Thursday, March 31, 2022

Cat Thursday: Spring Kitties

 


Welcome to the weekly meme (hosted by Michelle at True Book Addict) that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats!

We had a very warm weekend and my cats loved it! They got out and got dirty and enjoyed the sun. Then Nala came back in and puked up all the grass she ate...oh, Nala... 

May we enjoy the sun as much as these two!

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Thursday, March 24, 2022

Cat Thursday -- Stepan Is Safe

 


Welcome to the weekly meme (hosted by Michelle at True Book Addict) that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats!

Image source @giantcat9 Twitter

Image source Washington Post article

What is happening in Ukraine is devastating. But I was pleased to hear about the cat influencer Stepan. He's OK. His followers were worried when his account on Instagram and TikTok went silent for nearly two weeks. When Stepan and his staff Anna and her two sons were back online, they were safe in France.

It's actually a story on the connected world of influencers. And how many can reach out to their followers to find safe haven. Please check out the whole article.

So happy to see Stepan safe and other cats and animals being rescued during this horrific time.

Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Week-in-Review: Van Gogh Art Experience, Snow, DH Birthday, and Happy Saint Patrick's Day...

Well, I'm pleasantly surprised at how busy we've been this month. A couple of weeks ago we visited the Van Gogh Art Experience at our local museum and it was amazing! I could sit through multiple experiences of various artists. It really transforms their art and their lives into something beautiful. I had no idea the different types of art Van Gogh produced. And having them tell us about where he was living and what life was like for him through his letters and then showing his art was, yes, definitely an experience. I highly recommend these art experiences. I think more are being produced so I'm excited to come back for other artists.

Van Gogh Experience

DH had his 49th birthday last weekend! Whew. Next year is the big 5-0. We kept it pretty simple. We ate out as a family and he wanted Coldstone ice cream cake. This weekend we're keeping the celebration going with friends.

We even made it up into the mountains for a quick overnighter for another friends birthday. Lots of snow up there as well.

A happy post Saint Patrick's Day. We don't do much but I do like to make bangers and mash and soda bread and to wash it all down with some stout! 

This last weekend was a goodbye to our neighbors and good friends who are moving on to Florida. I am so, oh so sad but very excited for their new adventure.


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We also enjoyed a nice outing with some good friends to a new wine bar. We took the train up and enjoyed a nice relaxing evening trying new wines and enjoying gelato before heading back to our kids. These friends will also be moving in a few months out-of-state 😭

We are looking forward to Spring break in two weeks. It’ll be a stay-cation but looking forward to a few hikes and seeing some local things that we haven’t done because of the pandemic.


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G helped make family-style crème brulee

And happy Spring 🌷🌺 Our crocuses and tulips are sprouting!

Currently Reading 

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media by Jacob Mchangama

Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System that Keeps You Alive by Philipp Dettmer

The Once and Future King by T.H. White


The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science
by Sean Kean

Babylon’s Ashes (The Expanse #6) by James S.A. Corey

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

Read

Tree of Life: The Incredible Biodiversity of Life on Earth by Rochelle Strauss / 2004 / 40 Pages / Paperback / Science

My Thoughts: This is a lovely nonfiction book for kids. Great illustrations and easy-to-understand definitions and descriptions and ways to help the earth locally.


Black Heroes of the Wild West
by James Otis Smith / 2020/ 60 Pages / Paperback / History

My Thoughts:

Three stories in a graphic novel format about black historical figures in Old West. Great stories and lots of extra information to put the stories into context. 

Drive (The Expanse #2.6) by James S.A. Corey / 2012/ 30 Pages / Kindle / Sci-fi

My Thoughts:

Great short story that talks about the origins of the Epstein drive and the man who invented it in The Expanse universe.

Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America by John McWhorter / 2021 /  224 Pages / Hardcover / Nonfiction

My Thoughts:

Interesting thoughts from John McWhorter. I've always enjoyed his books on language as a fellow language nerd. Not his best but still worth the read.


Nemesis Games
(The Expanse #5) by James S.A. Corey / 2015 / 536 Pages / Paperback / Sci-fi

My Thoughts:

Another great book in the Expanse series. Really enjoyed diving into the Roci's crew this time around instead of adding new characters and perspectives.

