I read reviews and chatter about books online. It comes with the territory of being an author and librarian. And a personal pet peeve of mine is when books are dismissed as being “too young adult.” (I mean, of course it would irritate me, seeing as how I write young adult literature. I’d like to make a particular side note of an even bigger pet peeve: when adults criticize a YA book for being “too…

Today marks the anniversary of Tomas’s first day as a missionary. I’ve been taking some time to think back on how the year has gone. As I imagine most would expect, it went very quickly and very slowly at the same time. We check in with him once a week, and often it feels like there’s been almost no time at all since the last time we talked to him. The first few months he…

With the announcement of the latest update to the Apple Watch line, I started wondering just how long it’s been that I’ve had mine. A little bit of spelunking in my Gmail got me the answer: 7 years. That’s pretty surprising, honestly. Am I still happy with it? Do I want to get a new one? First, the happiness scale. Overall, I don’t have a ton of complaints, though I don’t know how much I’m…

I live in Maine, and people keep hearing about Hurricane Lee and Maine, so I suppose it’s no wonder I’ve also been asked “What’s happening with the hurricane?” a fair bit. We don’t get hurricanes here in Maine very often (and it doesn’t look like we’re going to get one this time, either), but I can just update you all at once about what’s up with the storm in my corner of the state. Honestly,…

No matter how much I try to ignore it, I have to face the fact that another presidential election year is staggering toward me, lolling from side to side like some sort of deranged zombie, and I’m just staring at it in horror, unable to move. It’s especially discouraging this year because I have little hope that it’ll be anything other than a mulligan of 2020’s election. If Trump is once more selected by the…

Ahojte všetci! Not much time this week, so just a quick update on things –  – 17 people at church this week (!) – getting fed very well by the members here – the blanket continues to grow – two baptismal interviews in Žilina (!!!) – random Blava pday since our district abandoned us (+ cool city pictures ) Things are well here, just very very busy But we are doing good and our friends…

I’m a fan of Star Trek, though I’m also far from a Trekkie. I’ve seen most of the movies, and a lot of the television shows, though not nearly all of them. Denisa and I watched some of The Next Generation together a while ago, and it was fun, but also not riveting enough for us to stick with it. The “Problem of the Week” style of television that used to be dominant just doesn’t…

I’m still on my language learning kick, trying to study Slovak once a day. (Well, Slovak on Mondly. Duolingo still doesn’t do Slovak, so I do Czech, instead.) I’m up to 250 days in a row, as of yesterday. Is it working? Um . . . definitely not as well as actually taking a class in it, speaking as someone who’s taken a number of languages. However, some of that is because I don’t devote…

I’m a board-certified geek, and proud of it. I read fantasy series that are longer than 10,000 pages. I watch all of Jackson’s Middle Earth movies in a marathon. (The extended versions, naturally.) I have gone to a party dressed as a Slytherin student. In other words, I’m the prime audience for Marvel and Star Wars. And I’m getting tired. It’s not that I don’t like Marvel or Star Wars anymore. I like water plenty,…

Ahojte všetci! It’s actually been a pretty crazy week out here, or at least I hope you all agree. Last week also was but this one was too.  Tuesday was a very normal Tuesday. I know I said the week was crazy but I’m getting around to it. I actually don’t really have much to say whatsoever about Tuesday.  Wendesday we managed to get back into contact with someone we were teaching! We had a…