Lisa R. Howeler's Blog, page 53

Weely Traffic Jam Reboot

Welcome to another Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot hosted by Marsha in the Middle, Melynda from Scratch Made Food & DYI Homemade Household, Sue from Women Living Well After 50, and me.  Look for the link up to go live on Thursdays at 9:30pm EDT.  (But apparently not on this blog because I forgot to set it up again!)

Oh my goodness, everyone! The weather is so awful and cold right now where I live and if you are in the United States, probably where you live too.

Much of the country is in an arctic freeze right now with temperatures anywhere from negative 14 degrees Fahrenheit (-25C) to 25 degrees Fahrenheit (-3C). Where I live, we are used to cold winters but not this cold!

The horribly cold temps started on Sunday and are still going on. On Tuesday about five inches of snow fell and my daughter (who I call Little Miss on here) loves playing in the snow but with temps at 18 and windchill at like 7, she gave up pretty fast.

Even our animals, who will go outside in almost any weather, only stepped out at five minutes at a time and then returned inside to warm up by our woodstove, which has been going full bore since last week when we had snow. I have barely seen my parents in two weeks, even though they live eight minutes from my house because the extreme cold makes my muscles hurt and my chest tighten up.

On Sunday we tried to head to my parents but high winds were knocking the dead Ash trees down around us, the temps were dropping and freezing water run off from the day before, so we opted to stay home.

How has the weather been where you are?

If it is nice and sunny then please enjoy but don’t brag too much! *wink* Kidding! Brag all you want. I won’t blame you a bit!

On to the most clicked post for this week:

Denim Mini Skirt: My 5th Denim Item Oh Boy by Nancy’s Fashion Style

And my three favorite posts for the week:

Grand Canyon From The South Rim by Robert T. McCall Style Imitating Art by Shelbee On The Edge

I chose this one because I couldn’t wait to see the outfits that came from the inspiration of this painting. If you would like to see the final outfits, you can go here: https://shelbeeontheedge.com/sia-gallery-of-style-grand-canyon-from-the-south-rim-by-robert-t-mccall/

Mindfulness With A Twist: Finding Stillness In the Spin by Grace Filled Moments.

I really enjoyed this reminder from Grace Filled Moments as well. I am going to be referring to this later when I need to be reminded to find those small moments to lift my sports and get through.

Where Bloggers Live: How I Stay Warm in Winter by Within A World of My Own

I loved all the winter tips provided in this blog post. Some of them I am going to try myself as we deal with this arctic cold snap.

Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or from years ago even.

Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enterhttps://fresh.inlinkz.com/js/widget/load.js?id=c0efdbe6b4add43dd7ef

Jane Austen January: Pride and Prejudice

This month Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are watching movie adaptations of Jane Austen’s books for Jane Austen January. We are also offering a link-up for anyone who wants to discuss the movies, or anything else Jane-related, on their blogs.

Last week we watched Sense and Sensibility. The week before I watched Persuasion.

This week the movie was the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice.

First a little bit about the story of Pride and Prejudice for those who might not know what it is about. The story follows Elizabeth Bennett and her three sisters – one older and two younger. Her older sister is beautiful and sought after by men but Lizzie is a bit mouthy and supposedly plainer, though I can’t tell in the movies since both girls are always beautiful to me.

During the book and movie, Elizabeth learns about the natural consequences of judging people without knowing the full story. Her father is the owner of Longbourn estate, but his property can only be passed to a male heir. Since his wife also lacks an inheritance, his family will become poor when he dies. Therefore it would be necessary for one of the daughters to marry someone wealthy so the entire family can be supported.

Mr. Bennett’s wife is obsessed with finding a rich heir. This obsession makes her, and two of her five daughters, very overbearing and lacking in social skills. Their overbearing behavior gets them into trouble often and one of them will get into a lot of trouble later in the movie.

With the idea that a wealthy marriage is needed, there is a lot of excitement when two wealthy bachelors enter the scene – Fitzwilliam Darcy and Charles Bingley.

I will admit that Erin had to practically drag me kicking and screaming to this particular movie adaptation after we agreed that the 1995 BBC mini-series, while superior in many ways, was simply too long to watch for our blog posts. It’s almost six hours all together.

In my mind, Colin Firth is the embodiment of Fitzwilliam Darcy and I struggle to see anyone other than him in this role so I really didn’t want to watch it for this buddy watch at first. I was like a pouty child, folding my arms over my chest and saying, “But I don’t want to. You can’t make me.”

In the end, she didn’t make me. I agreed to it.  

I will say that after watching this 2005 version for the second time, I’ve decided Matthew Macfadyen does an okay job as Mr. Darcy. He often reminds me of a pouty emo teenager from the 1990s instead of Mr. Darcy, but he grew on me as the movie went on.

I am not a huge Kiera Knightly fan but she also grew on me as Lizzie Bennett and while I found her rude and snotty at times, she had a lot more life in her than Jennifer Ehl did in the 1995 version. What I lied about Ehl, though, is her subtle eyebrow raises or expression that showed her feelings more than anything she could have said.

After watching the 2005 version again (I first saw it a few years ago), I’ve decided I don’t hate it as much as I thought I did. There are parts of it I might actually like a bit better than the 1995 mini-series.

For one, I find the actress who plays Jane in this version (Rosamund Pike) a bit prettier than the one in the 1995 version.

No matter which version I watch, though, I have to say that I don’t always like Elizabeth “Lizzie” Bennet. I know some see her character as being independent and bold and standing up in the face of oppressive patriarchy but I find her a bit rude quite honestly. Like a commenter said on my Instagram this week – I am actually shocked that Mr. Darcy speaks to her at all with how haughty she is.

That doesn’t mean I don’t like her at all, though, because I realize that the story follows her social development and her changes as a person. I do like that she stands up for herself and that she isn’t afraid to speak her mind.

I also like that she progresses from a bit of a stuck-up young woman with very high standards to a woman who learns from her mistakes of judging too quickly and believing the stories of people who she barely knows.

