51 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread

  1. allein April 30, 2016 / 10:21 am

    Wow, that’s a lotta marmalade. We’re gonna some toast.

  2. Mariana Paes April 30, 2016 / 10:33 am

    Just lounging around catching up on some reading under the spring sun in my city’s “central park”. Already jogged and did some light house work. Anyone here read Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie? I’m loving it (God, McDonald’s ruined this sentence for all eternity)

  3. allein April 30, 2016 / 10:37 am

    I’m just lying in bed playing around on my tablet. I’ll have to get up soon, though.

    My current reading selection is Dirty Old London: The Victorian Fight Against Filth by Lee Jackson.

  4. Lurkingduck April 30, 2016 / 10:46 am

    Good thing it’s Saturday. I think I’ll spend the entire day looking at this picture of utter relaxation and contentment. Zzzzzz…
    ?

  5. AJ April 30, 2016 / 10:47 am

    Man I wish I was still zzz-ing this morning but doggy woke me up around 5:30/5:45. Took him out for his morning walk in a light rain (who said it never rains in Southern CA, especially in April??) and now I’m just trying to get my act together. End of month means getting the bill payments set up then time to clean and do laundry. Whew I’m getting tired already. Maybe later I’ll have time to do some coloring or read – current book is The Chamber and The Cross by Lisa Shapiro and Deborah Reed. It’s one of those novels that has chapters that switch back and forth between current day and medieval England. So far so good and it was written by 2 local authors. Also like supporting my hometown.

    Here’s the website for the book: http://www.thechamberandthecross.com/index.html

    • debg April 30, 2016 / 10:53 am

      Oooh, thanks for the book tip! If they did their research on the Middle Ages (and they probably did, and I’ll know) it will be a great read.

      I just finished the first Flavia de Luce mystery last night, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. Today will be a quiet day of knitting, audiobooks, and housework.

      • AJ April 30, 2016 / 12:20 pm

        If you’re into mysteries, a friend gave me a great website that lists a lot of great mystery books broken down by category, author, etc. Go to http://www.cozy-mystery.com/

        • 6rabbits April 30, 2016 / 8:57 pm

          Ooo! Thank you for that link! That will come in very handy?

      • Jakepets April 30, 2016 / 12:38 pm

        Flavia is the BEST!!! I’ve listened to them all, on CD, in my car while driving around to visit critters for my pet care business. There’s a new one coming out in a few months (already pre-ordered on Amazon), so hurry and catch up! OR, better, luxuriate in each and every one … (‘ring-ring’ says Gladys’ bell!)

        • debg April 30, 2016 / 12:51 pm

          Will do, I promise! First, though, I have to finish Harry Potter (again) on audio and a library book the old-fashioned way. Cassandra Clare’s newest Shadowhunter title just became available and I didn’t want to miss it. Guilty pleasures . . .

      • 6rabbits April 30, 2016 / 9:00 pm

        Just finished the first and second Flavia in the last 2 weeks! Great reads!?

  6. Puddleglum April 30, 2016 / 10:51 am

    I would have lounged around in bed a lot longer if my cat hadn’t insisted on sitting on my chest purring in my ear and swatting at my face!

    No big plans for the weekend other than spending quality time in my art studio, perhaps reorganizing my closet and getting some reading done. And perhaps a walk down by the river. My current book: Ethan Hawke’s first novel “The Hottest State.”

  7. debg April 30, 2016 / 10:54 am

    Nobody can relax like a cat. It’s a scientific fact.

  8. Margaret April 30, 2016 / 10:59 am

    Laying in bed, knowing i need to get up but don’t want to. Today’s to do list is grocery shopping, library, finish a hat I’m knitting and reading H is for Hawk by Helen McDonald.

    Hard to get up looking at all that marmalade floof.

  9. Gigi_the cat lady April 30, 2016 / 11:07 am

    I’m stuck on the couch because of a cat asleep on my lap, I’ll have to stay put until she wakes up “”wink””

    In honour of Shakespeare 400th anniversary, I’m reading Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare The World as Stage.

