books — Page 154

Curses, Pat Conroy, and Instagram

March 6, 2016 at 9:53 am by Claudia

3-6 sunset

Beautiful sunsets make me smile. This one graced us with its brief presence last night.

I told Meredith we were planning to leave on Tuesday. Hopefully, that’s still the case, but I tweaked my back (which was SO much better) yesterday and I’m hurting again. In fact, I had to get up during the night and come downstairs to the den where I used some Tiger Balm, turned on the heating pad, and proceeded to sleep sitting up for the rest of the night.

It amazes me that I actually pulled that off.

May I take a moment to say how frustrated I am with this whole thing? Just think of all the curse words you can and you have a pretty good idea of what I’ve been saying.

I actually like the smell of Tiger Balm, but I’m getting tired of both it and my heating pad. But ever grateful for them because they’ve really helped. (I always run these things by Mer, since she’s a therapist and my brother-in-law is a chiropractor. They know their stuff.)

Anyway, I’m going to be positive. I’m determined to get on the road sooner rather than later.

I briefly wrote about the passing of Pat Conroy yesterday. I truly loved his rich and beautiful writing style. He was an artist with words. One of my favorite blogs has a tribute to him today, which includes a short video of Conroy speaking to a group of his readers. What an amazing man he was. It’s here at Jungle Red Writers.

I need to read some Conroy ASAP.

I’ve been meaning to share two of my favorite Instagram accounts with you; both of them have to do with animals.

Black Jaguar White Tiger – Run by an incredible man who rescues animals, including lions and tigers. He is based in Mexico and the work he is doing is of the utmost importance. He posts lots of videos of these incredible creatures – the latest is of a baby tiger drinking milk from a bottle. Oh, heavens. Beautiful. The Black Jaguar White Tiger Foundation does essential work for the protection of our wildlife.

Pumpkin the Raccoon – a Bahamian raccoon that was rescued by a family and now lives indoors with his dog buddies, Toffee and Oreo. I love this feed.

I find Instagram intriguing. Most of us post brief descriptions of our photos, but then there are those who treat it like a blog, with long descriptive passages. Some of those IGers have blogs as well and they’ve, for whatever reason, turned predominately to IG. Others have never had blogs, so IG seems to be their version of a blog. Since Instagram is meant to be something you can scroll through rather quickly, I tend to avoid paragraphs of writing. I’ll look at the photo and continue on my way. Maybe because I also read blogs, I don’t have too much patience with lots of words in this particular form of social media. But I am equally sure that a lot of people tend to spend most of their social media time on Instagram, so they have no problem with that.

It’s free. It’s fairly quick. Maybe that’s the attraction in this time of short-attention spans. A blog post takes time to craft. IG is much faster. Though yours truly, not especially a whiz with a phone keyboard, finds it takes time enough with lots of curses along the way as I retype words, correct auto-correct and insert the dreaded hashtags.

By the way, whenever the heck we leave for Florida, I may not post everyday but I will do my best to post to IG as we make our way South. So follow along on my IG account.

New post on Just Let Me Finish This Page: Gone But Not Forgotten: Harper Lee and Pat Conroy.

Happy Sunday.

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A Weekend at the Cottage

February 6, 2016 at 9:05 am by Claudia

2-6 afterthesnow

The snow stopped falling by mid-afternoon. It was a heavy, wet mess – pretty – but a mess.

We had our last run-through in the rehearsal room and today, the actors move onstage. This day will be for what is called ‘spacing’ – getting used to the levels on the stage, to trap doors, to movements on and off stage, going through the entire play to adjust to the set. Tomorrow, tech rehearsals will begin and will continue through Wednesday. Thursday will be the first Preview performance.

I don’t need to be there for Spacing or for the first Tech day, so I’m going home for a couple of days and I’ll come back on Monday so that I can check into tech rehearsal on Tuesday to see how the actors are doing and get a sense of the way their voices are working in the space.

I just finished The Kill by Jane Casey and now I’m all caught up. I started that series with the most recent book, After the Fire, which I reviewed on Just Let Me Finish This Page. I was so taken with Casey’s writing that I did what I often do: I went back and read all of the previous books in the series in order. She’s that good. Now, I’m left waiting for her next book to come out, whenever that will be.

Now, I’m headed back into the Susan Hill Simon Serrailler series, picking up where I left off. The Shadows in the Street will be accompanying me on my trip home.

Scout’s had a bit of a tough week and, consequently, so has Don. I hope to take some of the responsibility for our girl off of Don’s shoulders while I’m home. Every day we assess our girl’s quality of life. That’s where we are right now. I know you understand.

Okay. Have to get moving. Have to dig the car out. Have to get on the road.

Happy Saturday.

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Waiting

January 23, 2016 at 8:16 am by Claudia

I have had two restless nights of sleep in a row. I’ve slept, it’s not a case of sleeplessness, but my goodness, the dreams, and the waking up and the going back to sleep and the waking up…

Yesterday, my last dream before I woke up was one in which Scout had run away and I didn’t know until I came home and lots of people were there but no one was looking for her. I couldn’t believe it. Then someone told me the Girl Scouts were out looking for her, and I screamed at them that I was the only one who would know where to look. Unsettling, to say the least.

This morning, more dreams that, after two cups of coffee, I can’t remember. But it seems like the last two, no, make that three, nights have been filled with dreams where everyone I’ve ever known has made an appearance.

Enough already.

1-23 colorstoryfilter

I call this Waiting for the Snow. I took it early this morning and posted it on Instagram, but then I played around with some filters on a new app I downloaded called A Color Story. I don’t usually do a lot with filters, but I must say it’s sort of fun. Of course, I can’t remember what filter I used, but it intensified everything in this shot.

I’ve been up since 5:30. It’s now almost 8 and the snow hasn’t started falling yet. But I could sure feel it in the air yesterday as I walked home from rehearsal. Even if I hadn’t been aware of the forecast, I would have known that snow was headed our way.

I’m not called for any work today. I’d head home, but I might be called tomorrow. So I have to stay put. I guess I’ll take a walk when it begins to snow, as long as it isn’t too windy.

1-23 kindle

I gave up on the Cara Black mystery – for a couple of reasons. I opened the book to find it had been damaged by some previous reader. The pages were warped, there were stains, and it was irritating. (The library had noted the damage on the inside cover.) And I also quickly realized that I didn’t want to jump ahead to the newest book in the series, in which the protagonist is now a single mother, without knowing how she got there. So, I put it down. I’ll return it to the library.

Out came the Kindle, where I immediately dug into the other Jane Casey I had downloaded, The Stranger You Know. After I finish this one, I believe I will be all caught up and ready for her newest, whenever that comes out.

Right now, they’re predicting 5-9 inches of snow for this area, with an additional 1-3 inches tonight, which isn’t great, but is certainly much, much less than other areas of the East Coast. It’s supposed to stop by tomorrow morning, so by the time I want to head home, it might be clear enough to make the trip. Might. Again…fingers crossed.

1-23 yarn

Yes, I’m back to crocheting, but slowly, because my hands get sore after having made so many scarves last November and December. This one is almost finished and will go in the Etsy shop. Three more have to be made that are special requests. And then I’m done. For a long time.

If you’re at all interested, keep your eyes peeled on the Etsy widget in my sidebar. This is the only scarf that I will list for general sale. (The colors are a bit darker than they appear to be in this photo. But not much; it’s a really lovely colorway.)

Stay safe. Stay warm.

Happy Saturday.

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Curses, Pat Conroy, and Instagram

A Weekend at the Cottage

Waiting

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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