One thing I liked about the 2005 version is that it seemed livelier when the time for mutual affection shall we say. In this movie, we actually saw it, unlike the 1995 version where Lizzie and Mr. Darcy were very, very reserved when they finally shared their real feelings. I know that reservations are the theme of the time these books took place, but there was a bit more exuberance at the end of the movie from 2005 than in the one from 1995 without making it crude or out of line.

Included in this story are the characters Caroline and Charles Bingley, rich siblings, who come for a visit to the Bennet’s area and cause quite a stir in the little village because they are – uh – I guess because they are rich. I have no idea why people are so thrilled with them otherwise. The people of the village are also thrilled with Mr. Darcy because he is even richer but he looks at all of them with indifference and possible arrogance.

It’s so weird to see Kelly Reilly in the role of Caroline Bingley because I’m now more familiar with her as Beth in Yellowstone. I had to look at her more than once while rewatching this because I couldn’t place her at first.

She has the same smug look in both shows because both characters are smug and arrogant.

As for the man who plays Mr. Bingley, Sam Woods, I kept cracking up because he was like a cross between Ed Sheeran and Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

Another character who emerges as an antagonist in every way is Lt. George Wickham.

At one point, Wickham leaves Elizabeth with a sad tale of how Mr. Darcy treated him abominably when they were young, leaving him out of a will because Mr. Darcy’s father liked Wickham better than Mr. Darcy.

If you’ve read the book or seen the movie you know what that is all about. If you haven’t seen it, I’ll let you find out but will say that something seems very off with that story, of course.

There is humor in the book and movie and in the movies that humor break is with Mr. Collins.

Oh my. What can we say about Mr. Collins? He’s the vicar who will inherit their family’s land so he’s interested in marrying one of the daughters, which will help the family remain in their home. Sadly, Mrs. Bennet is hoping for Jane to marry rich Mr. Bingley so Mr. Collins sets his eye on Lizzie, who is horrified at the prospect. Rightly so.

He’s the character with the infamous lines, ““What a superbly featured room and what excellent boiled potatoes! Many years since I’ve had such an exemplary vegetable. To which of my fair cousins should I compliment the excellence of the cooking?”

The standout performance for me in this version is Judi Dench as Catherine De Bourgh, Mr. Darcy’s aunt. She’s the perfect “bad guy” and, as usual, like with any movie she’s in, practically steals the show.

Like other Austen stories, there is a lot of ins and outs, misunderstandings/slight of hands, whatever you want to call it. There are also a lot of unsaid things that cause issues and heartbreak and confusion.

Also like other Austen movies, there is a lot of beautiful imagery and amazing cinematography both inside and outside.

One scene that stands out for me is the dance scene between Lizzie and Mr. Darcy. At one point everyone around them fades away and it’s just them focused on each other, which, of course, we know what that means – that they only see each other. Sigh.

Even people who haven’t seen this movie probably have seen the outside scene of Mr. Darcy walking through the mist with his coat open, his white shirt unbuttoned and looking, I guess, sexy. I wasn’t as thrilled with that scene as other women but that’s probably because I’m not as big of a fan of Macfadyen as I am Colin. When Colin came walking out of that lake, as subtle as it was, I must admit I swooned a bit. If you don’t know what I’m talking about just Google Colin Firth walking out of the lake in Pride and Prejudice.

I saw an interview with him this week and apparently, he was supposed to be shirtless in that scene, but the BBC didn’t approve of the movie being that suggestive.

As with every Austen book/movie, I find myself frustrated at how women were treated and how they had to rush to marry someone rich or who was an heir to a fortune, to ensure that they had a place to live.

Of course, I know that’s how it was back then and I like how Austen fought against that idea in her books. All great authors challenge societal “norms”, in my opinion.

Looking online this week for what others thought about the movie, I learned that this movie is not as close to the book as the 1995 version. For one, there was less focus on any subplots and more focus on Lizzie and Mr. Darcy’s romance in this movie. I hope to read the book in the spring, so I will see more of what an article in Screen Rant meant when it wrote that.

The director, Joe Wright, also changed the time period from 1813 to the 1790s because he liked the idea of the French Revolution going on at the same time since the revolution created an atmosphere of fear within the English aristocracy. I really don’t like when the entire time period or location of a book is changed for the movie, but I guess it works okay for this movie because I had no idea what the date was supposed to be.

An article on Screen Rant by Amanda Bruce mentioned what I did about the movie, which was that Keira Knightly’s version of Lizzie was more feisty – I actually would call it more snotty than feisty, but  . . . Ms. Bruce can have her opinion and I can have mine.

Bruce didn’t exactly approve of the portrayal as a whole shown by how she wrote: “Knightley’s Elizabeth is comfortable pushing back on her parents — and in one scene, even shouting at them — while Austen’s Elizabeth might be headstrong, but she is never immature.”

The 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice, Bruce wrote was, “grounded in realism” and blended “traditional period-film traits with a modern approach.” 

I mentioned above that I liked the ending of the 2005 version because there was more affection shown between Lizzie and Mr. Darcy. Another article on Screen Rant mentions that the end of the 2005 version was different in the United States than it was in Great Britain.

I almost wrote what the differences were but I’ll leave that off and let anyone who hasn’t seen this version or any version figure that out on their own. Apparently, the Great Britain audiences didn’t appreciate the extra affection shown at the end of the movie, which was extremely clean, just to clarify, despite what a comment by my daughter suggested.

“Eew, they’re sucking each other’s faces off,” she said, but that did not happen. As with many Jane Austen adaptations, there is nothing gratuitous in the film that will make you put your hands over your child’s eyes.

Have you seen this adaptation?

Have you read the book?

Did this adaptation meet your expectations?

Next week Erin and I are watching the 1996 TV adaption of Emma with Kate Beckinsale. Next week we will be writing about Miss Austen Regrets.

To read Erin’s impressions of this movie, visit her blog: https://crackercrumblife.com/

Sunday Bookends: arctic temps, still reading the same books (sigh), and binging Northern Exposure

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.

This week I’m joining up with  Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer , Deb at  Readerbuzz,  and Kathyrn at  The Book Date.

