Actually, it Has Been a Couple of Tough Days For my Family!

Hello everyone! I hope that you're all just fine this morning - I certainly am! :) Anyway, I just wanted to give you an update on how I'm doing so far.

Well sadly, my niece Stephanie passed away on Wednesday, February 1st after bravely battling through approximately two years of a cancer diagnosis. She was suffering from ovarian cancer and had initially been misdiagnosed by her primary care doctor. She lobbied for a second opinion, but ended up being horribly allergic to many of the chemo therapy drugs that her new doctors tried to give her. Despite all that, she fought long and hard and had the best primary care physicians possible working on her case - Rest In Peace, Stephanie!

So, back on Wednesday afternoon, January 18th, Mareena and I got together with our good friend Lisa and we went to a barbecue place up in Saratoga called PJ's Bar-B-Qsa. Actually, we also went back on Friday afternoon, February 3rd and so have gone there a total of three times already. It is actually quite a wonderful little place and the food is really tasty! We just sat and talked and ate together.

Since Mareena and I enjoyed both movies that we watched on the 'On Demand' Channel about two or three weeks ago, we are trying to decide if we want to make the practice a monthly occurrence or not. As it stands now, we may choose one movie to watch on the 'On Demand' Channel each month; or perhaps two if the mood strikes us. There are several movies that seem to be very interesting.

I'm also still working through an amazing backlog of crossword puzzles and sudoku puzzles from the newspaper. So far, I've done approximately 90 sudoku and crossword puzzles from the newspaper, although I have also done some sum-doku puzzles from my puzzle books, too! I haven't really finished an entire sum-doku puzzle book from my collection since Saturday, December 3rd - I have been working through partial puzzles from the moderately difficult to extremely difficult levels!

I have also started doing jigsaw puzzles again. I actually started doing a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle on Saturday afternoon, January 21st, and finished it on Friday afternoon, January 27th! It was a surprisingly complex jigsaw puzzle for me, despite taking only six days to complete. I immediately started a seventh jigsaw puzzle out of my giant box of twelve on Saturday afternoon, January 28th! I'm hoping to finish this puzzle fairly soon.

So, as regards my own reading, the most recent book that I've read was One True Thing: A Novel by Anna Quindlen, which I finished on Monday, January 30th! I initially had two copies of this book in my library, and I read it for the first time over ten days in November of 2010 - from November 16th, to November 26th, 2010! I'm sure that someone else would definitely enjoy reading this book as much as I have, so I have posted my second copy of this book on the several book swapping websites that we belong to.

I recently started reading Debbie: My Life by Debbie Reynolds and David Patrick Columbia on Thursday, January 19th! After putting the book aside for a while, according to Goodreads - as of yesterday, February 3rd, I've actually read 205 pages out of 446 in Debbie: My Life by Debbie Reynolds and David Patrick Columbia; or approximately 46 percent. Since my own copy of Debbie: My Life by Debbie Reynolds and David Patrick Columbia actually has 374 pages in it; reading 205 pages means that I have read approximately 55 percent. Actually, I'm really enjoying reading this book; although, I'm also noticing that Ms. Reynolds is a bit of a name dropper.

Actually, I have absolutely no idea what happened this afternoon, but our downstairs tenant Pamela just came upstairs and handed me five books by a new author for me named Vincent Zandri. Pamela said that our next door neighbor had given her the books and had told her that he understood that someone who lived there liked to read and review books. The man didn't say exactly who he was - or how he knew that we read and review books - but he also said that now that he knew that there would be more books coming!

So I had Mareena do a little research, and while Mr. Zandri's biography does say that he divides his time between Florence, Italy and Albany, New York we still don't really know if he is our next door neighbor. Although while she was surfing the Internet for more information about Vincent Zandri, Mareena discovered that he had written a book called Orchard Grove. LOL!!! Who knows, we may actually live next door to an author, but never knew it!

Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight