I hope, if you celebrate Thanksgiving, that it was a lovely one! And, if you don't, I hope your week went well. I had the family over and we had dinner provided by one of the fancy grocery stores. That was a mixed bag - one of the side dishes was green beans but they didn't trim them at all so they were stringy and my green bean loving family didn't eat very many of them. Also, Mom2 and I are the only ones who eat sweet potatoes. Usually she makes them and brings them over but I told her that she didn't have to do that because the meal included sweet potatoes. Well, she ended up not liking them and now I'm stuck with them and, honestly? Mom2's are so much better.

I ended up not going to the Arcade85 on Thanksgiving night because the massive carbohydrate load of the meal knocked me on my butt. Poor Best Son was trying to visit with me once the rest of the family left and I could not keep my eyes open. I was literally falling asleep in front of him as he was trying to talk to me. Kind of a bummer since the fate of the Arcade is unknown but I think it'll show up in some form in the future.

I've been playing Everquest 2, and I was just kind of moving from one thing to the next, having fun and no clear goal in mind. Frigyth, my Froglok wizard, just hit adventure level 46 and I've decided to try and increase her faction with the various groups - Tunarian Alliance, Qeynos Guard, The Concordium, The Celestial Watch and also the Far Seas Trading Company. Right now I'm working on quests in Everfrost and I'm so excited because while I was working on faction quests, I also picked up some local ones and have earned some fish plushies! I love me a plushie quest.

Listening

Some podcasts I've listened to this week:

Reading

I finished the book I was reading last week, The King's Man by Elizabeth Kingston and my next book was NOT Snake-Eater by T. Kingfisher because I have yet to drive to the bookstore to pick it up. Instead, I bought several books online due to a Bluesky posting and am working on those.

Diane Duane (author of the Young Wizards series and a ton of other stuff) reposted something from another author, Krista D. Ball, who was busy promoting still other authors. I had never heard of Skyla Dawn Cameron before but I checked out her website and ended up buying 4 books! The first one I read was Dweller on the Threshold which was an excellent spooky book. It was atmospheric and suspenseful and kind of reminded me of T. Kingfisher's The Hollow Places. The main character in the book has 2 cats and straight up at the front of the book the author states the cats don't get hurt. I was very appreciative of that statement. Otherwise I would have been dreading that possiblity the whole time I was reading.

I finished that pretty quickly and now I'm reading Solomon's Seal which is the first book in a series. The main character is a treasure hunter with a troubled past who seeks out rare artifacts for the highest bidder. There's a catch, though - this world has undergone "the Pulse" which has awakened magic. That aspect of the book makes me think of the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews. I'm about a third of the way through this book.

The other 2 books of hers that I bought are The Silent Places and The Taiga Ridge Murders. I don't usually go for supernatural horror but Dweller on the Threshold ended up being so good that I have high hopes these will be equally good!

There was one other book I bought under the influence of that Bluesky post, Starship Librarians, an anthology of librarians in space stories. If that interests you, you can check it out here.

Watching

Still working my way through Crusade. I've watched up to episode 7 so I'm just past the halfway point. I feel like up to now the acting has been kind of clunky and wooden and some of the characters seem kind of one-dimensional but I think maybe I see signs of growth? It'll probably get good right at the end and I'll be left wanting more!

Quite a while ago, at least a couple of years, Best Son introduced me to the anime series Made in Abyss. I'm not huge into anime although he keeps trying to introduce me to things and get me interested and there have been some shows I've really enjoyed! This was one of them. The animation work is just so beautiful and I love the story of going down different levels in this abyss. My favorite level was where they had the giant lilypads. Anyway, I have since found out that there are follow up films and sequels! I bought a DVD set that has it all but since it's been so long since I've seen the original I'm doing a rewatch of that. I'm up to episode 5.

OK, I think that's about it for this week!

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