November Life Update

Hold on to your hats folks, its time for another random life update from Leaky20. Get ready for a riveting look into my life. But where to begin? I know I'll start with books I've read.

Since my last update I've read a few books. The best of which was a true survival story called "The Skeletons on the Zahara" by Dean King. This was an excellent book that I would highly recommend if you're into true life survival stories. Its a historic account of 12 sailors that were shipwrecked, captured and enslaved in Africa, and their harrowing journey across the Zahara dessert. This was a true testament to the resilience of humanity in the face of starvation and brutal human conditions. I would rank this one high on my list of book recommendations in the survival genre.

Another survival story I read was "Touchin the Void" by Joe Simpson. This one was a first hand account of the struggle that two mountain climbers went through in trying to decend the Siula Grande mountain in Peru. One of the climbers breaks their leg near the summit and what he went through to get down was just insane. The book itself was decently written, not amazing, but still very captivating. It was a good read.

My most recent finish was Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe. This one was about "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland that spanned several decades from around the 1970s through to the 2000s. It was a historic look of the fight between Protestants and Catholics and the events surrounding some of the central figures of the IRA. It had a main focus on the murder of Jean McConville and the aftermath of peace process. It wasn't an amazing read for me, but I liked the book overall and found it pretty interesting.

I'm going to pivot away from books now and come back to them later. I started low key learning Dutch on Duolingo. I've been doing 3 minute lessons each day for a total of about 60 days so far. Why Dutch you ask? Because I found learning French to be extremely difficult to learn but my Grandparents were Dutch and used to speak it in my presence when I was a child so I'm hoping that my brain absorbed some it back then and that it will be easier to learn then French was. Will I ever actually use this as a skill? Probably not. But what the hell. It can't be bad to learn a language right?

Duolingo is kind of hilarious in some of the phrases it wants to teach you. Like, are these phrases that people actually say in the Netherlands? I can't understand why a person would want to learn to say "Good day Juice!" Or "Excuse me, I am an apple." Why Duolingo, why?

My dogs teeth were bugging him for a long time. Some of them were loose, and many of them were rotten, and he was getting to the point of struggling to eat his food unless I soaked it in water and turned it into a mush. We held off on getting them fixed for a year because the vet said that it was too risky to put him under given his age (he is 15 or 16 now). After 6 months to a year of watching him struggle to eat and battling off and on again delirium that was probably caused by infection, we brought him back for another check up. He was seen by a different vet that said that the teeth removal procedure would be low risk for him so we decided to go for it to give him a better quality of life. It actually pissed me off that we hadn't done it sooner, but we went by the info we had at the time. They removed like 12 of his teeth that were rotten, and they cleaned the rest and the improvement we saw in him was very drastic. His delirium cleared, he could eat normal and even his ear, which were losing their hair, completely fixed themselves. I'm convinced that we gave him a solid 2-5 years of life back by going forward with the dental work. The funny thing though is that his tongue now hangs out of his mouth because his teeth aren't there to hold it in any longer.

Him looking derpy is a small price to pay for better health, in my opinion.

We did a stained glass work shop one Sunday where we each made a stained glass fish.

The class was 6 hours or so and we got to take the fish home that same day. I made a salmon and my wife made an orca, I think.

The next photo is my wife staring at her phone and out the window on Halloween waiting for trick or treaters to knock on the door and ask for candy.

Back to books. One Saturday we toured around the city and hunted down a few used book stores. We visited three that day and found a few books to purchase. Most were books that we had already read but didn't have copies of, so when we saw them in hardcover we snatched them up. Buying used books is guilt free to me. They are cheap and they are second hand so theres no additional carbon footprint created. I don't see it as consumerism. Maybe its just how I justify it but whatever.

The Watchmen comic I'll read soon. I liked the movie but have never actually read the original comic, so that was a win.

I also found another Goosebumps books for my collection and a Fearstreet novel, which is another R.L. Stein collection meant for teenagers. I'm not done finding all of the Goosebumps books but why not start a new collection, right?

We made a charcuterie board one day.

We wouldn't normally buy Babybel or Laughing Cow cheese but they were good for the color scheme and felt nostalgic to me for some reason.

Its fall and its getting cooler, so yaaaay for turning on the fireplace. The pets love it.

My wife made garlic and cheese bread the other day. That was nice. She broke my good knife trying to cut hard parmesan cheese though, so that was very unfortunate.

We went out for dinner and had this cheese, honey and pesto appetizer with garlic bread. It was very delicious and looked pretty cool so I snapped a photo.

And that's all I did the past few weeks and months and all I have to say. Thanks for reading. Until next time, byeeeee!