What’s Been Occurring

I talked a little bit about what’s been occurring yesterday in my Saturday Afternoon Chat. Mainly we’ve been dealing with weird weather of snow and rain and ice and high winds. Today our temps dropped very fast so we will be dealing with arctic temperatures for the whole week.  I will be inside the whole week, other than picking our son up at the bus stop (which is our local convenience store) because I don’t want him to have to walk up the hills to our house in the frigid temps.

I also woke up this morning to find out we have a wind advisory again so now it feels like 16 instead of 28. I was on my way to my parents this afternoon (they’re about eight minutes from our house) but when we saw a tree being removed from the bottom of our street and then another one hanging on a line, across the road and almost to the height of our car, I decided we would pick up my son and head back home to wait for the wind advisory to expire before we try again tomorrow.

We might have been fine but looking around seeing trees smashed along the road, limbs broken in the road and evidence of trees having been chainsawed to clear the roadway, we decided to err on the side of caution.

The Husband dropped some homemade soup I was taking off at my parents so they could at least have lunch.

Tomorrow’s temperatures will be frigid but at least we won’t have to be concerned about trees falling on us while battling the cold.

We have a lot of dead ash trees around us so those are ripe for falling down and causing issues. In the summer my daughter and I were at my parents’ swimming in the pool and one fell down behind my parents’ house in the woods. It wasn’t even windy that day. It just fell over. If it can happen without wind then it can definitely happen in 25 to 45 mph wind gusts.

What I’m/We’re Reading

I’m still reading Little Women and Dysfunction Junction.  I am enjoying both and like to switch off between them. I will probably finish Dysfunction Junction (by Robin W. Pearson) this week.

After that, I’ll be reading The Cat Who Went Into A Closet and The Bungalow Mystery – a Nancy Drew Mystery.

I am also reading Do The New You By Steven Furtick as a Netgalley read which was perfect timing since our online Bible study is going to be reading it in February.

At night Little Miss and I are reading The Borrowers.

What We watched/are Watching

I watched Northern Exposure over 20 years ago (probably) and started watching it again this week. I don’t remember much of anything about it so it’s like watching it for the first time.

It really was well written and holds up pretty well actually.

I also watched Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice for the Jane Austen January feature I’m doing with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs. If you want to join in our link-up to discuss all things Jane (including the books) you can find the link up above.

I watched Miss Scarlet and the Duke last week and will probably watch more today and this week since I will be hiding in the house until the weather gets better.

The Husband and I watched the 1978 version of Death on the Nile. It held up pretty well despite Bette Davis looking like she’d come out of a crypt.

What I’m Writing

I am working on Cassie, which releases in August. I hope to have it finished by February. If you are curious what the book will be about, here is a very loose description:

It’s 1995 and 32-year-old Cassie Mason is an actress who made it big on a sitcom in the mid-1980s but hasn’t been able to find a job since the show ended five years ago.

After being fired by her talent agency, Cassie takes her sister Bridget up on her offer for Cassie to come back to their hometown for an extended visit to unwind and regroup.

While there Cassie finds out her younger sister – the one with the handsome husband and three kids and running a farm – is going to open a café and farm store in the small town they grew up near. Cassie decides to stay long enough to help with the grand opening, though she isn’t sure what she can do since she doesn’t know a thing about cooking like her mom and sister and isn’t great at organizing either.

In fact, Cassie isn’t sure what’s she is good at other than acting. Bridget hasn’t been able to help out at the Berrysville Community center like she’d like to with all that has to be done to open the business so she asks Cassie to fill in for a couple of volunteer opportunities. That’s when Cassie finds out that her sister’s neighbor, Alec, isn’t only a small farmer – he’s also someone who knows how to cook and showcases those talents in a weekly cooking class at the community center.

During her visit home, Cassie struggles to figure out not only where she fits in and feels most at home but also to figure out if acting is all she is meant to do with her life or if there is another way God wants to use her talents.

And God? There’s someone else she needs to learn more about on this break from the career she thought she’d always have.

I’ve also been writing blog posts:

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Crazy weather and crazy weather and some reading time Weekly Traffic Jam Reboot Jane Austen January: Sense and Sensibility (limited spoilers) `10 on 10: Ten Things I want to accomplish, learn, master or create Comfy, Cozy Christmas Link Up Highlights

What I’m Listening To

This week I have been listening to James Herriot’s Treasury for Children but this upcoming week I will be back to listening to A Tale of Two Cities.

Next week I hope to return to sharing blog posts from other bloggers that I enjoyed from the week. I haven’t been reading as many blogs as I would like to and I’m really looking forward to getting back to that this year.

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

Sunday Bookends: artic temps, still reading the same books (sigh), and binging Northern Exposure

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.

This week I’m joining up with  Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer , Deb at  Readerbuzz,  and Kathyrn at  The Book Date.

What’s Been Occurring

I talked a little bit about what’s been occurring yesterday in my Saturday Afternoon Chat. Mainly we’ve been dealing with weird weather of snow and rain and ice and high winds. Today our temps dropped very fast so we will be dealing with arctic temperatures for the whole week.  I will be inside the whole week, other than picking our son up at the bus stop (which is our local convenience store) because I don’t want him to have to walk up the hills to our house in the frigid temps.

I also woke up this morning to find out we have a wind advisory again so now it feels like 16 instead of 28. I was on my way to my parents this afternoon (they’re about eight minutes from our house) but when we saw a tree being removed from the bottom of our street and then another one hanging on a line, across the road and almost to the height of our car, I decided we would pick up my son and head back home to wait for the wind advisory to expire before we try again tomorrow.

We might have been fine but looking around seeing trees smashed along the road, limbs broken in the road and evidence of trees having been chainsawed to clear the roadway, we decided to err on the side of caution.

The Husband dropped some homemade soup I was taking off at my parents so they could at least have lunch.

Tomorrow’s temperatures will be frigid but at least we won’t have to be concerned about trees falling on us while battling the cold.

We have a lot of dead ash trees around us so those are ripe for falling down and causing issues. In the summer my daughter and I were at my parents’ swimming in the pool and one fell down behind my parents’ house in the woods. It wasn’t even windy that day. It just fell over. If it can happen without wind then it can definitely happen in 25 to 45 mph wind gusts.

