I was looking for something to put on my calendar on the “Lincoln’s Birthday” square, so I put this birthday party hat on his portrait. So you can download a transparent png of Abraham Lincoln in a party hat from my For You page if you want.
www.shannonkay.com/you/
I’m taking inventory of my coffee beans to see what I should buy this week and decided this should be a spreadsheet instead of a list.
#Coffee
Shout out to YesPlz.coffee for another fantastic single origin. January 17’s Gotiti Gebeb natural process Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia. It’s so good that I’m brewing more.
#Coffee
I read Onyx Storm this weekend and then finished Julie Leong’s The Teller of Small Fortunes last night. Now I have no current read and it feels weird.
I’m happy to have spent much of the day volunteering at my kid’s school production of Newsies.
For Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, I wanted to share some links to reading material.
One of my goals in 2024 was to use the library more, and I succeeded! This year, I plan to read the books that I preordered but haven’t read yet.
The end of #AGDQ yesterday has left my 8-year-old with a list of games he’d like to play today. So far we’ve completed an any% run of Super Mario World.
Our new NAS (Synology DiskStation DS1522+) is now up and running. It took a while to transfer everything from the old NAS(DiskStation DS1511+) and do a restore, but now we have things running on it easily that I was struggling with before.
I’m excited!
#Synology #NAS
Good news! Covers don’t count against Whamageddon, so hearing it performed at a middle school choir concert is safe. #Whamageddon #LastChristmas
We got a new NAS! It’s a Synology DiskStation DS1522+ to replace the DiskStation DS1511+ we’ve been running for over 13 years(solidly and beautifully).
I’m swooning over the stack of 22 TB hard drives we’ve installed and can hardly contain my excitement at seeing 100 TB of hard drives in my server.
I decided to try some photos taken with a Nintendo 3DS XL for the challenge( #ShittyCameraChallenge ). I exported the jpg with both frames next to each other and two separate photos so you can swipe between them.
If anyone wants to view this on a 3D device, the original photo is linked here: www.shannonkay.com/3dsphotos
You can even use the Nintendo 3DS web browser, follow the link to the file, and view in 3D. (SSL doesn’t work, but you can press “accept” recklessly)
“Hide distracting elements” in Safari is beautiful.
It’s giving… thanks.
In the #GoodReads Choice awards opening round, if I have read a few books nominated in a category that I’m considering, I’ve decided to give my vote to the book with the fewest ratings. My intention is to vote for the less popular book in that category.
So, #Mastodon / #ActivityPub is like Twitter around 2008/2009(with some forum energy) and #BlueSky is more like Twitter around 2013.
This gives them different tones, and makes them valuable for different things to me.
I got a Sigma 18-50mm 2.8 lens a month ago, and it hasn’t left my Fujifilm X-T5 since! I use mostly prime lenses, but wanted to get a nice zoom lens for my kids' performances.
I’ve shot a school play, Halloween, a choir concert, and headshots. It’s fast, sharp, and beautiful.
Here’s a photo of my three kids at the Blizzard Halloween party this year in the traditional photo spot in front of the orc statue.
I shot this photo at 1/15s on my Fujifilm X-T5 handheld and I’m really impressed with how it turned out. There’s some motion blur where my son is flapping his Ender Dragon “wings”, but besides that it’s quite sharp. The lens used was the Sigma 18-50mm 2.8 if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
First day of 7th grade for Guinevere. (Like 8 weeks ago).
Itâs October and I never posted the first day of school pictures? First day of Kindergarten and Second Grade.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Wrath of the Triple Goddess by Rick Riordan (9/24) 📚
The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter (9/24) 🎄
The Wedding Witch by Erin Sterling (10/8) 🎄
What Does It Feel Like? by Sophie Kinsella (10/8)
The Dividing Sky by Jill Tew (10/8)
This Will Be Fun by E.B. Asher (10/29)
Where the Library Hides by Isabel Ibañez (11/5) 📚
The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong (11/5)
📚 This book is a sequel that I will drop everything to read as soon as it arrives.
🎄 These are Christmas/Winter Holiday books, so I plan to read them later.
Library Holds
Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis
An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen
A Daughter of Fair Verona by Christina Dodd
Dreams Lie Beneath by Rebecca Ross
A Gathering of Shadows by V.E. Schwab
The Hedgewitch of Foxhall by Anna Bright
Long Live Evil by Sara
Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books by Kirsten Miller
A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal
Wormwood Abbey by Christina Baehr
Kindle Books
Babel by R.F. Kuan
The Hurricane Wars
Lore of the Wilds
The Grace of Wild Things
Long Live Evil
The Honey Witch
Halloween Vibes
I’d like to read at least one “witchy” romance in October
Rewitched by Lucy Jane Wood
Witchful Thinking by Celestine Martin
Hot Hex Boyfriend by Carly Bloom
The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen
A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon by Sarah Hawley
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
Not the Witch You Wed
Re-Reads
Jane Eyre
Books I’d like to read that have sequels coming out
An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir - I’ve had this book marked “to read” on GoodReads since 2015, and never gotten to it. There’s a new book in the same world coming out October
This weekend was the dance recital for my daughter, Guinevere. Guinevere is now thirteen and has been dancing since she was three. Guinevere has been en pointe in ballet for almost two years, and this recital was her first performance en pointe.
When I got to the theater and an usher handed me a program, I was surprised and delighted to see that it had a picture of her on the back from 2015 when she was four!
The picture from the Alice in Wonderland recital she performed in was there to promote this winter’s recital for the younger dancers, which is the Alice in Wonderland theme again. I was so excited when I saw her picture that I immediately told the usher “That’s my daughter when she was little! Now she’s big and en pointe!” I also told pretty much anyone that was standing nearby. I started to tear up a bit, thinking about how much she’s grown in nine years. When I got to my seat, I told the person sitting next to me all about it. When you put your three year old in a dance class, you don’t know how long they’ll want to dance. Sometimes they love dance, try lots of styles, work hard for ten years, and start doing ballet en pointe. If you want to see how far she’s come, here’s the video of her pre-ballet Alice in Wonderland dance at age four.
Reading this book was like hanging out with friends and exploring New York with them for the summer.
Seasonal Vibe: Summer
Starts with a high school graduation and takes place during the summer after graduation.
Travel Location: New York City
There is a romance, but mostly this is a story about a group of friends figuring out what they love and what they want to do next. There’s also a really nice theme about books and writing, with the main two characters having bonded over a beloved(fictional) children’s fantasy series as kids. This is realistic YA fiction that touches on how people can use fantasy stories to navigate the real world and their relationships. There was also a theme about coding and app development that I was surprised to discover.
I started reading The Getaway List on the perfect day for me. I had just been to my youngest daughter’s preschool graduation and it was the last day of school for my older two kids, with my oldest daughter singing in the choir at the promotion for her middle school’s 8th graders. It had a perfect vibe for the end of the school year and looking forward to summer, and was a nice easy read for my tired mom brain.
Just some books that I think I might want to read this summer. This is not an exhaustive list, or even a “To Be Read” list, but just a selection of books that I think I might read during the next season for a variety of reasons.