Popping up and Month in Review (Summer)

 Did I ever mention we got a new toaster?

And did I ever mention that it's a toast catapult? Waffles have been launched and that have hit the floor. The dogs were thrilled.

Month in Review

Soccer started this month. I was hesitant and prayed about whether or not I should coach. I heard the call and now I'm at it. There's no skipping or showing up late now. I ran it solo until Francisco started to help out.

Work has been busy. I haven't posted much about it, because it's the daily trudge and I don't usually post my students on my blog out of respect for their privacy/online presence. I did post some boat updates, though! The boats even made it to the Winter Awards Ceremony.

I started posting Weekly Top lists about books and authors. I used them to help break out of my writers block. Isolated opinions are fun and easy to write. I did lists on 10 Most Read Authors, 10 Surprise Likes, 10 DNF's, and Favorite Mystery Series. I wrote briefly about audiobooks.

Piper (AKA Pip) the Kitten is acclimating to the house. 

Shane is staying busy with youth group, friends, and riding in addition to soccer. Carrie and I got to pawn him off with Ellie and Landie one day and have a date day to ourselves.

Save the book lists, I wrote every post for this month in July. Some of the details were fuzzy and I'm sure I missed some fun stories, but I got enough to fill out the month and I'm happy about it. Shane and I head to the beach tomorrow!

Soccer Practice - Up a Tree (Summer)

Every Thursday is soccer. I believe this Thursday was the fourth practice. I don't have many pictures of practice, because I was always fully engaged running everything! It was either this practice or the one before that Francisco started to help.

He was a Godsend. Two adults coaching 12 kids is a way better ratio than one adult wrangling 12 kids. Francisco's son, Joel, was newer to the sport, but athletic and one of the better players. 

We hung around and talked for a while after practice. Shane got tired of waiting and climbed a tree in the parking lot.

I'm fuzzy on timing, but I don't remember if today was the day Shane climbed two trees and got stuck in one. Yeah, that happened. 

So far, practices have gone well. We've arrived on time or a little early each time, I learned all the names quickly, and kids stay busy. It feels like we're covering skills and getting better. I've been worried if I'm "good enough," but thrilled with how it's gone so far. 

Snip for Pip (Summer)

Why did I leave early on a workday to visit the SPCA? 

It was time to drop little dude off to get his balls snipped. In the beginning, Carrie though he was a she. When Pip started to feel safer around her, he also felt more free about waving his fuzzy little things in her face. Good news: It's cheaper to neuter a guy than a girl (by $50!).

The SPCA changed up some of it's procedures on me from the last time I visited. Instead of bringing pets around to the back for clinics, now they're brought in from the front. There's been a lot of drama on Reddit about how the SPCA is run, treat their people, and all of the above. It's on the internet, so I have no idea how much of it is true, but the board ousting a higher up lends credence to what's being said.

But at the moment, I just cared that Pip came back sterile. I picked him up after work. It made for a lot of driving, but I had plenty of The Hunt for Red October left to listen to.

Once home, I turned him over to Carrie's ministrations. 

Thankfully, she didn't give Pip ALL the loves.

Pokemon Pre-Release Tournament (Summer)

I made Shane do something Sunday. It didn't start until 1, so we had to kill some time in Cville after church. Can you see how excited he was?

We ate lunch and head over to The End Games for a Pokemon pre-release tournament. I've never done a pre-release for anything. It was $50 for both of us ($25 per person).

This was high on my to-do list, because A) I like games and B) I knew Samuel and his dad were going to be there.

Shane stopped his complaining and got social the moment he spotted Samuel!

The boys perused the store while I stood in line to sign up, etc.

Not that Shane should've complained at all. Who do you think I was going to give my cards to when we were done?

It was a well attended event! There must've been at least 40 people.

Everyone was given a box and a time limit to construct a deck from it. The minimum deck size was 40 cards instead of the usual 60.

The tournament was going to be a 3 round Swiss. Basically, everyone played three rounds. Each round they would calculate standings and match records (someone who won their first 2 rounds wasn't going to get lucky and face someone who'd already lost twice!). There were only 6 kids in Shane's age level bracket, so most of the players were older.

I actually won my first round! 

Meanwhile, Shane lost. He was a grumpy gus. I encouraged him to finish strong and congratulate his opponent with a smile. He told me he was just tired, he didn't want to be there, etc.

Which immediately changed when he won the raffle for a prize. They drew names at the end of every round and the winner got to select from a prize box.

It's funny how that changed Shane's whole tune. If only I could get him to maintain a positive attitude instead of changing for every bump and swell on the way....(aka the basic human condition).

Shane became Mr. Energy and was out socializing again.

Shane won his next two rounds and ended up taking 2nd with tie breakers! He was ECSTATIC! Meanwhile, I lost my next two. My water deck went against an electric deck and was annihilated post-haste one game. I was highly competitive until the end in the last. I gave Shane the packs I won and he loved opening them with everyone else.

I told Shane we should go to The End Games again for regular play, but we'll see if that happens. I won't force it even though I think it'd be good for him.

We did an errand for Mom on the way home to say "Sorry we were gone so long!"

My Favorite Crime Mystery Authors/Series

I love mysteries, but I have a funny relationship with mystery novels. 

A dash of mystery makes most things better.  

The slow drip of information that leads to discovery after discovery.

For this list, I kept things "real world." The settings had to be present day or historical. No magic, no scifi tech, and no alternate universes/worlds permitted. Spy books are real world, but I didn't include those either. I loved Spy Kids and The Bourne Identity. Both have strong mystery elements, but then I'd start coming up with all sorts of other books I love with mystery elements that aren't considered mysteries by many. Also, I stuck to fiction. The Woman Who Smashed Code and The Spy Who Couldn't Spell were great, but I didn't think they belonged here.

The Short List

1. Sherlock Holmes
2. Agatha Christie
3. Encyclopedia Brown
4. Clue Books
5. The surprise vegetarian book
6. Edgar Allen Poe
7. Three Investigators
8. Hardy Boys
9. John Scalzi
10. John Grisham

It's an odd list, I know. 

I've actually read a much larger selection than the list entails. I tend to try an author, enjoy a case, and then promptly never read them again. MC Beaton introduced me to Agatha once. Another time, I enjoyed meeting Aurora Teagarden in Real Murders by Charlaine Harris. Harry Bosch's daughter had a run in with Triads in Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly. I almost read A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton twice, because I forgot I'd read it. That's not a great sign, but, in it's defense, it rang familiar from the first several pages. The ending was memorable enough that, once I worked up the courage, I flipped to the end and verified my suspicions. 

Recently, I tried Dorothy Gillman's Mrs. Pollifax series, Rita Mae Brown's Sneaky Pie Brown series, and Harlan Coben's Mylar Bolton series. They were all one and done. 

I attempted to read Along Came a Spider by Robert Patterson. I almost put it down after the prologue. It was a reference to real history, so I soldiered on to the meet the detective....and immediately put it down after reading about the crime scene. 

I can handle the darkness/crime aspects of mysteries better when it's visual. You'd think that would make it worse (and it can), but TV tends to censor things and I'm not afraid to look away, fast-forward, or skip an episode. I would watch way more mysteries, but Carrie is even more sensitive to the darkness/crime aspects than I am. I convinced Carrie to watch a chunk of Season 1 of Castle with me before Shane, because Mal from Firefly was a main character (aka Nathan Fillion in real life). We stopped, because, "Does there really have to be a murder every time?" I'd love to watch Monk with her (because they're sillier), but it's not available on any of the streaming platforms we pay for.

The Long List

10. John Grisham - Grisham tends to write legal mysteries. Those are often a 'meh' for me. However, he does it well, so I have enjoyed some of his work in the past. I know I read Runaway Jury, but there are several other books of his that sounded familiar when I was reading summaries (though it doesn't help multiple have become movies!). Grisham taught me the word "tort." The books are more likely to be wired in technical and legal terminology than gory details which is mostly a plus. He's a local philanthropist to Charlottesville, too. I've meant to give his Theodore Boone Kid Lawyer books a try at some point. However, the truth is I almost replaced him on this list. I haven't read anything by him in a while. He's an easy name that comes to mind for me, but I just finished a book by Jacqueline Windspear and I remember much more about her book than any of his. 

9. John Scalzi - Scalzi is more known as a sci-fi writer, but I recently listened to Locked In. It's a sci fi mystery! The main character is an FBI agent investigating a crime. It's the future so there are hi-tech hijinks, but I like that. It was written as a police procedural, but the figuring out how the world worked was extra fun. I liked it enough I bough the sequel Head On to listen to next. Scalzi pulls off a trick that the only other author I know of to do well is Ann Leckie (Ancillary Justice): He never reveals the gender of the main character. The MC is a victim of a disease that left them completely paralyzed. In the future, they have robots that allow people who are locked in to control and interact with the real world. I listened to the 'boy' version narrated by Wil Wheaton, but someone else could listen to the 'girl' narration by Amber Benson and may envision the character differently. It has no bearing on the story, but could impact how attached/similar someone feels to the MC. The MC's last name was Shane, so that immediately made me assume they were a he from my own personal experiences. 

