This is a long, rambling post about taking joy in the little things in life.

Food
I joined the Mayo Clinic Diet program on November 1st and have lost a total of 12 pounds since then! It’s been a really big change in my way of thinking, shopping, and preparing food. Some recipes are awesome, others definitely fall flat, but I’ve picked up some fun recipes!

For example, a package of whole wheat English muffins, pepperoni, shredded cheese, and a jar of spaghetti or pizza sauce will make me a week’s worth of lunches. Toast the muffins first, add a spoonful of sauce, top with pepperoni and cheese and broil for about 3 minutes in the oven. Tasty lunch that only takes about 10 minutes.

I’ve also recently discovered “chia pudding”. I’d never had chia seeds before, but for a tasty breakfast mix together 1/4 cup rolled oats, 1/4 cup milk, 1 tub (6 oz) of Tillamook vanilla yogurt, and 2 1/4 teaspoons chia seeds. Refrigerate overnight and top with fresh fruit or craisins in the morning.

I also came across this awesome “Salmon with Thai Sweet Chili Glaze” recipe and made it this last week. Another quick recipe (except for the marinating time) that turned out awesome! I didn’t have fresh ginger, so used 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger instead and it was very tasty.

Books
I mentioned my love for mystery novels and a friend recommended the “Chief Inspector Gamache/Three Pines” by Louise Penny series. I got the first one, “Still Life” and enjoyed it. There was one character in there that I wanted to smack upside the head the whole time though, a young, new recruit. Not sure if she’s in any of the rest of the series, looks like there are 19 books, but I’ll probably grab the next one soon.

My sister found this book: “Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone” by Benjamin Stevenson. He’s a comedian and has won some awards for his books. I was pretty excited for this one as it was getting compared to “Clue” and “Knives Out”, but it wasn’t funny at all. It was a good story, and I was surprised by the ending, but wasn’t what I expected.

One really cool thing about the book was I learned about the “Detection Club” that Agatha Christie and several other authors were members of that formed in 1930. Here’s the oath the members of the club took:

Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence, or Act of God?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detection_Club

Here are some of the rules they agreed to follow:

• The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know.
• All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
• Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
• No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
• No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
• The detective himself must not commit the crime.
• The detective is bound to declare any clues which he may discover.
• The “sidekick” of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind: his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
• Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

As much as I enjoy the “Knives Out” movies, “The Glass Onion” breaks one of those rules quite badly. If you’ve seen it, you know which one. 😉

Besides the mystery novels, my Sci-Fi Book club recently read “The Time Machine” by HG Wells. It was fun to read the classic; I had no idea it was such a short book!

Anime
My time on the treadmill is spent watching Anime series on CrunchyRoll. I started off with Demon Slayer, then on to Mob Pyscho 100 (written by the same artist behind One-Punch Man), and now am on to My Hero Academia. They’ve all been fun to watch and depending on how intense the episode, I can get quite a bit of speed going on the treadmill. My rule is this – if I want to watch another episode, I need to be on the treadmill. Provides the motivation to keep returning each day. I prefer to watch anime subtitled with the original Japanese voice actors. Some of the English dubbing done is just horrible. There are exceptions though, I enjoyed Cowboy Bebop and Fullmetal Alchemist with the dubbed dialog, those were done very well.

I’ve watched My Hero Academia before, but it’s been quite a while and I’ve no idea where I left off in the series so I’ve started that one over. It’s a long-running series with 6 seasons and 137 episodes! This one is going to take me a while. I see that a new Demon Slayer movie is coming to theaters for 1 day only on March 3rd, I’ve got my tickets to see it subtitled Friday afternoon.

Speaking of movies, the new John Wick 4 movie comes out March 24 – I may be scheduling a day off to go enjoy that one! I’ve got my own ideas/theories on what may be going on, curious if I’ve figured something fun out about the third movie, or if I’ve just been reading too many mystery novels!

D&D
We’re nearing a year with the Icewind Dale campaign, we started it late March of 2022. I’m not running this one, and it’s been a nice break just being a player again. I’m getting excited to take my turn again and have a probably over-ambitious/insane plan for the next campaign. I’m calling it the “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once” (an incredibly weird/bizarre movie with a very touching story at the center) campaign and will be trying to thread a story through all the remaining campaign kits I have. I think there are 7, but I’ve also got some digital books we can dig into. It’s going to be quite nuts, and quite long. I’m going to take them from level 1 to level 20. That’s the highest you can go now in D&D. When we first started playing, 14 years ago, we took a decade to go from 1 to 30 in 4th Edition. All these kits and books are written to only go from level 1 to around 10-11. So it’s going to get interesting.

Cleaning
Ok, this is probably the silliest on my list, but here goes. I used to have a gal that cleaned for me every other week. But her kids were finally to an age where she could return to work and she stopped coming by in December. This is the biggest place I’ve ever cleaned on my own, and it takes between 3-5 hours depending on whether I do dusting or not.

Dusting means all the book shelves, wooden slats on windows, ceiling fans, baseboards, all the wood cabinets, and all the hanging light fixtures inside and out. Plus TVs, hanging art, etc. I only do this bit every month or so. I really hate dusting, it really stirs up my allergies.

I generally split mopping/vacuuming and then everything else into 2 separate days. The floors are done on the second day. On the first day I tackle the bathrooms, kitchen, laundry, and snack bar area. Windex for all the glass, and then this spray I really like for all sinks, toilets, fridge/oven/microwave, tubs, faucets, door handles and light switches:

The cleaning gal used it and I had to find out what it was before she left because I loved the smell. Last is a special cleaner I got for just the granite tops throughout the house. They’ve all been sealed, so you don’t want to use a harsh cleaner on them so they’ll last.

I hate vacuuming the carpet because it’s such a thick, high pile carpet. It’s great for the feet, but hard to vacuum! However, mopping is actually rather fun because of this kit:

You use the pedal on the bucket to spin the mop to remove the excess water. What’s particularly awesome is the mop head is detachable and you can just throw it in the washing machine when you’re done! Perfect! I don’t have to wring anything out with my hands, and I don’t have a mop getting grosser with every use! I go through a stack of microfiber cloths on day 1 and just throw them all into the wash on the second day. The duster I got can be detached and thrown in as well!

Today is day 1 of cleaning and the house smells great at the moment and the washing machine has a bunch of cleaning cloths and duster covers waiting for the mop head tomorrow. My reward for getting on the treadmill and spending 3 hours dusting/cleaning is a Hawaiian Burger from JCW with onions rings, their ultimate dipping sauce, and a mini-chocolate malt with extra malt! This is about the only time I get to enjoy “burgers and fries” type fast food. 😀

OK, that’s enough rambling for now. Hope all is well with you and yours!