Onceuponatime
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Posts posted by Onceuponatime
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Speaking of kitties! I don't know if anyone remembers the kitten we rescued last August. Here he is napping on me while I read. This is a daily ritual. He is between nine and ten months old now. This new format lets me upload pictures from my ipad!
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I've been reading fluffy escapist mysteries. I finished The Weekend Was Murder by Joan Lowry Nixon and am now reading the Vintage Caper by Peter Mayle. I hope to finish book three of Middlemarch today.
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I haven't finished this part yet. I stopped reading around the time the board shut down. I was about halfway through. One reason was Fred's predicament and his poor choices were making me feel anxious. At the time I was worried about leaving my kids for a week. I guess I can get back to it now.
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1 hour ago, Jane in NC said:
Yes, I fell in love with Muriel Spark this year. How is your dad? And Polk County is gorgeous!
I'm not sure how to answer the question. As good as he can be, I guess. He is not depressed. He had the first chemo round the week before last. Delayed chemo effects began while we were there last week. He lost his appetite and that irritated him more than anything else. The brother who does not live with my dad and I have done a lot of communicating what we hear. We both get slightly different stories from dad and my other brother. He has also been communicating with the cancer research nurse assigned to dad's case. The cancer is more extensive than we had been originally told by my dad. We've accomplished a lot of business stuff and mapping out schedules for the next couple of months. Dad was very helpful and willng to get stuff done. The chemo's first effect was to make his breathing easier, which helped.
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I read A Meddler and her Murder by Joyce Porter and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark. The first was found in the thrift store. It is a British mystery featuring a very non-feminine woman called the Hon Con (Honorable Constance) and her "dear friend" who keeps house for her. The Hon Con fancies herself a detective and tries to out detect the local police in a murder on the next street over.
The second book I found at the Polk County, NC, library book sale, while I was visiting my dad last week. I remembered that Jane (I think ?) had recently read it. I made my husband take me to the library when we had some time to ourselves. When we walked in the door, I gasped. It is a gorgeous modern library. You enter the reception area from the parking lot, only to find out it is a loft above the main library which goes down behind a hill. The back wall is full of long windows that look out onto the woods and there is an outdoor reading deck. I asked the librarian how old it was. She proudly said it was eleven years old. Then she added, "We are so fortunate. Isn't it awesome." I agreed.
I'm not quite sure what I think of the book.
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Hi, everyone.
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My clubs are back wth no content.
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Clubs I do not belong to:
Divorce Support Group
International Homeschoolers
and a club that appears to be represented by a period. (.)
Club I want back in: Literary Hub
Club I started: I can't remember the name, lol, but I think it is called Nonbelievers or Atheist Support Group. It was private.
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On April 7, 2018 at 7:07 AM, Jane in NC said:
This is a test post. Sending thanks as well to those who have posted navigational tricks.
My old photo was lost in the conversion which leads me to wonder what else was lost...
I'm glad to see you made it back.
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Through dna testing, and with my help, my mother recently found out who her biological father was. He had passed away in 1983. Mom's mother had three husbands and my mother was told she was concieved from a young service man man whose name she was never told. We have managed to piece together the general story. The man himself may not have known my mother existed. The nice part is mom found out she has a half sister and half brother, they were born much later. They have been very kind. At first they were skeptical, but they shared the amount of dna of half siblings and no other relationship was possible. Plus all the locations and dates added up. We have been getting to know the woman on facebook and there are so many coincidental similarities in our families that it's eerie.
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Mine is without tomato sauce. I use the microwave trick and then remove the large veins and make mine all finger sized (so larger leaves may be cut into 2 or 3 pieces)
Filling: calrose rice, ground beef or lamb, 7 spices (not the Chinese one, the middle eastern version) I eyeball the ratio. We like them meatier than some.
Fill and roll.
Line bottom of stockpot with some peeled, sliced potatoes (these are yummy as they absorb the flavors)
Layer the cabbage rolls adding in peeled garlic cloves between layers (some smash the garlic for more garlicky flavor). Cover with an upside down glass or ceramic plate. Then mix lemon juice with water and pour over till you can just see the liquid level even with the top layer of rolls. Cover pot and put on low heat for several hours. You can check them and add more water/lemon juice if it is getting low. Be generous with the lemon juice as the lemon and garlic combined make the dish.
I made cabbage rolls last night, the Betty Crocker version with a tomato sauce. Your version sounds amazing. A question: Is your rice cooked first, or raw, when mixed with the meat. Also, what spices are usually in the 7 spice mixture? Thanks.
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Wow! Rose, I had no idea what you were going through till I popped on here. I wish safety for you and yours. A friend of mine who recently moved to California posted on facebook this morning that her husband was in the hospital with burned feet from running outside in his flip flops to put out a flash fire. Fire trucks came through thier neighborhood to wet everything down soon afterwards.
