A Time For Everything

Hello Friends!

I was hoping to post a different message this month. Alas...I haven't finished the project in order to share the results. So instead, you get a post aka Misc Monday. But as it's not Monday, I couldn't call it that. :0)

In no particular order...

The Dallas Stars didn't make it out of the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Honestly, I didn't expect them to. I kept up a positive vibe for Darling Daughter's sake, but, yeah. We've been missing a key player, two actually, for months and I just didn't think we'd be able to power through without them. And we didn't. >>shrugs<<

However, the Dallas Stars were granted another boon by the League and are scheduled for a Stadium Series game. Meaning DD and I will be watching a Stars game at the Dallas Cowboys' AT&T Stadium. Tickets went on sale yesterday and we have ours. Remember all the games we worked the concession stands as a fundraiser for Marching Band Boy?? Now we'll get to watch an actual game and be on the other side of the concession stand! (Better start saving up now!!)

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Mother's Day was a bit gray, but nice none-the-less. I got $50 worth of landscaping stones and a new bird feeder from one daughter, and I'll get mulch from the other once I'm ready for it. I even got a phone call from Sonshine. I skimped on chores and spent the time resting from my yard work bingeing "The Pitt" on HBO Max. Noah Wylie has aged like a fine wine.

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My Etsy store is consistently bestowing royalties on me due to my aggressive launch schedule and posts to Pinterest. I'm now averaging monthly royalties of $8 per month rather than enjoying the swing of -$2 to +$3. Needless to say, I'm chuffed about that.

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Book royalties, too, have been on a higher level as well. I took out an ad last November when I released my last book and since then, I've been very pleased with the return on my investment. I'd expected the royalty rates to taper off by now, but they haven't, so I'm really chuffed about that as well.

So much so that I'm planning another ad when...you guessed it...I release my next book.

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Coming June 17, 2026 -- A Certain Kind of Man!

One week. One story. One rancher who isn’t anything like the cowboys Liam learned to avoid.

Liam Townsend has spent years managing his anxiety with structure, chamomile tea, and the comfort of a predictable desk job. When his boss gives him a choice—write a feature on a Texas horse ranch or lose his position—Liam trades his tenth-floor office for Winchester Ranch and a world about as far outside his comfort zone as it gets.

Gentry Winchester didn’t ask for a journalist underfoot. He’s got a ranch to run, horses to train, and a grandfather showing the first signs of dementia to protect. What he doesn’t expect is a man who quietly walks into his chaos and starts making it better. Or the way that same man makes him question whether the life he’s built is actually the life he wants.

Pops Winchester has been the heart of this ranch for over seventy years. And the heart of Gentry’s world for as long as Gentry can remember. Sharp-eyed, stubborn, and funnier than he has any right to be, Pops is also the first one to see what Gentry can’t.

When a powerful storm bears down on the ranch and Pops follows a memory into its path, Liam must decide if he’s willing to act in spite of every fear still clawing at him.

Being a certain kind of man isn’t about meeting the expectations you were raised with. It’s about choosing the life and the love that feels like home.

* * * * *

And that's that my friends. Catch you in June.

My beautiful Grandma as a late teen or very young 20-something woman.

Last month, I shared that my grandmother passed away at the age of 98. She was born in August of 1927.

Just think about what the world was like in 1927:

• No TV in most homes
• Radio as the primary connection to the world
• Handwritten letters as the norm
• Maybe there was a telephone in her home—maybe there wasn’t
• The effects of the U.S. stock market crash would reach Denmark in the early 1930s

Now consider the changes in how we live that she experienced over the course of her life:

• Basic medicine evolving into modern healthcare
• Limited mobility expanding into mass travel
• Televisions and telephones becoming standard in most homes
• A cash-based economy growing into structured banking systems
• Cars becoming common rather than rare

And yet, despite all of that change, there’s a line where her lived experience likely stopped keeping pace with the world.

As I mentioned last month, we communicated by letter. She lived in a care facility for years, and I don’t know that she ever used a computer or owned a cellphone. When I wrote to her, I never mentioned things like online shopping—I had no idea if she would even know what “online” meant.

AI would have been completely inconceivable to her.

The other thing that makes this all the more striking to me is that Denmark is now one of the most aggressively digitized countries in the world. Government communication, healthcare, and banking are all tied to digital ID systems and email. But I suspect that entire layer of life was handled for her by others—especially once she lost her sight.