Bonus - I started on the Scalzi kick because the Dispatcher series was free on Audible+. Those were more science-fantasy mysteries. I really liked them, too. They walked the border between being dark enough to be different than my normal reads, but didn't go into enough details or darkness that I said, "Yuck!" and walked away. They were clearly streamlined to be audiobooks, too, so they were fast listens and a lot of fun.

I might have rated Scalzi higher, but all of these books were ones I've read recently. The next several rankers have the advantage of extreme nostalgia.

8. The Hardy Boys - I recognize A LOT of Hardy Boys covers. That's 50/50 from reading and from shelving them (I worked in a library as a page for my college years). Ironically, I can't tell you the plots of many of them. I read them so long ago. I remember the Boxcar Children more vividly, because I reread the first book with Shane and there's an exhibit in the Greenville Children's museum. I even referenced them in a Maine blogpost. However, I would bet a hefty sum I read way more of the Hardy Boys as a kid. I read some Nancy Drew, as well, but I preferred the Boys because I'm a boy (I was a shallow kid like that).

7. The Three Investigators - The Three Investigators were my favorite mystery group as a kid. While the plots are a mystery to me (Ha!), I remember more about the characters. I thought their secret abandoned trailer hideout in the junkyard was the coolest thing ever! During one of their mysteries, one of the boys, Jupiter I think, is SCUBA diving. He realizes he's in danger, but can't figure out why. He keeps running his hand along the SCUBA take line to confirm it's not tangled or leaking air, but he feels sick and gets loopy. Upon resurfacing, they discover the tank was empty! He was breathing CO2, but someone had rigged the gauge to look like the tank was cool. I don't know why, but that moment has always stuck with me. 

6. Edgar Allen Poe - Do you remember how I said I prefer things not too dark? Cause here's the exception: The King of Macabre poetry himself. Poe is probably tame compared to some way out there, but I went through a phase of loving the creepy stuff and Poe was my guy. Even the way he died is a creepy mystery. I probably had to first read Poe for school. I started to learn more about him and read his short stories. The Tell-Tale Heart was one of them. I'm pretty sure I read it first on my own and then later on for school.  He came up in Poetry units, as well. The cant, rhythm, and rhyme of some of his poems like the Raven fascinated me (still do!). Back in the day, we used to have large literature books in class full of short stories. I'd flip through and read his whether they were assigned or not. 

After reading Poe, I started noticing all sorts of other things referenced his work. There was even a Simpsons episode where Bart was the raven! 

5. The Surprise Vegetarian Book - I wish I knew the title or the author of this book. I've wanted to go back and reread it. This was a recommendation from John when we both worked at Pohick. "Mike, you've got to read this. You'll never see the end coming." There was a murder. The MC was looking into it, but he runs across this mysterious guy who was also looking into it. All sorts of weird stuff happens and....wait...the mysterious guy is a militant vegan who investigating animal cruelty and the murder stuff was just a bonus? Turns out pigs can get rid of a lot of evidence. Annoyingly, I can remember quotes from the book. The book is set in Florida (where all the crazy stuff happens) and the MC describes his step-dad as "from the generation where it was better to get skin cancer than dare to look pale." And yet, my internet-research-fu can't discern which book I'm talking about! I already threw some spoilers into the mix, but I won't throw more in case someone is actually reading this mysterious book on my top mysteries list! 

4. CLUE - A format of mystery book I don't see much anymore are the shorts. I remember eagerly ordering Clue books from the Scholastic Book Club order forms. I had the game, I read the books! Mr. Body somehow died or disappeared in each short story and it was up to the reader to figure out who did it, why, and how. There was always a reset and then a new mystery, so it was a lot like a sitcom. Still, I loved them! They weren't good for rereads, because I tend to have a great memory for books. 

3. Encyclopedia Brown - I liked Encyclopedia Brown even more than the Clue books. I reread some with Shane and I was surprised by how many solutions I could recall! In particular, I remembered I was salty as a kid when I got the answer wrong to the signed sword from "The First Bull Run" and therefore knew the answer reading with Shane! Shane didn't stay interested, though. The difficulty level of the mysteries vary and I was more willing to be wrong as a kid than he is. I ended up doing lots of internet research on Encyclopedia Brown and basking in nostalgia instead of continuing the books with him. I highly recommend these as a fun and quick series to make you think.

