This week in wineries

August 2, 20194 Comments

Fave pic of the week

I didn’t post last weekend because I was at my family ‘girls’ weekend. We were in Madison, Ohio, only 40 minutes from me, and our rented house was within 10 minutes of at least 4 wineries, probably more but that’s all we managed to visit. I always appreciate the time and effort from everyone to make this happen every year. Next year my mom and I are in charge of planning.

Highlights of the week This week Gage didn’t have camp (next week either) so we picked up Grandma and headed to the President McKinley Library & Museum and Memorial. It was 55 minutes from home and was a full day affair after we stopped at Aladdin’s for a very late lunch and a quick stop in Books a Million where Gage bought a Lego set and I bought up the board game Labyrinth. It was a fun day. Also, Gage was so proud of himself for completing the library Summer Reading Challenge. We made a special trip to the library so he could get his free book.

Could’ve been better They have started ripping up our side of the street so it’s 2 more weeks of parking on the cul-de-sac and walking through our neighbor’s yard. But at least we got front row seats to how it was done.

Finished reading Airs Above the Ground and listening I Know Who You Are both of which I reviewed here on the blog.

Still reading Eat Dirt: Why Leaky Gut May Be the RootÃ¢ÂÂ¦ and Started reading Pleased to Meet Me: Genes, Germs, and tâ¦ .

On the Small Screen We wrapped up season 3 of Stranger Things and I finally finished the last season of New Girl. And we’ve starting watching a few shows a week of Justified. I love Timothy Olyphant so I’m a fan.

Plans for the weekend We have a wedding tonight at 5:30 and then there’s this

On the way home from the reception (whatever time that will be) we’ll start listening to a Stephen King Book in the car and then I’ll see if I can make it the rest of the 24. I’ll post updates in IG. I’m stacybuckeye if you want to follow. Here’s my stack to choose from

Anyone else giving the reverse readathon a try?

July’s Movies and $ for charity

August 1, 20193 Comments

Is it possible I only saw one movie this month? I guess so. We finished up season 4 of Game of Thrones and Stranger Things season 3 and that’s been our screen time for the month. So, what have you seen? Please add your words – it makes it so much more fun!

You know the drill, add your 5 words (or less!) to mine in a comment and earn $1 for charity. Once we get to $100 the person with the most reviews will choose the charity. Click here to see the past winners, the charities they chose and the other reviews you can add to. Anyone is welcome to join in at any time.

We’re at $15 right now. Your charity could be next

John Wick 3: Parabellum, 2019 (Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Laurence Fishburne, Angelica Huston, Mark Dacascos, Asia Dillon, Ian McShane, Lance Reddick) Grade C+

Wanted more story less headshots.

I Know Who You Are by Alice Feeney

July 30, 2019July 30, 20193 Comments

I Know Who You Are. Finished 7-26-19, 3.5/5 stars, suspense, pub. 2019

Unabridged audio read by Stephanie Racine. 9 CDs

l Know Who You Are is the brilliant tale of two stories. One is about Aimee Sinclair—well-known actress on the verge of being full-on famous. If you saw her, you’d think you knew her. One day towards the near-end of her shoot on her latest film, Aimee comes home from filming to find her husband’s cell phone and wallet on the dining room table. He never goes anywhere without them. But he’s nowhere to be found. She’s not too concerned—they had a huge fight the night before. They both said things they didn’t mean. He might have done things he didn’t mean, things she can’t forget. Even though she has a history of supposedly forgetting. After all, she’s a very good actress.

Alternating with Aimee’s story is that of a little girl who wandered away from home. We always tell our kids not to talk to strangers or bad things will happen. Well, bad things happen. from Goodreads

Aimee is one of those characters you can’t quite trust. Yes, she’s an actress but she’s acting all wrong and you’re not sure why. Her husband goes missing and obviously they had their problems and she’s lying to police, but why? She’s not quite likable enough to pull it off. You also get the story of the little girl and it’s no surprise that it’s Aimee’s story and it helps explain why she seems so off. The police are sniffing around and she is totally unconcerned.

Honestly, I really didn’t really care one way or another but it was just interesting enough to continue listening and I’m glad that I did. For any fireworks that were missing for most of the story they all showed themselves in the last part of the book and they were worthy of a grand finale. I think the end will shock you, maybe even more than once. So, if you are willing to go slow and wait for he payoff this is your book.