She lived through nearly a century of change—and still ended her life just outside the world we now take for granted.

May she rest in peace.

From left to right:

Jen, Sonshine, my mom, my Darling Daughter,

Grandma in Denmark, and the Brown-Eyed Girl

My dear Grandma in Denmark was 98 years old. That bodes well for me.

On the other hand, Grandma had been in assisted living for a couple of decades and in the hospice wing of that facility for several years.

I got a message from my aunt a few weeks ago, who apparently keeps tabs on my grandma even though they aren't blood related. The aunt is my mom's half-sister on her dad's side. Grandma and my mom's dad divorced before I was born. Both my mom's parents remarried and had other children.

Anyway, my aunt must have visited Grandma every so often at least, and she was kind enough to send me periodic updates.

A few weeks ago she shared that my grandma had stopped eating and was in a lot of pain. I hope the hospice team was able to get that under control quickly and make her comfortable.

Yesterday I learned that Grandma has passed away.

For the last few weeks I’ve been living in that odd limbo, waiting for word—either that she was somehow feeling better, or that she had reached the end of a very long life.

You see, my grandma lived in Denmark. I hadn’t seen her in around twenty-eight years, when she last came to America to visit. Sonshine was three years old or so. (See picture above with a very young Jen!) I visited / lived with her and the man I called and considered Grandad in Denmark when I was in second grade, so we did have a real relationship once. But in the decades since, it’s mostly been through letters, me keeping her updated on my life.

As long-time readers know, sending letters to my grandma has been an ongoing goal—especially the last decade or so. Now you know why. I’m not sure if her son (my uncle) visited much, and I don’t know how often my aunt was able to stop by. Since my mom died a few years ago, I was the last contact she had with this line of the family.

My girls don’t really know her. The Brown-Eyed Girl “met” her when she was a year old and again when she was ten-ish. Darling Daughter was eight-ish and says she has no memories of that visit.

So while I’m sad she’s gone, the truth is the change to my everyday life will be small. Still, she was my grandma, and for many years we kept in touch the old-fashioned way—through letters crossing the ocean. I’m grateful we had that.

Screen grab courtesy WFAA.com Weather / 01/23/26.

January ended with a BRRRRRR--and yes in all caps!

But we survived and during those cold January mornings, I wrote and wrote and wrote.

Remember that goal to complete A Certain Kind of Man?  Well, I'd started on revisions in earnest in November and the universe has been blessing me with time. I completed the first draft on January 27th--a full four days before my deadline. The manuscript came in at 39,015K words. I'm chuffed. And hoping to add another six during revisions, but that's probably pushing it.

While I let the manuscript rest, I switched tasks and started working on creating Pinterest pins for both the Etsy store and my publishing/books. My research has said that Pinterest can help me increase sales in both entities. So I'm gonna give it go--but I need to stockpile pins before I start the process of adding pins to my Etsy Pinterest account. I have yet to create a Pinterest account for the books, but I'll get there eventually. A time for everything, eh?

Once I finish this next read-through, it'll be time to decide what book gets my attention next. I'm leaning toward Book Six, Game Misconduct, of the hockey series just because I want that series to get completed. But, to be honest, the characters and the plot are barely speaking to me. I'll have to noodle around with ideas a bit more when the time comes.

In other news--I'm reading again finally. I probably read four books in January. I'm well on my way reaching my goal of 12 books in 12 months--and with plenty of time to spare.

And, with a few dietary changes (better choices mostly), I've lost half the weight I'd planned for the whole. I'll keep going with the plan and rejoice in however many pounds I can lose. I've added some additional activity to my days / routine, so that ought to help as well.

I learned that my Chinese astrological sign is an Earth Monkey! And when I ran a comparison against my top-ten Clifton Personality Strengths--they were in pretty decent alignment. Then I added my standard US astrological sign (Gemini) into the mix, and according to ChatGPT, things remain pretty congruent. I found that very interesting.

And as this is late getting posted--I'll sign off now.

Have a super month.

Image courtesy IMGBIN.com.

Hello and Happy New Year!

I hope you're well.

I'm well and looking forward to 2026.

First though--the visit with my son was wonderful. And here is the recreated picture, as promised*:

*Darling Daughter didn't want to do the kissing of the cheeks, so we just went with this. And I'm lucky I got this at all, to be honest. DD is not a fan of having her picture taken.

