Monday: we’re home! Now I gotta unlock a bunch of posts

We checked out of Tram Haus at Jay Peak a little late. A. had some leftovers from La Buche and R. had some, too. I had peanut butter toast.

We stopped in Plymouth, NH at Edge of Town Tavern. It was good. I had a salad with avocado and some of A.’s chicken tenders and some of R.’s fish and chips.

For dinner, I had the leftover burger from Le Vintage 5080 — it was really good, even reheated (airfryer for the bun, meat in the microwave). I bet it was amazing fresh. You probably won’t ever be in Sherbrooke, QC, but if you are, stop into Le Vintage 5080 for any meal of the day. Those are some very nice people, and the food is great. I also had leftover potatoes from my avocado toast at Delice Resto Lounge in Levis, QC.

We got unpacked and started laundry. I noticed wet rugs in front of the master bathroom sinks. R.’s sink leaked. Plumber is coming tomorrow and R. has mostly stabilized it (the shutoff valve is no good either. *sigh*).

T. and I got tickets to see Twenty One Pilots next month and he has set up a ticketmaster account so I could transfer one ticket to his account. Worked easily the first time, so, yay!

I read some things on vacation

Yes, I have turned into the kind of person who reads on vacation. Or, turned back into the kind of person who reads on vacation. I listened to Ben Carpenter’s “Everything Fat Loss”, and I definitely zoned out on occasion, not because of the material or his reading voice, but because I was in a moving vehicle for hours at a time. This is, by far, the most comprehensive and best organized deep dive on research into various strategies for changing body composition with or without overall weight loss as the goal. Really, the only big thing that he didn’t cover was fat depots, and how various strategies interact with fat depot / order of storage / removal.

He’s a very gentle and kind person, which is generally good, but especially important in this general topic area. If you are interested in a nerdy / science-y take on this topic, I highly recommend. If you think that everything in this area is trigger-y, probably just go read something by Aubrey Gordon instead. Or, better yet, get an audiobook because she’s an even better audio narrator than Carpenter (Carpenter is fine! But Gordon is amazing).

I am super looking forward to Gordon’s next book (you can pre-order the hardcover or audiobook, altho not the kindle version. Yet). And I am _also_ super looking forward to Carpenter’s next book. (Which you can pre-order the kindle, the paperback and/or the audiobook).

On kindleunlimited, I read Casey Blair’s Sorceress Transcendant, which is a romp. And I read The Sundered Realms, which is less of a romp, but was very enjoyable. They are both fantasy novels with significant, slow burn romances. In Sorceress, the two characters are structurally enemies, but retired, and share the goal of ending the war they were on opposite sides in. It is goofily delicious, especially the golem army. The Sundered Realms is a much more complicated story of two very driven, successful people who are haunted by their failures, trying to figure out how to work together to solve some extremely difficult problems both of a technical nature and a political nature. Lots of nerdy (fictional) language stuff, fun if you love thinking about systems.

I also read Storm Furies, by Wen Spencer. FWIW, things seem relatively wrapped up at the end of it. That’s not to say that there couldn’t be more stories in the future, but a lot of the big problems get fixed, and we develop a much better understanding of the war between Tooloo and her daughter. The babies still aren’t born. And there are absolutely some bad guys still rattling around. I would not start in the middle of the series with this book, for sure.

This confirms that you should not try to read this book first AND that there are more Elfhome stories.

https://paulsemel.com/exclusive-interview-storm-furies-author-wen-spencer/