Month: December 2020

Thankful Thursday | Music, Music and More Music

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Semi-Normal Christmas
Christmas was, understandably, different this year. Celebrating with parents got put off by a couple of days, but we still managed to spend a few hours together, so there was at least a bit of normalcy. With how this year has been overall, I’m thankful for any level of that.

New Cookie Recipe
Spending Christmas at the house did give me a chance to try out a new shape cookie recipe, which was fun. It’d been a couple of years since I’ve pulled out my Christmas cookie cutters.

React Channels
okay, so this may be a weird thing, but it’s just honestly cool, but for finding some new music (especially classic music) as well as seeing the first time a person experiences a new band or artist. Got to share at least a bit of that same feeling.

New music
Not surprising, right? This is kinda a running thing by now. I ran across a couple of groups this past week (not through one of the previously mentioned youtube channels) and I’ve gone on a bit of a music binge. Wrecked havoc on my sleep (evidently rock and up-tempo music ’round midnight isn’t conducive to falling asleep) but it’s worth it.

Glam rock? Heck yeah!

I honestly have no idea why I haven’t fallen down the Haim rabbit hole before now. Especially since one of their song’s been on one of my writing playlist for years now. And they’re just so good.

Queen
Well, between Good Omens and the react channels I’ve fallen head over heals for queen again. I spent hours upon hours in high school listening to their best of albums, and I’ve spent still more hours watching live performances and finding new songs and just generally being a queen fangirl.

Book Review | The Adventure Zone- Here There be Gerblins by Carey Pietsch & the McElroys

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So, normally it’s fairly standard to start with the first book of a series and then make your way forward. For those of you who’ve seen my previous review on The Adventure Zone you’ll know that definitely didn’t happen, starting out on the second volume instead. Not that big a deal, since I’ve already listened to the podcast, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t thrilled to finally get the first volume for Christmas this year.

The art is by Carey Pietsch, and is so fitting for the series mixture of comedy and at-times-drama, lively and very much animated, especially regarding expressions. It’s colored in a palette that veers from cool to warm in turn. The color contrast works though, the chosen colors still complementing each other interestingly.

The comic does a fantastic job of transferring the story from the podcast to a visual media, especially in this earliest arc which was, understandably, a little shaky in its original format. I mean, they hadn’t expected The Adventure Zone to turn into what it became- originally just being a sort of one-off break in MBMBAM (the McElroy’s original podcast). The comic takes what the original iteration of the story and strengthens it, arguably benefiting from having the story and the characters already established. The characters that the McElroy’s had finally fully discovered by the end of the series sit there on the page.

And, just like in the podcast, where the story really shines is in the banter between the characters. The Adventure Zone comic is a meta-tastic fourth-wall-breaking piece of comedy, taking the joking ‘are we really doing this?’ nature of the earliest portions of the series and running with it, transferring it onto the page in the form of characters who, although are very grounded in the world they come from, don’t really take a lot seriously…. until they do. Because interspersed between those moments of silliness and Kenny Chesney references are real moments, horror and awe and connections-formed and being formed, that make these characters more than a bunch of jokes.

The meta-ness of course, might not be for everyone. The McElroy’s have a certain brand of humor that’s a little manic, a little off-the wall, that (like any brand of humor or storytelling) isn’t for everyone. If you’d rather have your fantasy story uninterrupted by jokes, or if the idea of the DM being an actual character who occasionally pops up in the corner of a panel, like some sort of polo-shirt wearing guiding voice, is off-putting, then this may not be the story for you.

For me, however, it was just what I needed, on this strange cut-off Christmas.

Thankful Thursday | Cinnamon and Sunrise

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Happy Christmas Eve! I hope everyone’s holidays are wonderful, and wishing you well, whether you celebrate anything ’round this time of year or not. Understandably, this week’s list is gonna be a little holiday focused.

Christmas Break
As of last Friday I am officially on Christmas Break- being as lazy as I can be and thoroughly enjoying it. After the chaos that was the end of this semester… well, I think everyone needed a break after that.

