Weekly Wrap-Up #126 – Back from Scotland – July 16th, 2023

So I always start these at the beginning of the week after I post the last one. So this was started before my Scotland trip. Going to try to skim down all the details I usually give.

On the 4th of July I woke up to a What’s App message from the tour group about little details to get ready. Also woke up to another text from my brother of the barbecue he’d already got started! My niece had her art show, but wasn’t selling this year. And she said it may be the last time she does one, so sad! Here are pictures from this year’s art show. Where I am the only one who got the “pop quiz” question right.

I was woken up shortly after midnight Wednesday the 5th morning to the power going out. Fortunately my house was cool enough inside I could still sleep. But I was worried the food I had in the fridge wouldn’t make it. The power came back on a little over 4 hours after that, and I assumed the food was good. I was also woken up by texts from the airline saying they’d had to change aircraft and so had changed my seats. I ended up not having a window seat for my 8 hour flight, so I had to change that. Only seats left that were window were back in regular Economy. So first thing once I actually got up for the day was to make sure to get a refund for the price difference. Thursday morning I got up, snuggled with the dogs a bit before I went to drop them off where they would be staying while I was in Scotland. Then came home packed. Also checked in for my flight, and went ahead and paid bills. Since my pay day is usually the 10th, I pay bills then, but that is when I would be in Scotland, so wanted to do it ahead. Fortunately the district gives us our two July paychecks at the end of June.

Friday the 7th was getting up and hoping I’d gotten everything packed and off the the airport two and a half hours before my flight to make sure I made it on time. Got to the airport and had a full day of flights till I would get to Scotland about mid-day their time on Saturday.

I’ll share all about my Scotland week in a separate post. Let’s just say that there was a crazy storm back at home Friday the 14th, and I got a notification my last night in Scotland that the power was out in my neighborhood. As I flew on Saturday the 15th to Toronto from Scotland, then from Toronto home, I kept checking to see if they power had been fixed. But I guess there were like 189,000 people without power, and it was not. So my mom and stepdad picked me up at the airport Saturday afternoon around 4:30, which if I’d still been in Scotland would have been 10:30 pm. So I was tired. But I went home and dropped my suitcases off, then went to dinner with my mom and stepdad and went back to their house to charge my phone. I decided to wait to get the dogs till Sunday with no power in the house. About 8 pm I had them take me back to my house to see about maybe getting stuff to stay at their house, but when I got there, the power was back on! So I spent my first night back in my own bed in my air conditioned home. I did have to throw out everything in the fridge unfortunately, since it had been over 24 hours with no power.

Sunday I went to get the dogs in the morning because it was supposed to be stormy weather again during the day. Got them home, but had no food, so had to go do grocery shopping. Then I did some blogging so I could post this!

Books Finished

First was an ARC that I posted the review for the first week of July, second was an audiobook I’ll review in my July L-L-L-Little Review post at the end of the month, and third was an e-galley I had to read before my trip, and posted that review before the trip too. Because of how busy I was on my trip, I didn’t get much reading done, so only finished one book that week, I’d started a while ago, so I only had 300 pages left in Dragonfly in Amber. But it was perfect timing to read while on my trip because so many of the places on the tour were in this book.

New Additions to My Library

ARCs:

All three of these ARCs came while I was in Scotland, so thankful that my mom could run over and stick them inside my house till I got home.

Audiobooks:

I used my Audible credit this month to get a Tessa Bailey book. I’ve wanted to read her, but if you read my DNF post from last month, I DNFed the one book by her that I’ve tried. Someone suggested trying audio, so I am going to do that. The other two were the free ones the week of July 6th from the SYNC summer audio program for teens.

Bookish Stuff:

I ordered some Outlander themed shirts to take on my tour in Scotland. The first picture shows the ones I got to take with me. The second picture are a couple of leather bookmarks I got in Scotland. The purple one is from Rosslynn Chapel where they filmed The Da Vinci Code movie. I loved the saying and had to buy it!

E-galleys:

Got the first one for a blog tour after I get back from Scotland. The second one I got once I was back for a blog tour mid-August.

Free E-books:

First one was free on Amazon. Found it through an ad on Bookbub. The rest were also all free on Amazon, but found through an author’s post on Facebook.

Physical Books:

The first picture are books I bought for myself in Scotland. I got the Hufflepuff version of the Harry Potter book at a comic/sci-fi fan store in Edinburgh my first night in Scotland. The other two books I got at the Culloden gift shop in Scotland. The second picture is a book I found at a local “junk” store as I call it. It’s called Cargo Largo and they have all kinds of random things. They have books and you never know what you’ll find. This was one I’d wanted to read, so grabbed it. I may end up taking it to my school library and putting it there since I don’t know when I’ll get to it.

What I’m Watching

Still watching my usual shows. Also started watching the first season of the Twilight Zone episodes that Jordan Peele did.

On the plane they had some newer choices of movies, so I watched two I had wanted to see. The new Shazam movie and 65.

Coming Up Next Week on My Blog

All of these are e-galleys for either publisher or blog tour reviews. These will be the week after I get back from Scotland.

I’ll probably have a couple promo posts and maybe a post about my trip!

Giveaways

Don’t forget that I do now have the nice little box on the right hand sidebar so you can check out giveaways all the time! My current monthly giveaway is HERE! Remember if I get over 100 entries in that monthly giveaway I add more winners, and the last five months I had over 100, so that was two winners each month this year so far. And for June I had over 700 entries, so I picked 7 winners!

I also started a Summer Seasons of Books Giveaway last week, so be sure to go enter that HERE. This giveaway goes for several months, so lots of chances to get entered.

Scotland Tour Tidbits

Look for a post later this week probably with some of the best photos and details from my trip!

Final Thoughts

How has your July been so far! Mine has been going by so fast! And so exciting with my tour! Reading hasn’t been a ton at the beginning thanks to being so busy with my tour. Did you read or watch anything good? Get any good books?

Enjoy this picture of me in Scotland. It was at Clava Cairns, which while not the standing stones used in the Outlander series, the closest ones to go see on my tour. I pretended to go through the stones to see Jamie!