Jigsaw Puzzles and 'Comfort Reads' Are the Orders of the Day!

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 Sunday, February 12th, Mareena and I weren't able to make it to the radio station because of the nor'easter snowstorm that blew through. Also, our downstairs neighbor Pamela - who is usually our ride to the station - put her back out while shoveling the driveway on Saturday, February 11th! Since there was also a ladies basketball game going on that day as well - and the show would only be an hour and a half as a result - we decided to call someone in to do our show.

The person who usually fills in for us was on vacation in Key West, Florida so we wound up calling our station manager Darrin who stepped forward to do our show in his place. Darrin told me over the phone that he had something unexpected planned for our listeners - which actually turned out to be a radio broadcast of an episode of 'The Twilight Zone' called 'Long Live Walter Jameson'. It actually turned out to be very entertaining to listen to the show, even though I don't usually like anything having to do with science fiction. The experience brought me back to a time when I used to listen to the BBC Radio Dramas as a child and a young adult every afternoon at 3 P. M.

I'm also still working through an amazing backlog of crossword puzzles and sudoku puzzles from the newspaper. So far, I've done approximately 104 sudoku and crossword puzzles from the newspaper, although I have also done some sum-doku puzzles from my puzzle books, too! Actually, I just finished another one of the puzzle books from my collection last Saturday afternoon - Saturday, February 11th - and am delighted to say that the book actually came from the six-pack of puzzle books that I received on Friday, March 4th of last year.

I have also started doing jigsaw puzzles again. So far, I've done another two puzzles out of my giant box of twelve that has held my interest for the better part of the past six months or so. That means that I have done ten jigsaw puzzles out of the box of twelve.

As regards my own reading, the most recent book that I've read was The Remains by Vincent Zandri which I finished on Wednesday, February 15th! Actually, I thought that the author wrote an intriguingly original story, and really captured the personalities of his female characters very well. In my opinion, he wrote a poignant and extraordinarily sensitive story.

I immediately started reading The Copper Beech by Maeve Binchy on Saturday, February 18th. This is actually a reread for me from just about five years ago - over four days in January of 2012 - from January 27th, to January 31st, 2012! I really enjoyed this book the first time that I read it and I'm sure I'll enjoy it again.

Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight