We are! It’s been a quiet month for us, a month of twos. Too hot or too rainy to do too much. Stu has stayed busy keeping the lawn mowed in between storms. The #2doods split their time between being outside with Stu, chasing the ATVs up and down the driveway beside our fence, and sleeping. I’ve been busy getting a little writing done and a lot of housekeeping – not housecleaning.
I’ve gotten myself involved in too many things and I end up running down too many rabbit holes. So I’ve started simplifying things, dropping some groups in Facebook (including dropping admin duties), cleaning up my email backlog, removing programs from my laptop that I no longer use, cutting back to one Words with Friends game per person (you wouldn’t believe how many games I had going), and the biggie – changing my two newsletters to a once a month schedule.
So, if you subscribe to either McNicol Mysteries: Murderous Intentions & More or McNicol Cozies: Mischief & Misdemeanors, in September they will move to monthly with Mysteries on the 1st of every month and Cozies on the 15th of every month. I was putting out 4-5 a month, two will be much more manageable.
Other than that, the only things of note are purchases and a great lunch out with a former coworker of Stu’s and her new flame. They were out on a motorcycle sight-seeing trip and close enough to us we could grab a breakfast at our local Cracker Barrel. This was our first time eating out since late February, other than eating in the car.
Other purchases have been two mugs – one for Stu and one for me – thanks to Facebook sponsored ads. It was hard to resist this Highland Grog Mug from Bones Coffee for Stu.
And for me, I got a limited edition (numbered 777 of 2500) of this Barrel Mug from Death Wish Coffee. My favorite, everyday mug is from them as well.
This is my favorite mug from them…
A while back I posted on my author blog about my new Rocketbook notebook. I’ve been using it a lot and decided to get the Rocketbook Mini for those quick things you always need to jot down but not save. I love the size and using an elastic on the back cover to hold the mini-cloth and the Frixion pen. I’ve also added several more Frixion pens and found I love the xtra-fine .7 pen over the fine .5 ones. I rarely use the highlighters but they’re handy to have around from time to time.
And the last purchase was for Stu. He wanted to update the map on the motorcycle, it has a built-in GPS system. The map was five years old and he felt he could justify the cost. BUT, the download procedure had changed and was only available for PCs. Now, we could install software to run Windows parallel with our MacOS but we really didn’t want to do that. He also needed a way to run engine diagnostics on our old F-250 diesel pickup and the gizmo he had was only readable on PCs.
So…..off to TigerDirect where we picked up a refurbished HP laptop with Windows 10 Pro. He’s spent the last two days getting it set up to work for him. He did get the new map downloaded and installed on the bike, so he’s a happy camper!
The #2doods are great – here’s a pic just before they got groomed. Cooper has been matting more this summer and he ended up with a shaved tail. I know, it’ll grow back. You’ll see it in future photos. LOL!
