WAY too much Idol reading recently—I've barely come up for air, and was so far behind on my f-list that I had to go back to Jan 22 to resume catching up. My apologies for all of the late comments!

We had a brief reprieve from rain, so I was able to bicycle outside FOUR DAYS in each of the last two weeks! \o/ Unfortunately, we're now in another wet spell. Four days of rain last week, a one-day reprieve, and then 5 more rain days. Ughhhhh. I finished pruning the 10 rose trees and about 7 other rose bushes in our yard, and did a little weeding, but that'll be it for awhile. Most of the remaining unraked leaves (they don't finish dropping until late December) became one with the mud several weeks ago...

We finally saw the latest (and probably last?) BBC Sherlock. Huh. Neither of us much liked the Mary subplot in the prior season (mainly, all the wedding stuff and then the improbable twist at the end), and that ate up quite a bit of this season as well. Then there was the torture porn. And the trashing of John's character. There was terrific style and some truly interesting visual work, but there has been less case-oriented plot in the last two seasons than I would have liked. I also renew my objection to the characterization of Sherlock's parents, who are far too normal and affectionate to have produced those particular children. We did actually enjoyed watching it overall—it was gripping! But like the prior season, we had really hoped for better.

We watched Anomalisa, and definitely regretted that. I understand what the creators were aiming for, but mostly it was just strange and slow at first, and Uncanny-Valley-weird throughout. Also? Puppet sex. I fast-forwarded through it, but you just can't unsee that. o_O

I read

The Girls In The Garden (modern drama with some mystery, hard to put down),

The Invisible Library (fantasy with librarians who strategically steal books from various multiverses),

The Fake Fruit Factory (tried too hard to be zany, but not weird enough), and

The Scythe (Neal Shusterman future-fic with a post-mortality world in which overpopulation is solved by "gleaning")

Up next will be the most recent No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novel. I probably forgot to mention that I finished the most recent Harry Bosch novel several weeks ago. That series was dissed in the Luke Cage finale, for no apparent reason. People are welcome to pile on the Lincoln Lawyer series, but the modern noire that is Harry Bosch? Sacrilege!

Our son has now started his final year of Moot Court competition, so we'll be spending some time at the county courthouse over the next month. Hey, at least it isn't jury duty! \o?