What I’m/We’re Reading

I’m still reading Little Women and Dysfunction Junction.  I am enjoying both and like to switch off between them. I will probably finish Dysfunction Junction (by Robin W. Pearson) this week.

After that, I’ll be reading The Cat Who Went Into A Closet and The Bungalow Mystery – a Nancy Drew Mystery.

I am also reading Do The New You By Steven Furtick as a Netgalley read which was perfect timing since our online Bible study is going to be reading it in February.

At night Little Miss and I are reading The Borrowers.

What We watched/are Watching

I watched Northern Exposure over 20 years ago (probably) and started watching it again this week. I don’t remember much of anything about it so it’s like watching it for the first time.

It really was well written and holds up pretty well actually.

I also watched Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice for the Jane Austen January feature I’m doing with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs. If you want to join in our link-up to discuss all things Jane (including the books) you can find the link up above.

I watched Miss Scarlet and the Duke last week and will probably watch more today and this week since I will be hiding in the house until the weather gets better.

The Husband and I watched the 1978 version of Death on the Nile. It held up pretty well despite Bette Davis looking like she’d come out of a crypt.

What I’m Writing

I am working on Cassie, which releases in August. I hope to have it finished by February. If you are curious what the book will be about, here is a very loose description:

It’s 1995 and 32-year-old Cassie Mason is an actress who made it big on a sitcom in the mid-1980s but hasn’t been able to find a job since the show ended five years ago.

After being fired by her talent agency, Cassie takes her sister Bridget up on her offer for Cassie to come back to their hometown for an extended visit to unwind and regroup.

While there Cassie finds out her younger sister – the one with the handsome husband and three kids and running a farm – is going to open a café and farm store in the small town they grew up near. Cassie decides to stay long enough to help with the grand opening, though she isn’t sure what she can do since she doesn’t know a thing about cooking like her mom and sister and isn’t great at organizing either.

In fact, Cassie isn’t sure what’s she is good at other than acting. Bridget hasn’t been able to help out at the Berrysville Community center like she’d like to with all that has to be done to open the business so she asks Cassie to fill in for a couple of volunteer opportunities. That’s when Cassie finds out that her sister’s neighbor, Alec, isn’t only a small farmer – he’s also someone who knows how to cook and showcases those talents in a weekly cooking class at the community center.

During her visit home, Cassie struggles to figure out not only where she fits in and feels most at home but also to figure out if acting is all she is meant to do with her life or if there is another way God wants to use her talents.

And God? There’s someone else she needs to learn more about on this break from the career she thought she’d always have.

I’ve also been writing blog posts:

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Crazy weather and crazy weather and some reading time Weekly Traffic Jam Reboot Jane Austen January: Sense and Sensibility (limited spoilers) `10 on 10: Ten Things I want to accomplish, learn, master or create Comfy, Cozy Christmas Link Up Highlights

What I’m Listening To

This week I have been listening to James Herriot’s Treasury for Children but this upcoming week I will be back to listening to A Tale of Two Cities.

Next week I hope to return to sharing blog posts from other bloggers that I enjoyed from the week. I haven’t been reading as many blogs as I would like to and I’m really looking forward to getting back to that this year.

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Crazy weather and crazy weather and some reading time

I read on Instagram that today is National Drink Hot Tea Day. There is always a national something or other day and I sometimes wonder who even keeps track of them all so people on social media can use it as content to talk about.

Anyhow, I’m drinking some peppermint tea with honey later today, not because I don’t have any other tea, but because I had some other types of tea earlier in the week and I wanted my old standby today.

Also later today I will be lighting a fire because our temps are going to plummet very fast this afternoon into this evening until they are in the 20s tomorrow and then the single digits at night and in the mornings starting Monday.

We are also under a high wind advisory today and when you live in a semi-rural area surrounded by trees (including a really old, really tall one in front of my house), you tend to get very nervous about high wind advisories. You also expect to lose power at some point, which makes me a little nervous since today it will be just me and Little Miss at home. The Husband is working and The Boy is going to a friend’s house.

I don’t do well health-wise in either very hot temperatures or very cold ones so I am not looking forward to the cold weather. I will not be leaving my house much at all during the cold weather snap because it irritates my asthma. I will be going out enough to pick up my son from the bus stop because I don’t want him to have to walk up our hill in such cold weather.

I am supposed to go visit my parents for lunch tomorrow when it is only supposed to be about 26 but I’ll see if I still want to do that or not. I practically have to be dragged outside kicking and screaming when it is super cold or when it is super hot.

The weather has been very odd here lately but that is somewhat normal for Pennsylvania this time of year.

Last weekend we had a snowstorm that lasted two days. By Tuesday it was rain and wind and the threat of flooding. Then off and on during the week snow and hail came and last night there was a burst of snow that covered the ground right before freezing rain came in and left the entire yard in a sheen of ice. To say winter has decided to show up this month is an understatement.

This past week I stayed inside every day and was a slug part of the time because of the weather. I read books, worked on my novel, wrote some blog posts, made some social media posts, enjoyed the fire, sipped tea and cocoa, cooked dinner, did the dishes a couple of times, ignored piles of books and papers I don’t know what to do with, and overall just enjoyed being a hermit and not having to go anywhere.

Yesterday I had to go pick up groceries but I really can’t complain because one, I had to drive there and they put them in the car, and two, my husband had to go out in this awful weather all week for work so he’s got the real cruddy end of the bargain here.

No one went with me to pick up groceries this time so it was just me in the car, listening to James Herriot’s Treasury for Children on Audible. I was going to listen to a Jane Austen collection but my phone claimed it wasn’t downloaded and it turned out better to listen to the one from James Herriot anyhow because it is so relaxing and my day really wasn’t relaxing for a variety of reasons – mainly family stuff and a lot of things on my mind about said family.

Today I hope to relax some but Little Miss wants me to play a video game with her and watch a movie. I honestly do not understand why my children always want me to play video games with them. I do not enjoy video games but they are just so excited to show Mom how to play it and then laugh at her when she can’t figure it out. My son wanted me to play Skyrim one time and I ran the guy into the wall over and over for like ten minutes.

