All Finished with My Winter To-Do List for 2020/21

February is over at last.  Whew.

Although spring has not yet sprung, I've finished everything on my winter to-do list that I'm reasonably going to finish, so I'm going to wrap it up and begin afresh.  Let's see how I did...

~ Finish writing a short story  Check! I released my new short story "Run, Run" in January as an e-book here for Kindle and here for Nook.  It's free!  (In the US, anyway -- it should be free for Nook everywhere, but the Kindle version may cost you a small amount in other countries.)  "Run, Run" retells the story of The Gingerbread Man, and is a sequel to my book One Bad Apple.  I've included a recipe for 1800s-style gingerbread in the e-book as well, in case you get as hungry reading it as I got while writing it.

~ Finish the first draft of my Beauty and the Beast retelling  Fail.  I'm not quite half done with this first draft, I think.  It's already at 30K, so this is going to be another longer book, which is fun!  But I have a lot to write yet.  I absolutely love these characters, though, so I'm not complaining about having lots of time to spend with them!

I still don't have at title for it, though.  It'll come.

~ Finish re-reading The Lord of the Rings  Fail.  That's okay, too.  This is my ninth time reading it, and I'm really in no hurry.  I've been enjoying Heidi's read-along of it a lot!

(This and the following book pictures are from my Instagram account.)

~ Read 3 Christmas books  Check!  In fact, I read six!!!  I think that's the most Christmas books I've ever read in one season as an adult.  I read:

• Christmas with Anne and Other Holiday Stories by L. M. Montgomery 
• A House to Let by Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins, and Adelaide Anne Proctor
• Yuletide: A Jane Austen-Inspired Collection of Stories edited by Christina Boyd
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (reviewed previously here)
• Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie
• Holiday by Gaslight by Mimi Matthews

~ Read 6 other books off my TBR shelves  Check!  I read ten.  It was a great winter for reading!  I read:

• Code Red at the Super Mall by Eric Wilson
• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
• Jewel of Persia by Roseanna M. White
• For the Sake of the Game edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger
• The Lone Ranger by Elizabeth Rudnick
• Further Chronicles of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
• Faces to the Sun edited by S. J. Lasko
• In League with Sherlock Holmes edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger
• Black Orchids by Rex Stout

~ Read 3 books from the library  Check!  I read:

• We are the Ship by Kadir Nelson
• Black Heroes of the Wild West by James Otis Smith
• The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby

~ Read at least 1 book each month about/by someone who is not white Check!  I read four:

• We are the Ship by Kadir Nelson
• Black Heroes of the Wild West by James Otis Smith
• The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

~ Host a pirate-themed blog party in February  Aye, aye!  We had so much fun.  Go here for the wrap-up post with links to all the different posts people contributed.

~ Watch 3 Christmas movies  Check!  I watched:

• Holiday Affair (1949)
• The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)
• A Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
• White Christmas (1954)

~ Watch 4 movies off my TBW shelves  Check!  I watched seven*:

• Call of the Wild (2020)
• The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976)
• Calcutta (1946)
• Much Ado About Nothing (2012)
• Virginia City (1940)
• Sleeping Beauty (1959)
• Against All Flags (1952)

*I had watched two of those before (The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and Sleeping Beauty), but so long ago that I didn't really remember them, so I kept them on my TBW shelves until I had a chance to watch them again and decide if I liked them enough to keep them or not.

~ Go see Wonder Woman: 1984 (2020)  Check!  It was okay -- you can read my thoughts here.

~ Try making cookies with my new patterned rolling pin  Check!  As you can see, it has a very ME design:

~ Help my daughter make a playground for her hamster  Check!  You can see him playing in it here:

~ Repaint the main floor bathroom  Check!  Very happy with the results.  Especially this border I put up:

~ Get back to regularly reading the blogs I love Check!  I've been keeping up reasonably well, I think, and I love spending a couple afternoons every week just reading and reading and reading them.  I'd rather be reading them every day like I used to, but right now, this is what works for my life, so I'll try to keep it up :-) 

I'll figure out a new set of goals in a day or two, for the spring!  Meanwhile, happy Friday to you.

