PK the Bookeemonster: It's been a Monday

Monday, December 20, 2021

It's been a Monday

Here we are. Work. One guy called in so the schedule was more difficult. The same one who hurt his shoulder and was out a week two weeks ago and has now done too much or not enough so he's going to be out more weeks - recommended 4-6. Our Internet this morning was out which means our phones were out too so incoming calls got routed to my cell phone. So not only did I have to try to fix the problem with Spectrum, I had to take all the customer calls. Finally got things fixed around 9:30-10:00.

And so forth.

I didn't go to beading on Saturday. I had gone out for my haircut in the morning and I just didn't want to go back out again.

The roads weren't horrible but still icy in some places and I'd been driving on them all week and I didn't want to do it anymore for a couple days. It was going to be at Jim's house. Sadly, only one person showed up. He texted to us all that he hadn't been stood up by so many women in one day in a long time.

I did clean off my beading table though. THAT needed to happen for the last two weeks. I did finish the book I was reading and started and finished another.

FIRST OFFENSE by Marti Green. 4th of 6 in series featuring attorney Dani Trumbull in Innocent Prisoners Project series.

Twelve-year-old Frankie Bishop is a model kid: quiet and bright. So everyone, especially his family, is shocked when he’s arrested for drug possession—and horrified when he’s sentenced to juvenile detention at Eldridge Academy. His uncle, Bruce Kantor of the Help Innocent Prisoners Project, wants to help but knows he’s too close to the case. His associate Dani Trumball has family worries of her own to deal with, but she knows Bruce wouldn’t ask for help without cause. Just as she and her team begin to investigate, the case gets even thornier: Frankie is missing, and evidence points to an Eldridge cover-up. As the FBI launches a hunt for the boy, Dani knows something isn’t right. Why would a minor’s first offense earn such a harsh punishment? Unconvinced by the court documents, Dani is dogged in her pursuit of the truth that will save Frankie’s future—if he still has one.

Published 2016; 270 pages.

Currently reading GOVERNOR by David Weber and Ricard Fox. 1st in a new SFF series, Ascent to Empire.

For more than fifty years, the Terran Federation and the Terran League have been killing one another. The death toll has climbed ever higher, year after year, with no end in sight. But the members of the Five Hundred, the social elite of the Republic's Heart Worlds, don't care. Their star systems are light-years from any threat of attack. Their children are sheltered from the “mandatory service” that falls so heavily on the Fringe Worlds' backs. Their trade connections with the Rishathan Sphere bring them wealth and influence. And their contracts to build ships, fighters, missiles, and all the other sinews of war have made them the wealthiest human beings in the history of the galaxy. Rear Admiral Terrence Murphy is a Heart Worlder. His family is part of the Five Hundred. His wife is the daughter of one of the Five Hundred's wealthiest, most powerful industrialists. His sons and his daughter can easily avoid military service, and political power is his for the taking. There is no end to how high he can rise in the Republic's power structure. All he has to do is successfully complete a risk-free military "governorship" in the backwater Fringe System of New Dublin without rocking the boat. Without dredging up any lunatic Fringe conspiracy theories. Without undercutting the Five Hundred's stranglehold on wealth and power. But the people sending him to New Dublin have miscalculated, because Terrence Murphy is a man who believes in honor. Who believes in duty—in common decency and responsibility. Who believes there are dark and dangerous secrets behind the facade of what "everyone knows." Terrence Murphy intends to meet those responsibilities and unearth those secrets, and he doesn't much care what the Five Hundred want.

He intends to put a stop to the killing. Wherever that takes him, he will go. Whatever that costs him, he will pay. And whatever that requires, he will do. Terrence Murphy is coming for whoever has orchestrated fifty-six years of bloodshed and slaughter, and Hell itself is coming with him.

Published 2021; 496 pages.

I figured out what to do for Christmas Eve and Christmas day dinner. I'm going to make homemade clam chowder for Steve and Zuppa Toscana for me on Christmas Eve (because I'm not a huge fan of clam chowder so more for him). And on Christmas Day I'm going to make Swedish meatballs.