Happy Accidents
Okay, so I’m not quite as rose-colored as Bob Ross, but sometimes a mistake can be almost worth it, especially when the results are still edible. Turns out, when making fantasy fudge, using half the amount of sugar won’t mess up the candy that much. Me and Mom discovered that it will, however, leave you with buttery fingers. and perhaps a smaller amount of fudge than usual. Fortunately, it left us with a good laugh as well.

Cinnamon Rolls
Specifically, sugar-free cinnamon rolls that I can actually eat. I ran across a recipe the other day in which you use crescent roll dough to make easy cinnamon rolls and it worked great. Certainly better than the basic canned cinnamon rolls I used to eat so much as a kid- more like the grands cinnamon rolls, though not quite as bit. But anyway, now when I have a cinnamon roll craving I can indulge, at least a bit.

Old Christmas Specials
As much as I love Christmas movies, I think what I enjoy even more are the older made-for-tv specials that I used to watch when I was a kid. My parents, early on, bought a VCR to record stuff off tv for me and we had a healthy collection of holiday tv specials. Even in the summer I would sit down and marathon those. It’s a little hard to drag out the boxes of tapes these days, and most of them haven’t been converted over, so I love it when I run across one of those stories.

Solstice Sunrise
Okay, so it was technically the day after solstice, but that’s when the days are supposed to start getting longer anyway. I’ve tried, for years getting up to watch the sunrise around the winter solstice, but it’s always overcast. Whether because of normal cloud cover or the fog that so often sits in the valleys, even in the winter. This year, though, the sky was perfectly clear. It was dang cold, but it was nice to see the sun peaking up over the mountains.

Thankful Thursday | Off-kilter, but okay?

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So, it’s the end of the semester. Anyone who works in a school will be able to tell you that there’s a certain brand of strangeness and exhaustion that comes along with that. Everything’s off-kilter, and the schedule’s all out of whack for one reason or another, and it’s that final press to get everything done that has to be done. Maybe that’s the reason this was harder this week… and why it didn’t get written at all last week.

Timely Music Discoveries
Sometimes it seems like the right song just falls into your lap, without really knowing you need it to begin with. This song seems kinda like one of those for me right now. I feel like I’ve been hanging onto a lot lately. At the end of the year I’m trying to pick apart what to cast off. This year there’s a lot.

Heating Pads
A few years ago my mother-in-law gave me this weird cinnamon-scented microwavable heating pad, and though I pulled it out every so often, the scent always got to me. I guess after a while that’s faded, or something, because it doesn’t bother me like it used to, and I’ve found myself tugging it out more and more recently. It’s nice to have something warm when the heating’s gone out in the classroom, or you have a stray ache or two.

A Golden Duo
Okay, so it’s not completely gold, in my opinion, since not all of my skills are gilded, but I completed a go-round of the Esperanto Duolingo tree. Technically two, since I got every skill to level two before moving onto the next, and I’m halfway through the third level as well, since I’d already started re-doing some of the earlier skills.

Fairy Lights
It always winds up surprising me, come this time of the year, just how quickly the darkness sets in. I mean, lots of people have to deal with that in the winter, but living in between a bunch of mountains really exacerbates that. These days, I’m lucky to see the edge of the sun peak up over the hills once or twice on the way to work, and by the time I get home in the evenings it’s already dipping down out of sight. I haven’t fought it so much as leaned into it this year, switching off the main light in the living room most days in favor of the soft glow created by the tree lights.

Christmas Shopping: Complete!
For the first time in I can’t remember when I’ve got all my Christmas shopping done with plenty of time to spare. A lot of people wouldn’t consider less than ten days til Christmas ‘plenty of time’ but comparatively I’m did great this year.

Book Review | The Twelve Dogs of Christmas by David Rosenfelt

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It’s always a risk, picking up a book mini-series, even if the novels are ones that can stand-alone, like your average mystery novel. Still, it can be nice, sometimes, coming in blind, popping into an already-established world. Thus, I didn’t mind picking up the 15th book in the Andy Carpenter series The Twelve Dogs of Christmas, a novel about a gruff puppy-rescuer accused of murdering her neighbor after his complaints about her number of dogs. 

