set for fruits or vegetables.  I’m hoping that will help prevent the drawers from becoming a produce graveyard. 

The door shelves in the new fridge seem sturdier than the ones in the old fridge.  Though, that may just be because they’re not very full yet.  Time will tell, I guess. 

The butter/dairy section in this one is bigger than it was in our old one, which is good.  We don’t actually keep butter here; we use it for Howard’s insulin and any other pet medication or food that needs to be refrigerated.  So it’s very convenient that it’s a little bigger than the old one.

And that concludes the grand tour of our new refrigerator. 

I’m still very excited to have a working refrigerator again.  And the silver lining to losing everything from the old refrigerator is that I’m starting from a blank slate.  There are currently no “oops, I really shouldn’t have bought that” items to contend with and no “yes, we did have an opened container of XYZ, so now we have two (or more)” issues.  Now I just need to keep it that way!

How do you keep your refrigerator and/or freezer organized; bins, baskets, drawers?  Have you found a great system? 

This Was Supposed to Be a Thursday 13

Last Thursday, I had most of a Thursday 13 post written and ready to go. Then our fridge died, and my evening derailed. For the sake of having good pictures for this post,

I’ve kept the two Thursday 13 things with the best pictures.

1. The lilac bush seems to be blooming again! It bloomed, those blooms died, and now it seems to be blooming again. I love the lilac blooms, so I’m thrilled.

2. We’ve had a random lily pop up in the front yard. We’ve worked very hard over the years to get rid of all of the lilies in our yard because they’re extremely toxic to cats. Our cats are indoor cats, but a few of them run out occasionally, and we worry about Duke bringing anything in on his fur.This one is in the front yard, though, and Duke only plays in the backyard, so we may let it stay. I’m not sure yet.

Now the fridge saga, with a few random pictures sprinkled in because it needs something positive. In hindsight, it was probably dying for several days, but because I’m very good at denial, I didn’t realize it. There were a few bags of lettuce that went very bad before their expiration date. That happens, sometimes, though, so I didn’t think too much about it. Some sweet tea got rancid. This should have gotten my attention because unless I’m out of town or extremely sick, sweet tea does not sit around long enough to go rancid here. I told myself I’d had more Coke than usual, so the tea sat longer than usual, and maybe it wasn’t even really that rancid because I’m pretty picky about sweet tea. I told you I’m good at denial.

What should have been my next major clue was that a few things in the fridge didn’t feel as cold as they should. I decided that maybe we had bumped the temperature control, so I reset it for the coldest setting. Then we had a busy couple of days where we both got home from work very late, so we opted for takeout one night and going out the next night. I like to think that if I’d cooked one of those nights, I would have finally admitted that something was very, very wrong with the fridge.

By Thursday afternoon, there was no question that the fridge was warm, not cool, and definitely not cold. Nick looked at it to see if he could figure anything out with it. The freezer was partially working; some things were still frozen solid, and some were completely melted. It was very weird.

We were able to save about half of what was in the freezer. We threw out anything that seemed questionable at all. We put some of what was savable in our chest freezer and gave some popsicles and ice cream to our neighbors. They were very kindly storing Howard’s insulin pen in their fridge for us and loaned us coolers so we could try to save things from the fridge.

My sister's cat Dobby

Unfortunately, every single thing in the fridge had to be thrown away. It was just too warm to risk trying to keep any of it. I’m trying very hard not to tally up how much money that was because I think that would be very depressing. I don’t think you really think about how much is in the fridge until you have to haul ALL of it out to the trash; condiments, milk, yogurt, cheese (including fresh mozzarella), fruit, vegetables, eggs,butter, etc.

Once we had everything emptied out, Nick defrosted the freezer with a hairdryer, and we reset everything. Since we’d already lost everything from the fridge, it seemed worth it to see if it was a case of the freezer being too stuffed and something freezing up. The neighbors mentioned that something like that had happened with theirs a few times. So we decided it was worth a try.

