Life
Whew, it was another whirlwind week of trip planning for this summer--and not getting much else done. So, it turns out that getting a campsite at Glacier National Park is actually harder than getting Taylor Swift tickets! We struck out with our first attempt on Wednesday, for a campsite on the east side of the park and had to scramble to find one in a private campground outside the park (which is a lot more expensive, plus you need to reserve entrance tickets to even enter the park). But, we learned our lessons, and Saturday morning at precisely 10:00 am, we were successful in nabbing a beautiful lakeview campsite on the west side of the park! You should have seen us celebrating here. And it turns out that the Canadian reservation system is a bit more civilized and very polite (no surprise there), and in spite of all the people trying to reserve campsites at the same time (their entire park system opened for reservations for the whole year on Friday morning at 10 am), we got a great campsite at Banff National Park, too. With those in place, we spent the rest of the weekend nailing down the rest of our itinerary--it has now expanded to an almost 5 1/2 week trip!
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Only 12,000 people ahead of me!
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I continued to reconnect with friends and slowly build up my exercise stamina last week, in the wake of recovery from my long chronic illness relapse. One close friend grew up in southern California and really does not like winter here, so she has a tradition of the Coldest Day of the Year Walk (figuring if she can enjoy that, she can handle the rest of winter). With our temperatures below freezing for much of January, it seemed like Tuesday might be the coldest of the cold days, so she invited me and our other close friend for a walk. The three of us have been friends for 25 years, and our sons are also best friends (since kindergarten), but we hadn't all been together since the wedding of one of their sons last September, so it was great to reconnect, walk and talk nonstop ... in 12-degree weather!
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Bird feeder is popular on those cold, snowy days
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Winter sunset - at 5:15!! Days are getting longer.
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And we went to another friends' house for dinner Saturday and caught up with them over a delicious meal. It feels so good to be reconnecting and socializing again!
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On the Blog
Favorite Movies Watched in 2024 - my annual wrap-up of all the movies I reviewed last year, with my top picks in different categories, and how carefully I store them (ha ha).
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On Video
Hold My Place Tag - this fun tag video is all about bookmarks! Check it out to see my diverse collection of random bookmarks.
Friday Reads 1-24-25 - my brief weekly recap of what I am reading and listening to.
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What We're Watching
Silo - This adaptation of the outstanding trilogy by Hugh Howey that starts with Wool (one of my favorite books and series ever) is now in its second season, as the dystopian story of a community living underground in a 200-story silo continues. While it is science fiction with loads of surprising twists and suspense, the focus--in the novels and the TV show--is on the characters.
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What We're Reading
I finished reading The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. As a child and teen of the 60's and
70's, I somehow missed this YA classic, set in Tulsa in the mid-1960's.
In case you, too, have been living in a cave for 60 years, the novel
focuses on a tight-knit group of boys who are called Greasers in their
local parlance, for their long hair, slicked back with hair grease.
They're not quite as bad as Hoods, but they're mostly poor and not
treated well by others. Their enemies are the Socs, short for Socials,
who are wealthy, spoiled, and sometimes cruel. Ponyboy Curtis is the
narrator, a fourteen-year-old boy who lives with his two older brothers,
Sodapop and Darrell, since their parents died. The three are close and
consider the other Greasers their family: small Johnny, rough guy Dallas
who's been in prison, Two-Bit who's always cracking jokes, and Steve
who is Sodapop's childhood best friend. Things come to a head with the
Socs one night when they attack Ponyboy and Johnny. The novel was just as outstanding as everyone has been
telling me for decades, and I read it in only a few days because it was so compelling. Now I want to see the 1983 movie (how did I miss that, too?).
Now, I am reading The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon, a book I gave my husband that he read back in 2019, and I've been meaning to read it ever since! It was worth the wait. The town of West Hall, Vermont, has always been plagued by mysterious disappearances, deaths, and supernatural legends. In 1908, a woman named Sara looks back on her childhood on a farm in West Hall. Her "auntie," a Native American woman who helped her and her father, taught her many things about nature ... and some very unnatural things as well. As an adult, Sara's beloved little girl, Gertie, goes missing. In the present day, in that same farmhouse, Alice is bringing up her two daughters, 19-year-old Ruthie and six-year-old Fawn. When Alice goes missing, Ruthie finds Sara's old diary and starts to unravel some of the mysteries of this strange place where they live. This is a super creepy paranormal thriller, with perfect January vibes. It's completely engrossing, and I'm enjoying it.
On audio, I am listening to Two Degrees by Alan Gratz, a middle-grade novel that focuses on the effects of climate change on three different children. Akira and her father are enjoying a horseback ride in the Sierra Nevadas in California when a wildfire traps them and some others in the forest. Natalie lives in Miami with her mother, and they typically just ride out hurricanes because they can't afford to evacuate. But when "the big one" hits Miami dead-on, the waters rise faster than they expected, with consequences they never dreamed of. Owen and George live in Churchill, Manitoba, near the Hudson Bay in the Canadian arctic. They know all about polar bears, but when the best friends get stranded out on the tundra, polar bears, hungry and desperate from the longer thaw season, get close enough to put their lives in danger. The novel rotates between the three stories, each featuring kids whose lives are in peril, trying to escape from a disaster or crisis brought on by climate change. It's excellent on audio, with different narrators for each story. The overall theme is an important one, but this might be too scary for younger middle-graders.
My husband, Ken, has been reading his most-anticipated Christmas present, In Too Deep by Lee Child and Andrew Child, the 29th book in the Jack Reacher series, my husband's favorite. He loves the action and suspense in this series. Season 3 of Reacher, the TV adaptation of the series, starts February 20--we are both fans of the show.
Our son, 30, is reading Practical Adept, book 17 of the Spellmonger
series by Terry Mancour, which he loves! He's been working six days a week and sounded exhausted when I talked to him yesterday--I hope he's had some reading time to unwind.
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What are you and your family reading this week?