Airs Above the Ground by Mary Stewart

July 25, 20197 Comments

Airs Above the Ground. Finished 7-22-19, 3.25/5 stars, suspense, 373 pages, pub. 1965

Lovely Vanessa March, two years married and very much in love, did not think it was a strange for her husband to take a business trip to Stockholm. What was strange was the silence that followed. She never thought to look for her missing husband in Vienna — until she saw him in a newsreel shot there at the scene of a deadly fire. Then she caught a glimpse of him in a newsreel shot of a crowd near a mysterious circus fire and knew it was more than strange. It was downright sinister.

Vanessa is propelled to Vienna by the shocking discovery. In her charge is young Timothy Lacy, who also has urgent problems to solve. But her hunt for answers only leads to more sinister questions in a mysterious world of white stallions of Vienna. But what promises to be no more than a delicate personal mission turns out to involve the security forces of three countries, two dead men, a circus and its colourful personnel. And what waits for Vanessa in the shadows is more terrifying than anything she has ever encountered. from Goodreads

I’ve been wanting to try a Mary Stewart book for years since I knew she was one of the first writers of romantic mystery. Although over 50 years old, the characters and dialogue hold up remarkable well. I enjoyed Vanessa and Tim and their adventures across parts of Europe. There was a twist not quite in the middle that I loved, but I don’t want to spoil it by telling you any more about it. There was some brief romance, but I’d have a hard time characterizing this as romantic suspense by today’s standards.

As much as those things worked for me, just when the story hit its peak, there was a long, drawn out chase scene that bored me to tears. And there is a lot of horse in this story. If you like horses I’d guess that you would get way more out of the story than I did. I learned a lot about the Spanish Riding School and it’s not something that drew me into the story, but might someone else.

Overall, I thought it felt fresh even though it was written in a time when people watched their news at the movie theater 🙂

This Week of no camp

July 21, 2019July 21, 20198 Comments

I’ve been absent this week, because Gage had a rare week of no camps so we were able to spend lots of quality time together. It was a really good week even though the heat has been a bit unbearable the last few days.

Fave pic of the week

This may be a pic that that only a mom can love, but every time I look at it I crack up. Gage got a haircut this week and because she offered I told her to spike it up into a mohawk. Gage doesn’t like gel in his hair so his reaction was priceless. He proudly showed it off the rest of the day 🙂

Highlights of the week We did go to the Tall Ship Festival last weekend with my parents. The ships were cool, but the lines were long and there wasn’t as much for Gage to do as I was led to believe from the promotions. It was still fun and I have a new favorite shot of dad and son… IMG_0722 (3) . On Friday we visited the Botanical Garden with Grandma and we spent a very hot few hours there. It’s one of our favorite places and we hadn’t been in awhile… IMG_0833 (2) It was so hot he had the sand box to himself for 30 minutes (at least it was in the shade) We had a fun play date with an old friend on Tuesday and yesterday Gage and Jason went swimming at another friend’s house (the highlight here is that I got some alone time in the house 🙂 )

Could’ve been better No real complaints this week. Even a doctor’s appointment that involved taking blood and a hand x-ray turned out just fine. It was routine and not a big deal.

Finished reading I finished Title: Peace Is Every Step : The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life, Author: Thich Nhat Hanh and wrote about it here. Gage and I finished up our months long President studies by finishing Title: Grover Cleveland, Again!: A Treasury of American Presidents, Author: Ken Burns , a great book for kids. Well, okay, we both learned a lot 🙂

Still reading Airs Above the Ground Eat Dirt: Why Leaky Gut May Be the Rootâ¦ and started listening to I Know Who You Are

Watching on the small screen We finished season 4 of Game of Thrones which is where I started watching originally and started the third season of Stranger Things last night.

Plans for the weekend The weekend’s almost over, but Jason took Gage to play tennis. This morning Gage said, “Do I have to go? I don’t see the point of it. It’s just hitting a little ball.” LOL. As you can see he did have to go and Jason just texted me to tell me he did great.

So what did you do this week to escape the heat?

This week of meetings and horses

July 13, 2019July 13, 20193 Comments

Fave pic %5ass46vTmK+LbqoJdgEfA.jpg

Gage was at horse camp this week and he loved it! This was at the therapeutic horse farm that he took lessons from when he was younger. He told me he missed the horses so we signed him up this week. So glad we did. I didn’t think he’d be interested enough for 6 hours a day but they kept the kids busy and he came home a sweaty, happy mess every day 🙂

Highlights of the week Well, I did go the the Author Alley that I mentioned last week and it made me feel good to see so many readers crowding around the 52 authors at the independent bookstore. And on another bookish note, my book group had Christmas in July this week. We met at a restaurant and brought the books that we’d received at out Christmas exchange. I ended up bringing Hillbilly Elegy home in a more than fair trade. Oh, and Jason and I snuck in a weekday date with dinner and a movie (John Wick 3).

