Valerean

While I was wrapping up the spring cleaning I found not one but two blind date with a books that I was unable to gift to the intended recipients. Since those two folks are now out of my life I could have donated them, but where's the fun in that? These became my reward from the Universe for finishing the spring cleaning. :) Here's the first one, which was the Christmas paper wrapped bline date. Bit of trivia: one of the first novels I wrote was set in a carnival, and like haunted house stories I've always liked them. So, definitely looks interesting. And the second -- now I understand the brown paper wrapping. :) I love a good farce, especially if it's spicy romance, so this one should be fun to read. Thank you for my surprises, Universe!

Love Beyond the Grave tells an epic love story between a mortal warrior general Duan Xu (Chen Feiyu) and the ghostly sovereign of the spirit world He Si Mu (Dilraba Dilmurat) against a historical backdrop of war, scheming conspiracies in both worlds and terrible losses. Si Mu has incredible powers and commands respect from all the other immortals in the other world, while Duan Xu kind of has the same role in our world, and with as many if not more problems. This is a long 40-episode xuanhuan (general fantasy) story, and in a way it takes that long to play out the epic plot. Every time I thought these two could have some time for each other, fate decided otherwise. Duan Xu is quite noble, and temporarily gives up his senses so Si Mu can experience life as a mortal (she has never been mortal and has no senses of her own.) Meanwhile, Duan Xu is trying through his efforts to reclaim some territories taken over by the enemy to stabilize a very rocky governnment and help friends at ...

To cheer myself after the social media incident I went to one of my favorite antique malls and invested in four blind date/mystery items. Two are blind date with a book bundles ($8.00 each), one is a bag of mystery bracelets ($10.00) and the fourth is just a big mystery box of something green ($2.50 because the booth was having a half off sale.) The first blind date with a book bundle was labeled cozy mysteries, which I enjoy. I have not read either author so this was a nice surprise. I also got a bookmark, hand cream, tea, and stickers that were tucked in the folds of the wrapper. The second blind date bundle. I have read this author before, who pretty much writes the same story over and over, and I really don't care for that. But that's the gamble with blind dates. To be fair I'll read these anyway. The mystery bag of bracelets was the most expensive item, so I was hoping to be wowed. And I was! I don't have a lot of silver bracelets, so I...

I just emptied my personal e-mail box completely for the first time since 2017. Yes, it was stuffed with nine years of e-mails -- well, not every e-mail I received, of course. Fan mail, of course, and then some notes from a few friends that were nice. I also saved the not so nice ones, the kind with digs, veiled insults, and unkind remarks that hurt me from people who told me repeatedly that they were my friends. It took me a long time back then to end relationships with bullies and toxic people, and I would pour over those nasty e-mails, usually thinking I was reading into it too much because hey, they said they were my friends, right? After Mom died, the blinders finally fell off, and I saw people for who they were, not for who I hoped they were. That's when I began cutting ties so I could start my journey toward peace and calm, although at the time I didn't know that's what I was doing. I was aware that I should have gone through all my saved e-mails and ...

I'm not alone when I say shopping for groceries has become like a test to get into Mensa. We now shop at five markets, sometimes weekly, to hunt and find the best bargains. The other day I went to three of them in one day trying to find affordable groceries. Here are some of my recent discoveries: Although I am hesitant about buying any kind of meat from Wal-Mart, after seeing the price for lean ground beef had swelled to $13.00/lb. at the store where I usually buy it, in desperation I bought a pound of their lean ground beef to try. In my opinion after making a meal with it, this is not 93/7 beef. It's more like 90/10 judging by the amount of fat it shed. It was dry, tasteless and I got terrible indigestion just after I ate a very small portion of it (I actually don't eat red meat very often, so that may be the real culprit.) Final thoughts: no more Wal-Mart ground beef for me and mine. Decent corn on the cob is very tough to find. I wanted to make it wit...

After brooding for a week about the May tote for my calendar project, I got started by disassembling the black canvas bag I'm using as the foundation. I then spread it out on my cutting mat and arranged the vintage embroidered crazy quilt fragments and the heron block on it until I got the look I wanted. This will be the front side. This will be the back (I may rearrange the fragments one more time.) To give you an idea of how I'm going to put this tote together, here's a box top I embellished with a damaged vintage crazy quilt piece. I created the top by sewing the piece to some backing and batting, covered the patchwork damage with some lace, added embroidery to the places where the original needlework had worn away, and then quilted it with beads and added an old dragonfly brooch.