Weekly Wrap-Up #222 – May 4th, 2025

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

One thing I have time to do at my desk at work is play on Canva. Often to make things for my principal, but then I also work on things for my blog. When I realized this Sunday was May the 4th, Star Wars Day, I thought this would be fun. Unfortunately Canva didn’t like the words Star Wars or Jedi, so I ended up making this on the Bing image creator.

Sunday Dora was acting like she felt completely better, but as I mentioned last week, I was not about to let her go back to normal just yet. I did let up a bit in that I let her lay on the couch by my office desk while I was on the computer so I could blog. But the moment she moved like she was going to get down or something, I jumped up and moved her where she wanted, to the floor to get get a drink of water, or often right back up on the couch because she didn’t know what she wanted. I had so much I needed to do around the house after the past week. But I only managed to get a load of laundry done (I only usually have one load), washed my BruMate water tumblers for the next week since most of them can’t be put in the dishwasher, and made ice with my counter top machine. I really need to vacuum with all the little seeds and stuff that come in with us every time we go outside, but that had to wait, because being able to sit and do some blogging was nice. I got most of my end of the month posts wrapped up and scheduled to post for the week, and started on my big month end wrap-up post.

Monday was back to school. Work the same. I am using any extra time at work to work on my online computer class right now. Came home and mowed, lawn really needed it after the on and off rain here and there over the past week. The dandelions were taller than Dora! They had predicted possible storms in the evening, so I wanted it done before that. I also made a casserole that Jinjer over at The Intrepid Angeleno had shared last Sunday. I forgot to put the sour cream in, but other than that it was really good! I will probably try it again with the sour cream, and I might add some more rice to it too. Here’s a picture. It will make nice leftovers all week! Oh yeah, I switched out and put colby jack cheese instead of cheddar because that is my favorite kind of cheese.

Tuesday was testing in the library. Kind of a busy day in that I had to go to classrooms to replace laptops that didn’t have the app needed for testing and a few other things. Came home and Dora still seems to be doing better. Although she was a little wobbly it seemed on her back feet, so maybe I’ll cut back on the muscle relaxer. My mom and I drove around to a couple houses on the Parade of Homes tour then went and had dinner.

Wednesday was another busy testing day in the library. I took down my April/Poetry month display and started getting ready to put up my May display. Did some work on some images I want to put on my blog about what my spicy ratings mean as well as what my star ratings mean. Finished up the ARC I started this weekend and that was my final completed book for April. Had to run up to Dick’s Sporting Goods to pick up the birthday gift my brother had on his list. Then came back home for my favorite tv night of the week. I also got an email from the private school library that had a job opening and they wanted to set up a phone call interview, so we did that for Thursday. Was a sad day realizing my neighbors were officially moved out as of this evening. It was at least a good tv night though!

Thursday was another crazy busy testing day in the library. I did get one of my May book displays up, I went with an end of the year theme and post-apocalyptic types of books. Came home and had a phone interview at 3:45. Then I had the spring banquet for the Greater Kansas City Association of School Librarians, this year it was at a place close to where I live, so that was nice. I had to present the check to the scholarship winner since I am taking over next year for that position and the person finishing up this year was unable to make it. On the way home I found out my sister-in-law decided to plan dinner for my brother on the actual night of his birthday. And I’d already bought tickets to see a movie. Had to cancel or switch the movie plans to Sunday, because it was a limited showing. Then the person I was going with kind of made me feel a little guilty because switching was an inconvenience, so I ended up saying I would watch her dog Rolla for Friday and Saturday nights.

