Tag: Roundup

September ’22 Roundup & Rambling

~ Bookstooge ~ 27 Comments

Raw Data:

Novels – 21 ↑

Graphic Novels – 6 ⭤

Average Rating – 3.07 ↓

Pages – 6116 ↑

Words – 1919K ↑

The Bad:

Dead Silence – 1star of totally awesome space horror RUINED by scyenze and romance

Hunting Zero – 1star read that killed this already dead series for me.

The Good:

American Assassin – The ONLY 4star read I had this month. sigh….

Movie:

Muppets Now, while quite enjoyable, had some serious flaws as an episodic show, in my opinion. There hasn’t been a season 2 yet and I doubt there ever will be.

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

What a busy, busy month. The only way I got through all the blogging was knowing that October was going to be totally different (more on that in the next section). After August’s R&R and realizing I was on the edge of burnout, I spent this month strategizing. It helped me mentally and emotionally (you try being an introspective introvert who hates people yet still wants to be liked).

Work still continues to be the dominant part of both my and Mrs B’s life. We are both working overtime every week and the holiday season is approaching (Mrs B has already seen Christmas stuff getting readied to be out on the sales floor, boooo!). So Mrs B is only going to get busier and my own work shows ZERO slow down. We’re still running about 2 months behind (so if you call and hire us, we won’t be able to get there for 7-8 weeks) so this winter is probably going to be as busy as ever. I’m tired just thinking about it.

The weather started to change, which was much appreciated. Some mornings it was chilly enough so you could see your breath but the afternoons were still warm enough that t-shirts and shorts were more than enough. With the drought we’re having I don’t know what is going to happen for the foliage. Glad I’m not a leaf peeper.

Utilities are skyrocketing in price. The electrical company instituted a price hike that comes out to about a 50% across the board hike. It’s all in the “service” part of the bill so you can’t even offset it by trying to use less electricity. Once the cold weather hits and we have to turn on the furnace, and the natural gas bills start coming in, well, it’s going to be an expensive winter. Thank goodness I have 3 can of campbell’s chunky soup in reserve!

On the good side of things, Mrs B and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary. God has truly blessed us together and we are so thankful He led us to the other. We don’t take it lightly. The stability we provide for each other is priceless.

I’ve also been playing the board game Doom with my brother every 3-6 weeks and that has been a blast. I keep taking pictures of the board and mini’s when we’re playing but my goodness, it is HARD to get even decent pix out of it, much less good ones. I’m going to keep trying though and maybe in the next month or two I’ll have a mini’s update about it.

The Hotel Bookstooge opened up fully for business. That project was probably the biggest one I’ve undertaken in regards to blogging in my whole experience so far. I’m very glad it’s finished and now all I have to do is decide what’s next!

Ended the month being sick with the flu and bronchitis. I was out of work all of last week and this week, while I went back, I was moving like a dead man. I can’t wait until I’m all better.

Plans for Next Month:

I’m still reading up a storm but for October, while I’ll be posting reviews, said reviews will only contain all the data I put in the very beginning. Pretty much going back to my roots of 2000-2001 and how I reviewed books then. That cuts about 90% of the writing so that pressure just isn’t on me. That will have the twofold effect of relieving the pressure and also letting my word well recharge. I won’t even be adding covers. We’re talking straight up text posts. LITTLE text posts too.

Depending on how that goes I might carry that format on for the rest of the year. Once my words get recharged and I keep on doing the minimum for reviews that will allow me to start writing some non-review posts again. It’s been months since I’ve written something based on an idea that popped into my head at 2pm or some such thing. I need the spontaneity back and I can’t do that if all my words go to just reviews. I’m a blogger, not just a book reviewer and it is time to take that aspect back.

I suspect October will be a recovery time for me and not a “hey, look at me blogging about Whatever” kind of month. Lots of tiny review posts. I’m hoping it will also help me to clear my head about blogging in general and using wordpress in particular. I’ll still be commenting away and if you have any questions on any of the reviews, I’ll be glad to answer, in the comments..

August ’22 Roundup & Rambling

~ Bookstooge ~ 30 Comments

Raw Data:

Novels – 15 ↑

Graphic Novels – 6 ⭤

Average Rating – 3.33 ↑

Pages – 4125 ↓

Words – 1162K ↓

The Bad:

One Piece #28 – The only under 3star rating this whole month!