  10. Faye April 30, 2016 / 11:07 am

    Been up since 8:30. Watched two episodes of Fear The Walking Dead and two episodes of the follow up show Fear The Talking Dead. Fear The Walking Dead just got good. No spoilers.

    Getting ready very slowly for a 3:00 Starbucks talkfest with a friend. I’m blessed with friends who are all young. 20s 30s 40s. I met them all through working with them at the Library. They keep me young and I can give them perspective. I have always been straightforward and young at heart so they don’t think of me as an old fuddy duddy.

    • amyliz April 30, 2016 / 5:48 pm

      Faye, those of us who read your comments here feel that we have a sense of who you are and we know you are just the opposite of a fuddy duddy! I just wish I could have been in on that talkfest!?

      • Faye April 30, 2016 / 8:17 pm

        Amyliz, thank you so much. We talked for four hours. It was such a wonderful experience.

      • Murray C. April 30, 2016 / 10:23 pm

        Ditto!

  11. Gigi_the cat lady April 30, 2016 / 11:10 am

    At the moment I’m stuck on the couch by a cat sleeping on my lap but I’ll be going out later to do some spring shopping.

    My book right now is Shakespeare The World as Stage by Bill Bryson.

  12. Ms Can Opener April 30, 2016 / 11:34 am

    My current book is Sisters In Law by Linda Hirshman. It is the stories/biographies/comparisons of Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It’s raining here in the Land of Lincoln, so after a little organization time in the office, my book and I will be curled up on the couch with a couple of cats.

  13. debg April 30, 2016 / 11:44 am

    PS I love that our weekend open threads share reading lists. You all have led me to some great new finds. When I’m not working, I’m knitting and reading (okay, listening).

  14. Birdcage April 30, 2016 / 1:02 pm

    I spent the morning doing yard work while the sun is out. Chilly but if I work fast enough, I have enough body warmth to wear capri pants and a t-shirt. This afternoon some shopping, me thinks, for my niece’s 18th birthday present. I just finished reading The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeny. Good fun and light enough not to tax my end-of-the-work-week brain. Parrot is saying the sweetest little hello’s from his cage in the other room, trying to get me to come and play with him……it won’t work! I’m cold to his ways!

    • Faye April 30, 2016 / 8:21 pm

      How can you resist.

        • Faye May 1, 2016 / 1:54 pm

          I am hoping I have one more chihuahua in my future.

          • allein May 1, 2016 / 2:18 pm

            Me too.

        • 6rabbits May 1, 2016 / 3:51 pm

          S/he looks like a wawa and corgi mix! Too adorable!

          • allein May 1, 2016 / 3:58 pm

            She does a bit…she’s a wawa/papillon. Too bad she didn’t get the butterfly head/ear coloring. That’d be extra cute!

  15. allein April 30, 2016 / 1:08 pm

    In a little while I’m going to meet my dad at Staples and possibly buy a new computer, cuz he wants the one he loaned me several months ago back.

  16. N. Fritz April 30, 2016 / 1:27 pm

    After nearly a week of *snow* I finally got some quality time in the garden today. I’m preparing graduation exams for my Austrian students, so I have been oscillating between mowing the lawn, to composing oral exam questions, to sipping gin and tonic in the lounge chair. The G&T is my homage to Prince, since that’s what I drank at the dance clubs in the 1980s.

  17. SAA1451 April 30, 2016 / 1:57 pm

    I have been lounging in bed half due to catching up on sleep I missed in the last week and half afraid to get up — but the cortisone shot seems to have done the trick. (yea!)

    Still, I wish I had some marmalade kitty warmers for my sore spots — I have looked on Amazon but didn’t see any.

    Just bought a new Kindle — it hasn’t arrived yet, but I am really looking forward to it.
    I love my Ancient Kindle because I am never in danger of being without something to read (and book-addiction withdrawal is really ugly,) but it is one of the old Huge heavy ones so I am really looking forward to the smaller, lighter new version.

