April '26 Circum et Pervagatus

 

Raw Data:

Novels/Novellas - 13 -

Short Stories - 0 -

Manga/Graphic Novels - 0 -

Comics - 1 -

Average Rating - 3.25 ↓

Pages - 2955 ↑

Words - 1088K ↑

The Bad:

Tower of Terror - 2.5stars of snoozefestapalooza!

14 of My Favorites in Suspense - 2.5stars of wallowing in the gutter

The Good:

Hard Magic - 5Stars of really good urban fantasy

Shadows Linger - 4stars of pretty good re-reading

Movie:

Resident Evil: Extinction, the third in the RE film series, really amps up the tension but falls down pretty hard in most other areas. Decent but my least favorite of the series.

Miscellaneous Posts:

• How Do You Follow Blogs?
• He is Risen!
• Lifelace - MTG 4E
• Off-Air
• Imperatoris Chronicorum II
• Lifetap - MTG 4E
• [Art] Seasonal Trees
• Lightning Bolt - MTG 4E
• The Dirge of Porky Chunkins
• Living Artifact - MTG 4E

Personal:

Paid our taxes. We have the minimum taken out, so we usually owe some at year's end. I began doing that a long time ago when someone told me that "getting a refund" from the Feds was just giving them an interest free loan with MY money. I've never looked at the "refund" the same again. Took me about an hour, as I had all the paperwork necessary on hand. Just glad it's over with for another year.

Spring is here and we're already in drought conditions. I really don't understand that, what with all the snow we got this past winter, but that's what the weather people say. Considering how early it is for that, I foresee a very uncomfortable summer with lots of ticks.

The bot views are back, with a vengeance. March had kind of tapered off and I was hoping maybe I could use April though the end of the year, but nope, after the first week I kept getting hit. 600-1200 views a day is NOT normal for this blog, especially when I see the same posts getting hit day after day 10 times a day. Makes me wonder what Wordpress is doing, besides absolutely nothing I mean.

My Devilreads experiment is going decent but no better. Not doing reviews has kept me out of reach of the wokescolds and other such finger waggers there. The feed is atrocious though. I can't customize what I actually see so I end up with a lot of garbage as people "update" the percentage of the books they are reading. Overall, the site is not conducive to someone as words oriented as I am or who wants one on one interaction.

Cover Love:

The Tower of the Elephant, a Conan novella by Robert Howard. While not quite accurate, it really does portray the situation very well. And it's just plain cool looking :-)

March '26 Circum et Pervagatus

 

Raw Data:

Novels/Novellas - 13 ↑

Short Stories - 0 ↓

Manga/Graphic Novels - 0 -

Comics - 1 -

Average Rating - 3.32 ↑

Pages - 2667 ↑

Words - 934K ↑

The Bad:

Grunge - 2stars of REALLY bad theology

The Hero and the Crown - 2stars of teen girl cringiness

The Good:

The Doorbell Rang - 4stars of Nero Wolfe, fightin' da mahn!

Drumindor - 4stars of returning to a beloved franchise

Movie:

Apocalypse, the second in the Resident Evil movie franchise, was fun. I like these movies :-)

Miscellaneous Posts:

• Sun Lamp Review
• Land Tax - MTG 4E
• Daylight Saving: The Vanishing Hour
• Leviathan - MTG 4E
• Imperatoris Chronicorum I
• Ley Druid - MTG 4E
• [Art] Maiden of Spring 2026
• Library of Leng - MTG 4E
• Who Bookstooge Is, According to AI
• Lifeforce - MTG 4E

Personal:

We have a saying here in New England: "In Like a Lion, Out like a Lamb". This is in reference to March's weather. You can also reverse it. So if March starts off, say, by dumping almost 2feet of snow on you and then continues to snow every week, well, that's coming in like a lion. It means we're supposed to get gradually better and ease into April with warmer temps and smaller amounts of moisture. Ha! Ha I say. March came roaring in like a lion and dragged our carcass all over the place the entire month and then we got ticks from that lion when he left. Boooooo!

Work has changed a bit. We had one of the crew chiefs (we have 3 crews, each consisting of 2 men) leave end of February, beginning of March and one of the other instrument operators (not a crew chief) left last Friday. So we are down to 2 crews, just as the spring is coming and our busy season is starting to ramp up. Not that we haven't been busy before, mind you. There is a lot of work and we don't have the manpower to handle it. I'm glad I don't have to deal with that problem in the office.

The medication that Mrs B has been taking for close to 15 years now for her crohns disease is no longer effective so her GI dr (gastroenterologist) is trying to switch her to something else. We'll see how that shakes out with insurance. It'll be the same battle as her old medication but on a new hill, sigh. I'm also dealing with my own insulin changes but without the help of a Endocrinologist, just my family practice doctor. It is just going from name brand to generic, so it's more about the doctors office filling out the prescription correctly so the insurance accepts it. Let me digress for a second...

(Health Insurance is the worst thing to happen to our medical system here in the US, ever. There have been times that I have wanted to off every single Health Insurance CEO and their entire board of directors. They will burn for their crimes in the afterlife, for sure!)

Mrs B and I were introduced to the card game Munchkins last year and for Christmas we got 7 of the expansions to the game. We've been playing a game a couple of times a month and it's been fun. It is a simple game but with just enough complexity to keep me interested while not being so complex that Mrs B throws up her hands in despair (like Magic the Gathering). I like it enough that I'm even considering getting the Munchkins: Warhammer 40,000 version :-D That would all depend on whether Mrs B will play that or not.

Finally, since I changed the boring "My Week" posts to the sizzling and exciting "Imperatoris Chronicorum", I decided to latinize these Monthly Roundup & Rambling posts as well, because nothing says sizzling and exciting like a re-branding of the same exact product ;-)
Ave, Caesar Bookstooge, morituri te salutant!

Cover Love:

Nothing was good enough to take the effort to put a full size picture in my dropbox account, create and edit the dropbox link so that WP will accept it and then put it here. Sometimes it is worth it and sometimes not. This was a "Not" month.

Plans for Next Month:

RE: Extinction will be reviewed next week.

Magic cards every Monday! Whooowheee ;-)

Exactly the same as this month. I'm still fighting the (losing) battle to keep Wednesdays free but I'm not giving in completely.

FREEEEEEEDOM!!! (to not blog if I don't want to)