The Good:

A Season in Carcosa – 4.5stars of Almost Perfect cosmic horror

Movie:

The 2015 tv revival of The Muppets made them rude and crude instead of laughable and lovable.

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

Batched the first week of the month as Mrs B was still out in California visiting family. Got sick in the middle of the month for a couple of days and then worked and read, worked and read. I just felt super busy the whole month even when things were going fine.

Had a baptism at church, which was really nice, went to a company lunch one friday (which was great because we still got paid but didn’t have to work those 3hrs), visited the SDA church one Saturday and tried to get a game of boardgame Doom going with my brother.

WordPress “updated” in the background at some point this month and they broke the ability to copy/paste multiple items into the Title bar of a post. Since I c/p the title, series and rating, I had to figure out an alternate way. I emailed WP and they confirmed it was the update doing the breaking and they also confirmed it wouldn’t be fixed at least until the next update. So I had to start using blogger as my primary blog and then WP as the backup. Blogging is just becoming a hassle and WordPress seems fixed on their course of driving away the casual blogger. I am really stressed about it. It is cumulative stress too, so it doesn’t go away. The block editor, which I am used to, still makes me angry to use, WP’s various shenanigans with their plans and addons and crap and now something “basic” isn’t working. It feels like I am dragging a ball and chain behind me every time I go to blog and I am starting to really, really, really hate it.

My Librarything usage has also been dropping and since the few people I interacted with on a social level had dwindled as well, I began cutting back at LT soon after the month began. Starting this week I’ve cut the cord completely. One less place I have to copy/paste and keep track of information. I feel like I’m re-trenching on multiple fronts. That’s not good, because you only retrench when you’re in a war, and usually only when you are losing that war. Reviewing has become a war that I’m losing. While I know my moods affect how I feel about blogging, the fact that I am feeling this way at all about it is a big fat warning sign to me. I’ll be giving it all some serious consideration over the coming months.

Plans for Next Month:

September is going to be a very full blogging month. So much so that I’ll be double posting on Mondays. One will be the typical Magic the Gathering post and the next one will be a book review, hopefully at noon. Might be some timing issues due to WP being idiotic but it will at least go up on my site at noon.

I’ve got to write about September 11 and do the next Muppets thing and everything else will be book reviews, book reviews, book reviews. I have GOT to get caught up, so September gets to be the month I pack them all in. I know book review posts aren’t as fun to read, but my backlog has almost doubled between the reading time I had while in California and the sick time I had this month. So prepare yourselves to be socked between the eyes. If I feel the need to write some other non-book review stuff, well, then that’ll be another double posting day as well.

July ’22 Roundup & Ramblings

~ Bookstooge ~ 27 Comments

Raw Data:

Novels – 12 ↓

Graphic Novels – 6 ⭤

Average Rating – 3.17 ↓

Pages – 4271 ↑

Words – 1303.5K ↑

The Bad:

The Best of Lester Del Rey – 1/2star of the Worst!

Bethink Yourself – 1star DNF of war is bad, blah, blah, blah

The Good:

Pyrate Cthulhu Vol 1 – 4.5stars of awesome cosmic horror

Battlefield Earth – 5stars of nostalgia that has run its course

Movie:

Muppets Most Wanted was a fantastic movie and I loved it! Enough that I’ll be buying it on bluray.

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

Got sick at the beginning of the month and missed the July 4th extended weekend. That was a real bummer. Going to California for a couple of days was a nice relaxer time though. Other than that, work, work, work. With the housing market still being wicked hot (despite the best efforts of certain people), my work is NOT slowing down like I thought it might. Maybe later this year in winter I’ll get a break? I can hope.

On the book side of things, my numbers were looking pretty good. My average rating went down but with the various stinkers I had I was expecting that. So all the other numbers going up was great. I like my numbers going up.

On the blog side, the numbers are all over the place and still make no sense to me. Of course, it feels like people are either taking breaks or flaming out. In all honesty, it just takes one person leaving blogging to make me feel that way, so it’s not hard to get to that place, sigh. It is not hard to mess with my head 😉

One of the big lotteries here in the US, Mega Millions, got up to over 1 Billion dollars. Talk about a boatload of cash! I obviously didn’t win. But even if I had, I certainly wouldn’t be telling all of you and shouting it out on my blog, now would I? I might be one of the world’s biggest egotists, but I’m not that stupid 😀 But it was really fun to think what it would be like to win that.

