Tricking myself into reading more.

I have a confession to make -- a terrible one for someone who used to write books and read all the time: I've fallen out of the habit of reading.

I don't exactly know when it happened, but I think I can trace it back to when I went full-time for the Legislative Council Service three years ago. Reading and correcting hundreds of pages of other people's documents per day, a lot of them pretty dense legalese, makes reading for pleasure less fun. Instead of picking up a book, I've been doomscrolling all day and watching TV every evening.

This is not healthy, I know. It has also made me less fun (I am not going to go back and count the number of blog posts I've written about stuff I first learned about on Facebook -- I just know it's a lot). So when my alma mater, Indiana University, sent me an email about the university's first-ever summer reading challenge, I clicked the link for the kit before I could overthink it. 

Stolen from IU's website. Somehow I don't think the school will care.

The kit contains the rules, a page of bookmarks you're supposed to print on cardstock and cut out, a log for keeping track of the books you've read, and two bingo cards: one for kids and one for adults. Here's the one for adults: 

Also stolen from IU's website.

Hopefully you can embiggen that enough to read the prompts. One of them is "A book by an IU alum"; I considered filling that square with one of mine, but that seems hardly sporting. I also think it would be cheating to use one book for multiple categories, but the rules don't explicitly prohibit it (I expect they will next year -- I can't possibly be the only person who has thought of it).

You can get bingo several ways: the traditional across, down, or diagonal, or all the red spaces to make a trident. I think I'm going to go for the diagonal that goes top left to bottom right: a book set in Indiana, a book you meant to read last summer, a book about time travel, a slow-burn romance, a fantasy novel, a travel memoir, and the free space (let's not get crazy - I'm easing back into the habit). I've already got my fantasy novel lined up -- my friend Melissa Bowersock's newest, Wok Walk (the primary category for her series is detective fiction, but there are plenty of fantasy elements, too) -- and for the time-travel novel, I'm using Heinlein's The Door Into Summer, which Amazon says I bought for my Kindle in 2014 but I don't think I ever read it. I started it yesterday, and it's not ringing a bell. (Then I looked over the challenge rules and realized, whoops, I'm not supposed to start reading 'til tomorrow. I didn't get that far into it, I swear!)

As for a book I meant to read last summer, my Kindle is chockablock with books I haven't read. I'll just pick one of them for that category. Surely I meant to read them all last summer, right?

That leaves: a book set in Indiana: a slow-burn romance: and a travel memoir. I could ask Mama Google for listicles, but I'd rather know what you guys are reading. So if you have a favorite that would fit any of those three categories, let me know.

***

I mean, I could cheat and use one of my books for the one set in Indiana. Or reread one of Kurt Vonnegut's novels. But I should probably read something new.

***

"What the hell," you ask, "do a trident and a buffalo have to to with a Midwestern university?" 

The trident is the shape of the IU logo (which I had never noticed before this, and certainly not when I was a student there in the late '70s).

The buffalo, I believe, comes from the state seal of Indiana, a description of which is set out in statute as follows (we here at hearth/myth are determined to provide more information than you ever cared to know): 

Indiana Code: IC 1-2-4-1

Sec. 1. The official seal for the state of Indiana shall be described as follows:

A perfect circle, two and five eighths (2 5/8) inches in diameter, inclosed by a plain line. Another circle within the first, two and three eighths (2 3/8) inches in diameter inclosed by a beaded line, leaving a margin of one quarter (1/4) of an inch. In the top half of this margin are the words "Seal of the State of Indiana".

At the bottom center, 1816, flanked on either side by a diamond, with two (2) dots and a leaf of the tulip tree (liriodendron tulipifera), at both ends of the diamond. The inner circle has two (2) trees in the left background, three (3) hills in the center background with nearly a full sun setting behind and between the first and second hill from the left.

There are fourteen (14) rays from the sun, starting with two (2) short ones on the left, the third being longer and then alternating, short and long. There are two (2) sycamore trees on the right, the larger one being nearer the center and having a notch cut nearly half way through, from the left side, a short distance above the ground. The woodsman is wearing a hat and holding his ax nearly perpendicular on his right. The ax blade is turned away from him and is even with his hat.

The buffalo is in the foreground, facing to the left of front. His tail is up, front feet on the ground with back feet in the air, as he jumps over a log.

