August 2024

Y’all it’s September ummm, 5. I think, I could look at the date, but honestly my head is hurting and that gives you an idea of what August was like.

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Week 1

The first week of August was our vacation in Galveston with my brother and his family. It was awesome and a great way to spend one of the last weeks with the kids before they headed off to college.

My nephew really wanted to play D&D so Jeff created a fun campaign for everyone to play, and we had fun doing that. We spent a lot of time playing on the beach, which means there is not a lot of pictures, because you do not take the camera into the ocean.

I managed to not get a sunburn, which I feel pretty proud of, there were an astonishingly large number of mosquitoes this year, and this is the first year we really had a lot of jellyfish, which had several of us getting stung by them. Which was so not cool.

I do realize this sounds incredibly boring and I have told no amusing stories, but my head is hurting and I don’t know how to tell them in an amusing way right now, so I’ll come back and finish writing this later.

Books read

• Callie and the Pumpkin Seed– a fun Cinderella retelling
• Ignite– an interesting fantasy that explores escaping from a controlling family
• Regency Rumors– a Regency mystery series, which is really fun because it has a companion novel
• Eugenia– which has the main character of the previous novel in the background as this all-knowing can solve anything it’s quite fascinating
• The Debutante– book 2 in the mystery series, there is a bit of an over-arching mystery
• Grace– which is the companion to The Debutante and the two of them lead to
• Clarendon Estate– which solves both the overarching mystery, and the unique mystery of the book, and sets up a possible new mystery, but sadly there is not yet another book in this series.

I also think I wrote down the books I read on the wrong week because I swear I read these books on a different week, oh well.

Games played:

• Clank (my review)

Week 2

Okay, so I love Clank, it’s a super fun game, and Superman and I have been talking about wanting to get Clank Legacy forever, so I decided to buy it for myself for my birthday, well a little late, and so I did. so we’ve been playing it a lot during August. And by a lot I mean we played through the entire storyline, all 12 or so games. It is a well-designed legacy game and if you at all like Clank I highly recommend picking up Clank Legacy.

But as to other events.

While we were in Galveston we had some MREs that we ate with the cousins and Superman and I decided to go on a hike and eat the MRE while hiking, only we also had a leak that we had to call a plumber for, and the plumber was going to come sometime that afternoon, but he of course called and was available to come right as we started to eat. Almost two hours early, so I told him it would be at least an hour before I’d get there, and proceeded to eat our meals as we hiked back. It was ridiculously hot that day and we didn’t realize just how hot we were until we were back in the car and realized that we had sweated through our shirts and it was sticking to us. Quite gross.

Then, we went to Monster Mini Golf, which I have a strange love-hate relationship with. I love mini-golf, but then I also always forget how much I dislike the black light aspect and the random lights in there which always end up giving me a migraine halfway through, so that part was not fun, but other than that I had fun.

And, I went with The Artist, my niece, and The Artist’s best friend to go see the Zilker Musical, Legally Blonde, which was a fun show. That was a crazy fun show, and I can’t quite decide if I like the movie or the musical version better. Both have certain things going for them. The love story is done better in the musical, but certain aspects of her story are done better in the movie.

Books read:

• City of Serpents– book 4 in the Secrets of Ormdale series. A fun gothic fantasy series, that is serialized.
• Winter’s Maiden– a Viking fantasy, which is something I’ve not read before, it’s a darker YA, so written more for a 15/16 year old because it’s a war story rather than for a 12-14 year old, which led to a discussion of what we include in our Discern section of the Lorehaven reviews, but it’s a bit unique because it has a male healer as a character, since so often the male characters are the warriors and she is the warrior
• Good and the Green– a rather not memorable tale when even after rereading the premise I’m like meh, generic cozy fantasy and I don’t really remember much about it, I’m really damning it with faint praise

Games played:

• Clank Legacy

Week 3

Right before taking the kids off to school, Superman, Jeff, and I finished the last game of Clank Legacy. We actually very carefully figured out how to schedule and make sure we did this. The game ended with the winner of the game being awarded the Employee of the Month, and Superman said, “To do this right, we need to go get a picture over by the wall,” so he dutifully walked over there and posed for the picture. I was so proud of him letting me get this picture.

