Finished reading: European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman by Theodora Goss 📚

Fantastic sequel to The Alchemist’s Daughter. Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Frankenstein, Van Helsing, Jekyll & Hyde all in the same story. Thrilling and exciting read.

Cleaned out several fountain pens and inked a few more up. Looking forward to the Pelikan Hub meetup next week. 🖋️

The iPhone might be the biggest and most popular mobile gaming platform, but it’s a sad platform. Apple really needs to do something about the App Store. You have to dig through so much garbage in the app store to find anything decent. I hardly play games on my iPhone any more because I don’t bother looking through trying to find anything good. Any new games I install are now filtered through word of mouth from tech sites or Mastodon. No I don’t use real life friend recommendations as many of them are OK with the garbage Pay2Win games.

Finding something as awesome and fantastic as The Room series is now a rarity because Apple just doesn’t care about the quality of the app store contents.

Finished reading: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers 📚

Such an enjoyable series. Becky Chambers writes some fantastic depth into her characters. This was a nice way to wrap up the books. I’ll be looking for more of her work.

I just watched the 3yr old smash her head into her pillow repeatedly to get it to the right shape. And then immediately fall asleep. I laughed because I also smash my pillow until it’s correct.

Picked up the Lego Ecto 1 set. Can’t wait to build this one. Not sure if I want to watch the original Ghostbusters while I build it. Or watch Afterlife, which I haven’t seen yet.

Quit reading: Babel by R. F. Kuang 📚

I tried. I’ve heard plenty of good things about this book, and wanted to enjoy it. It never really hooked me. I forced myself to keep going, in hopes it got better, but the past few nights I just haven’t wanted to read. Time to give up and move on.

Finished reading: The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune 📚

Excellent book, ended up staying up very late to finish it as I wanted to see how it would end.

New pen day, an Aurora Optima 365 Celeste with a broad nib. Inked it up with Robert Oster Chicago. Excited to have a broad nibbed Optima in my collection as I love my other Optima with a fine nib.

I have a few weather apps installed to try on now. Carrot is out because the premium version is not worth that to me, and half of it is gimmick. Currently looking at Hello Weather, Mercury, and Weathergraph.

Finished reading: The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi 📚

This was an amazing book. Loved every minute of it, it ended too soon. I’ll be looking up more books by John Scalzi.

When you visit Vermont, you should make sure to get Vermont craft beer.

Another batch of jam fresh out of the canner. Peach this time.

Finished reading: Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers 📚

Another excellent sci-fi space opera from Becky Chambers. Took me a bit to get into this one, but enjoyed it once it caught me.

I’m not sure what I did wrong, aeropress coffee isn’t that hard to make, but my first cup of coffee this morning was garbage. Second cup was much better.

Emptied another bottle of fountain pen ink. Organic Studios Copper. I like the color, but I don’t think I’ll get a replacement bottle of it.

Yeah, I think we got some rain today. The creek was low and slow prior to this morning.

Tonight’s jam production is rhubarb orange. We didn’t get to make this last year, so thrilled it’s happening this year.

I’m playing bachelor this week. So instead of playing video games, going for a bike ride, or doing nothing, I’m getting things done around the house and making a pile of jam. I’ve made 2 batches of blueberry lemon yesterday, and blueberry lime tonight. Tomorrow, a batch of rhubarb orange.

Finished reading: Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne 📚

This was fantastic. Similar to Travis Baldree’s Legends and Lattes. Wonderful, cozy read. Looking forward to book two of the series once it arrives.

Finished reading: Uprooted by Naomi Novik 📚

More enchanting than a Disney movie could wish to be. Wonderful fantasy tale with hints of old folk lore and fairy tales.

Finished reading: The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester Fox 📚

Fun quick book involving a cursed library, and lost memories. Very satisfying ending.

Finished reading: A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers 📚

Quite a different feel from the first book, but still an enjoyable read.

Stopped by the library this morning to pick up a book they had on hold for me. I’ve been doing pretty good at reading more this year then I have in the past several. It’s been nice to relax with a book at the end of the day.

Picked up a new keyboard. This is a Keychron Q2. With Gateron Milky Yellow switches and SA Monster clone keycaps. Reflashed it with Vial firmware last night and set up some of the macros and shortcuts I have on my Planck.