I Blinked

and now we're in July

You know those small towns you drive through? The saying is, “You blink and you miss it.”

Some months are like that.

June was like that. A lot happened, but it went by so quickly it feels like little more than a blink.

It’s odd because you would think these long summer days, when the sun doesn’t set until about 8:30 might feel … well, longer.

But it’s already July and I’m looking around and behind me, wondering where the scattering of days has gone.

Last month, I posted a kind of summary, What May Held … so here’s another summary of sorts.

Goodreads, Space, and Aliens

Do you have a Goodreads account?

For several years, I kept close track of my books on Goodreads. I enjoyed it because I could join their annual reading challenge, where you decide at the start of the year how many books you want to read and then keep track of your progress throughout the year.

(PSA: If you want to feel good about yourself and your New Year’s resolutions, participate in at least one challenge of something you enjoy doing. That way, when diet and exercise resolutions fall by the wayside in mid-Jan, you’re still going strong in something like reading or bird-watching or getting enough hours of sleep.)

Anyway, Goodreads changed its log-in format and I removed the Goodreads app from my phone.

The result?

I couldn’t access the platform for about a year. Finally, I managed to recover an old email address and change my Goodreads password.

I put 48 books on my reading challenge this year … but halfway through 2024, I’m 17 books behind.

(Time to read some short books!)

I’m currently reading a new book of poetry by a Facebook friend who calls himself the Mad Space Poet and who writes mad space poetry. He also does very cool typewriter poetry.

Here’s his book and one of his typewriter poems:

I also picked up a book from an estate sale, kind of as a joke, to show my boys. The title is The Day after Roswell.

If you’re not familiar with Roswell, it’s a town in New Mexico where, the story goes, an alien spacecraft crashed in July of 1947.

So, I opened the book one day while I was trying to trim some books from my library … and I got totally absorbed.