Tag: The Uninvited

Pushing Forward Back March/April 2019

March began with a decision the first weekend to read what I wanted and then continued with a decision the second weekend that what I wanted to read were my own books for a reading challenge. By the third weekend, I had One Foot in the Grave, but I was still reading, and by the fourth weekend, I had received bookmail from a fellow Sunday Saloner. I haven’t read that book yet, but I did read Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew J. Sullivan and The Uninvited by Dorothy Macardle, for the reading challenge.

March also began with simple plans for Lent, the first of which included a vacation day for Ash Wednesday that I took and that I am bookending with a vacation day on Good Friday in mid-April. Another plan was to read Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith by Barbara Brown Taylor, which I am reading during the Sundays of Lent.

Other things that happened during the month were:

  • My wife and I ditched Facebook (no link, no blog post…yet).
  • I changed my blog theme (visit my blog on a browser to see the new theme).
  • I started a new pay week tradition (every two weeks) of going to a restaurant in a nearby town for breakfast on Saturdays or Fridays, depending on when I work on a Saturday.
  • I attempted to start a new routine for mornings and evenings during the week to cut down on screentime and be able to read more on weeknights.
  • My wife and I hung a few framed photographs, prints, and local artwork on the walls in our living room.
  • My wife and I got tickets for a wine event on Seneca Lake, one of the Finger Lakes in New York, on the weekend of my birthday and booking a room at a bed and breakfast nearby for the Saturday night before my birthday.
  • My wife and I watched Can You Ever Forgive Me?, which we both thought was a little slow to start, but picked up, especially toward the end.

April begins with big changes, starting with an oil change (get it?) this Tuesday and new hours for the weekend at the library where I work. We are adding Sunday hours and modifying Saturday hours to match the Sunday hours. That all begins this coming weekend. Also on Saturday, my wife turns 49 (she gave me permission to tell…“I don’t care…own your age…I always hated that ‘tee-hee, I’m turning 29’…Don’t be a little bitch about getting older.”). We are going out for brunch (yes, that restaurant in the nearby town) and getting together with neighbors to play 500 Rummy.

On the reading front, I am giving up on the aforementioned reading challenge (when am I going to learn that I suck at reading challenges and readalongs and the such?) because I really do like reading not only what I want but also when I want. That said, I was glad to read the two books I did for the challenge: the first, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, because I did eventually want to read it, and the second, The Uninivited, because I wanted to read it especially since my friend John highly recommended it to me. It was good and I think if you liked the movie Rebecca or the book (which I haven’t read) that you’d like it. A movie also was made of it, that I need to find. I also want to thank Anne of the blog My Head is Full of Books for having the challenge and I wish her and the other participants the best of success on the challenge.

As for the rest of the month, I have two back-to-back (week) Fridays off in April, that includes the aforementioned Good Friday off, so I plan to put those two Fridays to good use:

  • The second Friday of the month, I will be putting out stuff for “cleanup week,” a bi-annual tradition in our town, spring and fall during which townsfolk put out stuff they don’t want or sell it in yard sales before it gets taken to the landfill. We are getting rid of a few chairs that we don’t use, including some kitchen table chairs that we plan to replace with a more comfortable chair in which I can sit when I read my Sunday Salon posts Sunday mornings.
  • The third Friday of the month, I plan on going to church in the afternoon for Good Friday services.

I am working two Saturdays this month, but because of the aforementioned change in schedule for Saturdays, they won’t be as long of days as they used to be, so I’ll have time to blog more…

…speaking of blogs, if you ever wondered how they get started, here you go:

How was your month of March? Read any good books, seen any good movies and/or TV shows, listened to any good music? What was the highlight of your month? What are you looking forward to in April? Share in the comments.

One Foot In The Grave, but I’m still reading

Last weekend, I joined the “My Own Books Reading Challenge,” which started Friday, which I also happened to have off from work, and ends May 15. So….I read and finished my first of 10 books that I selected for the challenge. The book was Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew J. Sullivan and while it wasn’t as good as my first seven books read this year, it still was a pretty good mystery by a first-time novelist, who is an award-winning short story writer. I’d be interested in seeing his next work.

My next book for the challenge is The Uninvited by Dorothy Macardle, which my friend John highly recommended. After that, I have six others that I mentioned last week and two others: Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith by Barbara Brown Taylor, which I’m reading every Sunday during Lent, and Now and Then: The Poet’s Choice Columns, 1997-2000, by Robert Hass. I am planning to read those two periodically over the next two months. I did start on Leaving Church, but as I’m only two chapters into it, I can’t tell you much about it yet. I haven’t delved into the Hass book yet, but might do that this afternoon, I’m thinking.

Besides reading, I’ve been watching One Foot in the Grave on Britbox. The TV show, which aired mostly in the 1990s, is a British comedy about a man who is forced to take early retirement at age 60 and thinks his life is over. I find it kind of funny that I am discovering this right before I am turning 50 and feel a little (okay, a lot) like Melissa Firman, another Sunday Saloner, who wrote how she feels about turning 50 this year that ti-i-i-ime is (not really) on my side. My sister thinks I’m being dramatic about it, and to a certain degree, she is right, but I also understand and empathize with what Melissa says in her blog post.

Last weekend I also received a lot of feedback and comments on my decision not to read one book for the challenge and read another instead. To see what prompted the discussion, scroll down to the end of the original post and then read the comments, if you want. I always encourage comments and do my best to respond to each and every comment. When you sign in, leave a link to your blog or edit it so there is a link and I will visit your blog if I don’t already have your blog in my feed reader.

In other blog-related news, I updated my theme so if you are visiting from a feed reader, come visit my blog on a browser on your desktop, laptop or mobile device. I used a photo from a vacation to the Bahamas (our only vacation to the Bahamas) in 2006 for the header as I did with my old Facebook page. I think with that, I’ll leave you, thinking warm, happy thoughts of being on a beach in the Caribbean (which I just learned I didn’t know how to spell).

So how was your week? Reading, watching, listening to anything good? Share that and any thoughts on this post in the comments and if you have a blog, share your link to the linkup for the Sunday Salon over on the group administrator’s blog. If you wish to also post a link at Facebook, you can also do that.