It’s an interesting enough story, with a sufficient number of twists and complications to keep one’s interest. It’s also a quick read, with pretty good pacing throughout. Unlike a few mysteries I’ve read, the details and clues are well-played out, the evidence easy to follow as it’s put together and presented by Andy in the courtroom.

The writing is pretty straight-forward, but the tone is fairly lighthearted for the subject material involved. There’s a light humor here that comes out during those courtroom scenes where the protagonist/narrator can use his wit and sarcasm. Those were definitely some of my favorite scenes.

Still, I can’t say the story really sucked me in. The characters, other than Andy and the accused Martha, felt a little bland (of course that can happen in the middle of a series, so that may be on me). And while the narrative started out strong and the courtroom scenes were good, I felt myself losing interest at times.

Long story short, while I don’t feel I wasted any time by reading this one, I’ll probably not be picking up another nook in the series.

Thankful Thursday | Warmth at last

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Heating
The heat is fixed in my classroom!

Doll-repair success
Actually had good luck with the benzoyl peroxide treatment this time around, and got highlighter off of a poor cabbie’s face. Last time I used it it didn’t make as much of a dent, but I tried something a little different this time and the highlighter marks came right off. So I’m gonna have to go back once I have some time during Christmas, and tackle a few stains once again.

Oh Christmas Tree
My favorite part about Christmas has always been the lights- specifically at home that means turning the main lights off in the living room and just letting the glow from the tree softly light everything. It’s so wonderfully warm, and I feel like it soothes me more than just about anything.

No Quarantine
Knock on wood…. we’ve had a few close calls, but even as the cases increase in our area we’ve been lucky enough to avoid being in a quarantine situation again.

Book Review | Skipping Christmas by John Grisham

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Out of the new Christmas books I found for this December’s reading, this is the one I was looking forward to the most. For those of you not familiar with the book, or the movie based on it, Christmas with the Kranks, it follows the Kranks and their decision to forgo Christmas in lieu of a cruise, as their daughter won’t be home. They find that bucking tradition might be harder than they think.

The premise is interesting. I think everyone’s had those moments, faced with the stress of the holidays where they just want to throw up their hands and be done with the whole thing. The thoughts of ‘what if we did something different this year’.

Thus the reason I feel disappointed by this book. I really wanted to like it, especially since I found the movie amusing- not my favorite holiday film, but I don’t turn it down if someone else wants to watch it. Unfortunately the detractors from the film are here in the book and even more noticeable.

Take the characters. I didn’t like any of them, but Luther especially was often unsympathetic, which is strange given how easy it would be, as previously stated, to make the reader feel for them. He’s so very often smug, self-centered, money-focused and, to be quite honest, racist (as is Nora, his wife with at least three comments throughout the book between them). And yes, character flaws make for realistic characters, but I struggled to find moments where I found him to be a normal human being instead of a scrooge caricature. 

And the neighbors aren’t any better. Seriously, who are these people that they think it’s a great idea to spend the season harassing their neighbors over a 6 foot plastic snowman? 

The story itself, once you get past the premise is… well bizarre. Everything is exaggerated, from the reactions to the Kranks’ decision, to their daughter’s hyper-whirlwind romance. This translated decently to the big screen, with the humor fairly clear, but in Grisham’s prose it misses something, never quite sticking the landing. 

Ultimately, it wasn’t one of the worst books I’ve read recently, but it does seem to be one of those rare books where the movie might just be a better choice.

Thankful… Day | Quiet and Snowy

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Well, I kind of lost track of time again this week. Getting caught up on grading and such. But better late than never.

A Quiet Thanksgiving
I must admit, I feel a little odd about having taken a week off from Thankful Thursday on the countries official Thankful Thursday, but I figured ’twas better to just relax. And relax I did. Normally I have family from Ohio that comes in, and, well… Covid. So that didn’t happen. It was a lot quieter than I’ve gotten used to. Just me and the hubby, and Mom and Dad. It was still nice though, just different.