Plans for Next Month:

I got nothing. Just trying to pump those reviews out and not fall too far behind. I’ve still got like 8 reviews to write just to get caught up and every day that passes brings yet another to write. Oh, I might try for a Binstagramm post. I hear it’s the next big thing online. One post and I’ll become an Internet Celebrity. But don’t worry, I won’t forget all you little people.

June ’22 Roundup & Ramblings

~ Bookstooge ~ 51 Comments

Raw Data:

Novels – 13 ↑

Graphic Novels – 6 ⭤

Average Rating – 3.34 ↑

Pages – 3667 ↑

Words – 995.5K ↑

The Bad:

Dead Souls – 2stars of incomplete and rambling ridiculousness

Morningside Fall – Unrated DNF’s always make me sad 😦

The Good:

Hostile Takeover – 4stars for the latest Arcane Casebook entry

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #6 – 4stars of Turtles fighting Space Triceratops!

Movie:

The Muppets, a 2011 reboot, was decent. Not really exciting, but not bad at all.

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

Ohhh, this was a wicked busy month. It felt like we were doing something every single day, even though we weren’t.

We also had cell phone issues. We were using a budget carrier but they were bought out by Dish Network. And to keep the current rate we would have had to sign up with Dish, which since we live in a condo is impossible. And if we didn’t sign up, our plan would triple in price. So I spent a good while trying to figure out a budget alternative. Most cheap plans by the bigger carriers were at least double what we had been paying plus having to buy new phones on top of that. We’ve ended up going with Google Fi and got everything moved over this past week. Now it’s just using it and seeing where the kinks are hiding out so we can straighten them out.

Work was low key for the first half of the month. I was holding steady at 40hrs a week and that extra hour of leisure time was fantastic. Then things went back to normal and once I’d come home and cleaned up and checked my comments on WP, I’d look at the clock and it would be 7pm already. Aye yi yi. When’s that recession going to hit so I can take some time off!?

Plans for Next Month:

I was doing some searching on my site and realized that the search wasn’t doing what I wanted, so I’m going to be adding the series info back into the post titles, so the titles will be getting busy again. Also, my reviews shouldn’t be just one liners. I gotta admit though, it sure was nice! But I felt your pain at trying to comment on such succinct posts, so back to the bloated flabby fleshpots of Egypt we go.

Also going to be doing a little bit of traveling near the end of the month. So I’ll be out of commission for a couple of days; probably do me some good to take a break 🙂 Posts will be going up but they’ll be scheduled and I won’t be around to comment.

Recently had a doctors visit where I was told I was overweight (I am) and that I needed to start getting exercise outside of work. So I am hoping to start walking 2 miles 4-5times a week in the evenings. I suspect that will cut into my blogging time as well. So between work and exercise, we’ll have to see how things go.

May ’22 Roundup & Ramblings

~ Bookstooge ~ 26 Comments

Raw Data:

Novels – 12 ⭤

Graphic Novels – 6 ⭤

Average Rating – 3.03 ⭤

Pages – 2735 ↓

Words – 817K ↓

The Bad:

The Gathering Flame – 1star read that killed the Mageworld series for me 😦

The King in Yellow Tales – 1star DNF of utter poetic insanity (and not the good kind!)

The Good:

Monster Hunter Bloodlines – 4.5stars of Cowboy Pirate Murder Ghost awesomeness!

Three – 4stars of pretty good re-read’ness

Movie:

Sherlock Season One was very enjoyable to watch but it was a good thing I did a buddy watch with SavageDave. I simply couldn’t blog very well about it. Every post was a real battle to write.

A Study in Pink, The Blind Banker and The Great Game.

The Muppet’s Wizard of Oz on the other hand, well, it was so bland and boring that it made oatmeal think it was Tabasco Man! and I was practically on cruise control for writing this. Easy-peasy.

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

The month started off pretty good. Church was going along swimmingly, the weekends were filled with fun things (like the DOOM boardgame) and even work was going well.

While things overall went well, a couple of stress points hit me pretty hard. Nothing at all serious, just stupid things that I let mess with my head. Being an introspective introvert certainly has its downsides. I’m hoping that I’ve worked through them but I guess I’ll be finding out in the coming month :-/

The price of gas is starting to be a serious consideration now, as is the price of food. Trying to be much more “planned” in even our little trips (so no more 3 little trips to the grocery store because we feel like it) and list making for grocery shopping has become a “must” again.

