Quarantine Quotidians, April 14

(Favorite book from seventh grade that I was just thinking today needs a reread.)

First thing today: most interesting post card

My father grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico. My only visit to his old haunts was in 1992, when I joined he and my mother in a trip to Sante Fe to bury his father. So it's possible I could have purchased this in 1992, but it's more likely that my mother bought it on a more recent trip to NM she took with my dad.

Today, I think the card got sent to my youngest brother's house in CA.

Also, Angry Birds plushies that I have repaired: Matilda

Alex loves the fact that we're stuck in the house and he can now shove all his limping stuffed animals at me for repair. I am not the most accomplished seamstress.

How many Angry Birds do we have? A dresser full. I'll take a picture next time Alex has them all out for an event.

How do the birds get damaged? He pounds them into each other, reenacting some battle or other from Star Wars and a seam will start to give, and then he'll stick his fingers into it, making it larger, and then comes to me complaining that it broke. I've already done several of the smaller birds and on Saturday night, I had to sew up the rest of Might Eagle's throat that I hadn't previously repaired. Maybe by the time I finish all the bird repairs I'll have the energy to bring out my cross stitch stuff, which I haven't touched since my father in law died in 2016. That was a tough year. Though 2020 might beat it.

Health update

So, the kids and I are now on day 10 of low grade fevers, headaches and general blahs. Do we have Covid-19? I dunno. The fevers never go above 100 degrees, nor do any of us remain feverish all day long. Our energy is lower and an appetites are definitely reduced. I haven't called the doctor because she's going to tell us to rest and drink fluids, which we are already doing. It means I have only left the house to weed the front flower bed and I'm getting a little crazed. At least I got to go to the grocery store before. Marshall went to Costco on Saturday and we're going to need him to go on a trip to Aldi soon; we can't run out of turkey bacon and scrapple. Well, we could, but it would mean Miranda and I wouldn't have breakfast and that could be scary.

Entertainment News

Marshall has been binging on movies to cope with the lock down while I have, mostly, been reading instead. (If you've known me for five minutes, this is not a surprise to you.) If you want to follow my reading, you can stalk me on Goodreads.

• We finally finished this season of Doctor Who last week and were exceedingly underwhelmed. Great cast, especially the new Master, but terrible, horrible, preachy writing. We are long time fans (we haven't seen every single episode since 1963 but many of them) and we hate to see a great show start to die. And Chibnall (exec producer) is better than this. Or so we thought. 
• We actually paid Amazon Prime to watch the new Birds of Prey movie and turned it off after half an hour. And I'm the kind of person who actually liked (parts of) Justice League and most of Aquaman. 
• Marshall would like you all to know he's going through a Cinéma vérité phase, reexamining films from the 1960's - 1980's that he's previously missed. Recent entries have been Conan the Barbarian, All the President's Men and The Shining. I joined him for the ends of Conan & Woodstein but skipped the last. Not a horror fan, except that my brief glances made me want to revisit Ready Player One. 
• I finally finished over the weekend The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam by Barbara W. Tuchman. I started reading it in paper but finished with audio (I love my library!). She's an excellent analyst although it was dismaying to listen especially to the section on Vietnam, how each president from Truman to Nixon kept chasing verifiably incorrect assumptions about Vietnam and its people to rationalize more and more death. 
• In between, I've been reading breezy romantic thrillers by HelenKay Dimon, Jayne Ann Krentz and Barbara Freethy. And low angsty contemporary romances by Jackie Lau. I have a stack of angsty books on my TBR but I haven't had the energy for them. I have so far resisted falling back into PsyChangeling or Guild Hunter by Nalini Singh (I read each series twice last year and that's more than 30 books and novellas) but I'm sure a reread will happen eventually during this calendar year. The new PsyChangeling book comes out June 9 and the new Guild Hunter in November. 
• Then, there's also the Vorkosiverse books. Marshall's all-time-favorite-reread-numerous-times-series that I have been trying to read since spring, 2016. I did finish Cetaganda (book 6) last week, finally, because I'd bought a used paper copy of it last year. I think because my husband prefers the audio versions (thank you, library), he can just cycle through them over and over again. Our library, however, has only the audio versions of the books. I can read some books via audio but not all and Lois McMaster Bujold just doesn't work for me in that medium. I need to see the words on the page. So, finally, I just went and bought Kindle versions of all 22 (?) books. For all that Marshall loves the books, I figured we should express our love financially at long last to the author. It's nice to have the means to do that at present. (I don't want to know how many books I've bought since December so don't ask; I'm afraid to count them.)

Scripture readings for today are Proverbs, Luke and Deuteronomy (that I haven't listened to yet). I shall be glad to leave the Pentateuch soon but after all the fun blood lettering of Joshua there's all the depressing blood letting of Judges. I'm actually looking forward to the prophets this year. I started the Bible in One Year app last July so I'm counting from there as my read the whole Bible mark. Then I'll just start again. 

Here's a good way to end things: