This Week...

I'm reading....

I had every intention of reading a book set in France after finishing Sixty Summers (because as I may have mentioned last week we booked a trip!) but I ended up picking up Water Under the Bridge by Lily Malone instead. I got an email telling me that the second book in the Chalk Hill series was on sale. When I was looking I realised that I had actually bought the first book in the series a while ago, but had never read it so I decided it should be my next read. I have read one book by this author which I enjoyed so it was time to try another book by her.

When I started reading, I realised the series is set in a fictional town in south western Western Australia, which is an area that we visiting between Christmas and New Year so it feels a bit familiar. In fact, on the author's Facebook page she shared a post from her local paper talking about her latest release. The town where she lives is Cowramup, and it is a place that we visited during our trip and so it is helping me visualise the town as being similar to the area. The town is colloquially known as Cowtown, and all down the main street there are cows everywhere and lots of the shops have cow inspired names. Let's put it this way, if there was a movie theatre in the town it would definitely be called the Moo-vie theatre.

I have noticed something unusual about my reading so far this year. Normally I have a mix of paper books, audiobooks and ebooks, but this year all of the books I have finished so far are all ebooks. I'm not sure why that is, but it is a change.

I'm watching...

The only new thing that I watched this week was the first episode of the new Star Trek: Picard series. It is only being released weekly, so it is one episode at the time, but I felt that it was a good start. It's been a long time since we have seen Picard on the small screen, and I found it a very comfortable return to that world.

I have long been much more a trekkie than a Star Wars fan, which is interesting in our house because my husband is very much the other way. Until I started dating again I had never seen a Star Wars movie from beginning to end. I went and saw one on a date (not with him) and then another one with my husband, so I haven't seen them all but I get the world now.  We did watch The Mandolorian together recently which I enjoyed. Whilst I don't expect to be converted from one to the other, I am coming around.

In life...

On Saturday we went to see another classic Aussie band. This time it was Icehouse and the show was awesome. It was held in the grounds of the zoo so we took the opportunity to spend a couple of hours wandering around looking at the animals. It's been many years since I had done that.  We then had to exit the zoo and line up to get back in (we won't talk about how hot it was or how long it took) to go and claim our spot on the grass.

On thing I did learn as a result of this event is that the only part of my body that should make prolonged contact with the ground is my feet. I am not made to be sitting or laying on the ground. Next time we will take chairs even if it means sitting at the back! Despite the discomfort, it was a perfect night to sit outside and listen to fantastic music. My husband didn't grow up in Australia and so sometimes when we got to see bands he only knows a few songs but he enjoyed the concert because he knew almost all of them.

Icehouse is a band that I have wanted to see for the longest time and I would gladly go see them again. I think the next Aussie band I really need to see is Hoodoo Gurus, and I am totally hoping that Simply Red comes back to Australia soon as they are also on my have never seen but must see list!

Back in the day the lead singer from Icehouse had the full on mullet and a perm as you can see in the video below. These days he looks a bit different, but then again my hair has changed in that time too!

The other thing that we did this weekend is a small project in the house. My husband, who is often known as Bob the Builder because he is very handy, loves a good project and he decided that this long weekend was a good opportunity to redesign the walk in robe. That meant taking everything out and so I tried to at least get rid of some clothes that I no longer need! Hopefully I'll have some pics for next week's post.

This is just a small project. Previously he had done our kitchen (see the pics here), the flooring, the deck and my son's bedroom. This year, we intend to do the two bathrooms and our room which will pretty much leave the spare room and the garden! At least that's the plan for this year!

And for fun....here's just two of the cows from Cowtown

I've linked this post to It's Monday, what are you reading? as hosted by Book Date