Cover Love:

With all of the artwork that I’m putting up with the Magic the Gathering cards, I think I’ll be passing on this section for the rest of the year unless something REALLY stands out.

Plans for Next Month:

I am approaching word burn out. Many of my non-review posts this month were picture oriented and even the NOPE tag had me struggling and I left a bunch of the questions unanswered. To help combat that I’m going to be turning Mondays over to the MTG cards completely and moving the manga to another day. I will also be making my reviews very much of the Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down variety instead of writing a lot of what I thought. I’m hoping a month of “I liked this book” or “I didn’t like this book” will help my word well to recharge.

Also, back to one Muppet movie/show a month; no more Sherlock tv series. I just can’t do multiple movie reviews regularly.

April ’22 Roundup & Ramblings

~ Bookstooge ~ 31 Comments

Raw Data:

Novels – 12 ↓

Graphic Novels – 6 ⭤

Average Rating – 3.03 ↓

Pages – 3430 ↓

Words – 1043 ↓

The Bad:

Flashman – 1/2star of Pure Filth

Tales of Angria – 1star DNF

Wings of the Dove – 1star DNF

The Good:

A House of Gentlefolk – You know you’re having a rough month when a Russian novel is the best you can muster up at 4stars

Movie:

Fragglerock Season 4 was a great way to end the series!

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

I started keeping track of my food intake again. Not trying to chart the carbs or calories but simply list everything I eat and drink. Simply being aware keeps me from mindlessly snacking and since I almost hit 170lbs at the dr’s office, well, time to start the food fight again.

Good news is that my diabetes is getting under some good tight control (my last hemoglobin A1C was 6,8) with the sensor and pump AND my eyes haven’t degraded in over 18 months, which means things are stable. The endocrinologist is happy, the retina specialist is happy and I’m happy!

Work has been much better. My coworker has stopped grumping so much and I got a raise, which is going straight into the massive tax hike we got stuck with this year. We owe a lot and I know EXACTLY who is to blame.

The reading bump I had gotten from getting covid back in January finally ended and I’m back to a bit more “realistic” numbers. The upside is that I won’t have to write so many reviews each month; the downside is that now I have to be more “creative” to come up with other things to write about. It might turn out to be a bit more work than expected. Of course, with how April went in terms of numbers (every number!), I’ll be glad to start a new month. This was the worst reading month I have had in a VERY LONG time 😦

With all that good stuff, there has to be something poopy too. WordPress. Of course. If you didn’t know, WordPress scrapped all of their plans, changed everything to a free or expensive plan and pretty much killed off the chance of any casual new blogger from starting out. Those who had existing plans can still renew them at the old rate, but there is no guarantee of how long that “promise” will last. Basically WP gave the free bloggers the old heave ho and told all the inexpensive plan users to pay more or fuck off. AND even now, a month later, pertinent details like pricing and addons are still a mystery. I have never seen a business transaction handled this badly. Never.

Cover Love:

None of the covers this month grabbed my attention, and since I don’t believe in the Participation Trophy mentality, NOBODY gets the cover love mention.

Plans for Next Month:

Since I started reading Sherlock Holmes I wanted to watch the 2010 series by the BBC. I plan on watching Season One and reviewing each episode on Sundays. SavageDave will be joining in so your Sundays will be filled with more Sherlock than you can shake a stick at!

To keep the Muppet theme going for movies, I am also planning on watching the Muppet’s Wizard of Oz. Everything I’ve heard and seen leads me to believe this is going to be the worst Muppet movie I’ve ever laid eyes on, so hang on, because who knows what will happen!

March ’22 Roundup & Ramblings

~ Bookstooge ~ 32 Comments

Raw Data:

Novels – 17 ↑

Graphic Novels – 6 ⭤

Average Rating 3.43 ↑

Pages – 5652 ↑

Words – 1825.5K ↑

The Bad:

Jim Henson: The Biography – 1star of Puff Piece’ry

Death-Reach 2 – 2.5stars of Mediocrity

The Good:

In the Court of the Yellow King – 4.5stars of Utterly Delicious Madness

Earth Unaware – 4.5stars of Card Writing at His Best

Movie:

Fraggle Rock Season 3 was just as fun, just as frenetic and just as loud as the previous 2 seasons.