    Currently reading fantasy and suspense. Really love anything by Kim Harrison.

  18. Patty April 30, 2016 / 2:30 pm

    My daughter is moving this weekend, in the rain, that’s what I’ll be doing. I did go buy her a dining table and 4 chairs at a yard sale this morning.

  19. Laura April 30, 2016 / 3:08 pm

    Alas, the curse of the self-employed is working on weekends, and this weekend I’m buried. I did allow myself to sleep in, however, which was just lovely. oh well, hopefully by midweek I’ll be able to be lazy at least some of the time; these socks won’t knit themselves, after all. Speaking of which, I approve of all the knitters here. I guess love of furry creatures and fuzzy yarn kind of go hand-in-hand, don’t they?

    Our furry creature is out sunbathing in the yard. How anything with fur could enjoy lying out in nearly 90ΒΊ sun with accompanying humidity is beyond me, but she soaks it up till she’s hot to the touch and then goes back for more. Silly thing!

  20. murkle46 April 30, 2016 / 5:01 pm

    • allein April 30, 2016 / 5:16 pm

      Wine fruit salad? I thought that was called sangria..

  21. amyliz April 30, 2016 / 5:34 pm

    Today I did lots of “tasky” stuff, including making a big batch of play dough to take to work for the kids on Monday. There’s nothing like fresh play dough to keep them engaged for a long time! Just about to open a bottle of wine and watch a documentary I found on Netflix; “Finding Vivian Maier”. It’s about a nanny, I think in the 50s and 60a, who,unbeknownst to anyone at the time, took many thousands of street photographs and is now considered a gifted photographer!

    • amyliz April 30, 2016 / 5:38 pm

      P.S. I love looking at really good photography, especially black and white! Some people just have an eye. I do not but appreciate that gift in others!

    • Faye April 30, 2016 / 8:29 pm

      Ooo I read all about her. The photographs are haunting and she sounded fascinating.

    • Murray C. April 30, 2016 / 10:26 pm

      Yes! I saw that documentary a while back and it is wonderful. A true outsider artist!

  22. 6rabbits April 30, 2016 / 9:13 pm

    It has been a very rainy, gloomy day here. Did some laundry and a leetle cleaning. Took a verrrrry long nap in the middle of reading a Hamish Macbeth mystery on my ipad. Couldn’t make it to the library, so had to choose from their ebooks–lots of stuff I’m dying to read is NOT an ebook?. I crochet, and am stuck undoing a BIG mistake in a project with difficult yarn?. Going to try and tackle it tonight. Cross your fingers!

  23. Murray C. April 30, 2016 / 10:30 pm

    OK, who remembers “Flower Drum Song”? There was a song that went “Sunday, sweet Sunday, with nothing to do, Lazy and lovely, my one day with you. Hazy and Happy we drift through the day Dreaming the hours away….” etc. Wishing everyone a nice lazy Sunday.

  24. fkaWaldenPond May 1, 2016 / 12:33 am

    Hello all! I see medieval reading here, (AJ) and surely Faye πŸ™‚ ; I am fully geeked out on that time period and am actually reading Ruth Goodman’s ‘How To Be a Tudor’– do you know they really loved a fantastic massive breakfast of eggs and bacon (for the working folk) annnnd! the wealthy actually felt ‘poached’ eggs were better for you! Some things never change.
    But I am also all over more recent history as in the tv show ‘The Americans’– anybody else out there? I have been fretting over Martha’s outcome.
    Also just started Season five of ‘Homeland.’
    Flappy-lipped-yelly-mouthed orange marmie with his grampy, cataract eyes got his sub q fluids, brushed, fed, and smooched often these last 48 hours but still refuses to put a sock in it throughout the early morning pre-dawn. Little prick.
    A rainy gloomy day forcasted here tomorrow so a bolognese is in order. But the rain should encourage the beginning blooms of the magnolias and forsythia I saw today on my run. Be well all. πŸ™‚