The ground has shoots of blue grass, in the area of the buffalo and woodsman.

(Formerly: Acts 1963, c.207, s.1.)

There's been a lot of discussion about the imagery over the years. Here is what I can tell you: the tulip tree is the Indiana state tree; Indiana entered the Union in 1816; and the rest of it seems to be in honor of the nation's westward expansion, with the pioneer fellow chopping down trees and chasing the buffalo away. (There actually were bison in Indiana at one time.) Describing the sun as setting rather than rising has been a topic of discussion since the state's inception; one fellow in 1819 insisted the sun was meant to be rising east of the Allegheny Mountains, which pioneers had to cross to get to the state. 

Sure, Jan. If those mountains are the Alleghenies (which are part of the Appalachians), that bison is running toward Minnesota.

Here's the seal. Judge for yourself. 

Alancotton | Dreamstime.com

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These moments of habitual reading blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Yay, reading!

And the Summer Reading Challenge winners are...

 

Illustration 174468593 © Kornetka | Dreamstime.com

And that's a wrap on the hearth/myth 2021 Summer Reading Challenge. Thanks to all who entered, and congrats to the rest of you who found new books to read by consulting our curated list. 

The grand prize winner of a signed copy of The Payoff is Tom Dent. The winners of the Pipe Woman Chronicles mugs, in no particular order, are: Tabitha Ormiston-Smith, Meredith Townsend DeVoe, Smoky Zeidel, Melody Stiles, and Vickie Koehler Averhoff. Congrats! I'll be contacting each of you to get details on how to get your prize to you.

That contest took a very long time from start to finish. Thanks to everyone for hanging in there.

As for my total? 72 books. I wouldn't have won my own contest! I knew I should have tried harder...

***

So I've just tonight uploaded the final few episodes of The Atherton Vampire 2: Out of the Coffin. They will be dropping on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays on Kindle Vella through October 22nd. 

In addition, every episode of the first Atherton Vampire novella is available on Kindle Vella right now.

I'll be releasing them both next month as regular Kindle ebooks, in time for your Halloween reading pleasure. There will be at least one more Atherton Vampire book -- book 2 ends on a sort of cliffhanger and I am going to have to resolve that if I want to sleep at night. Details on all of that, including preorder info, will be coming shortly. Stay tuned, as they say on TV.

***

That's it for tonight. I have other stuff to say, but it's too serious in tone for this particular post.

Besides, I've been at the computer for hours and I need to go hang out with my new kitty, Tigger, who I adopted from the Santa Fe Animal Shelter just yesterday. Here he is, a little high on catnip. No doubt you'll be seeing more of him in the weeks to come. 

Lynne Cantwell 2021

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These moments of winning blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get vaxxed!

The Summer Reading Challenge is wrapping up.

 

copyright Lynne Cantwell 2021

This is it, y'all. The final week of the hearth/myth 2021 Summer Reading Challenge has begun. And I have a confession to make. 

See the books in the photo? Well, the three books plus a Kindle. Anyway, they represent two things: The hardback copy of The Payoff is the grand prize for the person who has read the most books on our list; the others are books I fully intended to read this summer and never got around to.

I don't know about you, but ever since all this business with the pandemic started, I've had a really hard time concentrating for long enough to get much reading done. But when I compiled the the list of books that's the basis for the contest, I had such great plans. I'd already read a ton of the books on the list, and so many of the others looked really good. Surely I'd be able to dive in and knock off a bunch of them in short order. Right?

Yeah. Not so much. 

I started one and bailed. Then I read a couple of books that aren't on the list at all (what was I thinking?). I picked up one from the list that took me way too long to get through (I blame packing and moving for that), but I did finish it at last. Then I spent way too much time on Facebook. Then finally, last week, I knocked off one. Today, I started another, and I can tell I'll have that one done by the end of the week, no problem. But the books in the pile in the photo? I'll get to 'em. Just not by Saturday.

All of which is to say that if you, too, had good intentions to make headway on our list, but got sidetracked for some reason, don't feel bad. I'm right there with ya.

When you're toting up the books you've read, if you're pretty sure you'll finish the one you're working on by Saturday, go ahead and count it. You have my permission. I mean, I intend to do the same thing.

And if you're certain that you're not going to finish any more books by next weekend, that's okay, too. Go ahead and send me your tally now -- no shame, no blame. We've all had a rough year, after all.

*** 

If it's not clear from the foregoing: I'm accepting contest entries as of now. 

There are several ways to get your final tally to me: email me at lynne.cantwell@hearth-myth.com; leave a comment below; or I'll even take your total in a comment on Twitter or in a Woo-Woo Team post on Facebook. (Those last two weren't in the official rules to start with, but they are now.)

One more time, here's the list. Send me your totals by Saturday! I'll post the winners (and my own total) here on the blog next Sunday. Thanks! 

***

A couple of housekeeping issues: The final episode of The Atherton Vampire dropped on Kindle Vella on Friday, so if you're the sort of person who puts off reading a book 'til it's finished, go for it. In addition, the first three episodes of The Atherton Vampire II: Out of the Coffin will be released tomorrow. Sales of the first book haven't exactly beensmokin' hot. So while I intend to write a third book in the series, it won't be released on Vella; instead, all three will be available in Kindle editions before the end of October. Stay tuned for more on that.

bejotrus | Deposit Photos

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that this month marks the tenth bloggiversary of hearth/myth. Yes, that's right -- I published my first post in this space on August 16, 2011. "I'm going to aim for a post a week," I said back then. "Let's see how long it lasts." Well, now we know: ten years and counting. Good job, me! This calls for balloons, and maybe even a cake!

Should I shoot for fifteen years next? How about twenty? Let's just see how long it lasts!

***

These moments of celebratory blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Submit your contest entries by Saturday, September 4th! And of course: Get vaxxed!

 

In which our Summer Reading Challenge beats NPR.

The move went fine last weekend, thanks for asking. Even the dresser delivery guys were late in perfect proportion to how late we were running with the rest of the move.

Now, of course, comes the unpacking and whatnot. A lot of that "whatnot" seems to consist of buying furniture to replace all the built-ins I had at the other place, including dresser drawers and bookshelf space. In addition, I've had to buy some things that came with the old apartment, chiefly a mattress and box spring, as well as a table and chairs for the dining room. All the new stuff is either already here, or ordered and on the way, except for two things (and why do I get the feeling I'll be saying "I just need two more things" for the next several years?). Now I just have to wait for everything to get here.

In the meantime, summer's on the wane, and with it, our hearth/myth 2021 Summer Reading Challenge. We all have until Saturday, September 4th, to read another book (or books!) on the list. That's less than two weeks away, guys. 

Our list is pretty darned comprehensive, so I was feeling rather smug when I read an NPR article this week called, We Picked Our Favorite Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books 10 Years Ago. Here Are Some We Missed. Why smug, you ask? Because of the seven additions to their list, our list has four (and I've read all four of them -- go me!): Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler; Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany; The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell; and Grass by Sheri S. Tepper. Take that, NPR!

The remaining three they wish they'd included are: Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh; Magic's Pawn by Mercedes Lackey; and We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. I haven't read any of these, even though I've always heard great things about Cherryh and Lackey. (I've read some Lackey, just not any of the Valdemar books.) But I figure I have about two weeks to rectify my oversight, right? I started Foreigner the other day, and so far it's good. 

I'm also trying to figure out how my ridiculously well-read friends and I missed the Zamyatin altogether. And miss it, we did; it was published in 1924. Anyway, it's on my radar now. Hopefully someone will pick it up and let me know whether it's worth adding to the list for next year.

I won't keep you any longer, as I know we all have reading to do. I just wanted to make sure y'all remembered about the contest. Here's the link to the list and the rules again. Good luck!

***

These moments of reading-ready blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get vaxxed!

Brace yourselves: it's another knitting and crafting post.

My apartment is in an uproar right now. The movers are coming in less than a week and I'm running out of places to put the boxes I've packed. So how about a knitting post?

The last time we chatted, it was in March and I was dressing up Flora. I've done a few other crafty things since then. Here we go.

First: I decided I needed to clean up the clutter on my desk. This desk has several drawers (and what's with the desks they make without drawers these days, anyway? Where are you supposed to put all your stuff?) but I had a bunch of little containers on my desktop, as well as two cups full of pens and scissors and things like that. The clutter was making me a teensy bit crazy. So I bought an unfinished box and decided to stain and varnish it, rather than paint it. I asked Mama Google about staining and she said you could use instant coffee. Well, I had some packets of instant Starbucks that were about to expire anyway, so that's what I used. It turned out okay. And now the top of my desk is a little bit less cluttered (although right now there's a pile of papers that need to be filed. Gonna do that tonight, I swears it.)

Lynne Cantwell 2021

I also decided to spin up some of the roving I've picked up here and there over the past few years. This stuff is Falkland wool and it came in a rolag, which is what you get when you put a bunch of dyed fiber on a blending board, mix it up, and roll it off into a tubular shape. These turned into lovely yarn. I have no earthly idea what I'll do with it -- it's not enough to make anything with. But it was fun.

Lynne Cantwell 2021

Less fun to spin is the silk top that my daughter Amy gave me a few years ago. Silk is more slippery than wool and it's been a challenge to keep it from breaking. I spun up part of it and put the rest aside. I might get back to it eventually. Or not.

Now, about the knitting. In the spring, I took a virtual class on brioche knitting from here in Santa Fe through fibre space in Alexandria, VA. I'd never done brioche before. It's, um, challenging. If you make a mistake, you're almost better off frogging the whole thing and starting over. There was one more issue: the cowl called for three coordinating colors of yarn. I had leftover yarn from another project and wanted to use it as one of the three colors, but that meant picking the other two while looking at photos of my options online. I was only kind of successful. But it's done, and now I have even more yarn left over, so I might eventually make a hat to go with the cowl.

Lynne Cantwell 2021

Next up: a pair of socks from this sock yarn I bought about a billion years ago and finally got tired of looking at in my stash. 

Lynne Cantwell 2021

The socks were sort of a palate cleanser after this next project. 

At one point this spring, I totally lost my mind and bought a shawl kit from an ad I saw on Facebook. The yarn was a nightmare to work with and some of the pattern directions were confusing, so I won't be doing that again. The result is stunning, though, so I guess all the cursing I did was worth it. I'm calling it my Sunrise shawl.

Lynne Cantwell 2021

If I have a Sunrise, then I need a Moon to go with it, right? As it happens, the Moon shawl is what I'm working on right now. I've included the cover of the instructions so you can see how it's supposed to look when it's done. 

Lynne Cantwell 2021

This pattern is a different nightmare. Like the Eden Prairie shawl, this designer is using a dark color to separate the sections of the shawl; unlike the Eden Prairie, which sensibly used garter stitch for everything, this pattern calls for knitting each section in stockinette with an I-cord bind-off, and then picking up stitches along the edge of the I-cord to start the next section. I'm currently about half done with binding off the 399 stitches of the third section. If you're not a knitter but that sounds like a lot of stitches, you're absolutely right. I have two more sections to knit, then an I-cord bindoff around the whole shawl, and I get to use duplicate stitch to make those cute little moon phases along the border. I keep thinking I'm making progress on this thing, and then I look ahead to the next section and despair. But eventually it will be done, I swears it. Just not before the movers come on Saturday.

***

Which reminds me: I'm going to take next week off from the blog due to the move. See you back here on the 22nd.

***

Which reminds me of something else: Our summer reading challenge is heading into the final few weeks. Check out the list and the prizes at the link, and good luck!

***

These moments of crafty blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get vaxxed!

The vampire is (nearly) loose.

Are y'all tired of me talking about The Atherton Vampire yet? If so, sorry -- I'm doing it again.

But this time, I have excellent news. Amazon announced a few days ago that Kindle Vella will launch this coming week. And Jerry's tale is in the queue and ready to go. If you're in the US, and if you have a Kindle app on your phone or iPad, try this: Open that Kindle app, go to the search function, and type in "atherton vampire" (yes, in quotes; no, it doesn't need to be capitalized). You should get a result that looks like this (although the resolution should be better):

Clicking the link gets you an error message right now. But sometime this week, I'm told, it'll work. And then Jerry Atherton will be released upon an unsuspecting public, muahahahaha.

Well, you won't be unsuspecting because I've told you about it. 

Oh, you know what I mean.

Anyway, I'm making outstanding progress on the second Atherton Vampire story for Vella. My goal is to write one episode per day for Camp NaNo this month; today I'm at almost 17,000 words. So I should be able to start publishing episodes of the second story as soon as all of the episodes of the first story have been released. 