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

On the book side of things this was a great month. Numbers were up across the board and I read a lot. Of course, the month ended on a down note but I’m hoping that means April will be even better as I got the bad stuff out of the way.

Personally, this was a kick in the pants kind of month. Last Roundup&Ramblings I talked about how my coworker was super grumpy the whole month and was making it hard to enjoy work. It turns out he was dealing with a diverticulitis flareup but wasn’t telling anyone. He ended up in the emergency room and then came back to work the next week. I just shook my head and hoped he didn’t keel over while I was working with him.

My journal ran out and so I had to buy another one. Sadly, it took an extra week to get here and so I ran out. The horror of not having a journal to write in was pretty horrible and I think I’m shell shocked now. I’m hoping to do a post showing the new one sometime next month.

Taxes. I did our damnable taxes this month. That was yet another kick in the pants. We ended up having to pay a sizable amount over and above what had already been taken out in fething payroll taxes. I was spitting mad and if a politician had walked in front of me, just like Jason Bourne or John Wicke, I would have killed them with a pen. I know exactly why they went up and their names rhyme with *deleted*

Spring is definitely here. One day I was in shirt sleeves at work, no jacket, hat or gloves needed! Of course, the downside is that the deer ticks are now out and I have to inspect my clothing and myself every day after work and start keeping my work clothes in a separate clothes hamper for their own separate washing.

Cover Love:

Caves of Ice, a Ciaphas Cain novel by Sandy Mitchell. This is an alternate cover that really showcases the spirit of the book: violence on a frozen world with almost no hope of survival. Warhammer 40K really puts the “grim” in grimdark! and if you ever wondered what a chainsword looked like, well, now you know.

Plans for Next Month:

I am going to be starting up a new series of posts to take over from the Project X series, which will be ending. I have a scheduled post where I explain it all next Monday.

With 23 books this month, I’m probably going to ease up and not read quite as much in April. So there will either be days where I don’t post or the posts will be a bit lighter in tone as I ramble about whatever takes my fancy. With a couple of exceptions I have been writing non-stop since July of ’21. While no where near burn out, I want to make sure I am pacing myself appropriately.

February ’22 R&R

~ Bookstooge ~ 44 Comments

Raw Data:

Novels – 15 ⭤

Graphic Novels – 6 ⭤

Average Rating – 3.40 ↓

Pages – 5220 ↑

Words – 1597K ↑

The Bad:

Hangman’s Holiday – 1star DNF is pretty bad.

Stryker’s War – 2.5stars. Galaxy’s Edge finally let me down 😦

The Good:

Wrath of Empire – 4.5stars of Epic Fantasy.

Carrying On His Will – 4.5stars of awesome manga. Good stuff!

Movie:

Fraggle Rock Season 2 was just as good as Season 1.

Miscellaneous Posts:

Rambling:

This month was very odd weather-wise. Somedays we’d get up to 60degrees, then the next week we’d be in the teens. It was just so changeable.

Work was rough, mainly because my coworker needs to retire but he is one of those people who can’t do “nothing” or even remain physically inactive for more than 10min, so he’s sick of his job and doesn’t actually need it but if he retires he’ll either be bored at home OR his wife will give him a honey-do list. So he’s been complaining the whole month. Makes it tough to enjoy your work when the other person is actively not enjoying it.

Outside of work was busy. We’re back to helping with sunday school once a month and we got sucked into helping out with the livestream video stuff. Our church upgraded the whole video system for covid tail end of ’20 and one lady has been running it by herself. She needed some help, so we’re helping with that once a month, which means we also have to deal with practice mid-week. And small groups started up. So yeah, a lot has been going on.

February has tended to be a lower activity month on the blog in terms of traffic over the last 5 years. For whatever reason, this year was a complete exception. I have had some of the best numbers that I have seen since I started blogging here on WP back in late ’16. I don’t know if Putin was worried that I’d get involved in the Ukraine situation and so was scoping me out, or if Xi Jinping was worried that I’d become Our Great Leader (he should be worried. That guy’s got a LOT of wrinkles, unlike me). But whatever the reason, this month was in the Top 5 months ever. Yeah, I like that! Oh, if you feel uncomfortable calling me Our Great Leader, you can always use the endearing Papa Bookstooge. I don’t mind, really.

In the book department, I felt good with what I read. While my average rating was down, I was not surprised because any month I get a 1star I always get a dip in the ratings. Now that I am done with Sanderson and Sayers, I can try some more new-to-me authors and maybe find the next gem that I can be effusive about, much like I have been for Neal Asher and currently am for Rex Stout. Wish me luck.