2. Agatha Christie - Out of all the random mystery authors I've read, I always come back to Agatha Christie. I think she is the most technically skilled mystery out there hands down. I have never fully solved one of her novels, but can always find the threads when I look back. She has some amazing twists here, too, that I don't want to spoil. The most recent book of hers I read was The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Unfortunately, I already knew the twist. I'd heard about it elsewhere on a show and didn't remember the name of the exact book, but that gave me the game far sooner than I ever would have realized. Even though I was pretty sure I knew what was coming, it was a great read and I appreciated the technical skill it took her to pull it off. So again, I think Agatha Christie is the most intelligent/skilled mystery writer of all time. I think there's a lot more humor in her books than people realize, but the age of the stories prevents some of it from coming through. I felt like I was just missing jokes in Ackroyd, but there were still descriptions I smiled at.

1. Sherlock Holmes - While Agatha is more skilled, I will always have a soft spot for Sherlock Holmes. I love the bromance between Holmes and Watson. The short stories were quick payoffs and the adventures are just fun. I remember reading The Death of Sherlock Holmes in one of those great classroom English literature collections in school as well as reading the stories for fun. When I borrowed Nana's kindle as an adult/young father, I downloaded the first book from Project Gutenberg (They distribute free ebooks that reside in the public commons). The stories still held up. Holmes has successfully made the transition to other forms of media, too. I liked the series with Cumberbatch better than the movies with Downey Jr, but both are fun. The series eventually got too far out there for me, but I'll never forget the Sherlock Holmes Girls that kept posting outside my classroom door when I was in room 121B at Centreville High School!

Kitten Explores the house! + Shane Rides Again (Summer)

Carrie let Pip out of the bedroom today for the first time.

He had an explorer's spirit.

Happy was the friendliest cat. Tsuki watched from a distance. I think Aria got locked up in the office, but I'm not 100% on that.

For the most part, no one bothered Little Guy.

He wandered around and did his thing!

It reminded me of Max whenever we went somewhere new.

Where we the dogs? Locked up. Carrie didn't think Pip could handle that much enthusiasm from the get go!

The soccer game was cancelled. I don't remember if the fields were flooded from a previous rain or if they rain showed up later. Shane's riding lesson was still on.

It was a good opportunity to get out of the house and talk to someone for him. 

Shane doesn't like stopping what he's doing, but he bonds quick. He likes to see PG (and it helps that there's next to no commute time to get there!).

I don't remember how cold it was, but everyone was jacketed up.

Aria was out when we got home and she liked the smell of Shane's jacket. I took a picture and then immediately had him hang it up just in case she liked the smell too much.

The final episode of My Hero Academia Season 6 was out, so we watched that as a family after we got home. Plus Ultra!

We probably stayed in the house and farted around on electronics the rest of the day. Not the most exciting, but not the worst way to rest on a Saturday either. There was one week of school left before Spring Break and we were all feeling it!

Stuck (Summer)

This story starts with grass seed.

It was an emergency ask from Carrie. The seed guy said he was coming with next to no notice and she wasn't available. I've only missed two days of school all year. One was for Travis' funeral and the other was coaching related and therefore school business. 

So, I took a day. I did barn chores, opened the gate, and passed on instructions to the seed guy.

He had an expensive apparatus attached to the back of his tractor that tries to earn it's keep each year in planting season (and is useless the rest of the year which is part of the plight of modern farming). 

I think it took him 3 or 4 hours to cover all the fields and burn through all our grass seed. I could check timestamps, but I'm in hurry-up-and-post-stuff mode!

Meanwhile, I had a problem. I'd gotten the gator stuck on Poop Mountain.

The forest poop/compost pile has grown tremendously. I hazarded driving up to push more poop further into the woods and bet wrong. I attempted digging out (ew) and shoving things under the wheels to drive out, but failed.

Next, I attempted to use the mower to pull it out. If Carrie was home, I would've gone straight to the truck. However, I didn't want to tell her the gator was stuck yet. I wanted to see if I could fix things myself. I thought about hijacking the truck, but I didn't want to see the seeder guy to see I was an idiot either.

Thankfully, I wasn't a total idiot. I guessed the gator weighed more than the mower and proceeded cautiously. The mower popped a wheelie (which I didn't know it could do) and then the cord broke. 

I didn't try to engineer any cockamamie fixes after a few failures. I'd known from the start it was an easy two person fix. I told Carrie I needed her in the truck AFTER she got home (there was no reason to give her anxiety when she was off property!). 

We took care of business lickity split. We tied the gator up to the truck, Carrie drove, and I hopped in the gator. I put the gator in gear, started running the tires slightly, and signaled Carrie. It worked like a charm.

I took more pictures than these three and I showed them to my class. They all got a laugh at my misadventures while I was working on the farm instead of in the classroom. I told them getting good grades was key to getting jobs with good air conditioning, but there was plenty of money to be made for those who could handle the outdoors!