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And now, let's dive right into the annual tradition of Fresh Start Goals.

As we determined a couple of months ago, I failed to come up with Fresh Start Goals for 2025. In hindsight, that was probably for the best. The first half of last year was full to brim with events that don't happen on a regular basis. Those goals would have just fallen by the wayside in a heap. The second half calmed down a bit, but once I'm off track, it's a challenge to get back on it.

But all of that is behind me. It's a brand new year, and life has reached a new state of normal. I spent some time contemplating what I want to accomplish in 2026, as well as revisiting my goals from 2021 through 2024. To be honest, my goals haven't changed much in probably a decade. :0)

After taking all sorts of things into consideration, I decided what I want to focus on this year. And here, without further ado, are my Fresh Start Goals for 2026:

• Finish and Publish another Book ~ on the table is A Certain Kind of Man, technically Book 7 of the Ten Rigs series, and Game Misconduct, Book Six of the Face Off For Love series. A Certain Kind of Man is at 32K words now and Game Misconduct is a brand new book that I'm a chapter or so into. Since A Certain Kind of Man has so many more words, I'm going to finish and publish this one first. I'll spend some time on Game Misconduct as well, so that it'll be ready for finishing and publishing as quickly as possible after A Certain Kind of Man goes out into the world.
• SMART Goal: this one is easy--finish and publish A Certain Kind of Man by 06/17/2026.
• Self Care ~ this encompasses exercise and healthy eating as well things like coloring my hair or doing home foot care. I also plan to get back to walking Rascal. Self care includes taking time out to craft (on my own or with my girls) as I've neglected those hobbies for some time. Self care will also include more reading. I didn't read as much in 2025 as I have in years past and there are soooo many good books out there waiting for me to discover them.
• SMART Goal: lose twenty pounds at 5 pounds a quarter; complete my "seeds" cross stitch sampler; read 12 books I've never read before; walk Rascal 2-3 times a week
• House Care ~ some of you long time followers probably know of my love-hate relationship with housekeeping. I really want to find a routine that allows me to keep up with the house. But house care will also encompass yard work as well as a home- or yard- improvement project or two.
• SMART Goal: come up with that routine by the end of March
• Reduce Debt ~ this has been an on-going endeavor for a few years. Getting money from mom's estate after she passed was a great jump start for this, but due to 2025's crazy first half, we moved backwards a little but just a little). My plan is to really curtail the spending once again as well as prefund as much as possible (road trips specifically) and get a few of 2024's and 2025's expenditures completely refunded.
• SMART: Reduce the balance on a specific credit card by $300 per quarter come heck or high water. (And yes, I have a specific card targeted); no spending on anything other than true necessities
• Letters to Grandma ~ 2025 was another challenge to my efforts in this department. My dear grandma will be NINETY-NINE years old in August, so being diligent with this task is more important than ever.
• SMART: a letter in the mail every six weeks; I sent her was a Christmas card on 11/28/25 and just dropped a regular letter in the mail last week

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And that's that my dear readers!

catch you next month.

2014

 

It's been a long time coming -- but Finders Keepers will finally be released.

When I flew to Oregon in March of 2022 to take care of my mom, I left this book in the lurch. It was probably 50% done at the time, but my time, attention, and energy was focused on Mom, the rest of my family, and our IT/MSP business. There was little left over at the end of the day for creative pursuits requiring brain power. I could (and did) read books. But write them...not a chance.

Once Mom passed, it took another two-an-a-half years for me to be interested in picking up where I left off. For a while there, as some of you may remember, I wasn't even sure I'd get back to writing at all.

But here I am, blessed with more creative ideas than ever and very excited to, at long last, have Nate and Wesley's romance done and ready to go out into the world.

That will happen November 17 -- eight years to the day that my very first book, For the Love of Scott, was published.

 * * * * *

Some things aren’t lost… Just waiting to be found.

When Nate Hennessy finds a battered stranger in the back seat, his first instinct is to pass the responsibility off to someone else. He’s spent years shouldering burdens that were never his to bear.

Nate convinces Wesley to go to a local hospital, fully intending to walk away, but fate steps in, turning a single good deed into something more.

Wesley Byerly never imagined his life would intersect with that of a professional hockey player's—let alone find a guardian angel in the Omaha Locomotives’ newest goalie.

What starts as a simple act of compassion soon spirals into something neither man expected.