Could’ve been better They’ve started work on our street and it’s been disruptive to say the least. They are starting with the cul-de-sac circle, but since we are the next driveway there are always trucks in or blocking our driveway. And because our house wraps around the corner we have the biggest front yard on the street, which means we have the porta john, everyone’s mailboxes, all extra equipment they are not quite ready to use and currently half of the street’s trash cans in our front yard. sigh This may be what shows up in this section every week for a while 🙂

Reading I finished and reviewed The Dinner List and spent time with

Airs Above the Ground Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfuâ¦

Listening I’ve started a few audio books but have abandoned them.

Watching on the small screen I’ve been gone most nights this week. In addition to what I already mentioned I had the library board meeting on Monday. I think Jason and I managed one episode of Game of Thrones and one episode of Justified.

On the big screen Jason gets to pick our movies for a bit longer because he won our March Madness bet this year, but for some reason he chose something I wanted to see (he’s good that way). Why do I like the John Wick movies? I have no idea. I spent much of the movie looking way or closing my eyes in disgust at the violence. I love Keanu Reeves and I liked the story in the first two, but this one not so much.

So, what’s been happening in your neck of the woods?

My Dinner List

July 11, 20194 Comments

Yesterday I shared my thoughts about The Dinner List, a book based on a birthday dinner where the attendees (living or dead) were chosen by the birthday girl.

Jason and I had a date night last night and we discussed our own choices for over an hour. After we filled up our first table, we also started a B table, lol.

My birthday dinner wish list – Jason (I want to be able to talk with someone about the dinner when it’s over!) Jesus, Thich Nhat Hanh, Michelle Obama, Jimmy Stewart. So, I took way too much time considering my table. Seriously. Jimmy Stewart could have been any of my favorite movies stars from the black and white era, but he was chosen because I thought he’d get along with the rest of the table, even now I’m second guessing not choosing Cary Grant. Just typing that makes me laugh. Start this discussion on your next date night with a few glasses of wine and you’ll see how fun it can be.

Jason’s table – me, Clinton Woolsey (Jason’s great-grandfather. Click on his name to read his wiki page), George Washington, Albert Einstein, Warren Buffet.

We started a B table and started with Katherine Hepburn, Raphael Nadal, Stephen King…that’s as far as we got before our movie started.

So, let’s see YOUR list. If you post about it leave a link and I’ll add it to this post. But even if you don’t I still want to hear who is coming to your dinner! Who knows maybe someone on your list will convince me to change mine!

The Dinner List by Rebecca Serle

July 10, 20198 Comments

The Dinner List. Finished 7-9-19, fiction. 3/5 stars, 273 pages, pub. 2018

When Sabrina Nielsen arrives at her thirtieth birthday dinner she finds at the table not just her best friend, but also her favorite professor from college, her father, her ex-fiance, Tobias, and Audrey Hepburn.

At one point or another, we’ve all been asked to name five people, living or dead, with whom we’d like to have dinner. Why do we choose the people we do? And what if that dinner was to actually happen? These are the questions Sabrina contends with in Rebecca Serle’s utterly captivating novel, The Dinner List, a story imbued with the same delightful magical realism as Sliding Doors, and The Rosie Project.

As the appetizers are served, wine poured, and dinner table conversation begins, it becomes clear that there’s a reason these six people have been gathered together, and as Rebecca Serle masterfully traces Sabrina’s love affair with Tobias and her coming of age in New York City, The Dinner List grapples with the definition of romance, the expectations of love, and how we navigate our way through it to happiness. Oh, and of course, wisdom from Audrey Hepburn. from Goodreads

The book starts and ends at a 30th birthday party that takes place at a restaurant. Sabrina finds all of the people she put on a proposed list her BFF Jessica made her come up with in college. Jessica, Tobias (her one true love), Conrad (college professor), her dad who abandoned her, and the one and only Audrey Hepburn. What? Audrey Hepburn is dead you say? Yes, well she’s not the only one and this is just one of the things that doesn’t make sense during this 4+ hour dinner that we Seinfeld fans could call ‘the airing of grievances’.

