Welcome to the Weekly Wrap Up!
My current cellphone is a Moto G Power 7 (2019) and while I've never been one that feels the need to upgrade to the latest and greatest, the little Moto has made my decision for me. It started freezing, is terribly slow and I think it just needs to be retired. My new phone is a Moto G Power 5G. In Lilac! With a purple case, because I am forever dropping things.
So last week I talked about an old graphics site I had found. I thought the graphics were so cute and I was able to find the original owner. I was debating asking if she still had graphics available for sale (as Wayback Machine didn't save much). I got encouragement both from some Neocities peeps and my son (when I worried it would be weird my lovely son said, "Embrace your weirdness, Mom!"). I sent an email one night and the next morning I had a reply from her! She said she had most of her graphics and asked what I was interested in. I replied back .... and it's been crickets since then. I'm not going to hold my breath. But you know what? Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Every week I do this I think to myself that I should be keeping notes on what I've watched or read about during the week so I can talk about it and I have yet to actually do that. However, I did leave myself a note about wind phones. Messy Nessy Chic is a site that I regularly check on and once a week she does a series called 13 Things I Found on the Internet. One of the 13 things this past week was the wind phone and I thought this was such a sweet and beautiful concept! From the creator's website:
The Phone of the Wind was created in Japan by its creator, Itaru Sasaki, while grieving his cousin who died of cancer. He purchased an old-fashioned phone booth and set it up in his garden. He installed an obsolete rotary phone not connected to wires or any "earthly system." Here, Itaru felt a continued connection to his cousin and found comfort and healing amid his grief. Itaru gave his phone booth a name, Kaze No Denwa (風の電話), translated as The Telephone of the Wind.
There are wind phones all over the world and you can access a map showing where they are. I found that there are 4 in my state! I may plan a day trip some time to go visit one.
Reading
I finished a book that I'd been spending most of this month reading, The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez. It was a LONG book - over 500 pages! It has a typical fantasy premise:
Two warriors shepherd an ancient god across a broken land to end the tyrannical reign of a royal family...
The narrative construction was interesting because even in the midst of an event happening or two main characters talking the author would break in and incorporate snippets of conversation or thoughts from townspeople or soldiers or other - for lack of a better word - literary NPCs. It was a unique way to flesh out scenes. It seems like this book got a lot of notice when it came out in 2022. I only heard of it because it showed up on the Libby app, which is what I use to borrow ebooks from the library.
After reading that I needed something a little lighter, so I bought Prima Facie by Ruth Downie, which is a novella in her Roman medicus mystery series. I love this series and I especially appreciate her main character, Gaius, a Roman army doctor who married a Briton and has family in Gaul. He's just a guy trying to get along and the family is not always helping. Rarely helping. Sometimes anti-helping. Reminds me so much of my family! (I say this with love.)
Watching
The new season of Harry Wild on AcornTV has started. This is the 3rd season and Jane Seymour plays the title character, a retired English professor living in Ireland who has a private detective agency. It's fun and light, a good thing to watch while unwinding from work. Although, I feel like I've been watching Jane Seymour forever (she was a Bond girl in Live and Let Die, she was Serina in the original Battlestar Galactica, she was Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman) I don't remember her voice being so deep and gravelly. When did that happen?
Until next week!