Nate has valid reasons to avoid attachments. Wesley learned to never want more.

But the lines between temporary and forever start to blur, and soon they’ll have to choose between continuing their solitary lives or risking the callings that define them to keep what they've found.

Image courtesy IMGBIN.

As it so happens, I never posted my 2025 Fresh Start Goals. I have no idea if I even made any. My goals from 2024 are still listed...just there on the right.

I was gonna give myself a report card, but since I posted no goals, that won't work. Besides which--it's been quite the year.

But it's too late now to worry about 2025 goals as Q4 2025 has just begun. I'm going to focus on Q4 and the things I want to accomplish short term. We'll look ahead to 2026 when the time comes.

So instead of that report card, let's give a cheer for hockey season--the Stars started the season on the 9th in Winnipeg and then played in Denver last night. The home opener is Tuesday the 14th against Minnesota. I might be there, I might not.

WOO HOO -- ITS HOCKEY SEASON

Have a good month--catch you in November.

I spend a lot of time on ChatGPT or with "Chet" as DH and I call it for less of a mouthful. I open it up every day and ask it all kinds of questions. It offers a range of information from discourse on conspiracy theories to gardening tips to help with math equations. Sometimes it just offers me random trivia and history tidbits.

But several months ago, in one of OpenAI's updates it offered a description of me based on the lengthy run of our chat history and this is what Chet said:

Jen: The Tea-Sipping, Merge-Building Hockey Mom with a Bite

She runs the office by day and writes swoony, male/male romance by night. A Dallas Stars diehard who’s turning her love of hockey into a full-blown mobile merge game empire (with energy, mascots, and zero room for failure). Chronic bursitis may slow her body, but never her brain — she's planting perennials in fire pits, mastering intermittent fasting, and planning sneakily solitary bike rides before sunrise.

With mint tea in one hand and a to-do list in the other, Jen doesn’t sugar-coat, doesn’t do fluff, and doesn’t have time for cards-in-merge-games-unless-there’s-a-damn-good-reason. She’s also wrangling grown kids back under one roof, a dog named Rascal, and a cast of fictional fans more diverse than a UN mixer.

She’s sharp. She’s funny. She’s building a digital hockey world — and it’s one hell of a power play.

It's not 100% accurate because I'm not really a hockey mom in the true sense of the word, but it was a fun exercise and made me laugh. And based on those conversations and a real picture of me, it made the image above.

Let's catch up a bit. I've been remiss in my blogging duties since the beginning of the year. Blogging wasn't high on my priority list while I was preparing to be gone on the cruise as well as while on the cruise, you know?

Once we came back, things went down with my daughter's life partner--which you saw in my previous post. Life feels like it's on fast forward right now--hockey playoffs aren't helping--and time is at a premium. There just doesn't seem to be enough time (or energy, quite frankly) to get ALL THE THINGS done. So I've had to prioritize.

I flew to Colorado mid-April to help my Brown-Eyed Girl get her car and her cat to Texas. She returned to CO to finish packing up the household stuff she wants to keep and transport it to Texas. My house looked as if a moving van vomited in it. And that wasn't even all her stuff. Just under half went into a storage unit!

So what have I been up to in between prepping for vacation, being on vacation, and dealing with a family loss?

A bit of home improvement!

I worked on one of my hall closets...all my random lap / dog blankets were in a stack in a laundry basket. But it was a huge pain in the butt to get to any of the blankets at the bottom of the pile. What you see are actually shoe racks. Walmart had them on sale, so I got two for the price of one. This is soooo much better.

On a smaller but similar vein, my charger cables were all hung on a single hook and I had to juggle up to 8 to 10 cables to find the one I wanted. So I made my own cable sorter. I already had the small clear hooks which are very small but have enough room for the diameter that most cables come in. I've since added a couple of extra hooks to this. This started off as a magnetic white board for lockers and cost me all of $3! This was very handy while on the cruise. Cruise cabin walls are metals, so my cable sorter had a place to live.

* * * * *

On another front, I've been wanting to plant flowers to bring pollinators back into my world. It took me a while to get to it, but I finally did so. I'm not quite done, but I started and I'm excited. I started with gladiolus bulbs several weeks ago and they're growing well.