It’s now a running joke in our house. My son will say something like, “Look, I’m Mom playing Skyrim,” and then just run into a wall several times while looking over his shoulder saying, “Don’t worry, Havar. I’m coming! I swear! If I can figure out this controller, I’m coming to help you.”

Of course, by then Havar was dead because I was still running into a wall.

This upcoming week I really need to work more on my book, Cassie. It’s been hard to get going on it but I hope to have it done in February so I can start work on my next Gladwynn book.

This week my dad left me a comment on my Facebook cover where I was promoting the second book and it really meant a lot because my dad is not a reader. He’s really never had time to read and if he did, he chose non-fiction books, such as theology books.

Mom told me he read my first book in the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries, though, reading a chapter or so a night before bed. When he was done, he told me it felt weird not having the book to read so I was glad that it wasn’t long after that when I realized the second book.

Now he is in the middle of the second book so I really need to start writing book three for him.

This is the message he left on the photograph for the book on my page: am not much of a reader at all and very seldom read fiction and I watch very few movies.

Like who wants to read about something that is not? Lol. Evidently a lot of people.

Anyway, I got into the first Gladwyn Mystery and found it intriguing, and starting this one I find it more so.

Sometimes I think wow, I never knew that [image error]lol. You see Gladwynn Grant, a mixture of intelligent, ditzy curious, and almost cunning, was my mother’s name.

Okay off to store a few more clues and along the way to the hometown theater find out what happened to Samantha.[image error][image error][image error] [image error][image error]“”

Dad hasn’t always been super supportive of me writing fiction (“You have to actually go places to write books and you don’t go anywhere or have a lot of experience,” he told me once. Sigh. Dads.) so the fact he’s enjoyed these Gladwynn books has meant a lot to me.

Well, I am off to watch the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice, which I am watching as part of Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and my Jane Austen January Feature. I will warn you that this version is not my favorite and I am actually finding it a bit annoying at this point. I promise to try my best to be polite about it when I write about it on Thursday.

I will be back tomorrow with Sunday Bookends, where I will ramble about what I’ve been reading and what I hope to read and all that jazz.

How was your week last week? Did you do anything exciting? And what’s your tea of choice these days?

Weekly Traffic Jam Reboot

Welcome to another Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot hosted by Marsha in the Middle, Melynda from Scratch Made Food & DYI Homemade Household, Sue from Women Living Well After 50, and me.  Look for the link up to go live on Thursdays at 9:30pm EDT. 

This week has been crazy weatherwise here in the east of the U.S.

First, we had a fairly major storm Saturday and Sunday. That left about five inches of snow on the ground for us.

Monday the weather still wasn’t great and the snow stayed around. On Tuesday, there was more snow and freezing rain and then it turned to all rain and flash flooding was predicted. Luckily there was no major flash flooding or flooding at all and the snow is still on the ground.

The high winds we got were scary but didn’t cause damage in our immediate area, which is a surprise considering all the dead ash trees we have around us. There was a lot of damage in other counties around us, however.

The kids enjoyed playing in the snow and my youngest was sad when it melted. There are rumors she will have more snow to play in before the month is out, however.

Maybe even before next week is out.

Moving on to last week’s traffic jam reboot link up, Thrifting World had the most clicked post. Actually, she had two posts that tied for the most clicked.

Thrifting in 2024

and

A Table From A Door

In addition to enjoying her posts, I always enjoyed the following posts:

Friday Morning Catch Up with Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs

Nativity Scene Collection with Chez Mireille Fashion Travel Mom

My Office and Reading Nook with Living Outside the Stacks

Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or from years ago even.

Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enterhttps://fresh.inlinkz.com/js/widget/load.js?id=c0efdbe6b4add43dd7ef

Jane Austen January: Sense and Sensibility (limited spoilers)

This month Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are watching movie adaptations of Jane Austen books.

First up is Sense and Sensibility.

Sense and Sensibility was the first Jane Austen movie adaptation I ever watched. I started it, thinking I’d hate it but ended up falling in love with it.

I’ve now watched it three or four times.

I’ve decided to “live blog” this one as I watch it, similar to how I wrote about Persuasion and again I will not provide spoilers in case you’ve never seen the movie or read the book.

Erin joked that last week’s post was like a Mystery Science Theater 3000 post and I liked that comparison so consider this a blog version of Myster Science Theater or Rifftrax.

Before I start I will relay a couple paragraphs from Wikipedia about the basic plot of the book and film:

“It tells the story of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor (age 19) and Marianne (age 16½) as they come of age. They have an older half-brother, John, and a younger sister, Margaret (age 13).

The novel follows the three Dashwood sisters and their widowed mother as they are forced to leave the family estate at Norland Park and move to Barton Cottage, a modest home on the property of distant relative Sir John Middleton. There Elinor and Marianne experience love, romance, and heartbreak. The novel is set probably between 1792 and 1797 in Sussex, West England.”

So the movie opens with a man dying and he wants his second family taken care of and asks his son, John, to take care of his second wife and three daughters.

We know right away that the promise the son makes to his father on his father’s deathbed will not be kept because he already looks swarmy.

Op, yep. Swarmy to the core and his wife is even worse. She has the most evil ideas and a very pinched face. It’s no surprise her name is Fanny.

As we get to the young ladies who have been left behind, Marianne is playing a very sad song on the piano and we will be introduced to the humor injected into the film by Emma Thompson and her perfectly timed sarcasm and whit.

She asks Marianne to play something different because the music is making their mother weep even more over the death of their father.

Marianne tries a different song but it’s even more depressing than the first.

“I meant something less mournful, dearest,” Emma’s character (Elinor) quips from the other room.

It’s so funny to watch a family mourning yet feeling a bit like you want to giggle over the behavior of Marianne and the over dramatic mother who is flustered because they are being kicked out of their home by the cold and heartless half-brother and his wife.

It was an awful time, though – where men inherited everything and daughters were kicked out of their homes. These women will go from wealth to poverty very quickly which will be a shock to them but in some ways, I think they will be better off poor, without the stuck up rules of the rich back then.

