Weekly Updates - July 1, 2022

And here we are in July. 
  • Tonight J. took P., K., Y., G., and L. to a Kane County Cougars game (our area minor league team.) When he asked H. if she wanted to go, she most definitely did not. She has been to a couple of games and I'm pretty sure the whole thing makes no sense to her. So I stayed home with H. and R. (who did want to go, but would not have ended up enjoying it, thus J. wouldn't have enjoyed it.) They watched a movie and I'm sure they both had more fun here than they would have there.
  • Without TM at home to run errands for me, we were running out or very low of many ingredients that we need for Chinese and Vietnamese food. Things were getting dire, so I planned a big stock-up trip to H-Mart this morning. It ended up being much bigger (price-wise) than I had anticipated. A lot bigger. Usually Asian ingredients are pretty cost effective, but I was shocked at the prices today. You should actually be pretty impressed that I didn't pass out when I saw what the total was. That was not in my mental budget for this pay period. But, we should be set for a while. 
  • I did make Y. extremely happy, though, by buying her seaweed and some of her favorite noodles.
  • The baby ducks are real ducks! The other day, they all got in the pond and happily swam and flapped about. The other ducks did have a look about them that said, "What on earth are they doing in there? Now there's no room for us!" The baby ducks do take up quite a bit of the pond when they are all in it. 
  • For the past week or so, every morning when I go to feed the horses and turn them out, Vienna makes funny faces at me while waiting for me to put her food in her bowl. I was ready for her today and caught this.
  • I have just spent a half hour trying to figure out why some photos appear on my phone and some don't. I am here by myself without any of my tech support people and I am perilously close to heaving my phone against a wall. I am putting the phone down now, but it also means you do not get to see the cute picture of the baby ducks in the pond which J. sent me. I find technology infuriating. 
  • I do not like to not understand things if you haven't guessed. 
  • We finished reading Lost in a Good Book, the Thursday Next book we have been reading at teatime and have started The Well of Lost Plots which comes next. I'm realizing as I reread these books out loud what it is I love about them. It is the book world. The Eyre Affair, which is the first of the series, spends precious little time inside any books, just Jane Eyre at the end. In the second one, you really get to the book world about halfway through. That was enough for me when I was reading them the first time, so that by the time I hit book three (which is where we are right now), I was hooked. It also explains why a couple of people I have recommended the series to, just don't like it. It's because they never really got through the first book. Maybe I'll start recommending that people begin with the second book, and then go back to the first once they have been hooked.
  • This also happens to be how I fell in love with the Lucia books by E. F. Benson. I first read Mapp and Lucia, which comes very late in the series. I also think it is the strongest of the books. Once I was hooked on the character, I could go back and enjoy the other books in the series. I know I would have been totally annoyed by Lucia if I had started right at the beginning.
  • G. walked into our room last night and requested a book. I asked what type and "something funny" was the reply. So I grabbed some Jeeves and Wooster books by P. G. Wodehouse. It was good I grabbed two because when I went to say goodnight, both G. and L. were happily reading each of the books. 
  • If you are in need of escapist reading because the news seems to be one dumpster fire after another, I think any of the books I've mentioned up above would fit the bill. 
  • Our oven stopped working over a week ago. I baked something in it, it was fine, and when we went to turn it on again a little later, it didn't work. (Thankfully the stove still works.) This range is just under a year old. But we had bought a warranty! So J. calls to set up a repair appointment. They were scheduled to come yesterday. Except that when J. called to confirm, he was told by the repair company that the warranty company had cancelled the appointment. I will spare you the endless conversations he has had with many different operators. The end result so far is, the oven is still non-functioning, no repair person showed up yesterday, the warranty company was supposed to call to set-up a new appointment (because for reasons I cannot even begin to imagine, they had to wait a day to reschedule) but didn't, so we don't even know when a repair person will show up. The stupid thing is they already sent the parts to us and they are sitting in a box which we have been FORBIDDEN to open and J. could probably fix it himself. Thus voiding the warranty (which wasn't cheap). But if we're never going to get a repair person out... 
  • Clearly, I think I need to get ready for bed and settle down with a good book which does not involve technology, ovens, or current events.

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