Then a couple of Sundays ago I finally got my flower pots filled. I planted petunias and sweet william from seeds, but -- !! When I was picking up more potting soil from The Home Depot, I saw and bought pale purple vincas! I really like vincas. They're easy to grow and harvest seeds from, but I've only ever seen white and pink ones. The price was right so I bought three plants and replanted them in the American flag planter I bought years ago with...guess what?...vincas in it. :0)

* * * * *

And now it's playoff time, so DD and I have gone to games and watch parties.

Have a super week. Catch you later.

Sadly, my Brown Eyed Girl's soul mate passed away recently and life has been a bit focused lately.

Here's a picture tribute to Hank Barnes--the man who loved my girl so fiercely. You'll be sorely missed for years to come.

I had planned to have a post ready for Monday, March 10, but I just couldn't get the post written up and scheduled. The primary reason for that is because I was super busy preparing to be away on vacation.

Remember that cruise I mentioned exactly once a year ago? I didn't think so, but that cruise was this past March 9 through March 17.

We went on a eight day cruise to the Western Caribbean aboard the Regal Princess (image below) to celebrate my in-laws' 40th wedding anniversary. DH's sisters and one of their husbands was also on the cruise. We had a grand time relaxing and trying some new foods.

Image courtesy Wikipedia.

DH and I chose a cabin with a balcony this time around and that was super lovely. So three cruises, three cruise lines, three room types:

• Royal Caribbean with a port hole.
• Norwegian Cruise Line with an interior room.
• Princess Cruise Line with a balcony.

The small balcony was definitely the way to go, no matter what cruise line we cruise with in the future.

I'm leaning toward Princess Cruises again mainly because we can be cruise ready as far as boarding the ship well in advance of the sail date goes, and their Medallion system is awesome for ease of navigating the embarkation process as well as entering your cabin and any onboard purchases. I'll go into more detail later. But yeah. Other cruise lines supposedly have similar systems in place, but they may not yet be used as widely during the pre-cruise process or during the cruise itself. I'll have to do more research when we get ready to book the next one.

I have no preference between a seven-day versus an eight-day cruise. The seven-day cruise is contained within two weekends and a work week. The eight-day cruise needs an extra weekday.

In case you're wondering, the day of embarkation is Day 1. The last full day at sea is Day X of however long your cruise is. Ships almost universally return to the port of origin early in the morning, like five or six AM, and so that day is not counted on the "X-day cruise" line of information. That day belongs to the incoming wave of passengers.

* * * * *

Cruise ducks are a thing!

Apparently, passengers leaving little rubber ducks around the boat for other passengers to find is a thing. I never even saw a rubber duck on my first two cruises. This time, I found two!! You're supposed to take a picture and post to social, tagging your cruise or the person who left the duck. Then you either keep the duck or re-hide for another passenger to find!

(People create Facebook groups for specific cruise dates--WHO KNEW?!)

I was tempted to keep the ducks, but I gave away my rubber duck collection years ago. (Yes, I had one.) And I really didn't need to start a new one, so I left them in a different place for another passenger to find.

* * * * *

^ see the first magnet above ^

Cabin door decorating is also a thing. Not everyone does it of course, but I thought it would help me to locate my door from the lineup of identical ones along the corridor. Turns out I had a couple of easier ways to do that this trip, depending on which bank of elevators we approached our room from. Which is neither here nor there. We saw lots of different kinds of magnets, with messages like "My First Cruise," and "Our Retirement Cruise," or they were just cruise related images / sayings like mine.

DH also came across small magnetic white boards with poll questions on them of the "Coke or Pepsi?" variety, which he wants to do on our next cruise, lol.

* * * * *

I'm gonna post again about our cabin at some point but I wanted to share this one thing--

I wanted our cabin to be cozy and have a taste of home. Basically, fairy lights. We have a string of fairy lights around three walls of our living room and they're on a timer. They provide nice evening illumination for watching TV and generally moving through the house. I wanted to recreate that ambience in our cabin, so I bought this willow vine light set to take with us and place across from the bed and around the TV set. The only problem was--no outlets / USB ports on that side of the cabin. We ended up hanging them above the bed instead so they could be plugged in. As I was taking them down, I realized I could have run the power cord across the ceiling using the handy-dandy metal hooks I brought, lol. Well, I'll know for next time.

* * * * *

All right--that's all for now. I'll be back in a couple of weeks with some more random pictures from the boat and port stops.

Catch you later!