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My spooky reading has commenced! This week I read two short anthologies of spooky stories from famous writers: Great Ghost Stories and Great Tales of Suspense. I'm currently reading A Discovery of Wtiches by Deborah Harkness. Last week, I buzzed through Crosstalk by Connie Willis (not a spooky). It wasn't one of my favorites by her but it held my attention. She captured the harrassed feeling of a life of constant connection very well. I'm also working my way slowly through the collected works of Robert Ingersoll.
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Kazuo Ishiguro has won the Nobel Prize!
How many of his books have you read? Any Favorites? I've read Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go, and When We Were Orphans.
Has anyone read the one that has an Arthurian setting?
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I love spooky October reading!
Right now I'm finishing The Daughter of Time and I love it just as much the second time around. It really shows how history is written by the winners, and that what you think you know about the past may not be what actually happened. After reading the biography of Robert Ingersoll, I've started reading his collected works, found online. I find his writing style very much like Mark Twain's, who is said to have been influenced by Ingersoll.
A little self promotion here: Twenty years ago I researched and wrote a children's biography of Sweyn Forkbeard for SWB's writing contest. I didn't win, but I still had the manuscript hanging around. So, I decided to self publish. Today and tomorrow, the book is offered free on Amazon Kindle.The link is in my signature, if I did it right.
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Hi, I think I've missed a couple of weeks. Time is flying by. We are already entering our sixth week of school. I never finished The Stockholm Octavo. I lost interest halfway through when it got r-rated. The Tomb in Turkey was an average mystery.
Last week I read a couple of juvenile books for fun: Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer and Emmy and the Incredible Shrinkng Rat. I don't Remember if I mentioned reading My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber. I'm over halfway through The Great Agnostic by Susan Jacoby, and I've started on The Daughter of Time for October's book club meeting. It will be my second reading.
This afternoon I read Autumnal Tints by Thoreau. Highly recommended.
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I hardly read at all last week, what with ds3 trying to navigate college technology, ds4 starting his 8th grade work, and.....our surprise adopted 6 week old kitten.
My neighbor was walking her dogs and found the kitten by a nearby government building. It was on its own and crying. She thought maybe a feral mother cat was moving its kittens. But when they came by again later it was still there and came up to them when they called it.* She called me to see if I was interested in taking it in. So after a dropping a couple hundred at the vet for the extended "kitty care package," we appear to have a cat. He is in very good health. We have only had older cats before, so the constant supervision Oscar needs is a little exhausting, but everyone in the family has bonded with him.
*Our rural county gets a lot of abandoned animals, so that's probably how Oscar got there.
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Simon Brett has a mystery series with Mrs. Pargeter, a widow of an ex crime syndicate boss. It has a lot of humor.
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Our eclipse viewing was about 88%. We had two pair of official NASA eclipse glasses and one homemade ceareal box pinhole projector. At the peak the atmosphere was quite eerie. It was not much darker than when a storm is brewing, but there was a palpable quiet hush. We live in a rural town, all bird sounds ceased and the crickets started chirping like they do at dusk.
A funny story: My oldest son lives an hour away. He ordered a pack of ten eclipse glasses minutes before a company sold out. When he got the package, there were twenty glasses inside. He gave some away to his inlaws and friends and sold the rest, making more than he had paid out. He was at work during the eclipse and had only one pair with him. It turned out he was the only one there with the glasses so he ended up sharing them with half a dozen people.
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Well, folks, no job this time.
Ds 3 started full time college classes today. Ds 4 and I start school tomorrow. It will be my 25th year homeschooling.
I'm currently reading non fiction by Arthur C. Clarke called The Treasure of the Great Reef. I found it in a thrift store. I also have been dipping into a compilation of Lord Peter stories by Dorothy Sayers.
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When did they think they'd get back to you?
They didn't say, but they have been very quick to respond to everything. Plus, they took down the listing. Hopefully that means they have picked someone. It's Friday, so I think I should find out next week.
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Thanks! I wore the skirt. The interview seemed to go very well, but now I have to wait till they get back to me. This is nerve wracking.
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What should I wear to my interview at the library? Standard Black pants, grey pants, or navy skirt? I have one top that goes with all if them so that's not a problem. I have nice black flats, true blue flats, and muted silvery grey flats. I can't wear heels. I should have thought this out days ago. Help me make up my mind.
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I'm currently reading The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin and loving it. It is much better than Zevin's Elsewhere. The story revolves around the life of a bookstore owner. It is mostly charming, a little funny, and a little bittersweet. I hope the end is not sad.
Guess what? I have an interview on Friday for a small weekend job, in a small library, as an assistant librarian!
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April 15 to 21 -- Reading
in Topics
Posted
I wish we were private again. I have a mini rant on that topic, having been recently subjected to a facebook article on essential oils and cancer that raised my blood pressure. It had nothing to do with dad, but he's not doing well. So, it made me more irritated than I might have been.
I finished The Vintage Caper and the third book of Middlemarch. I need to read Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers for my next book club meeting. I've also started the Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits. Mysteries are wonderfully distracting.