Friday I got up my other May display, and then forgot to take a picture, so I’ll share that next week. It was another busy testing day in the library. I stopped and picked up Rolla on the way home. Dora is continuing to seem to be doing better, but I worry with Rolla there that he will get too rambunctious playing with Argyle. I thought Argyle would enjoy having another dog to play with now that the neighbors’ dogs are gone, and so he did enjoy that for a bit I think. But I was so worried about Dora and then I started worrying about Argyle getting hurt because he is 12 years old, and Rolla, while also a dachshund, is a little bigger and a lot younger, I think he’s 4 years old? So I ended up putting them all in the cage and going to Panera to try to do some blogging. Of course the wifi at Panera doesn’t always seem to be that great for me to blog. And the public library closes at 6 pm on Friday nights, so that was all I had to do. I ended up going home and just finished up The Bondsman and watched a bit of Outlander before going to bed. I left all the dogs in their cages all night, except for when I got up around 3:30 to take them out.

Saturday morning I woke up earlier more awake than normal. I’m guessing because I didn’t have dogs waking me up constantly during the night. I got up and spent some time with them, let them sit with me on the couch. Rolla does pretty well now when everyone is sitting on the couch. Then I went to my nephew’s basketball game about 10:30 am, had lunch with my mom afterwards, then went by her house to work on my blog with no dogs bugging me. But I feel bad when I’m not home and plus she had the tv on and I didn’t get as much done as I wanted. Then I had to drive to my dad’s house to check his mail for him because he went out of town for a week and didn’t stop his mail. Went home then and fed the dogs and hung out for a bit with them. My neighbors who have moved came over and were getting stuff out of the shed in their old backyard. Argyle was outside while they were there and I could tell he was looking through the fence to see if his doggie friends were there. They were not. I went to see a movie around 5 pm, then came home for the rest of the night to hang out with the dogs.

Books Finished

First was the ARC I got two weeks ago and I picked up and loved! Should have posted my review this past week. Since I got started on two other e-galleys, or should I say went back to one I’d started last week and then started a new one when I got bored with that, I didn’t get another book finished this week. Second was the audiobook I was listening to and finished up Saturday.

Most of the other posts this week were monthly wrap-ups.

New Additions to My Library

ARCs:

none

Audiobooks:

The first two were freebies as part of the Audible membership. They sound good, so we’ll see when I can get to them. The third I bought with my monthly Audible credit. Fourth I got from the library. I thought since Jessica at A Great Read loved the book so much, maybe I needed to grab the audio and give it a try!

Bookish Stuff:

Finally got my Picklegram from J.J. Knight’s Patreon. It came with a cute little journal this month!

E-galleys:

The publisher sent me a widget for the first one. I penciled it into my blog calendar, but won’t download it till closer to the time if I think I can read it, which is in August I think? The second was also a widget sent from the publisher. It comes out in October and was already on my TBR, so I did go ahead and download it from Netgalley.

Free e-books:

none

Physical books:

none

What I’m Watching

All the usual: Amazing Race, Survivor, Ghosts, and of course in between, Outlander. I finished up The Bondsman also since I’d watched all but the last episode last week. Saturday night I went and saw the movie Until Dawn. It was pretty good I thought. I didn’t realize it was based on a video game until I saw the info that Playstation was part producer at the beginning.

What’s Coming Up Next Week

All 4 are e-galleys. The first was for the SmartyPants Patreon. Second I think is for a blog tour? The other two are ones I requested, I think I forgot to post when I got the last one, it was a while back I think.

Final Thoughts

Continuing to watch Dora and hoping the improvements keep up. Going this Friday to see the vet for a check to see if we are about back to doing most normal things. Not that I’ll ever complain again when she wants me to pick her up instead of her using the ramp to get up and down.

Can you believe it is May? The year is going by so fast! Which is nice for me with this job and I’m so ready for this school year to be over. It’s also time that I’m starting to be thinking about our family’s annual Memorial Day trip to Branson, only 3 weeks from now. We didn’t go last year since my stepdad passed away, and I think the one year anniversary of that is going to be right around the same time we are down there this year. So it will be an emotional weekend in many ways. Will also probably be the last time we do this, as we thought last year would have been the last.

How was your week? Your April?

Here are some photos of my Friday and Saturday night house guest.