Serafina and the Seven Stars by Robert Beatty / 2019 / 352 Pages / Paperback / Library / Fantasy

My Thoughts:

This is book four of the Serafina series. I read them all with G. Don't know if there will be another in the series. This one did not disappoint.


Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History
by Art Spiegelman / 1986 / 159 Pages / Paperback / Graphic Novel / History

My Thoughts:

I've been meaning to read this one for years. So glad I finally got to it. It's a devastating story but also brilliantly told about his father's experience of World War II and surviving the Holocaust. He also draws and writes about grief and trauma and how it continues to influence generations after. Just absolutely brilliant. Please read!

Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself by Kristin Neff / 2011 / 320 Pages / Paperback / Psychology / Self-Help

My Thoughts:

This one took me about 2 1/2 months to read because of how much learning and exercises there are to do! It's a powerful book and one I'll be referencing often. Highly recommended!

Movies Watched:

Witness the bloody origin

The King's Man
(2021) (HBO Max and Hulu) Directed and written by Matthew Vaughn. Starring Ralph Fiennes, Harris Dickinson, Djimon Hounsou, and Gemma Arterton.

My Thoughts:

I really liked the first one except for the ending...the second was still interesting...this one was even less so. Meh.


Fresh
(2022) (Hulu) Directed by Mimi Cave. Written by Lauryn Kahn. Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan.

My Thoughts:

This one premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and I can see why. It's a horrific story which I thought was going to be a bit more comical than horrific. But I still really really enjoyed it even though I doubt I'll ever watch that again. Watch if you are into Indie Horror!

Growing up is a beast

Turning Red
(2022) (Disney+) Directed by Domee Shi. Written by Domee Shi, Julia Cho, and Sarah Streicher. Starring: Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh

My Thoughts:

We watched this as a family! It was wonderful. We all really enjoyed it. Funny and heartfelt. This one digs into puberty and all the changes that come with it, including what that means for parental relationships and even friendships. Brilliant as always.

TV Watched:

I finished off Star Trek: Discovery. Still catching up on The Expanse. But mainly I've been watching basketball, both NCAA and NBA.

I hope to get a better handle on my updates come April!


Joining up with Deb from Readerbuzz and her Sunday Salon.

Thursday, March 17, 2022

Cat Thursday-- Happy Saint Catrick's Day


 Welcome to the weekly meme (hosted by Michelle at True Book Addict) that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats!






I hope you have a wonderful St. Catrick's Day!


Thursday, March 10, 2022

Cat Thursday- Space Cats!

 


Welcome to the weekly meme (hosted by Michelle at True Book Addict) that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats!





I mean what's better than space cats?!


Tuesday, March 8, 2022

Week-in-Review: Um...

 I missed last week....what with Russia invading Ukraine, inflation, Covid...plus regular life stuff...it just felt a bit too much to get this out last week... Um seems to be all I can say. 

G celebrated one last weekend of his birthday with his grandparents. We brought pizza and G picked out a strawberry torte cake. We played a couple of games. I helped my mom trim her nails and read to her for a bit. It was a fairly pleasant visit and G enjoys dragging out the birthday all month long!

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One of my brothers on the left, Dad, G, DH's finger's, and of course the strawberry torte cake!

Currently Reading:


Immune: A Journey into the Immune System that Keeps You Alive
by Philipp Dettmer-- Our bodies are amazing! Dettmer's style is so easy breezy and his analogies and metaphors are pretty funny and his drawings are colorful and informative. I want him to write all the books like this.

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker-- I've been needing some optimism and hope and this book is doing just that. His optimism is infectious and it's much-needed. It's a very long book, though, so I know this one will take a while...

Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself by Kristin Neff-- I've been working on this one since January. It's not very long but there are a lot of exercises over the course of the book and so I'm really trying to get all I can out of it. I should finish this month, though. Powerful book.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson-- I am loving the audiobook. I started reading it in paperback last year and got quite a ways but put it aside for a bit and I just got back to it with the audio and the narrator is so good. She even sings some songs!

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. du Bois-- This one will take me awhile too since they are essays and may I only get to one a week or so.

Nemesis Games by James S.A. Correy (The Expanse #5)

Serafina and the Seven Stars by Robert Beatty-- Reading with G aloud.