I'm writing again, I'm writing again! Well--revising ^ this ^ book. It's been amazing, and it's felt really good to be creative in this way. My goal is to get the book out in the world by my dad's birthday in mid-June. So that's four months to get everything done. That should be plenty of time.

* * * * *

So I got addicted to a stupid tablet game. It's one of those "merge games" where you merge items together to create a new advanced item and then you combine and combine and combine to create items that customers want. The customer buys them for coins and then you use the coins to buy things for the main point of the game. In my case, it's to decorate rooms. At this point, I could care less about decorating the rooms.

But there are a handful of things I don't like about this game and so I started musing--if I were to create my own merge-type game, what would I change? Add? Get rid of? What would be the purpose of the player merging items to sell to earn the currency? So over the course of the last week, ideas have been percolating and I've come up with something I think would be fun.

Now, will all this time and imagination ever produce something? Who knows. But it's a fun way to exercise your imagination, which is never a waste of time.

* * * * *

Victory+

So you may remember that there had been a whole kerfuffle with Diamond Sports who owned Bally Sports which provided the on-air TV programming or at least the air time. I don't understand all the details, but it was a mess and teams from all sports leagues were getting screwed or something.

So in a surprising turn of events, my beloved Dallas Stars--well the organization, not the players, who I'm usually talking about--created their own streaming platform called Victory+. Along with Stars games and related content, the Anaheim Ducks also signed on. Eventually, baseball's Texas Rangers also joined the platform. Rangers fans have to subscribe, but hockey fans can watch either team for free. :0)

But all that to say, back in 2016 / 2017 / 2018, DD and I were always scrambling to find a way to watch games. We didn't have the correct cable package to watch the aforementioned Fox Sports & Bally Sports. And any other platform required a subscription. Eventually we upgraded our cable package to include Fox Sports & Bally Sports and were happy campers.

And now we have this free-to-hockey-fans platform, but these days, DD and I watch less hockey than ever before. Life can be funny, can't it?

* * * * *

Image courtesy of www.chewy.com.

Rascal has finally been fully accepted by DD. She bought him a bed last week.The one above that looks like a slipper. :0) That is not Rascal, although it looks like him.

He loves to curl up inside and under blankets when it's super cold, as it was last week, so...another cozier bed for the Rascal-meister.

* * * * *

And that's it for me. I'll catch you--hopefully--in a couple of weeks. I've been struggling to come up with any interesting tidbits to share. :(

Take care and STAY WARM!

We ended up with two of them!

Snow is a fairly rare occurrence around these here parts--especially this much. But it was lovely to watch and enjoy while working from home. Technology has its plusses and the ability to work from home is definitely one of them.

Here are a few more pictures:

The water in the bird bath was frozen solid.

Rascal tracks in the snow. :0)

Snow on the driveway / ramp. (This was after the first wave of precip.)

* * * * *

Image courtesy of Paramount+.

I binged this and it's fabulous. Stallone is great. If you have Paramount+ and you haven't seen it -- go watch it.

From Wikipedia: Stallone portrays Dwight "the General" Manfredi, an American Mafia caporegime who has been recently released from prison in New York and is sent to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he begins to set up a criminal organization.

What they left out is that he was in prison for twenty-five years for covering for the family he worked for and they sent him to Tulsa with nothing.

Can't wait for Season Three. :0)

* * * * *

Image courtesy of Netflix.

I also watched this movie, and it, too, was awesome.

From Wikipedia: The film is based on the 2019 magazine article "Fighting a Two-Front War", by Kevin M. Hymel, on the contributions of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, an all-Black and all-female battalion, in World War II.

These women have to overcome all sorts of obstacles on top of the basic indignity of being dismissed because of the color of their skin.

The battalion commander, Major Charity Adams, receives orders to Europe from the Army, but doesn't get the commensurate orders from the War Department which will officially allow her to command her troops. She ends up writing her own.

And it snowballs from there. The battalion's original housing is supposedly bombed, so the commanding general picks new housing "especially for them." Which turns out to be a filthy, vermin-infested old boarding school. So before they can even start the mission they're there to complete, they have to clean the building / facilities to make them livable.

And on and on.

I highly recommend this as well.

https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/six-triple-eight-true-story-real-history/

* * * * *

And that's all I have for you at the moment--this post is already a fortnight late. Yikes.

So...hope all is well with you.

Take care and catch you in a couple of weeks.

Image courtesy of IMGBIN.

It's 2025 -- can you believe it?

