Fantasy Book Club discussion
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I finally finished my week plus long project of moving the fish pond to the other side of the house. It came out pretty good. I documented it with about a dozen pictures on Facebook here:https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?s...
I'm hoping it will look a lot better in a couple of years. I need to get some more stones from the stream & plan to buy a bunch more fantasy creatures from the gal who sold me the fairy princess during the Ren Faire in June. Father's Day is during the fair, so I have a feeling I'll get a few as gifts. Since my wife & kids never know what to get me, I'm sure I will.
:)
Helen wrote: "Sorry for sounding so British, but we've had all the sunshine!"Wait a second, I thought you Brits were all about the rain. What happened?
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Wait a second, I thought you Brits were all about the rain. What happened?"
I don't know but hey, I got slightly sunburnt walking to school!
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Wow! That looks great. I get frogs in the summer but not sure from where as I don't have a pond. I also have a road that lives under the wheely bin, there were two last year. Not noticed any after dark activity but I also at the front of the house :)
Jim wrote: "I finally finished my week plus long project of moving the fish pond to the other side of the house. It came out pretty good. I documented it with about a dozen pictures on Facebook here:https://w..."
That looks amazing, nice work!
Thanks! It's nice when so much hard work pays off so well.
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So these have turned out to be 16 weeks which means they are as tall as her but skinny and gangly, the weight of her whiskers. She's a hissing monster who doesn't like being banished from this one room - I'm in it and she's my shadow. They have only had one person in their life, since the rescue, who slept in the room they were kept in so didn't do holding or fussing as she was asleep.
They don't do people. They aren't completely hiding from me now but close. They have learnt to hiss, at Izzy and me :(
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Argh, I somehow missed this post! Life has been really time-consuming for me as well, but in a good way! How are you doing, and if you're not tired of answering this, how is your mother doing? I hope she's improved.
I'm off for 5 days starting last Saturday. I finally got the rotten coon who has been making my life miserable. Not only has my fish pond & bird feeders all been left alone, but we finally got some zucchini. Actually, suddenly we had half a dozen. Too much to eat at once, so what to do?Zucchini bread. No problem. I generally make a couple of batches every year using a recipe from my mother. Until my daughter talked me into using her bread machine since it's easier & makes less mess. Hah! I managed to put the ingredients in just backwards the first time. Well, the birds are happy. The second loaf came out looking & smelling pretty good, but I used up more time & dishes.
Garden Lasagna is basically lasagna made with zucchini taking the place of the noodles. Good stuff, easy to make. Again, a recipe from Mom & I won't be using anything but the regular oven this time!
;)
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Helen wrote: "Oh that sounds great. Zucchini is courgette right? I’d like to try the bread."Apparently. I had to look that up. It's a squash. I wound up making bread & butter pickles using it, too. I haven't tasted them yet, but the juice tasted the same & when I told Mom about it she said I'd never been able to tell the difference. Apparently she used cucumbers or zucchini, whichever one she had enough of, for years. I'm going to taste them tonight & might make up more. Now that the coon is gone, I'm drowning in zucchini.
It looks as if the cantaloupe are doing fine, too. I've found 7 so far, but the zucchini has been crowding out the tomato plants. I've never seen such big plants or leaves. I've had to prune them because half a dozen zucchini got hung up in the leaf growth & went bad. That led to one large section rotting off one plant.
I planted 2 each of the zucchini, tomato, & cantaloupe on the big dirt pile in the horse field that is mostly their manure gone to dirt. I left one side open to pile fresh manure against. No water, minimal weeding, & the best crop ever.
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My kittens are finding their feet. The nervous tabby is becoming fearless and sprinting about. The other is still very timid.
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15 mins later, they are actually curling up to sleep and I’m wide awake.
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I hate when that happens. My cat usually decides that 4am is a good time to be needy and demand food and tummy rubs.
They're not OUR cats, we're THEIR humans :p
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No new cats here, but I did meet a bunch yesterday -- went and spent an hour in the cat room at www.thecafemeow.com.
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We had a new grandson this week - Ryan Gregory. No, I don't know size or anything, but he's healthy. His older brother turns 5 next week, so the kids have their hands full. He's 600 miles away in MD, so we won't get to see anything but pictures for a while, thankfully. Marg (my wife) & Erin (my daughter) will stop to see him in December when they go to our oldest boy's wedding in RI.Mom is now 6 weeks into her broken thigh & starting PT. She driving herself there. Says getting in & out of her Tahoe is time consuming with her walker, but it's too far to go in the Gator. She's been driving herself around the farms in the Gator to oversee the work being done.
We're supposed to look at 2 horses this weekend, but I don't know if we'll do it. My wife & her bus monitor treated themselves to a sandwich when they got fuel in the school bus & got food poisoning a couple of days ago. They've both been pretty miserable.