The Once and Future King by T.H. White-- Reading along with a fellow blogger. But wow, the racism is strong in this one😒

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton-- I put this one aside for a couple of weeks but once I'm done with Cibola Burn I'm hoping to get back to it and finish it up quickly. It's pretty short.

Books Read:



Donut the Destroyer
by Sarah Graley / 2020 / 192 Pages / Paperback / Own / Graphic Novel / Sci-fi and Fantasy

Goodreads Summary:

Donut (middle name: The; last name: Destroyer) has a heart of gold and incredible strength. She lives in a world where everyone is born with a special ability and can choose whether to develop it for good or evil. Donut has just received the best news of her life -- she's been accepted to Lionheart School for Heroes! But her parents are the most infamous villains around, and her best friend, Ivy, can't understand why Donut would choose a life of boring heroism and ruin their plans to cause chaos. Donut is determined to prove that, despite her last name, she's meant to go her own way and be a hero. Meanwhile, Ivy cooks up a plan to get Donut kicked out of Lionheart -- and back on track to villainy!

My Thoughts:

G bought this at his school fair the other week and he really liked it. So I thought I'd give it a chance! Everyone's born with a superpower but you either use it for good or for evil. Donut's family has been on the evil side of things but Donut doesn't want that. She wants to use her powers for good so she enrolls at her local superhero high school. She must battle for new friends and for her fellow "good" students to take her seriously since her parents are so notoriously evil. And her "evil" best friend is out to sabotage her as well.

Loved the illustrations and the overall moral about being true to yourself and how love for friends and family come first.


Dead Silence
by S.A. Barnes / 2022 / 352 Pages / Hardcover / Library / Sci-fi and Horror

Goodreads Summary:

Claire Kovalik is days away from being unemployed—made obsolete—when her beacon repair crew picks up a strange distress signal. With nothing to lose and no desire to return to Earth, Claire and her team decide to investigate.

What they find at the other end of the signal is a shock: the Aurora, a famous luxury space-liner that vanished on its maiden tour of the solar system more than twenty years ago. A salvage claim like this could set Claire and her crew up for life. But a quick trip through the Aurora reveals something isn’t right.

Whispers in the dark. Flickers of movement. Words scrawled in blood. Claire must fight to hold onto her sanity and find out what really happened on the Aurora, before she and her crew meet the same ghastly fate.

My Thoughts:

This was just what I needed to get through a bit of a reading slump. Not as scary as I was hoping but it will be horrific if they make a movie out of it! Please make a movie out of this horrificly awesome sci-fi thriller!! She couldn't quite get the dread of what was actually happening but the storyline and the imagery and yikes. It's all very terrifying. Read if you love it like I do!😁


Cibola Burn
(The Expanse #4) by James S.A Corey / 2014 / 581 Pages / Paperback / Sci-fi

Goodreads Summary:

The gates have opened the way to thousands of habitable planets, and the land rush has begun. Settlers stream out from humanity's home planets in a vast, poorly controlled flood, landing on a new world. Among them, the Rocinante, haunted by the vast, posthuman network of the protomolecule as they investigate what destroyed the great intergalactic society that built the gates and the protomolecule.

But Holden and his crew must also contend with the growing tensions between the settlers and the company which owns the official claim to the planet. Both sides will stop at nothing to defend what's theirs, but soon a terrible disease strikes and only Holden - with help from the ghostly Detective Miller - can find the cure.

My Thoughts:

The books are always a bit slow to start, expect for the first one, but once it gets going it's hopping! A couple of characters were only there to provide perspective on what was happening at a given point but overall, I enjoyed the story and the character and world-building.


The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy
by Anthony Gottlieb / 2016 / 320 Pages / Hardcover / Philosophy

Goodreads Summary:

In a short period - from the early 1640s to the eve of the French Revolution - Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Hume all made their mark on Western thought. The Dream of Enlightenment tells their story and that of the birth of modern philosophy. What does the advance of science entail for our understanding of ourselves and for our ideas of God? How should a government deal with religious diversity - and what is government actually for? Their questions remain our questions, and it is tempting to think these philosophers speak our language and live in our world; but to understand them properly, we must step back into their shoes. Gottlieb puts readers in the minds of these frequently misinterpreted figures, elucidating the history of their times while engagingly explaining their arguments and assessing their legacy. Gottlieb creates a sweeping account of what they amounted to, and why we are still in their debt.