Did you know they make peanut butter-filled Oreos now? I guess I'd seen them a few times, but we tried them for the first time this weekend, and they're pretty good! About on par with the mint ones, I'd say. Like the mint ones, the filling isn't as sticky as ordinary Oreos, but other than that, they're grrrreat! They're not as strongly flavored as the minty ones either, just a nice chocolate-and-peanut butter mix.

And yes, they're of great assistance when one is pounding out 2,000 words a day. I'm past 16,000 words now, and I put a new snippet up last night.

So Mom was here last week, Monday through Saturday. As usual, we had lots of fun. We watched the first five eps of season one of Bones, two movies (How to Steal a Million and Shadow of a Doubt -- mmm, Peter O'Toole and Joseph Cotten!), and a couple of NCIS eps. We also baked several batches of cookies (haystacks, peanut butter cookies, and cinnamon ice box cookies) and sent them off in care packages to the Leatherneck and Quikie (Cowboy's best buddy from college). We took Daniel on a walk downtown and toured our library (always a highlight of any visit!). Cowboy and I introduced her to Vietnamese food at a little place not too far from the Crow's Nest. AND on Thursday, Mom babysat Dano so that Cowboy and I could go out to celebrate our anniversary a few weeks late! It was the first time we'd been anywhere without him since he was born, so that was a bit interesting. It felt kinda wrong not to at least be talking about him at first, but we got used to it.

Then on Saturday, Cowboy, Dano, Mom, and I all went to Cambridge to visit Johnnycake and Dimples. It was our first time there, although they've visited us several times. They have a cute apartment (with air conditioners, swoooooon!), and Johnnycake showed us around the Harvard Law campus and other interesting sites near there. We went to three different bookstores, one pretty famous (the Harvard Book Store, one of the largest independently-owned bookstores in the country), one really tiny (the Grolier Poetry Bookshop, which is one of two poetry-only bookstores in the country), and one underground (literally -- a used and rare book store in a shop below street level). We all went to church with Johnnycake and Dimples on Sunday, and ate lunch at a Thai restaurant. Then we played Taboo while Johnnycake welded some chrome back onto The Tank for us. It was a short, but fun, visit. Mom is spending this week with them now, but Cowboy and Dano and I are back home.

"Oh phooey, I burned the darn muffins."

Okay, I didn't really burn muffins, I just felt like quoting The Long Kiss Goodnight. Because how can you not love Samuel L. Jackson? Anyway, what I actually did was make half a batch of No-Bake Chocolate Cookies, and they totally didn't turn out. I don't know why -- I've made them oodles of times before; they were my Grandpa H's favorite cookie, so I grew up with these things. Maybe you can't halve that recipe or something -- I know some recipes you can't. They turned out really dry and refused to stick together much. So I got about a dozen little cookies and a cereal bowl full of what are essentially Chocolate-Coated Sugar Bombs. Which are tasty, but not what I was really hoping for. Oh well. Chocolate is good whatever the form, right?

Waaah! It's been so humid lately that my Oreo cookies have gotten chewy! Yuck :-b

Guess what I discovered while working in Grocery last night? Mint-creme Oreos! Oh baby oh baby, I had to buy me a package right that same morning, and are they ever mintalicious! Cowboy won't touch them -- he says the smell of mint on my breath is overpowering enough, but I loves them, yes I does. Their only drawback is that the filling isn't quite a sticky as normal Oreo innards, so the cookies sometimes fall off a little when I dunk them in milk. But that's okay. They are marvy and I have eaten six already. That leaves lots more yet :-9 Oh, and I was really nice and got Cowboy a package of normal Double Stuf Oreos since I figured he wouldn't like the mint ones, since I usually don't buy them for him because I don't really like Double Stuf as much as regular ones. So he gets a tasty treat too :-D

Cowboy gave me an early Valentine's Day present yesterday: a new rack for my oven! I know what you're thinking: what a sentimental fool he is, eh? But I really wanted one, because our oven only has one rack and with as many cookies as I bake, two racks is essential, really. I've been making do with only one for the last two-and-a-half years, and Cowboy finally decided enough was enough. Just think: my cookie baking will be twice as fast now! I love him!