October wasn’t as productive reading-wise as the past few months. I’d like to formally thank the Vegas fiasco (part 1, part 2) for that.
Two back-to-back weekends in Vegas — plus my birthday party the weekend before — didn’t really leave a whole lot of time for reading.
But, I did read two books this month, at least. Which, honestly, isn’t too bad. I think it’s actually the goal I set at the beginning of the year.
IT HAPPENED!
After an awful last weekend in Vegas, I was soooo cautiously optimistic because I didn’t think it would actually happen, but it did!
Ryan and I just got back from an awesome weekend at the When We Were Young music festival at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds.
IT WAS THE BEST DAY OF MY SAD LITTLE EMO LIIIIFEEEE.
We had our first hard frost (and a low of 22 degrees!) earlier this week here in Flagstaff, which means our gardening season is effectively over.
I’d hung up some plastic sheeting last week to try to get my tomatoes to ripen while nighttime temps were flirting with the 30s, but lo and behold, nature had other plans. The plastic sheeting fell down while we were in Vegas, and that was it. It dropped down to the low 20s, and my lone three remaining vegetable plants — the tomatoes, pickling cucumbers and zucchini — all died off.
So, I wanted to take a second to recap my very first gardening season here in Flagstaff.
Ughhhh this is the SADDEST, most DESPAIR-FILLED, EMO post EVER.
I just got back from a weekend in Las Vegas, which was supposed to have been spent moping around in the best way — at the When We Were Young Festival.
INSTEAD, the festival was canceled, and I ended up wasting thousands of dollars moping around in the WORST WAY — not at a music festival, but instead, crying and walking along the Las Vegas Strip wasting away a day doing practically nothing.
IT WAS AWFUL AND I AM SO LEGIT DEVASTATED.
It’s a fire season of a different kind here in northern Arizona.
Instead of lighting up with amber flames, the sides of the San Francisco peaks are blazing gold with the colors of autumn aspen leaves.
It’s truly gorgeous.
I’m pretty sure the end of September/ start of October is the longest straight period I’ve ever worked, but I got to undertake a really cool work assignment on the weekends which made it totally worth it!
I was fortunate enough to spend the last weekend in September and first weekend in October working out on the neighboring Apache-Sigtreaves National Forests (A-S) to help with the annual A-S Women in Wildfire boot camp.
(You can read the stories I wrote here and here.)
It was SO fun.
Well. September was… a LOT of books.
I cranked through three books alone while I was out in Albuquerque for my work conference. I couldn’t really do a whole lot since I drove an agency vehicle out there, so while a lot of my cohort got to brewery hop every night, I spent most nights reading in my hotel room.
My goal for the month was five books, which I easily reached two weeks into the month… which is great, because I’ve been SO busy with a work assignment this and last weekend that I haven’t touched a book in a few weeks now.
However, I did end up reading six books in September: mostly a combination of historical fiction, thrillers and modern romance novels.
This month was a lot of 4/5 star books, which seems to be my default. If you have any suggestions for 5/5 star books, I’ll gladly take em at this point!
I can’t believe summer is already over!
Summers have always gone by way too fast… but now that I’ve got fire seasons eating up a huge chuck of the warm weather months, they manage to go by even faster.
Regardless, here’s a little recap of everything I’ve been up to lately.
Well. This summer was the summer of paddle boarding was the summer of swimsuits.
I live in Arizona. There’s no water here. Swimsuits are an anomaly.
Does it take anyone else, like, three-to-five business days to unpack from a trip?
I FINALLY finished unpacking from last week’s work conference, five days after getting back. In my defense: Last Sunday, I basically went straight from my camping trip at the Grand Canyon to Albuquerque (I paused to switch from my Jeep to an agency vehicle), so I was unpacking two cars from both a camping trip AND a business trip.
(And I get to re-pack everything in two more days for another work trip this weekend. Why even bother unpacking!)
But, it was totally worth it. My conference in Albuquerque was really intense, but also really interesting.
