Weekly Wrap-Up #216 – March 23rd, 2025

I’m connecting up once again with Kimberly at Caffeinated Reviewer.

Sunday I did not get a great amount of sleep, thanks to being worried our house guest would get up in the middle of the night and pee on something. So I would make the dogs spend most of the night in their cages, which sucked because I like snuggling with them. I brought them in around 3 am when I woke up. They did okay, but it was Dora getting up and down that would wake Rolla up. It was really cold in the morning after that little bit of snow we got. Then I did some blogging. Went out and ran some errands, including up to where they were doing a Butter Beer food truck type of thing at noon. Unfortunately the line for that wrapped around the outside of one of the shopping center buildings and it was a little cooler than I wanted to stand outside in. Came home for about an hour before heading to the Amy Daws author event. It was a lot of fun! There was another author there, not one I’d read, who did the interview. Before they got started, Amy made a couple TikToks.

Monday was so nice waking up knowing I was taking Rolla home and would be back to just my two dogs. The weather was nice. It was a busy day in the library with classes in all day to hear about a project the district was having them do in order to graduate. Came home to my two right after school, then had to head back out to get the chip in my windshield fixed. I was a little worried while I sat there and waited because it seemed like every person who was getting finished up they hadn’t been able to fix their windshields and were going to have to replace them. But fortunately mine was fixed. I went to grab a quick fast food dinner, then headed home to do a bit of blogging before snuggling on the couch with Argyle and Dora. Found out that the donut shop by me had been broken into early in the morning.

Tuesday was another beautiful weather day, although a bit cloudy as the day got later. I stopped by the donut shop to buy a donut to support them! It was again busy in the library, this time with text make ups. Ran by Target on the way home from school to pick up some hair products I was out of. Also stopped by the public library to pick up some books I’d put on hold on the school’s library card for a teacher to use with her classes. Then I came home and did a tiny bit of blogging before going to dinner with my mom. I had to be back home by 6 pm for a Zoom meeting with the state library committee I’m on. Oh, I decided to start a Go Fund Me to try to get a book repair machine to help with the books I was working on. To the left is a picture of some of the books. And you can help out if you want here: https://gofund.me/3852e1ac

Wednesday was a half day for students like normal, but then we had parent conferences starting at 2:30. I don’t usually have parents, so I get voluntold to work the table in the entryway or other little things. I try to get things done in my library without the usual interruptions when I can. But this time I decided to start working on a 6 week online class I signed up for when the state offered it free. It is called Computer Science for Educators. Maybe I’ll switch into a technology role at some point if I’m ready to be out of the library. But it is also free graduate credits too! It started out around 50 degrees in the morning, but then the temps dropped and we got some sleet and snow, of course right during the time we were driving home from conferences, around 6:30. My mom went and let my dogs out around 1 pm before anything really started other than the temps dropping. Conferences were busier than usual it seemed. Probably because teachers had to call all students with D or F grades, instead of usually just their advisory classes. Drove home in a bit of spitting snow, but it never really did much sticking.

Thursday was the last day of school before spring break started. There was testing in the library in the morning, and they were doing interviews in my conference room part of the day for the principal’s secretary for next school year. I ran by the grocery story on my way home from work and then just came home to hang out with the dogs at home all night for a change. I did a little blogging, but really just spent the time with the dogs and watched my recording of The Amazing Race from the night before.

Friday I slept in. Got up and went over to my mom’s so we could get my taxes done since she buys TurboTax and I just use her program. Looks like what I did about having extra money taken out of each check helped, I’m actually getting a little bit of money back this year instead of having to pay! Then we went and she got my name put on her checking account just in case something was to happen it would be easier to handle that way. We went and had lunch, talked about our plans for leaving on Sunday to go to NOLA. She had some items she had sewn that were ready to go in her little shop at the Painted Tree Boutiques so we took that up there. Then I came home to get some laundry done, do some blogging, and see if I needed to get any bills set up to pay ahead of time since Tuesday while I’m in NOLA will be payday. Sat on the couch and watched a documentary and spent time with the dogs.

Saturday morning I got up and took the dogs to my friend’s house who is going to watch them while I’m out of town. I’m excited to go, but always a little sad to leave the dogs. Afterwards I went to do a few errands, get cash, etc., and then went to coffee with my dad, stepmom, and sister, as well as my aunt who is my dad’s sister-in-law, she was married to my uncle-his brother, who has passed away. She’s been coming to the coffee once in a while lately. I went home afterwards and packed finally with no dogs in the way. Got some blog posts set up for while I’m gone, including this one.

Books Finished

First was the audiobook I’d been listening to, that review will be in my L-L-L post for the month. The next two were e-galleys for author request review or blog tours. The 4th one was audiobook novella I fit in this week.

I also posted a Tell Me Something Tuesday and an Xpresso Blitz for the week.

New Additions to My Library

ARCs:

None

Audiobooks:

None

Bookish Stuff:

Got my mug for my public library’s winter reading program. I finished clear back in January a couple weeks after it started because they did number of books instead of number of days this time, but the mugs weren’t ready until just now!

E-galleys:

Other than the last one, I have loved all of this author’s books so far, and this first one above also sounds really good! The publisher reached out this week and I went ahead and got it from Netgalley. The second two were also from the publisher, and were Netgalley links.

Free E-books:

All were freebies on Amazon, and I think all are less than 200 pages long this time!

Physical Books:

First was my pre-order of Nine Month Contract new trad published edition from the Amy Daws event Sunday night with some fun swag!

On Thursday my book box order for the latest J.J. Knight book came. I’ve read most of the book through her Patreon chapter updates, but will need to read the last few chapters to complete it. I added on the parts of the box that didn’t come standard. I think the cat light and the emotional support pickle are what I added.

What I’m Watching

All the usual: Survivor, The Amazing Race, and rewatching Outlander season 4. There wasn’t a new episode of Ghosts thanks to the March madness basketball. Probably not as much tv this week since I’ll be in NOLA! I also decided to finally watch my friend’s documentary since I might see him when I’m in NOLA this week. It is an interesting story about a monopoly on food carts in the French Quarter.

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What’s Coming Up Next Week:

Both of these are ARCs, I hope to read and post their reviews later this week. Although the first one may not get finished if I don’t get into it more.

I also have a blog tour post, an Xpresso Blitz, and most likely my DNF post!

Final Thoughts

Depending when you’re reading this, I am either at the airport, on the plane to NOLA, or in NOLA with my mom for our fun trip right now! I have a couple posts scheduled like I mentioned above for when I’m gone. I’ll be back on Thursday to get caught up!

How is your March going? Can you believe it is almost over? My reading has been a bit down, no snow days and house guests keeping me from as much reading as usual. April is going to be a long month for us, I think we might have one day off, and all our Wednesdays will be full days of school instead of the shortened days for students with meetings for us in the afternoon. I’m interested to see how that goes since it’s been years since I haven’t had one early release day a week for meetings.