Then the next day we took the kids up to college, and because I know the kids would not want lots of pictures, the only picture you have of their dorm rooms is the picture I snuck of Superman’s desk. I had one of The Artist’s desk, but I apparently deleted it.

I then forced them to let me take a picture of them right before we drove away, and they acted like I was insane, but I have a picture of them at college.

We’ve negotiated that they will call us every week on Thursday. It’s interesting seeing how they talk about their week when we do talk and what questions we get more detail about. Superman is very excited about potentially getting to volunteer at a living history museum and starting at a martial arts place. The Artist told us all about lots of things related to many random things, but very little that had to do with her personal life.

But, the kids are all moved in. It’s a very weird feeling to drive home and have no kids in the house now for a few weeks.

Books read:

• Ghost Talker– a fun gas lamp mystery series with a slow burn romance
• Delicious Death– the second book in the series, books in this type of series seemed to have over-arching mystery so after buying the first on sale, I ended up buying the rest of the series
• Spirit Guide– book 3
• Gray Lady– the covers of the books changed in the three weeks or so since I bought them interestingly enough
• Haunted Grave– I’m not a super fan of the new covers
• Ghastly Mistake– But the series was fun, and it made for a good read
• Worth of a King– I actually think I read this one earlier, and according to my Kindle this was the first time I read it, but it seemed familiar, it’s book 1 of a series, but no others from the series are out yet
• When a Dragon Comes Courting– a fantasy novella, it’s like 60 or 80 pages, but is a fun quick read

Games played:

• Clank Legacy

Week 4

This was our first full week with no kids, and here are my observations:

• We are no longer running the dishwasher a minimum of 1-2 times a day
• I no longer need to buy 2-3 gallons of milk a week
• Making a dish of enchiladas lasts for like at least 3 meals, seriously Jeff and I have eaten it for 3 meals and we have enough for 1 more meal
• I need to learn how to cook for 2 rather than 4 or more

We had our co-op Not Back to School party and had so many kids.

I made a fun whale craft for our Jonah lesson. The kids had fun putting the whales together.

Jeff and I went to go see the Daniel Sight and Sound production in the theaters and it was loads of fun.

Wait, no that’s not Daniel. Ummmm….. I don’t remember what that was. That was something else Jeff and I went to go see, now I have to remember what it was. I just had so much fun with Daniel that I”m remembering that the most. It will come to me as soon as I hit publish. Grumble.

Books read:

• Chaos Grid– this was an interesting post-apocalyptic book, then I read the back cover copy and thought, “They gave away way too much of the book.” I read it after a friend recommended it, so the back cover copy gives away all these plot twists revealed near the end of the book.
• Regency and Regicide– A Regency Romance with a twist, a Regency author falls into her own book along with the young man she’s in love with, it’s a fun sort-of fantasy book that a friend recommended saying “You’ll love this Ticia,” and she was right
• Emma M Lion vol. 1– Another book recommended to me as a somewhat cozy fantasy in a similar vein to Anne of Green Gables, and I can see what she was saying, but I find it frustrating because it’s so short. It’s only 121 pages and the author is charging $5.99 for the kindle book for that length, which is high. I bought it figuring I’ll see and maybe I’ll like it enough to think it’s warranted, and it is cozy, but I don’t like it enough to warrant wanting to end up spending close to $50 for the whole series. So it’ll sit there in a half-finished state. I wonder if I can convince my library to buy the series.

Okay, that’s our August in all its very messy glory. Now I’m hitting publish and heading off to complete the other stuff I need to get done today. This was a very crazy week.