  25. Phred's Mom May 1, 2016 / 9:24 am

    Almost halfway through http://www.amazon.com/Elizabeth-Mary-Cousins-Rivals-Queens/dp/0375708200 by Jane Dunn. I’ve probably botched the link to Amazon,
    but you get the idea. I’ve been a big fan of sixteenth-century English history, esp.
    the Tudors, since a child (many moons ago), and think this book among the best
    ever written about these two colorful women. It is wonderfully illuminating of
    their personalities and the people around them, showing the dramatic differences
    in their upbringing. These differences , couples with their inherent natures, made
    history, and make compelling reading. I wish I could meet Elizabeth and just listen
    to her. She was one smart, tough cookie. One can learn from her.

    I get most of my books second-hand, real books, since a) reading in bed is a cold
    exercise with a hard electronic thingy, and b) I’m cheap, on a fixed income, and
    kind of an Amish/Luddite at heart.

    • Phred's Mom May 1, 2016 / 9:30 am

      Ferhevvinssake, don ‘t use the link. Go through
      NTMTOM to Amazon. Lost my head *grovelling
      in apology*. What can I say, the coffee hasn’t hit
      yet. USE NTMTOM FOR AMAZON! *slinks away
      to wash the breakfast dishes.*

  26. Smartypants May 1, 2016 / 3:42 pm

    LOL, Phred’s Mom, you might also like these guys: http://www.hamiltonbook.com.

    They have a gigantic collection of markdowns, overstocks etc. in every genre, cheap, and they have a printed catalog that’s great bedtime reading in itself. Even though they’re not a brick-and-mortar bookstore, I think of them as a ‘local’ business because they’re right down the road from me.

    It’s addictive, though – I tend to place orders of 20+ books a few times a year, then waddle out of the post office under their weight of my loot!

    • 6rabbits May 1, 2016 / 4:03 pm

      I highly recommend Better World Books, which for me is local, but ships worldwide FREE. They have a $3.95 bargain bin and I visit online frequently. (There is also a charitable aspect to their organization.) http://www.betterworldbooks.com

      • Phred's Mom May 1, 2016 / 4:09 pm

        Bless you both for these sources.
        One cannot read too much.
        If I ever should lose my sight,
        just toss me onto the ol’ ice floe,
        if there’s one left.

        • 6rabbits May 1, 2016 / 6:18 pm

          I remember as a kid being afraid of going bind because I wouldn’t be able to read. I figured “Popular” kids’ books weren’t written in braille–and I frustrated myself trying to learn braille anyway! In 6th grade there was an article in a kids’ newspaper–Scholastic?–about this prohibitively expensive, copier-sized machine made for Stevie Wonder? Ray Charles? that would read any book out loud to him! I remember being so relieved that I would still be able to “read” all my favorite books if the worst happened. Yes, I was a weird kid.?

  27. Michelle P May 1, 2016 / 9:36 pm

    My first open thread in two weeks. Last weekend was an emergency trip to hospital to have my gallbladder out. Didn’t even know I had gallstones! *thinks back… so that’s what all those painful stomach aches were… huh* All I can say is, thank goodness for the Canadian medical system or I’d be a darn sight poorer by now! I’ve definitely turned a corner over the past two days and was able to cut enough fabric today to make five summer dresses. The past week’s reading has been The Silk Worm and Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling). I’m really loving her new character, private detective Cormoran Strike. I’m going to miss next weekend’s thread as I’ll be visiting Turtle Valley Donkey Refuge. Been sewing them some projects to sell in their store (my way of donating, I guess) and I’m using the delivery of the goods as an excellent excuse to drive 4 hours to visit the donkeys. πŸ™‚ Looks like I may be on a every-second-open-thread cycle. Hope y’all have a lovely upcoming week!

  28. fkaWaldenPond May 1, 2016 / 10:47 pm

    Ohhhhhh yaaaaaaa! Raptors! πŸ˜€ πŸ˜€ πŸ˜€

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