My First Pumpkin Pie
Normally, said family-from-Ohio brings in desert for Thanksgiving Dinner, including the pie. So, it fell to me to make one since my mom avoids pumpkin pie if at all possible. This way, I got to make it sugar-free, so I didn’t have to worry about a blood-sugar spike. And I think it turned out well. Between me and Dad, we certainly didn’t have any trouble with finishing them off this year, so I’ll count it as a success.

The Tree is Up
A lot of times putting the tree up gets pushed off to the side, in favor of getting school work done. But this year we managed to get it put up and decorated this past week. I think I got holiday spirit kicked into gear by…

The first Snow of the Season
As weird (and as warm) as this year has been, I was halfway expecting to not see snow until January, but we got a nice couple of inches. Not enough to be really dangerous, since it melted off the roads pretty quick, but enough to make everything nice and pretty and white for a day or so.

Success With my Phone
I’ve been struggling to load my mp3s onto this sucker for the past few months. For some reason it just wouldn’t make a solid connection with my computer. I finally figured it out though, just in time to be able to put on my holiday music. Hopefully it wasn’t a one-time thing.

December 2020 TBR

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So, I’m gonna preface this with the saying I have no intention of reading all of these books this month- I know by now that my interest in any one topic or book waxes and wanes sometimes by the hour, so it’s best to have an assortment brought out to choose from. So, here’s my TBR tower, heavily weighted towards Christmas stories. You’ll see, as the month goes along, which I’m actually pulling out (and not discarding after a few pages).

Skipping Christmas – John Grisham
I’ve seen the movie- not one my favorites, but I’m not gonna turn my nose up at it if someone else wants to watch it, or if my holiday faves aren’t available. I’ve always been curious as to how the book compares, so I didn’t hesitate to pick up this one from the thrift store when I saw it a couple of weeks ago.

The Twelve Dogs of Christmas – David Rosenfelt
So, normally I’m not the sort to pick up random mysteries from the middle of a series, but hey, I figured why not. It’s a Christmas book and it’s got dogs, which, I can guess from the cover and the general premise of the series (a dog-loving defense attorney) aren’t going to end up horribly killed.

Hogfather – Terry Pratchett
I’ve felt my mind gradually shifting back towards the Discword series recently (obsessing over a story partially penned by Sir Terry will do that I guess), and Hogfather seems the perfect re-entrance point. Unfortunately, this is one of the less likely for this month, since (as of today) finding the book isn’t going all that well. Oh well, crossing my fingers.

Plus-Any number of horoughly re-read children’s books that I’ve pulled out every single year since I got them, not limited to:

Mallory’s Christmas List – Ann M. Martin–
What can I say, I’m a sucker for the Babysitter’s Club, especially this one about a holiday gone excessive.

Kirsten’s Surprise – Janet Beeler Shaw
Really, any of the American Girl holiday books, but this was the first AG book I ever read and it’s still my favorite of the whole lot. Unfortunately, it’s another one that’s lost somewhere in the library, so we’ll see how that goes.

Zappy Holidays – Diana G. Gallagher
What can I say, I’m a product of the 90s and Alex Mack was one of my fave tv shows ever. I haven’t watched it in years, but every year I have to pull out this book. It’s my holiday tradition.

Now for some non-holiday possibilities, because you know there can be too much of a good thing.

The Case for God – Karen Armstrong
What can I say, Good Omens has sparked my comparative religions curiosity again. I love Karen Armstrong, and I hadn’t picked this one up yet- well, before a couple of weeks ago. This is one of my in progress books. I tend towards reading slowly through non-fiction texts. We’ll see how far I get this month.

The Fool’s Girl – Celia Rees
Not so sure about this one, but I’ve got a decent YA/middle grade backlog, and it dips a bit into Shakespeare, so I figured I’d give it a shot.