Oh. Hugh Grant in his prime. Hello. Playing Edward Ferrars, Fanny’s brother.

Good grief those high collars look ridiculous, though.

He’s so polite. Unlike his sister. Odd how they were both raised in the same family and he is so much nicer.

Gemma Jones, Elizabeth Spriggs, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant, James Fleet, Greg Wise

And he and Elinor – well, I promised no spoilers but, well, the fact they get along so well is certainly making Edward’s evil sister very, very upset. It’s making Elinor’s mother hopeful because she’d love to get her house back again or at least a very nice house.

Honestly, they’re both a bit conniving. The whole idea back then that men could only marry those who were in their “class” is so disgusting and annoying. I love that Jane knew that and instead writes about marrying for love and not prestige.

Barton Cottage. Sigh. It’s so cute. So much nicer than those big, drafty mansions. Well, then again, they are shivering and grabbing extra blankets in the cottage to show how drafty it was as well.

Sir John offers the women the cottage. He is Mrs. Dashwood’s eccentric cousin with an even more eccentric wife.Yes, Sir JohnOr as I remember him – Siegfried Farnon from the original All Creatures Great and Small show from the 1980s or 70s. Whichever. I used to watch it on PBS with my mom.

Or as I remember him – Siegfried Farnon from the original All Creatures Great and Small show from the 1980s or 70s. Whichever. I used to watch it on PBS with my mom.

Ah. Colonel Brandon. Strangely attractive even though I’ve never had a thing for Alan Rickman.

Not sure how I feel about him looking at Kate Winslet. He’s probably old enough in real life to be her father. He’s probably supposed to be younger in the movie. Or not. Who knows. It was a different time.

The cinematography and scenery in this movie is so beautiful – like most of the Jane Austen movies. Sweeping landscapes and towering Victorian mansions, beautiful dresses, handsome men and women.

Enter another handsome character – John Willoughby. Alas, he might not be as dashing as we think. We will have to watch and see.

Hugh Laurie. I totally forgot he was in this. He’s the guy who played House and the man who my son says is weird to hear with an English accent and that he thinks that Hugh’s English accent is actually fake.

I can’t figure this Willoughby out. He seems so delightful and interested and invested in the family, not just Marianne, but … there’s something just not right. He wants Marianne and her family yet – I won’t say. You’ll have to watch the movie.

Again, though, the rules of class and who you could and could not date back then were just ridiculous.

Poor Elinor. She is the only stable one in the whole family it seems. Holding it all together.

Everyone around her seems completely crazy.

Lucy Steele. She breezes in and just adds to the crazy. You’ll see. Completely delusional.

I pretty much want to throttle Marianne through this entire movie.

Robert Ferrars. Eek. That is all.

Were people really this uptight in the 1700s or just the British? I know they weren’t always uptight but these period dramas just make them so…proper. I’m drawn to the characters who aren’t very proper in these movies.

Elinor seems proper in some ways, but real in others.

There are a lot of confusing twists and turns in this one.

A couple people need a good slap across the face.

One needs a right shake and wake up call, but she’s young so I’ll try to cut her some slack. Plus, there are a couple of scenes where my heart just melts for poor Marianne. She had such high hopes and fell so hard only to be rejected in such a public way.

An aside – get Colonel Brandon some blasted blankets too! He’s an old man! He could catch his death. My goodness.

Alan Rickman was such a good actor too. At one point when Marianne finally notices him – his expression from hesitant to touching. Sigh. Just swoon-worthy.

I won’t spoil the ending so I will wander off here for a bit to discuss the history of the book and some behind-the-scenes of the making of the movie.

The book was published in 1811 and was Austen’s first novel. It was not published under her name but instead, the title page simply read: written by “a lady.”

It was published in three volumes to begin with and the cost to publish them cost more than a third of Austen’s annual household income. She paid for the books to be published and barely made a profit off them. She made $178 on the 750 publications sold, which would be about $6,358 today. As a self-published author myself, I certainly feel her pain and relate/

I did not know until this week that the screenplay for the movie was written by Emma Thompson and she won an Oscar and Golden Globe for it. She was 35 at the time the film was made.

According to Wikipedia, Thompson spent five years between other projects working on the screenplay. Thompson had never written a screenplay before so many studios were not interested in taking on the project. Showing a bit of a novice writer she was, she almost lost the entire project in a computer failure.

From Wikipedia, “As Thompson mentioned on the BBC program QI in 2009, at one point in the writing process a computer failure almost lost the entire work. In panic Thompson called fellow actor and close friend Stephen Fry, the host of QI and a self-professed “geek”. After seven hours, Fry was able to recover the documents from the device while Thompson had tea with Hugh Laurie who was at Fry’s house at the time.”

The film was directed by Ang Lee, a Taiwanese director and Lindsay Doran, the producer, chose him because of his past films about complex families. He was not familiar with Jane Austen at all.

In an interview, Lee said, “I thought they were crazy: I was brought up in Taiwan, what do I know about 19th-century England? About halfway through the script, it started to make sense why they chose me. In my films, I’ve been trying to mix social satire and family drama. I realized that all along I had been trying to do Jane Austen without knowing it. Jane Austen was my destiny. I just had to overcome the cultural barrier.”

In case anyone is wondering about Thompson’s age compared to how old Elinor was supposed to be, that was a concern brought up by Thompson herself. For one, she wanted Natasha Richardson and her sister Joely to be cast as the sisters, not herself, but Lee and the studio wanted Thompson because she was becoming well known as an actress.

Thompson finally agreed but they increased Elinor’s age to 27 instead of 19 to make the idea she was a spinster more believable to modern audiences.

I think the very ending is very fitting and serves a certain person right. If you’ve seen it let me know what you think in the comments.

In case you are interested, here is Emma accepting her Golden Globe for the film.

And here you can watch the making of the film:

If you have YouTube Prime you can also watch the full movie here:

If you want to read Erin’s impression of the movie, you can read her post on her blog.

Up next week we will be watching the 2005 edition of Pride & Prejudice.

Have you seen this version of Sense and Sensibility? What did you think of it?