It also means the first Atherton Vampire story will be published as a regular Kindle ebook around the fall equinox in September, with the second story released as an ebook just before Halloween.

All this, and I've started a part-time job, too. I'm working for the New Mexico Legislature as a legal proofreader again, but the hours are a lot more forgiving right now than they were during the legislature's session last winter. Which it looks like I will be doing again this coming winter. Which is good, actually, because I'm buying a condo and the extra money will come in handy.

To be honest, a lot has been happening lately. And the rest of this summer is going to be busy, too. This is how retirement is supposed to work, right?

***

I hope you haven't forgotten about the hearth/myth Summer Reading Challenge. There's still plenty of time to increase the number of books on our list that you've read. You can find the list and the rules here. Good luck, and happy reading!

***

These moments of anticipatory blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get vaxxed!

Writing episodic fiction for my new guy.

Before I get into the meat of this post, I wanted to put in a plug for our Summer Reading Challenge. It's been going on for just over a month and I've read, uh, one new-to-me book on the list. Oh, wait -- actually I'm still reading it. Whoops. I have another one queued, though. 

Anyway, I can't win any of the prizes. But you can! Hop on over to the link, check the list, and get cracking. The contest ends September 4th.

***

copyright Lynne Cantwell 2021

So here's my new guy. His name is Jerome Reed Atherton, a.k.a. The Atherton Vampire -- Jerry to his friends. Looks like a charmer, doesn't he? I'm writing his story now for Kindle Vella, a new platform that Amazon is developing.

We don't have a launch date yet for the platform, although one blog has speculated it will be sometime this month or next. What we do know is that Amazon is aiming Kindle Vella at people who read on their phones or other mobile devices, and it will work a little differently than a regular Kindle ebook. For one thing, the story will be doled out in episodes of between 600 and 5,000 words apiece. For another, readers won't be able to purchase the whole story at once, the way they do with an ebook; instead, they'll buy virtual tokens, and then use those to buy the episodes. The episodes are priced by length, with one token worth 100 words -- so an episode that's 1,200 words long would cost a reader 12 tokens. As usual with these sorts of things, the more tokens you buy at once, the cheaper they will be. 

Don't take the prices for tokens at that link above as gospel; Amazon hasn't finalized them yet. But using that chart as a rough example: it looks like Jerry's story is going to end up being about 40,000 words long. The first three episodes of every story will be free; in Jerry's case, that's about 2,500 words lopped off the total, so you'd be paying for 37,500 words. The whole shebang would cost you 375 tokens, or (according to that chart that hasn't been finalized yet) between three and four bucks.

Another thing that isn't super clear is how much authors are going to be paid. We'll get 50% of what readers spend on each episode, but the formula has variables that include the price a reader paid for their tokens and the fee charged by the sales platform. That's not as good a deal as the 70% royalty that authors get for ebooks, but it's not nothing. And it's a way to reach a whole new readership. Assuming this thing takes off.

And assuming people like Jerry's story well enough to keep reading it. That creates a bit of a challenge in terms of structuring the story. I'm keeping my episodes on the shorter side; none has hit even 2,000 words yet, which is shorter than the chapters I write for my novels. And each episode needs to end with something that will compel the reader to buy the next episode -- a cliffhanger, say, or a surprise of some sort. I'm thinking I'll end up with 25 episodes. That's a lot of cliffhangers.

I'm not allowed to publish a Kindle Vella story as a regular Kindle novel unless I unpublish it from Vella first. So we'll see how it goes. If Jerry doesn't get many fans to bite (sorry not sorry), I'll pull the story from the new platform and publish it as a regular ebook. Either way, I think Jerry's story has legs, as we used to say in journalism; I have a whole bunch of ideas for sequels. 

I'll let you know when Kindle Vella launches and how things go from there. Or as they used to say on TV, stay tuned for our next exciting episode!

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These moments of episodic blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get vaxxed!

Taking a pandemic breather to review.

geralt | Pixabay

It sounds like most folks had the same reaction I did to the CDC's recent declaration that anyone who's fully vaccinated can (mostly) stop wearing masks in public: Eh, not so fast. We're now at the point where either you throw caution completely to the winds and go without, or wear one anyway and risk those you meet thinking you're either: a) an anti-vaxxer or b) a Republican. I feel like I need to get a t-shirt that says, "I'm fully vaccinated but I have trust issues about everybody else."

