I haven’t written much about my life lately. There hasn’t been a lot going on, really. This is one of the coldest winters we’ve had in New Hampshire in a long time. I’ve been indoors when we weren’t on vacation. This weekend, I am going down to New York City to see Tom Felton in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. It’s going to be freezing there, too, this weekend, so I don’t think I will do much except visit a few bars in the area while I am there.

We sold my parents’ house, which is on the lot next to ours, last summer. It was time. There were things that needed to be done, and we weren’t really making any money on it while renting it, since I didn’t want to gouge anyone. That paid off the mortgage on our house. That has taken a bit of a burden off of us financially. We managed to get the parking area enlarged for our house since we wouldn’t have routine use of that driveway anymore. We still have to get the deck repaired from the incident last spring, which we will focus on along with other improvements that we’ve been thinking about for a while.

I think the depression I’ve suffered from throughout most of my life is rearing its ugly head again. I have little motivation to do much of anything, especially if it involves getting out of the house. A good part of it is the current situation in the United States. I’ve thought many times about writing blog posts about what’s going on, but it’s too depressing when I try to tackle it. For my own sanity, I try to disassociate as much as I can. I know how bad it is, and I know there is little I can do about it by myself. I have attended protests, and my social media posts reflect my opposition to what’s going on. Just today, someone said how grateful they were that I and others are posting it because they feel very alone in their opposition to what’s happening. There are more of us, but the other side is louder. Meanwhile, I have two grandchildren living with us, and I want to give them as much of a “normal” childhood as we can in these times.

My posts lately have been mostly book reviews since I dove into being an advanced reviewer two years ago. I spend a lot of time reading or listening to audiobooks while I diamond paint. This means I go through books pretty quickly, and it’s been hard to keep up with reviewing them as fast as I’m reading them. I enjoy this very much, but even writing just one post a day takes a lot out of me. My brain doesn’t want to function the way it used to years ago, and sometimes it’s like I am fighting it to get through the day. I’m tired of it all, though. Tired of fighting my own brain and body, but I persevere as best I can.

I’m trying to get back into reviewing several television shows I’ve been watching. With the grandchildren home during the day, I don’t put on my shows, and it seems like they were home a lot in January when I was. Today I watched a couple of episodes of Babylon 5, and that depressed me in how close it parallels what is happening now. I was struck by the fact that Nightwatch on the show mirrors ICE. Again, it is overwhelming and depressing to see how far this country has fallen and is still going in that direction.

If you’ve been keeping up with my book reviews, I thank you. It helps having people read them and comment. A few authors have thanked me for reading their work as well. I try to be as honest as I can with the reveiws. I’ve also made an anti-AI commitment with my reviews. I won’t use AI, and if I learn that a book has been written with AI, I will reveal it. I’ve managed to steer clear of any so far, but it’s become a problem for a number of reviewers when they think a book was written using AI. People have caught AI prompts in the middle of the text thanks to sloppy editing. I would probably just refuse to write the review if I were in any way uncertain.

I promise to try to post more Babylon 5, Outlander, and Star Trek reviews going forward. I will start tackling Deep Space Nine going forward. I hesitated to dive into it because it is so close to Babylon 5 (only B5 was first and better – there, I said it!) I’m midway through the 3rd season of B5, and the fifth season of B5 wasn’t all that great, so I think I’m safe to start on DS9 soon. Sitting down and spending several hours just watching something on television isn’t easy for me, so we’ll see how it goes.

That’s it. I just wanted to give my followers a little update and information as to why I’ve been so focused on books for the past few months. I hope everyone out there stays safe and warm!