Weekly Recap

 

Another week down and we're about to hit the -ber months which means summer is pretty much over. Not that much changes around here, but maybe my car won't show triple digit degree temps when I get inside after work soon. 

I'm skipping the traditional High/Low/Ha that I've been using because most of them will relate to the birds that have been living in our garage. We have a dove who made a nest over our garage/carport light (it's got a door but is open on the other side ... I don't know what to call it) and her eggs have recently hatched. 

Yesterday, I noticed our baby birds were up and looking anxious, so I knew they would be leaving us soon. This morning when I came outside for my weekend back deck coffee drinking and writing session, I noticed they were gone. 

However they flew back, and now I'm watching the whole family (two babies and mom and dad) fly around our back yard from the roof of the house, to the roof of the carport, to the table, to the ground ... and it's filling me with so much joy. 

On the flip side, my dad joked with me about coming back outside because there is a toad by the door. I am deathly terrified of frogs/toads, like will freeze and have a panic attack terrified. I'm now watching it out the window as it tries to size up if it can jump on the step leading into the house. Not on my watch ... when I sick my dad on him because I will be of no use. 

But for the fun parts of the weekly recap ... 

COOL EATS

Our cool eats of the week come from Solera Restaurant & Wine Bar. I love Solera because it has small plates. I haven't had an actual entree there because I convince kiddo or my friends to split some small plates with me because it just makes more sense to be able to try all the things. They have happy hour food specials as well, so I highly recommend going during happy hour!

I will say that the menu has changed, but some of them of favorites are still there, so I'm good. ☺We got the calamari and fries to start. (They have some of the BEST fries!) We followed that up with the croquettes which were stuffed with Andouille. We followed it up with my absolute favorite, the stuffed piquillo peppers (they are stuffed with manchago cheese and drizzled with honey - one of the best things I've eaten!) We ended the night with bread pudding and a post meal coffee. Their cheesecake is amazing but kiddo isn't a fan of cheesecake, so the bread pudding it was. 

WEEKLY RECAP

Let's face it, my weekly recap tends to really just be all about what I'm reading because that's pretty much all I do with my life now. (I do have a diamond painting project that I'll be starting soon though!) So let's give you a quick recap on the latest book I read, plus what I'm looking forward to reading in September. 

LATEST READ: 

The Rise by Rick Bettencourt is a book that is not one I would normally read. I joined the ARC team for this one and wasn't sure what to expect. Even what I expected, wasn't what it was. And what it was, was so much better than I could have imagined. 

I can admit that this book will not be for everyone. It's book one in a new series, so there's a lot of back story to explain character relationships and lots of world building info, but once I pushed through that, I was anxious to see how it played out. 

As the sheltered Christian kid trend on tiktok would say, I also saw SO many religion parallels in this story and thought they were woven in beautifully, in a way where you let the readers draw their own conclusions and see that some people twist it to use it for their personal gain, but some truly believe it and are sincere in their beliefs, and others like Diesel are skeptical but can still love them in spite of their differences in beliefs.

I think that Bingham and Elio are my favorite characters, despite them not being main ones. As the parent of a special needs child, I felt some of that same energy coming from Bingham and I loved that you wrote a world where he found a family that loved him and still retained that internal goodness when it would have been easy for him to become bitter.

I can honestly say, this isn't normally a book I would pick up because I would be intimidated by all of the background to get to the meat of the story, but I'm really glad I wasn't sure what I was going to get because I can't wait for the next book!

CURRENT/UPCOMING READS

Here are the books that I plan to read in the month of September. We'll track this together, and for any I read that happen to not be on this list, I'll be sure to let you know!

ONE MORE THING ...

I saw this on social media this week and it was posted by a principal and it's something that I want to share with my daughter now that she is in high school and getting more into the whole social media world. It's a good reminder for us as adults too.