On the whole, aside from how quickly the year flew by, it was a pretty good year.

On the other hand, in reviewing my 2024 goals...I fell really short in three of five of the major categories.

The journey to being debt free goes on, and I'm making progress. Mom's house finally selling and the money being dispersed really helped. But I also implemented some other protocols that have been keeping things on track. I haven't kept reading financial books as I intended, but debt is reduced. I do plan to re-read four of the books that had the biggest impact though.

The path to health and wellness took a left turn at Albuquerque. Instead of losing ten pounds, I'm now twenty-ish over my preferred weight. My eating is far from healthy. I'm using the Hinge Health app once again and was doing both yoga and Pilates for a while, but they both fell by the wayside.

BUT

I'm getting back on track starting this month. I received a bike for Christmas, so riding my bike is a thing I can do as well.

Writing was the biggest fail, but I've accepted that my brain is not yet ready to be creative in that way again, so I will continue to fill my well with reading, watching, and listening.

Housekeeping and Home Improvement were also a fairly big fail. I have no housekeeping plan in place and didn't improve much of anything inside the house. The back yard is another matter--made a few improvements there and I mostly kept up with the falling leaves. The weather / temperature will be the biggest factor in how much more I can do.

Letters to my grandma went out more regularly and, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I met and exceeded my reading challenge. My pattern offerings on Etsy remained roughly the same...

So that's my report card on not just the fourth quarter, but my whole year as far as my 2024 fresh start goals are concerned. It wasn't great, but, sometimes, that's life. An you can start fresh at any time.

Speaking of starting fresh -- let's get to this year's fresh start goals!

Jen's 2025 Fresh Start Goals

1. Send Grandma a monthly letter...to be sent no later than the second Friday of the month. Yes, she's still alive, much to my delight and surprise. She was moved into hospice last spring, and turned 99 I think on her birthday in August. So if she makes it to August 23, 2025, she'll turn 100. That's very good news for me!
2. Read 60 books for the year. This includes the Bible (#5 on this list), so aiming for 59 other books. Quite a few will be be repeats from previous years because I enjoy them that much. And as mentioned above, there are four financial books to re-read, one each quarter. That brings me to 55 other books.
3. Home Improvement -- a) get the oven fixed, b) clean out and organize both hall closets, and c) clean out and rearrange my bedroom closet
4. Yard Improvement -- a) trim and maintain the holly hedge, b) plant flowers, c) finish tidying up the back yard in terms of things growing in the fence (we have a lot of random weed vines that I'm trying to eliminate) and kill/remove the random weeds in the "lawn"
5. Another read-through of the Bible. I've done two years of the "One-Year Bible" where you get some Old Testament, some New, a Psalm and a Proverb. I've also done a chronological read-through where you skip around and read the Books in the order in which they were written. This year, I'm reading the Bible beginning to end in the order in which the books appear.
6. Lose ten pounds. The ultimate goal is twenty, but I'm going to start with ten. Eating right and exercising is the only way to make this happen, so they don't get their own line items.
7. Self-Care -- gonna try this again. Mostly home pedicures because my feet are in bad shape as well as coloring my hair on a regular basis. But also things like crafting and puzzles.
8. Add Patterns to Etsy -- I've been saying this for years too, and last year I attempted setting up my own pattern website, but couldn't get any traction on customers clicking over from Etsy for the expanded pattern offerings, so I'm just going to stay with Etsy and get to adding. I'm going to stick with the goal of one non-hockey pattern per quarter still.
9. Take better care of my car -- regular car washes and vacuuming as well as cleaning the leather.

I looked back at the last four years of goals and I seem to be pretty set in my ways.

The new things added are Yard Improvement line item and Car Care. That's because I want to be more active and things need doing. I left off any writing related goals. I struggled all of last year to make any sort of progress and I decided to let things lie for now. The car care is probably self explanatory...

So HAPPY NEW YEAR to one and all.

All the best to you and yours.

Image courtesy of Goodreads.

My Year in Books via Goodreads!

At the beginning of 2024, I pledged to read fifty-five books in the Goodreads Challenge. I'd completed fifty-eight books or 105% when Goodreads decided to send my Year in Books Review & graphics to go with.

The above graphic was one of the graphics and I was curious as to what that actually meant, so I Googled it. :0) There were multiple ways to qualify, but I knew exactly how I made the cut:

"High Review Volume: You consistently review a large number of books across various genres."

