Creative
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Books I Read in January 2024
I lowered my reading goal this year to 30 books for my Goodreads Challenge, down from my usual goal of 40-45 books. Last year I read 42 books, in 2022 I read 60 books and 2021 and 2020 are a bit skewed because I was counting a lot of the books I was reading Forest at that time so those years come in at 110 and 188—and it looks like 2019 is skewed at 139, too. I mean, I did read them! Most of them might have been 20 pages long, though! hah! The reason for lowering my goal this year was because I wanted to focus on some longer…
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Cracking Open A New Sketchbook | The Sketchbook Diaries
After taking so much of last year off from doing any kind of art, I am back at it. I have started two new watercolor sketchbooks and am planning to get back into my perpetual nature journal, too. In fact, I finally completed an entry from last March recently and need to work my way through more of them to catch up. I wanted to start a sketchbook for some hikes we’ve been doing and will continue to be doing in the coming year for the Big Thicket. I’m working from photos because: time, but at some point it would be nice if a few of these were en plein…
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Trespassers: James Prosek and the Texas Prairie at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art
I came across James Prosek’s work last fall when someone I was following on Instagram posted that he had an exhibit, Trespassers: James Prosek and the Texas Prairie at the Amon Carter in Fort Worth. I hadn’t been to the Amon Carter in probably two decades but put it on my list to wrangle some people to go with me during the Christmas holidays when we were in Fort Worth visiting family. My mom had taken Forest and his cousins there last summer, an activity to beat the searing Texas heat, and they had all loved it. So, we wrangled up the kids again and my mom, Chris, and I…
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Best Books of 2023
In 2023 I set the goal to read 40 books in my Goodreads challenge. I hit 42 and spent December thinking I would read two more but just never did. And that’s fine. I lowered my goal to 30 this year because I want to read a giant stack of magazines I have piled up in addition to some thicker books I’ve been putting off for a while. Audiobooks will still fill in many gaps and I suspect I’ll surpass 30 books easily but I prefer to ease up on myself on this end a bit. I looked over the books I read in 2023 on Goodreads and realized it…
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Reading, Writing, Creating (and Health) in 2024
Drosera capillaris, Chuluota Wilderness Area – Florida, 2020 December turned out to be busier than I expected, so my goal to write here daily went *poof*. Such is life! Forest had several school functions, I had some last minute doctors appointments, including my third MRI of the year, as I tried to milk the most of out having met my deductible earlier this year. So far in 2023 I have received pretty digital pictures of my hips, brain, and now my cervical spine! This was certainly the year to figure out so many health issues. I managed to get my hip mostly into decent condition again with four months of…
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January 2023 Books
Alright, time for January’s book roundup! I read 8 books this month! I’ll break down which is audio, kindle, and paper. Audiobooks did a lot of heavy lifting as per usual and I think you want to add in more reading to your life, an audiobook is the way to go. 1: Playing God in the Meadow by Martha Leb Molnar – Kindle I enjoyed this book but was frustrated with the author at several points along the way. The author and her husband have bought a property in Vermont and in front of their house is a huge former apple orchard that has fallen into disrepair due to disease.…
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1SE – January 2023
I’ve known about the One Second Everyday App for several years now. I think I even tried it back when I had my old iPhone but could never get into a routine with taking the photos/videos. An internet friend has been using it to document her new baby and I thought I would give it a whirl this year. The good thing is you can import photos and if you use the Live photo mode it makes those photos a short video which really helps with having the 1-1.5 second clips needed to make this video. I’m not good with taking a video every day but I can manage a…
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Goodbye NanoWriMo, Hello NanoEdMo
Four days into NanoWriMo and I think I’m going to call it. Why? I realized I have a plot issue. The plot where I left off last year doesn’t work in my brain this year. And try as I may, I can’t get it to work. Typing words is difficult and I find myself stumbling. But I came up with an alternative plot this afternoon that works better. However, I’m going to have to edit the first half of the book before I get back to writing so that I can get into the groove of the book again. *phew* So, no winning for me this year. But coming to…
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The Best of Intentions
Well, 30 days of writing just isn’t going to happen. As per usual, I start off well for these types of things and then fail rather quickly. It isn’t for a lack of interest. I go into weekends with the plan to do more creative projects than I actually get done and over the years all of those plans fall apart faster than they used to. I can’t even get all of the chores I want to get done completed in a weekend anymore. What I have been doing is spending a lot of time in my head brainstorming ideas and thinking of the projects I’ve started that I need…
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Magnolia-cone Mushroom, Strobilurus conigenoides | Wildlife Wednesday
While fungi aren’t quite wildlife or plants and I probably should have called this Fungi Friday instead, we’re going to shuffle our mushroom friends to a Wildlife Wednesday today. And while we’re enjoying Second Summer, I’m dreaming about a day that will come soon enough, one that requires a light fleece in the morning, warming to the high 60s or low 70s mid-day, but under foot, while traipsing about the woods, are tiny mushrooms growing on decaying magnolia cones. I first saw magnolia-cone mushrooms, Strobilurus conigenoides, a few years ago when out in Sam Houston National Forest, not realizing that they were a specialized fungus that grew only on magnolia…