We went out to Home Depot and Lowe’s to buy a thermometer to put in the fridge and to look at refrigerators in case we ended up needing a new one. We bought a thermometer and found a fridge we really liked with the right measurements to fit in our kitchen. Our house is small, and the fridge cutout in our kitchen is very small. Well over half of the refrigerators available weren’t even close to being small enough to fit, so we had a very limited selection to choose from.

The one we found was perfect. It was stainless steel, which Nick really wanted, and Icame around to after our neighbor Lori showed me how easy it was to clean. It had the freezer drawer on the bottom with very well-designed storage within that. The top fridge part was double doors with great storage, and all of the shelves could be moved. There are probably hundreds of ways you can rearrange the shelves in this fridge. It was perfect.

By Friday morning, we knew that our fridge was definitely dead. On the one hand, we weren’t planning on a new fridge, so that wasn’t great, but with the perfect fridge justwaiting at Home Depot, it wasn’t terrible.

Our house and our neighbors’ house are pretty much identical. They were built in the 50s, and the only real differences, other than color, are additions and improvements made over the years. They’ve been in theirs much longer than we’ve been in ours, so we’ve copied a lot of ideas from them, and they’ve come over and measured where lightswitches and things are when they’ve been undoing a renovation. It’s very convenient. When I took Howard’s insulin pen over, I noticed that they have a double-door refrigerator, so I asked Lori if they were happy with it since our kitchens arebasically the same. She said she wouldn’t get it again because you can’t open the door on the right side all the way, and that makes it inconvenient when you’re trying to get a large pan in or out.

We ended up going over and measuring their fridge and fridge cutout in the kitchen. We learned that our houses aren’t quite as identical as we thought. We have the same square footage, but our living room is a few inches bigger than theirs, and their kitchen is a few inches bigger than ours. Those inches all seem to be in the fridge cutout.

We decided we needed to measure how far we could get the door to open on the perfect fridge and to take a 9x13 pan with us to see how it was to get it in and out. I was fairly confident that a few inches wouldn’t matter that much and was still thinking of all of the wonderful ways to organize the perfect fridge. Fortunately, Nick has a much better sense of spatial judgment than I do. He measured again, factoring in a hinge that we hadn’t noticed swung out quite so far the night before. That’s when all of my daydreams of the perfect fridge were shattered. It wasn’t even close to doable.

If you have a very small space for your fridge, I highly recommend measuring it twice and looking for any parts that swing out or take up any more room before you explore the interior and all of the wonderful drawers and shelves. Don’t get attached to a fridge you can’t have. Trust me on this one.

After multiple trips back and forth between Home Depot and Lowe’s, lots of measuring, re-measuring, and trying out different shelves for the 9x13 pan, we finally decided onand bought a refrigerator. Let’s just say that Nick’s grandmother was right to suggest naming him after a saint, and his mom was right to think it was a good idea. I was annoying myself by the time we were finished. I’m sure it took the patience of a saint to buy a refrigerator with me.

The new fridge is supposed to be delivered on Thursday. It’s stainless steel (which Nick really wanted, and I finally came around to after seeing how easy it is to clean), has the handles in the tops of the doors instead of the outside (which Nick really wanted), has two separate produce drawers (which I really wanted), and has a solid, not wire, shelf in the freezer (which I really wanted). So, while it’s not perfect, it does have features that we both wanted. And, at this point, almost any cold refrigerator sounds like a very good one.

Of course, now that we don’t have a functioning refrigerator, all I want to do is cook elaborate meals with lots of ingredients that need to be refrigerated and lots of leftovers.

For now, we’re sticking with very simple meals made with things we can safely keep in coolers and canned foods.

The trash was picked up today, so at least now we’re not seeing all of the bags of food we had to throw away every time we go outside. That was just depressing.

On the positive side, we’re planning to have panini a few nights this week, which is always good. And we’re getting a blank slate with the refrigerator; no multiple jars/bottles of the same thing opened, no sauces we aren’t crazy about but feel bad throwing away, and definitely nothing expired or past its prime. A massive refrigerator reorganization is a daunting task, but starting from zero makes it a lot easier.

Frankie

So what about you? Would you have worried about the fridge a lot sooner than I did?Have you ever had to throw away everything from your refrigerator? Do you have astainless steel fridge, and if you do, do you like it?