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Every year zooms by faster. I swear I don't know where the time goes. My son says our time sense is a function of our age. A day is forever in the life of a child, but it's a blip for an oldster.I trust everyone has winterized their homes? I've pulled the fish pond pump & closed all the vents. Heaters are all working in the house, shop, tack room, fish pond, horse water trough. Of course, one of the horses had to chew through the cord of the water trough's heater immediately. It wasn't plugged in, unfortunately. That would have taught them a lesson. I repaired it & hopefully have it blocked off well enough. A tough proposition since they want to play with anything new.
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I'm barely starting to wear warm clothing, and have yet to use my coat :O
But I feel you... I lived in Sweden 2 years, and those winters... *shivers*
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Your son is correct the time/age perspective is a true thing. When a child goes from 3 years old to 4 years old that year is 1/4 of his/her life. When a person goes from 59 to 60.....well you get the picture. Any way it kind of went without saying but I always found it really interesting to think about. Just imagine how quickly time would go for someone who lives for thousands of years. Would they have a clock that measures days instead of minutes? Thinking like this is why I love Fantasy.
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We have frost-free taps outside, so I don't usually wrap them until it really gets cold - constant temps below the 20s with dips into the single digits (Fahrenheit). Otherwise, they're fine.
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I've got an interview tomorrow, I've never had one before. I went from being a student onto the 'pool' where schools request new teachers, to supply and then was kept on at my current school from the supply post. Bit nervous!
Good luck Helen...I'm sure you'll knock their socks off :)
Good luck, Helen! We dip down to about -15 or -20C, but don't usually stay there long. -10C isn't unusual. We haven't gotten above 0C since the night before last. Still got rain, though. It was right at 0C when I drove in this morning at 5am. Everything is covered in ice, although the roads were pretty good. Almost all was just wet & the few patches of black ice weren't a problem driving in for me.
I expect there will be school delays & a mess since the temperature usually drops a degree or 2 by the time dawn comes around. The various hollows & valleys often catch slightly colder air, too. Lots of little roads that won't get salted in time so will be icy sheets.
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Good luck Helen! You'll do great.I've gone native here in Phoenix, Arizona - It's in the low 60's and I'm shivering if I don't wear at least two layers. But I miss the snow. One of my favorite memories is on top of a moonlit ski hill listening to the snowflakes land.
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Jim, I can't believe how cold your weather gets. It amazes me that my country is so obsessed with weather seeing that our temperatures barely shift, 0-25c most of the year. This year we hit 30 a few times, I bought an expensive fan, hahaha.
Wow, Helen. That sounds idyllic. Our temps fluctuate that much in the spring & fall. It's not unusual for us to have a few days of 35C weather in a row during the summer. We're in the middle of the continent & our weather sweeps up from the Gulf, down from west of the Great Lakes or in from the Great Plains. Those systems tend to meet over us & there aren't any large bodies of water to mediate the temperature. So we need both good heating & A/C systems, although we use ours less than most since we work outdoors a good deal. Still nice for sleeping.
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The other thing that reminds me of that is the tide. I grew up in south Wales in a town with the second highest tide in the world (this isn't verified, just what we were taught). The tide goes so far out that you can't see it. Then you go on holiday and discover that some tides don't move!
Question, are there any fantasy groups for people who exclusively listen to fantasy audiobooks? Due to my illness, reading is too exhausting, listening however, brings me hours of joy. I can' read/write for short periods of time, but so far since joining all the books haven't been in my local audio library :( so I'm curious to know if there are any other groups that might fit my needs?feel free to msg me :)
I don't know of one, Cj. We saw the new Fantastic Beasts movie last night & really liked it, although now we have to see the next. Too much left open. We had the movie theater to ourselves since they had no internet & could only accept cash or tickets from Fandango. They're splitting from Regal Cinemas & the new internet provider had an issue with their installation.
I really hope going independent works out for them. The best thing was the lack of loud, long, & annoying commercials at the start of the movie. There were a few trailers for new movies & then the movie started. That was so much nicer!
The snack bar was every bit as ridiculously priced, though. $10.50 for a small slurpee & a pack of Junior Mints. Tickets for 3 adults & 1 senior were $36, so not too bad.
Cj wrote: "Question, are there any fantasy groups for people who exclusively listen to fantasy audiobooks? Due to my illness, reading is too exhausting, listening however, brings me hours of joy. I can' read/..."Like Jim, I don't know of any clubs that only listen to audiobooks.
I have three libraries that I use and four different library apps , Overdrive, Hoopla, Cloud Library and RBdigital so my hit rate for available books is pretty high......much better than it used to be.
Fantasy Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Double Solitaire (other topics)Assassin's Fate (other topics)
The Shadow of the Gods (other topics)
The Lost War (other topics)
Foundling (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Melinda M. Snodgrass (other topics)D.M. Cornish (other topics)
China Miéville (other topics)
Today, I went back to work after a nice week on holidays (went to Spain :D :D :D). It was pouring. Train conductors are on strike (as usual...) and because of that, I spent 2 hours blocked in a trafic jam. Someone spilled coffee on my shirt (white, of course). The person that was supposed to look after my case while I was on holiday did absolutely nothing. So I have an entire week of work to catch up with.
It's only Monday....
😭