Cover Love:

Cthulhu Lies Dreaming perfectly captured the atmosphere shown on this cover. Beautiful, gloomy and slightly disturbing. A big thanks to Fraggle for her photo-work on removing all the extraneous text on the cover. This is how it should have been from the get-go!

Plans for Next Month:

Nothing new coming up at all. March, as far as the blog is concerned, looks like it is going to be a carbon copy of February. I’m ok with that.

January ’22 Roundup n Ramblings

~ Bookstooge ~ 29 Comments

Raw Data:

Novels – 15 ⭤

Graphic Novels – 6 ⭤

Average Rating – 3.52 ↑

Pages – 4191 ↓

Words – 1302K ↓

The Bad:

Jerico’s Garrison Finish -2stars and where I parted ways with Max Brand.

The White Tree – 2.5stars of very amateurish writing that I smited with that review

The Good:

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – 5stars of chocolatey goodness

Sins of Empire – 4.5stars of gritty flintlock fantasy

Movies:

Fraggle Rock Season One was quite different from the Muppet Show but still a blast.

Dune Part I was as good an adaption of the first half of the novel as I could wish for. Highly enjoyable.

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

Mrs B and I getting covid pretty much dominated this month. Once things got past the scary stage and we were home, I ended up doing a lot of reading and binge watching of Fraggle Rock. It’s why this month was so heavy on the book reviews. 21! I am hoping that since we’ve had covid once, if we get it again in the future that it will be milder. I guess we’ll find out 🙂

I decided to break out the novels from the graphic novels so this year I’ll be keeping track of them separately. Blogging, tracking, etc is an evolving thing and changes right along with me. With how I’ve got my manga and comics setup, the numbers shouldn’t really change that much, so it is more for the year end than any immediate data.

Plans for Next Month:

Pretty much the same old, same old. I will be changing how I title posts, so there isn’t such a plethora of info in them. I also plan on hiding the synopsis behind the (details) code so you have to click the details to see it. That way you won’t be bothered by spoilers or have to scroll forever to get to the My Thoughts part. I know some of the classics synopses from Wikipedia are like 10 pages long after all! I am hoping those 2 little changes will streamline the appearance of the reviews. We’ll see.

February is going to be just as full of reviews as January because of my 10days of downtime and with February being a shorter month, that means less non-review posts.

I am also beginning my journey into the CST program (certification program for work), so I have no idea how that is going to affect my blog time. I suspect this month will be a trial run for the next couple. I’m really hoping it will be less strenuous than I think it will be.

December ’21 Roundup & Ramblings

~ Bookstooge ~ 34 Comments

Raw Data:

Books – 21 ↑

Average Rating – 3.43 ↑

Pages – 4582 ↑

Words – 1449.5K ↑

The Bad:

Hard Day’s Knight – 1star of poorly written blasphemy (noticing a theme in these lower ratings are you? Me too)

Department 19 – 1.5stars of Blasphemous Youthful stupidity (sigh)

The Good:

A Christmas Carol narrated by Tim Curry – 4.5stars of of a wonderful earful

Meanest Man in the East (One Piece #11) – 4.5stars First time One Piece has made it into this position

Movie:

Muppet Treasure Island was a blast. And with it now being winter and snowy here, some tropical weather, even if only onscreen, was quite welcome!

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

Bookwise, this month was nothing but up, up and up! Even with the two stinkers I read, my average rating was up from last month and all the other metrics were up too. Part of that, I have to admit, was because I tried to stuff in as many books as possible from this year so as to not carry them over into 2022, but even with that taken into consideration, I read a lot this month.

Got sick the first week of the month and thought it was covid but thankfully was able to get one of those quick tests and it was negative. Still felt like crap for the whole week. Right after that was when my computer died, so that was a real kick in the pants, sigh Let me tell you, a decent computer is expensive nowadays. I paid less for my first car back in 2000 for goodness sake!

Our plans for moving have been scuttled for the foreseeable future. Lack of job prospects and affordable housing put paid to being all done by March. We’re going to look again next fall. sigh.

Plans for Next Month:

Write the Year in Review Post. Which has to go up tomorrow! Aye yi yi!!!!!

Beyond that, I just can’t plan. That post is just too big. Probably should have started it earlier, hahahaha.