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Welcome to my weekly update for July 18, 2021! Today is my 43rd birthday and one of my good friends arrives for a weeklong visit! It should be a great day! My husband asked me what I learned in year 42, the year that should have been the answer to "Life, the Universe, and Everything" (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference). I told him that I learned that masks and vaccines are the answer to everything. I may not have learned any secrets of the universe in 2020/21 but 42 is a year I definitely won't forget. We went on vacation to Homer, Alaska and Denali National Park last week. We're actually still in Denali as I write this. I was worried about rainy weather but it hasn't been bad. Homer was cool and overcast but the rain only came through overnight. We can deal with that. The weather in Denali has been great. We actually saw Denali (Mt. McKinley) on Thursday. It's a monster! It's crazy how much higher it looks than all the peaks around it! (For those who don't know, it's the highest peak in North America at 20,310 feet or 6190 meters). The sky has been too hazy since then for us to see it again. We've read that only 30% of visitors actually see the mountain because it's usually hidden behind clouds so we're happy that we saw it at all. I haven't even started to sift through my Denali pictures yet but here are a couple from Homer. Images © Jennifer G. at Introverted Reader The first picture shows the little town of Homer ("Halibut Fishing Capital of the World") and Kachemak Bay State Park. I took the second picture at Grewingk Glacier, which feeds a lake of the same name. It was so…

Welcome to my weekly update for July 11, 2021! We didn't really do anything for the holiday last week but my husband is off this week. We spent the holiday weekend making plans for our vacation and for trips with our family and friends when they visit. Everyone we know seems excited to visit us in Alaska! We're looking forward to welcoming them. Unfortunately, the weather for our vacation week looks cool and rainy so we've booked our hotels in Homer and near Denali National Park but we haven't made many other firm plans. We'll have to take it day by day. I consider myself to be an average housekeeper but I can't relax in a space I consider to be "mine" until I've done a deep, deep, deep clean. So I've spent a ridiculous amount of time scrubbing our little studio apartment. My husband says it's a good thing we normally live in our RV while he's working; I'd kill myself cleaning if I did this every three months! He's not wrong. So I've finished a lot of audiobooks while I've been tracking down every last dog hair (the former renter had at least one long-haired dog) but I haven't sat down to review anything in a while. Posted: Ten Books That Have Been on My TBR the Longest Read: The Umbrella Academy: Dallas by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá--4 Stars The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart, read by Del Roy--3.5 Stars Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II by Liza Mundy--4 Stars Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World by Joan Druett, read by David Colacci--4 Stars Currently Reading: Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich The Land of Forgotten Girls by Erin Entrada Kelly, read by Lulu Lam…

Welcome to my weekly update for July 4, 2021! Happy Independence Day, my fellow Americans! As I write this on Friday, we haven't made any plans for the long weekend yet. Someone pointed out that Alaska is not the best place for 4th of July fireworks since we don't really see any darkness at this time of year. Oh well. I'm sure we'll find some sort of celebration! I'm posting pictures from Independence Day in Portland, Maine in 2019. We went out on a schooner with some friends to watch the fireworks from the water! Posted: Ten Anticipated Book Releases for the Remainder of 2021 Read: The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy The Golden Tresses of the Dead (Flavia de Luce #10) by Alan Bradley, read by Jayne Entwistle Namesake (Fable #2) by Adrienne Young Two Old Women: An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival by Velma Wallis, illustrated by Jim Grant Firefly: The Unification War: Part One by Greg Pak, Dan McDaid, and Marcelo Costa, created by Joss Whedon Currently Reading: The Umbrella Academy: Dallas by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart, read by Del Roy Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II by Liza Mundy Up Next: I need a book set in/written by an author from Australia or New Zealand for one of my reading challenges. I know a lot of you live in these two countries. What do you recommend? What did your week look like? Deb Nance at Readerbuzz hosts The Sunday Salon and Kimberly at Caffeinated Book Reviewer hosts Sunday Post. Kathryn at Book Date hosts It's Monday! What Are You Reading? I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in beautiful Asheville, NC. I will earn a small commission at no…

Welcome to my weekly update for June 27, 2021! If you're new here, you might not know that my husband is a traveling healthcare professional. He accepts three-month assignments to fill staffing needs at hospitals around the country and I tag along. I take care of chores and errands while he's at work so that we can explore on his days off. We completed his last assignment in Sarasota, Florida earlier this month. We're now in Anchorage, Alaska! It's warmer here than you probably expect, with highs in the mid-60s and lows in the mid-50s, but still a bit of a shock to our systems! The sun sets at around 11:30 pm and rises around 4:30 am but the sky never truly gets dark. We're getting adjusted though! We normally travel in our motorhome but we didn't want to drive 4000+ miles from home, cross the Canadian border (allowed for essential workers but it still sounds like a pain), and find a campground near the hospital. So this time we flew in, rented a furnished apartment, and borrowed a car from a friend of a friend. We're used to rolling into town, plugging in the RV, and immediately sightseeing, so this experience has been different for us. We've had a lot of little chores that seem to take a lot of time. We haven't gotten out much yet but hope to this weekend now that we're settled in. We visited the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center on Tuesday. It was so cool to see all those native animals in their own environment! Let me know if you've visited Anchorage and have any suggestions for things we need to see! The brown bear is a resident at the Wildlife Center so he was behind a fence and we were up on a…

Welcome to my weekly update for June 20, 2021! Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there, especially my own! We were able to celebrate an early Father's Day with him last weekend. Considering that I hadn't been home since February 2020 because of covid and my husband hadn't been home since September 2019 (I flew home in February for a funeral but he had to work), it was a truly special day. What a busy few weeks! I last posted on May 28 while we were still in Sarasota, FL. I struggled with internet access the whole three months we were there but Verizon finally throttled my data access to the point where I just stopped trying. My apologies for not commenting on your blogs or responding to the very few things I posted here. We finally finished up my husband's work assignment in Sarasota and went home to Asheville, NC for a little over a week! Yay! It was so good to see my family and my mountains! We were ridiculously busy, trying to fit in time with everyone and catch up on overdue doctor and dentist appointments. If you want to feel old, schedule all your yearly appointments in one week. Seriously. Slideshow: The misty mountain view is from my parents' back porch, where I grew up in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. The clearer view is from my grandmother's front porch, "just up the hill" from my parents. I've been a lot of beautiful places but there's no place like home! Posted: Since my last update on May 23, I've posted Beautiful by Stacy McAnulty, illustrated by Joanne Lew-Vriethoff--5 Stars Ten Quotes about Making a Difference Read: I have been reading quite a bit since my last update on May 23. Less blogging…