Debbie's Spurts

I badly needed new roof.  Lots of rain delays in the attempted scheduling.  A surprising number of folk who didn't even come out to estimate (I think all the rain had everyone swamped -- pun intended).  With nearly triple-digit heat index (Fahrenheit), I don't blame this crew for wanting to show up almost before sunrise (plus the furbabies insistently have us up for breakfast before then) -- but, I got surprised because two hours earlier than the very recent phone call told me.  

It's been nonstop hammering.

Which will be either good for trying out my just arrived Oasis as a distraction or bad for it if it gives me a headache.  Probably any headache won't be as bad as the ones I got listening to bidders patronize the little lady (in my home, granted, my husband is handyman but in my entire family I'm the handiest and I have certified skills in some construction work--neither of us are healthy enough now to be up on ladders but decades ago could have done the work ourselves).

The Oasis I got because hopefully will have some pool/beach time with money I should be getting from some work projects.  Waterproof sounded good as did audio added back.   Not a big audiobook reader but I liked having audio on kindles pre-Paperwhite for the occasional audiobook, text to speech, and my MP3 music files.   It's lighter weight and I do see some display improvements (more font and size options including, thankfully, an option to do a larger text for menus).  Sleek/slicker feeling than my other kindles which I think is just a difference rather than good or bad.  Don't care for the sharper edges.  Seems lighter weight.  Responsive.  And almost got sent back until I found out how to change the home screen in settings back to my library of books with text list of current reads first (came with a screen more than two thirds taken up by Amazon recommended for me bookcovers and a text list of books on my wishlist with a rlarger bookcover of my most recent download/purchase and a menu choice to go to my library).  I loathe having bookcovers showing on kindle home screen; mostly because fewer books show and the title says/authors not always clear in the greyscale thumbnails.  Partly because despite not reading a lot of "embarrassing" books it's usually employers, clients or strangers when traveling that would see that screen and I don't want the conversation or the judgment (so not into any genre bashing ).

With the roofing, in addition to rain delays, there were some initial in-laws-want-me-to-hire-courtesy/obligation-interviews with odd quotes -- or lack of quotes, one of their guys never would quote me about the roof but was oddly determined to give me newer, enlarged back door and to do a total kitchen remake to show his drywall plus cabinet/carpentry skills, another in-law was basically wanting to borrow all our tools for all his upcoming projects, have us buy his license, pay for his insurance, buy him a trailer for hauling off debris, take more than a month while prepaying him $1K per week to oversee the crew we would hire and the materials we would buy and have delivered ...basically we would be buying him a business without actually getting the contractual benefits venture capitalists or investors get plus he would be doing zero work other than overseeing those actually working and we would be packing up and driving the debris to the dump ourselves in the trailer we bought for him ...).  We do home maintenance one of three ways:  ourselves if possible, companies we've used before or worked with, or very well papered, licensed, certified, trade and better business organization members with good reputations type of strangers.

I think the carpentry new-boyfriend-of-inlaw focused guy just wanted to do a project for us to get us on his recommendations because our local involvements in some construction stuff make a rec from one of us a careerbuilder.  But he really gave me a headache talking endlessly about fixing one patch of ceiling dry wall and continually explaining the process to me.  I gave up telling him that as  soon as roof leak was fixed Imwould patch it myself because he just never heard and started everything with how I didn't wouldn't know something and how great he was at ..l

The $1K a week to over see a project for over a month guy -- sheesh.  Kept being late and rescheduled a lot just to quote.  Roofing on our average home with plain roof with a good crew after supplies in place won't take a whole 8 hours.  And cost a quarter of what he'd already mentioned before even getting to to total quote which he never gave us...

So far, I like the roofers we got.  I have deeply offended a lot of relatives by using this company and keep getting dire warning phone calls about how I'm being taken advantage of because their guys would have been cheaper and should hire family first ( and apparently also boyfriends of family even if unemployed boyfriend only met a few weeks ago and clearly has never been up on a roof in his life and has zero references ...).

The world building is getting really good.  Along the lines of just who is the alien with a good sense of several cultures.

So far, the characters are somewhat mysterious with backgrounds steadily being filled in.  M.C., Eric, has been so busy escaping captors while rescuing a new captive that I cannot yet tell if I like him.  An intriguing back story so far.

Sort of new to me author.  I have read some bits and pieces and samples from her.  Always planned to read.

Yay!  I got my email for this one without signing up still yet again.  Maybe (I say maybe because it looked more like the usual newsletter which had a blurb about free ebook than the ebook notice I used to get).

Boo!  Says was made available June 12 and can only download through June 15.  But, I just got the email.

At any rate, hurry up to download  from https://ebookclub.tor.com/ .  To see publisher's details on book - https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765376466 

This was a random Kindle Unlimited borrow that I abandoned before giving it a decent chance.  No egregious editing issues or anything.  Possibly of more appeal to  middle grade readers (main character is 13).  Character age not the issue for me.   I did have an issue with how curiously detached the writing/story seemed.  The sentence structuring was also wearing on my nerves where I doubt this writer's style would appeal to me.

Current bookcover is misleading with such an adult looking female:

"If your answer to every question is 42. If you can quote the three laws of Robotics. If you want to say “my precious” every time you see a gold band. Then this list is for you. We asked our 3,000 bibliomaniacs what their favorite SciFi/Fantasy novels were, and here are their top 100 answers...."

Just signed up.  Signups at https://24in48.com 

"I probably should have been doing that from the beginning, but you may have noticed that for a terrifying murderbot I fuck up a lot."

Ah hah!  The title is explained:

"She explained, “In the creche, our moms always said that fear was an artificial condition. It’s imposed from the outside. So it’s possible to fight it. You should do the things"

I really don't want this book to end.

"Being asked to stay, with a please and an option for refusal, hit me almost as hard as a human asking for my opinion and actually listening to me."

"This place was creepy. I reminded myself that the terrible thing that had most likely happened here was me."

"I didn’t react visibly, because I’m used to clients making bad decisions, and I was getting a lot of practice at controlling my expression."

"...in the mining contracts I had had, the techs were usually in offices off the pit site or adjacent to it, and we didn’t see them unless they got intoxicated and tried to kill each other, which admittedly was rare."

Duh .. well, the first one kinda scared me.