Now, to be honest, I don't write reviews but I do give them all a star rating.

In addition to those fifty-nine books, I read a boat-load of hockey articles.

Now, if you go look at my Goodreads Challenge Book List, be aware that I did not actually read all of the titles listed. That's not to say I didn't read fifty-eight (or more) books. I know I've mentioned this in previous years, but I read a lot of fan fiction. So some of the titles listed, like Gone With the Wind, are placeholders for a piece of fan fiction. I try to choose place-holder books that have roughly the same amount of pages/words as a given piece of fanfic. I'm not reading a 500-word fic and then using GWTW as the place-holder.

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The New Guy

Is working out great. He's smart and he learns quickly, which has been awesome. So a month + in and we're still very happy with our choice.

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Pain Management

I have good news and bad news.

Good News: I finally had my appointment with the rheumatologist.

Good Bad News: I don't have rheumatoid arthritis requiring life-long medicating. What I do have is osteo-arthritis--which the rheumatologist said just means "I'm feeling my age." (boooo!)

Good News: My primary care doctor put me on some pain meds back in October for the right hip / bursitis I can't seem to heal.

Bad News: the meds didn't seem to help

Good News: according to the rheumatologist, the meds I was given are very slow acting, so they should start to work any time now (thank goodness, lol)

Good News: this pain med is also a mild anti-depressant, so I've been a little more upbeat even though the pain hasn't quite been eliminated.

I also had a bone-density scan done to check on...well...my bone density and take corrective action if needed. I'll meet with the rheumatologist again at the beginning of January to go over all the results.

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Image courtesy of IMGBIN.

Book Binge

So I've started another book binge. I didn't mean to do it, but one thing led to another and, well, here we are. :0)

I've dipped my toe into some genres outside my usual purview of romance such as a police procedural, a cozy mystery series, some general fiction, and some self-help.

Didn't pay full price for any of it.

I suppose, as an author myself, I shouldn't be so pleased about that, but between the online library and some recent sales, and books just offered at $0, I'm set for books for at least a good month.

I'm currently reading a fictionalized version of Julia's Child's early career working for the government.

I've developed an appreciation of Mrs. Child after watching the dramedy "Julia" on HBO, which, sadly, was canceled after two seasons.

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Well, friends--this is it until the new year. Hope your holidays are filled with family, friends, food, and fun.

See you in 2025.

Hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving Day and weekend. We had a lovely day with family on Thursday and then spent the rest of the weekend eating deliciousness -- DH's word for the things that you can't eat all the time. I.E. Rotel Queso, pizza, brownies... I did make a lovely beef stew to balance things out though.

Anyway, today, I'm just gonna share some random things.

So I've had this oven mitt for over two decades--I still use it weekly and it has one job. And that's to hold the handle of my large stock pots while I'm cooking.

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Do y'all remember this mug? I got this early- to mid-2000s and I used it for ages and ages. These days, I'm using my tall Dallas Stars Tervis mug--which doesn't look like the picture because it's stained to heck and back with tea :0) -- but this was my go-to mug back in the day. I loved it so much, and I carted it around with me. I bought a second one in red on a subsequent trip to the USS Lexington and then broke it rather quickly. After that, I left the original at home. :0)

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Who's not familiar with Elf on a Shelf? Basically, you buy the little elf doll and move him around the house for the little ones of the house to find each day during the holiday season. DD was in charge of the "Elf Program" at her school for a couple of years. She passed it along this year because she's already at school early enough as it.

Anywho--one of our employees has a 3-D printer and created a glow-in-the-dark skeleton whose joints move. We ended up with him somehow and DH left him in the bathroom one day, and then the next day, someone (DD) started moving him around the bathroom. Then it became a game. Whoever found him moved him to a new spot. But the bathroom is only so big, so we moved the game to the kitchen and the living room.

He's been found and moved several times since his stint in the light fixture.

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Stars Win!

So DD and I got to watch a game from one of the suites. Someone donated two suite seats to the school fall carnival silent auction which DD won. We even got "gold parking" as part of the package.

It was a really fun experience / opportunity to enjoy the game from a suite. The food there was free, but we had to pay for our beverages, which was fine.

Here are a few pictures...

Our gold parking was under a restaurant next to the American Airlines Center and we got to take the elevator right up to the level our suite was on. Fancy!!

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Take care and catch you in a couple of weeks.