I'd get a button, but I don't think all that would fit. Or at least not in a big enough font to be readable from six feet away.

Anyway, it appears that in the US, at least, as vaccination rates go up, the number of COVID-19 cases is going down, and the death rate attributed to the virus is going down, too. I don't want to jinx things by speaking too soon, but we may be emerging from the woods.

Regardless of how soon our lives can safely go back to normal, this seems like a good time to sit back, take a deep breath (masked or un-, your choice), and see whether we've learned anything from the past fourteen months. Robert Reich, who was Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, wrote a Facebook post earlier today that's a pretty good summary of the economic lessons learned due to the virus. While I agree with his list, I decided to come up with my own. There's some overlap, but I think he missed a couple of things.

1. How nice was it to show up, get your government-provided vaccine, and not have to pay a penny for it? Nobody asked for your insurance information. Nobody asked you for a co-pay. You didn't even have to contact the vaccine administrators to find out whether they were in-network or out-of-network. You just showed up, got the shot, and went on your way, right? Now think about how wonderful it would be if all health care in America was offered the same way. It can be -- if we would just institute universal health care. We're the only major nation that doesn't have it. It's beyond ridiculous. We need to do whatever it takes to get this done.

2. We need to continue to appreciate our essential workers -- and by "essential workers," I mean all the people who had to show up for work during the pandemic while the rest of us stayed safely at home: the health care providers, the delivery drivers, the warehouse workers, the grocery store clerks, the cashiers at stores deemed essential businesses, and the teachers who had to go back to in-person instruction not knowing for sure whether it was safe. Other than teachers and health care workers, most of these folks don't have job security -- they're typically not full-time employees and they receive minimal, if any, benefits from their employers. We need to fix that. At least give everybody free health care (see point 1).

3. I have zero patience for people who made a buck off of others during this trying time. I don't mean just the idiots who bought up all the hand sanitizer and wipes at the start of the pandemic and then tried to sell them for a premium -- although they're on my list. Nope, I'm also including the billionaires who have increased their wealth by more than $1.6 billion over the course of the past year and change. In many cases, their gain has come at the expense of their employees, many of whom are considered essential workers. Economic inequality was already off the charts in this country before the pandemic, and now it's worse. There's no excuse for that. 

4. As for the employers who tried to roll back hazard pay for their essential workers after a couple of months? Hello, the pandemic is still happening -- they still deserve that extra pay. And if you can't get people to come to work for you now? Maybe don't be so chintzy with your pay and benefits, and treat your employees like they're human beings and not interchangeable cogs.

5. When it comes to those who've been working remotely for the past year, now that they've had a taste of the good life, employers are going to have a hard time convincing them to go back to the office full-time. It was gospel at my old law firm that secretaries would never be able to work from home. Our job duties simply wouldn't allow it. Well, here we are, fourteen months into the pandemic in which everybody's been working remotely -- including secretaries at my old law firm. Not everybody thrives in the office fishbowl. Employers need to be flexible when it comes to bringing people back into the office.

6. I admit I wasn't nuts about the idea of having to wear a mask when it first came up. But when it became apparent that either I needed to mask up or hermetically seal myself in my apartment to avoid getting the virus, I got on board. But some people have been absolutely desperate to avoid reality, to the point where they have convinced themselves that masks are useless and the vaccine is dangerous. I'm all about "live and let live," as long as people's choices don't impact me. This does. If you're not going to get the vaccine, wear a mask. If you won't wear a mask, get vaccinated. And for gods' sake, don't lie about having gotten the vaccine so you don't have to wear a mask. 

7. The January 6th insurrection happened. It was not a "normal tourist visit." It seems logical to assume that anyone who objects to an investigation into what happened that day, including a thorough probe of who was behind it, probably has something to hide. 

Okay, that last point doesn't have much of anything to do with the pandemic. I'm leaving it on the list anyway. After all, this is just a draft. I'll come back to it once the virus has well and truly ridden off into the sunset.

***

Speaking of lists: How's your progress on our summer reading list? I'm not nagging, I swear.

In case you're wondering what I'm talking about, here's a link to the list and info on the contest. That's right! Prizes! Now go forth and read!

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These moments of bloggy listicle creation have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get vaccinated and good luck!