`10 on 10: Ten Things I want to accomplish, learn, master or create

I am finally joining up with Marsha in the Middle’s 10 on 10 today. I have forgotten to do it every other month, but here I am to talk about ten things I want to accomplish, learn, master, or create this year or in the future. I don’t know if it has to be this year but, in the future, at least.

So here we go:

1. I want to learn more about taking photos with film and developing it myself.

I have taken photographs for years, starting out in film when I was in high school. I didn’t know enough about film back then to know what I was doing. I simply took the photographs and then took them to be developed at a drug store like Rite Aid or CVS. When I worked in newspapers in college, we had a staff photographer who would develop all the film and refused to teach me how to do it when I asked.

All I knew was there was a rotating door that spun him into some dark room and he developed film until one day he didn’t anymore because we either took the photographs to Rite Aid or we started using digital cameras.

To this day, he is one of the best photographers I have ever seen, but back then he could be a real jerk to the newbies. I still wish he’d slowed down and taught me more about film photography.

2. I want to learn to cook better.

I can cook fine to make dinner for The Husband and kids, but I really want to learn more about how to cook different dishes and how to bake. Our oven has been broken for a couple of years now but we hope to have it fixed soon so that will help some of my efforts to become a better cook. I have learned more about cooking in an electric frying pan, an air fryer, and an Instapot without the oven, though.

3. I want to create a book of my dad’s writings and my grandfather’s poems and I hope to do that this year.

I already have the poems and all I have to do is typeset (old newspaper word) them into the computer and get them ready for publication. Wish me luck. My grandfather wrote poems about anything and everything. My dad writes little pieces of prose and I’d love to put them in the book as well and give it to my dad for Father’s Day.

My maternal grandmother was also a writer and poet so her work will be next on my list.

4. I want to be able to finish this book I am writing now.

I am really struggling with my latest manuscript and it is one hundred percent my fault. I agreed to join a multi-author project where there were all these rules about what I could write and how for the book I am contributing. In my own defense, there weren’t that many rules when I agreed to do it. All I knew was the book had to be written in the 1990s and it had to be a certain word length and there would be a cookbook involved that would tie all the books in the series together.

Once I signed on even more rules were thrown in and I was stuck because pulling out of the project meant leaving the other authors hanging. So I am plodding forward and asking God for help because this is not how I usually write my novels. I have my own ideas of how I want the story to go, who I want the characters to be and what the plot will be. The story is my own. In this instance, it does not feel like it is my own. Pray for me.

5. Start a clean fiction book club either online or in person

I would really love to start a book club for clean fiction either in person or online. We’d choose one book, read it for the month, and then discuss it at the end of the month. This would be easy to do, I just don’t seem to be able to slow down and do it.

6. To move forward and not hold on to the hurts of my past.

This one will not be easy for me. I have a lot of hurts from the past that I am holding on to. Almost all of them were betrayals and abandonment by people who were close to me at one time (not my parents so, no, this isn’t a therapy session. Ha!). I want to let all of that go and hold on to my word for the year – onward.

By onward I mean I want to go, “yes, I was hurt, but no I won’t react like I usually do and retreat away from that person or life. I won’t purposely ignore a person if they reach out, even if they hurt me. That doesn’t, however, mean I will fully trust them or open myself up to a friendship or relationship with them but I want to say, “That happened. They hurt me. Move on and let them live their life without me sitting and seething inside about how they hurt me.”

It will be hard for me because I put up walls very fast and behind those walls I ruminate about the hurt I’ve been inflicted. For years and years. I hope to let that go this year and in future years – or at least keep working on doing so.

7. Start a podcast with Erin and not be afraid of public speaking.

So this is actually two but they go hand in hand. Erin and I from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs want to start a podcast and ramble about whatever we ramble about. We are both trying to be brave and not only offer ourselves and others an escape from the stresses of life but maybe find ways to earn extra income for our families. How will we do that through a podcast? I have no idea. Maybe we can tell people about my books and Erin’s journals and books and who knows. The avenues to reach our goals are wide open, we just have to take them.

8. Reading more of the Bible and recording the verses I read.

I have started a yearly Bible verse reading project and I really hope to stick with it throughout the year. I want to get up in the mornings and read my verse and write it down in my journal to work on memorizing scripture and taking in what the verses really mean. How to apply them to my life, in other words.

Right now I am using a list I found on Instagram, which Erin shared with me and hopefully, I can use a list from the same account throughout the year. So far, I only have January’s list.

9. Master how to write a novel quickly.

This goes along with my other writing goals but I really do want to learn how to quickly write a novel and plot better. Right now I write most of my novels by the seat of my pants and in the writing world that is known as “pantsing.” I really hope to be able to plot a bit better in the future and bring the stories together a little faster so I can hit the deadlines I set for myself. As an indie author, I set my own deadlines for most of my books (except the book I mentioned above where deadlines were set for me.)

10. Travel more and have more experiences outside my house.

I suffer from some chronic health issues and sometimes crippling anxiety so I really would love to travel more and have some more experiences outside of my house and immediate area at some point in my life. Erin and I have discussed meeting each other halfway so we can actually meet each other in person so that is a goal for me. I also want to get over my fear of having a “spell” in public because that is one thing (along with time and money) that holds me back.

I do have vertigo and weakness spells a lot and that seems to go with whatever autoimmune issues I have (doctors haven’t really diagnosed me with anything because they just think I’m crazy and pretty much tell me so and offer me antidepressants.). I want to be able to manage them and the crazy anxiety symptoms that come as well, so I can travel further and just live a little more.

So this was my 10 on the 10th for the month. How about you? Do you have accomplishments you want to reach? Things you want to master or conquer?  Let me know in the comments and if you want to join in on Marsha’s 10 on 10, find her link up here: https://marshainthemiddle.com/10-on-the-10th-january-2024/

Comfy, Cozy Christmas Link Up Highlights

Thank you to all of you who posted on my and Erin’s Comfy, Cozy Christmas Link Up.

I wanted to highlight a few of my favorites that were posted as a thank you for taking the time to post.

I loved this list of ideas of winter activities.