My Thoughts:

This is the second book in Gottlieb's series on a history of Western philosophy. His first The Dream of Reason was excellent. He's got quite a snarky style of writing and it made the whole thing more enjoyable.

He provide a nice summary of some Enlightenment philosophers like Hobbes, Hume, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Rosseau. A lot of ideas were quite new to me and I felt he parsed them nicely. I could never be a direct-text reader so I'm very grateful for these kinds of books to give me the gist so I don't actually need to read their writings! Maybe Hume and Spinoza would be OK...

I recommend his series if you want a quick history into Western philosophers and their ideas.

Movies Watched:


Tagline: She's not the only one listening.

Kimi (2022) (HBO Max) Directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by David Koepp. Starring Zoe Kravitz

My Thoughts: I really enjoyed this one! Tight Covid-19 pandemic thriller set in Seattle. Zoe was spot on. 

Tagline: Our memories make us.

Belfast
(2021) (rented). Directed and written by Kenneth Branagh. Starring James Dornan, Ciaran Hinds, Judi Dench, and Caitriona Balfe

My Thoughts: Another Oscar contender loosely based off of Branagh's childhood in Ireland at the start of the Troubles. I really enjoyed the little boy Buddy. It touches on sectarianism, family, loyalty, and love. A really feel-good movie.

Tagline: Uncover the past. Protect the future.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife
(2021) (Own). Directed and written by Jason Reitman. Starring Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard and Paul Rudd.

My Thoughts: This was a fun one. We watched it together as a family and G really enjoyed it. They did a great job. Funny, kid-friendly, with plenty of nostalgia for the originals.

Tagline: Who will survive the dead of winter?

No Exit (2022) (Hulu). Directed by Damien Power. Written by Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari and Taylor Adams. Starring Havana Rose Liu, Danny Ramirez, Dennis Haysbert (Allstate guy), and Dale Dickey.

My Thoughts: This was a fun little winter horror movie from Hulu. A few twists and turns along the way and a "how in the world are they going to get out of this?" 

Tagline: Every fairytale ends.

Spencer (2021) (Hulu) Directed by Pablo Larrain. Written by Steven Knight. Starring Kristen Stewart, Sally Hawkins, Timothy Spall, and Sean Harris.

My Thoughts: This was good! Way better than I was expecting. The way this is filmed is sort of a metaphor for how Diana felt about the royal family and her place in it...not great. Kristen Stewart is phenomenal in this. 


Drive My Car
(2021) (HBO Max). Directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Written by Haruki Murakami (original story) and Ryusuke Hamaguchi (screenplay)

My Thoughts: This is Japanese film at its finest. Beautiful scenery and long philosophical dialog on the meaning of grief and trauma and how to keep moving. This better win all the things at the Oscars. 

I also loved that some of it's set in Hiroshima where I lived for a year. It was fun to revisit a few places.

TV:



Star Trek: Lower Decks
(Paramount+) So much fun. Lots of nostalgia and old Star Trek references. Must-see if you are a Trekkie.

The Girl Before (HBO Max). I watched the first episode and haven't been back yet...I want to finish it but when? Take that for what it's worth...

Star Trek: Picard (Paramount+) Season two just started and I'm very excited.

Star Trek: Discovery (Paramount+) This is a train wreck of a show that I can't not look away from. It is the opposite of everything I love about Star Trek but I keep hoping it'll change...There is also a giant fluffy cat and Tig Notaro from time to time.

The Afterparty (Apple TV): This is such a funny show/mystery. Tiffany Haddish nails it.


Joining up with Deb from Readerbuzz and her Sunday Salon.




Thursday, March 3, 2022

Cat Thursday-- Neighbor Kitties


Welcome to the weekly meme (hosted by Michelle at True Book Addict) that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats!

My neighbor and her family went on vacation last week and asked me and G to watch their two kitties Red and Mustache. They are adorable kitties and we had so much fun watching them and playing with them each day. So I thought I'd share some pics this week for Cat Thursday.


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Here's Red! She's such a sweetie.

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Mustache is a female cat but they named her that before they knew but they liked her little side mustache color off her nose. She's a bit skittish but she warmed up to us after a couple of days. And I just love this little action shot of her mid-meow! Looks like she's giving us some sass!😹