January '24 Roundup & Ramblings

Raw Data:

Novels – 14 ⭤

Short Stories – 0 ⭤

Manga/Graphic Novels – 0 ⭤

Comics – 1 ⭤

Average Rating – 3.23 ↓

Pages – 3057 ↑

Words – 1060K ⭤

The Bad:

Stalking the Dragon – 2stars of Ultimate Boring!!!!!

Woman in White – 1star of Wilkie Collins. Overwriting. Everything. All The Time.

The Good:

Second Foundation – 5Stars of all the SF goodness

Weaponized – 4Stars of Polity body horror

Movie:

John Wick 4 was a torturous, bloated movie of violent excess. I don’t have any thing else to say.

Miscellaneous Posts:

• Bookstooge Reviews 2023
• PSA: WP Updates
• [Art] Pain…
• Deathgrip – MTG 4E
• [Art] …Suffering
• Deathlace – MTG 4E
• Marvel Champions – The Opening
• Death Ward – MTG 4E
• Desert Twister – MTG 4E

Personal:

What a busy month. Looking at our wall calendar, we had multiple things going on every single week. I am not a fan of having commitments to others that often. A body needs down time, alone time, so it can recharge.

Had a couple of snowstorms, both of which were decent sized. Of course, a week later it either rained and washed it all away, or it was up to 50degrees and melting like crazy.

Taking Friday’s off from writing on the blog has helped tremendously. Just seeing that “Free Day” on my google calendar is a weekly reminder and it’s been good for me emotionally. While Wednesday’s haven’t worked out quite the way I was hoping, knowing that they are only open for Review posts does help me. I read enough that writing reviews, while monotonous at times, doesn’t have the same creative pressure that a non-review post does. Mainly because the reviews are for myself and I just don’t care. Non-review posts are usually written with some random idea whereby I hope to engage your interest and elicit comments from you all 😉

Our church finalized the hiring of a new assistant pastor (not sure what his official title is, as he’s still studying at seminary and so doesn’t have his doctorate yet). He’s in his mid-20’s, married to his highschool sweetheart, with one little kiddo. He’s some sort of engineer at one of the big car companies and he likes people. In short, he’s everything I wanted to be 20 years ago. But I’m me and no amount of moaning or whining is going to change that 😉 I am really hoping for his success out here (they are moving from Michigan) and that he gets along with the majority of the congregation. He made a great impression on us when they came out to visit at the end of ’23. I do admit, I am looking forward to seeing how a young man proceeds in this day and age, as the challenges he will face will be totally different from what I might have back in my 20’s. Being witness to the rising of the next generation of Christians is sad, scary, exhilarating and oh so encouraging, all at once.

Our cable bill went significantly up this month. I am looking at other options but I am afraid it will impact us, I just don’t know how yet. Not looking forward to yet another change. Using our phones as hotspots and tethering is one option. That would mean I can’t stream stuff on our bluray player anymore but I don’t know how much of an impact that would actually have. But a 50% jump in the rate is not something we can sustain.

Cover Love:

Shadow of Anubis wins this quite handily. The Arcane books are just gorgeous and I’m ok with that. And Dr Bell is looking shaaaarp in that vest!

Plans for Next Month:

Going to be doing a buddy read with Lashaan for Pride and Prejudice. Looking forward to that.

Other than that, it should be business as usual. I do promise that this month’s Art will be happier than the Pain & Suffering of January 😉