I wanted to love this. I kept waiting for something to happen that would make me love it, but all I felt at the end was sadness. Maybe you could consider this a cautionary tale since there are life lessons served with the meal. It was an easy read, but not one I rushed through because I just wasn’t that invested.

The best part of the book was the premise, the question we’ve all heard, what five people, living or dead, would you want at your dinner party? I put this question to Jason when I started the book and now that I’ve finished we’re both due to share our lists with each other. Come back tomorrow and I’ll share both of our lists with you and be prepared to share YOUR list. If you post about it you can leave a link I’ll add to my post.

Stella Bain by Anita Shreve

July 8, 2019July 7, 20195 Comments

Stella Bain. Finished 6-13-19, 3.5/5 stars, historical fiction, pub. 2013

Unabridged audio read by Hope Davis. 7 hours

An epic story, set against the backdrop of World War I, from bestselling author Anita Shreve. When an American woman, Stella Bain, is found suffering from severe shell shock in an exclusive garden in London, surgeon August Bridge and his wife selflessly agree to take her in. A gesture of goodwill turns into something more as Bridge quickly develops a clinical interest in his houseguest. Stella had been working as a nurse’s aide near the front, but she can’t remember anything prior to four months earlier when she was found wounded on a French battlefield. In a narrative that takes us from London to America and back again, Shreve has created an engrossing and wrenching tale about love and the meaning of memory, set against the haunting backdrop of a war that destroyed an entire generation. from Goodreads

After I finish a book I might write a few thoughts on a piece of scrap paper and slide it in the book until I share my thoughts here, but in between those two I’ll probably take a gander at Goodreads to see if something jumps out as something I forgot. Well, let me save some of you the trouble and tell you straight up that this is a prequel of sorts. The fact that I didn’t know this makes me more than a little miffed. So, Shreve’s earlier book was written from the perspective of Stella Bain’s husband about their marriage. I wish I had read that one first I think, but it may not stop me from picking it up now, even knowing how abhorrent he is.

So, with that fair warning out of the way, let’s get to Stella. When we first meet her she has no idea who she is, but at some point early on she remembers that she drove an ambulance in the War (WWI). The doctor and wife who take her in help her to recover enough memories to know she must go to the military headquarters in London. Here she remembers everything and we’re not even halfway through the book.

I’m not sure how much more to tell you because I don’t want to spoil anything, but will say that I grew to respect ‘Stella’ but I never truly got a handle on who she was. Some of her choices were hard to accept. I did learn a lot about how shell shock (PTSD) was misunderstood and even feared during the time and I thought that was a strong part of the book. I thought it was a good book, but probably would have liked it more if I’d read All He Ever Wanted first.

This Week with Fireworks and AC

July 6, 2019July 6, 201917 Comments

Fave pic off the week

We needed a new pic of the three of us!

Best part of the week Well, we spend some lovely hours today with our friends, the guys swimming and the moms talking non-stop, BUT I have to say getting a new AC after going over a week without one in the sweltering heat wins the week. The local fireworks with the three of us and my mom was nice too 🙂

Could’ve been better Remember how excited I was to go to the wedding reception last week and eat all of the wedding cake? Well, it turns out you can be at a wedding reception for 4 hours and still not get cake 😦

Reading I just started my first Mary Stewart.

Title: Airs Above the Ground: The suspenseful, romantic story that will sweep you off your feet, Author: Mary Stewart Title: Eat Dirt: Why Leaky Gut May Be the Root Cause of Your Health Problems and 5 Surprising Steps to Cure It, Author: Josh Axe Title: Peace Is Every Step : The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life, Author: Thich Nhat Hanh

Listening I just finished today and I loved it!

Title: Fangirl, Author: Rainbow Rowell

Watching on the small screen We’re still working our way through season 4 of Games of Thrones. Once we finish that we’ll catch up with the kids in Stranger Things.

Plans for the weekend It’s All-Star weekend here in Cleveland and they have a lot of fun things set up for kids downtown. Depending on the weather we’ll probably get there. And hopefully Jason and I will catch a movie when Gage is at Grandma’s tomorrow. There is also an Author Alley (20+ local authors all there to sign and sell their books) at my favorite independent bookstore tomorrow, but seeing how it’s 1:30 am I’ll have to decide if it’s worth it when I wake up.

Favorite thing I got in my mailbox The picture doesn’t do it justice but I love this postcard I received from Dennis in Los Angeles.

IMG_0652 (2)

What’s been happening in your next of the woods?

Stacy's Books

books, movies, and boy