Peaceful Winter Days: 15 Activities for Winter by Crazy Little Love Birds

Then there was this tour of a beautiful Christmas light display from Marsha at Marsha in the Middle

This post by Deb at Reader Buzz had me sniffling for sure. It was so touching.

I love Mary Berry so I loved this post from Joy’s Book Blog about the Ultimate Mary Berry Christmas

I also enjoyed Steph Creates Things, Decorate Your Home with DIY Winter Wooden Snowflake and Bead Garland.

If I didn’t highlight your link, please know that Erin and I still appreciate you linking up and taking part and helping us make Christmas 2023 comfy and cozy. I hope you will participate in our other link-ups throughout the year.

I hope we make this an annual tradition. Focusing on comfy and cozy books, movies, and events really creates a magical and calming atmosphere for the Christmas season and I really needed that this year.

Sunday Bookends: Romances and mysteries in reading, mysteries in watching, and a snowstorm

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.

This week I’m joining up with  Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer , Deb at Readerbuzz, and Kathyrn at  The Book Date.

What’s Been Occurring

Yesterday we were hit by a snowstorm that wasn’t as bad as we thought it was going to be but still brought about five inches of snow and cold. It was our first bigger snowstorm. Little Miss had a wonderful time sledding down the hill behind the house even after it got dark. We are grateful for a very bright light in our backyard.

We are also grateful for a bright streetlight because the kids decided to slide down our driveway and across our street around 10 at night. They had a blast.

It was too dark for photos but Zooma the Wonder Dog also had a blast. As I have mentioned before on my blog, she loves to jump up and catch snowballs that are thrown for her.

The snowstorm is set to continue today so we are hunkering down. I don’t know if we will get much more snow but the roads are supposed to be fairly messy and it is very, very cold out there right now.

Little Miss enjoyed playing in the snow much of yesterday and again today with her dad before he has to go to a second, part-time, job he recently started.

What I’ve Been Reading

This past week I finished two books – a Christian romance, Southern Snow by B.R. Goodwin, and a non-Christian mystery called  How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin.

If you like squeaky-clean books with a Christian message and romance you will like Southern Snow.

If you don’t mind some language and a very good mystery (like could not put the book down good) then you want How To Solve Your Own Murder but that one doesn’t come out until March 26 so go pre-order it.

You could also be like me and like both of them. Southern Snow is out now and on Kindle Unlimited if you have a membership to that.

This week I will be continuing Little Women, Dysfunction Junction by Robin W. Pearson, and listening to A Tall of Two Cities on Audible.

Dysfunction Junction will be out on February 6. Here is a description:

When three women receive an unexpected phone call that leaves them reeling, they have no other choice but to reckon with a lifetime of memories they’ve long tried to bury. Only in facing the past will they find their path forward.

Frances Mae Livingston’s firm grip of her family’s destructive history makes her hold her husband and four children even closer. But she’s losing bits of herself while proving to everybody and her mama that she’s enough. There’s no way she’ll repeat her mama’s mistakes, even if it kills her.

Annabelle McMillan didn’t have trouble kicking the Eastern North Carolina dust off her feet. The tough part was replanting herself in familiar soil. Now she’s blending her old life with her new husband, stepson, and unborn child. And battling old memories of abandonment and new fears of rejection.

Dr. Charlotte Winters has built a career around helping others sort through their emotional baggage. She’s also spent a lifetime refusing to unpack her own. So what if Charlotte doesn’t recall all that her mama did to her and what her daddy didn’t do for her? Her only mission is to help others help themselves…until the women from her past and the man in her future undo her well-sewn life.

At the junction of healed and hurting, broken and whole, and past and present, three women wrestle with their inability to forgive and forget in this riveting Southern family drama about sisterhood from award-winning author Robin W. Pearson.

I am also putting together a list of books I want to read this winter – including a collection of stories by Agatha Christie that I planned to read last winter but never got to. I hope to share that tomorrow or another day on the blog. It won’t be a big list because I am a slow reader. The Husband is reading John Connolly books.

The Boy and I have set A Tale of Two Cities aside for right now as we start a non-fiction book for history called Lost Names by Richard Kim, which I have started and have been swept up in. I also decided I wanted to read/listen to A Tale of Two Cities first so I can guide him when he reads it.

What We watched/are Watching

This past week I watched a lot of cozy mysteries – Poirot (with David Suchet) and Miss Scarlet and The Duke (which I am pretty much binge watching now).

What I’m Writing

If you’re new here you might not know that I write fiction books. Yes, I am an indie author and some readers do not read indie authors. That doesn’t offend me. I get it. I don’t even read a lot of indie authors.

There are a lot of not very good indie authors out there and a handful of good ones. That’s my honest opinion, even though I am an indie author.

Am I a good indie author? I’m a decent one, maybe, but recently questioned it when I put out a book that I had somehow switched two chapters on and then published the stinking book.

Oh my word I was so humiliated when I discovered it two weeks later. How did I do it? Well, it has to do with my new formatting software and how it’s very easy to move things around. So easy that two chapters were transposed without me even realizing I did it. I did not second check things before I uploaded it to Amazon because I had uploaded it before and it was fine. This time I had only made a minor change with a typo I somehow missed correcting after my editors gave it back so I didn’t think I needed to check it. Well, I learned my lesson the hard way.

Anyhow, this week I am working on a new book called Cassie that will be part of a multi-author project. It doesn’t come out until August so I have plenty of time but writing this one has been a struggle. I will admit that I now wish I had not joined a project that had so many rules with it that were provided by someone else and not myself. I will not be doing another project like this ever, but I feel this one is pushing me creatively and that’s a good thing.

I hope to have Cassie complete by the end of February, the beginning of March. After that, I hope to start a new Gladwynn Mysteries book and I think this time around I will share it here on the blog more than I did with the last book. I plan to move my books out of Kindle Unlimited so I can share and sell them anywhere I want. I will be doing that in the spring.

If you want to learn more about my books and what they are about, you can click HERE.

What I’m Listening To

Right now I am listening to A Tale of Two Cities on Audible.

Photos from Last Week

Here are some photos from our snowstorm:

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.