Cleaning

I have finally broken down and hired a cleaning team, Two Maids and a Mop.  They're out trying to bring order to my house.  I'm growing stronger all the time, but I can't keep up with our house, it's just too big.  So I found someone to do it for me.  I'm holed up in the computer room and they're working away.  Told them to ignore the upstairs, we don't use it and it can just wait.  Can't wait to see how the house turns out.

Update:  They cleaned for 3 hours and the place looks and smells wonderful.

Dilemma

As I've said before I read a lot and I keep track of my reading on Goodreads.  I don't read a lot of great literature, I read just to entertain myself.  I read nearly every genre except for Chick Lit and the only time I read that it's an accident or the author is so good I overlook love story.
Most of my reviews are 3 stars meaning it was good, but not great.  There are a sprinkling of 4 stars and very few 5 stars ratings.  You have to really impress me to get 5 stars.
So far this year I've read 147 books and given 3 books a 5 star rating.  The latest one to get that is Beartown by Fredrik  Backman and if I could have I'd have given it 6 stars----I loved it.  I've read nearly all of this author's books starting with A Man Called Ove.  I've enjoyed them all, but this one is the best of all.
I liked the writing, liked the characters, even those I hated. It was about hockey and I don't even like hockey.   What a great book.
So what's my dilemma?  Well I discovered that there's a sequel to the book, I ordered it and it will be here Monday.  But I'm not sure I want to read it.  I like how Beartown ended and even though I wanted more I liked imaging what might have happened next, I'm not sure I want to know for sure what happens.
I'm not good with sequels of books I really like.  I loved Me Before You and absolutely hated its sequel, wouldn't consider reading the 3rd book.
So my dilemma is, should I read the sequel?

The Day After

Halloween last night, we got 3 Trick or Treaters, even less than last year.  My favorite was Jay from State Farm dressed in his khakis and red shirt.
Guess we've got a lot Snickers and Hershey bars to eat, how sad.
Worked in the garden today, second time.  It's really a mess and it's going to take forever to get it into shape.  We've been watching Monty Don on a Gardener's World (courtesy of Brit Box) and there are NO, NONE, NARY A ONE, weeds in his garden,
We're having Shepard's Pie today, I ordered the spice packet from Amazon.
Reading Bear Town by Fredrik Backman.  A story about hockey and what it does to the town of Bear Town and the people in it.  It's so good.

Halloween

It's Halloween and though we won't get many Trick or Treaters I always enjoy it.

Our front yard

Two pictures our daughter Tweeted us, they're from the Godzilla shop in Tokyo.

My Table

Yes, my kitchen table where no one ever eats, but I love to decorate it seasonally.  Mac got me more glass pumpkins and a kitty-cat sitting on a real pumpkin and he lights up.  We'll put him out on the porch for Halloween.
Got some Chrysanthemums for the front steps and some pansies we haven't potted yet.
I started a new cross-stitch, but I'm afraid I pulled something in my hand and when I use it much it hurts across the palm, so it's going to be slow going.
Finished the mew J.A. Jance Joanna Brady book, Field of Bones,  I have to say it was just ok.  Hope the next one is better.
Didn't like Robert Galbraith/ J.K. Rowlings latest, Lethal White, as much as the earlier books.  Didn't dislike it, just didn't like it as much.
I've started 4 books, but after a chapter or two I deleted them.  Can't even remember their names.  Now I'm doing a reread Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie and rereading a bunch of Georgette Heyers----love her books and some of them I've read many times.
Supposed to rain tomorrow and we need it, we'll see.

Something New

Just a quickie today.  I got a new wig recently, the other one had gotten too itchy.  My hair has started growing again and of course that's itchy too.

A Bit of This and That

I'm not much for buying souvenirs when we travel,  but when I saw this little guy at the Nagoya train station I had to have him.

It was a mixture of his serenity and his celadon coloring.

You should know that my hero Godzilla has finally had a constellation named after him.  Well deserved honor.  

My daughter  included in her birthday presents to me some new Godzillas.

I did some painting yesterday, still not happy with the results, but one of them is coming along.

That's about it from here, sadly it's time to clean bathrooms.

Yeah!!!!

Good CAT scan report, tumor still shrinking, my Doctor is pleased.  Next scan in January.
In other news, big, beautiful Buddhist shrine in Kyoto.

In Nara we visited the park that was full of sacred deer.

  

There were almost as many deer as tourists.  Our daughter got interviewed by some school kids who were practicing their English.

Kyoto

Kyoto was wonderful.  We were staying for 5 days so we rented an apartment and it felt great to have room to spread out.
We saw loads of shrines both Buddhist and Shinto--so different and so amazing.  I think we all agreed that we preferred the Shinto.  I'll talk more about that in a later post.
Now I want to talk about food.  I'm such a fussy eater that finding a place for me to eat wasn't always easy, but our daughter, armed with Google, did a great job.  I'd told her how much we enjoyed Benihanas in Atlanta and she did her best to find something similar.  What she found was a place where you cook your own food on a hibachi grill  and she was the chef.
We ordered chicken, corn, shrimp and scallops.  All of it was great, to say nothing of the fresh avocados we started with.  Dinner was so good that we went back 2 nights later and did it again.

Japan

We got home from Japan Monday morning and it's taken till now for me to have the energy to post.  There were 2 typhoons while we were there, the first delayed us from getting to Miyajima the island we were going to.  They suspended trains and ferries and we had to stay on the mainland.  Luckily our daughter, with her great Google skills found us a hotel overlooking the water so we had shelter from the storm.
The new day we went to Miyajima and it was a beautiful place.  We explored the "floating" Shinto Shrine and did some drawing.  We stayed at a Roykan, a traditional Japanese hotel, with dinner served on a low table and futons to sleep on.  It was wonderful.  After dinner our daughter and I went down to the communal baths, one for women and one for men.  It felt heavenly.
This has got to be one of my favorited places in Japan.
The next day we headed to Kyoto.

On the ferry

The view from our room

Our room

The floating Torii

The Shinto Shrine with the tide in.

Setting up our dinner

bedtime

Japan

We're in Japan.  The typhoon made us a day late to our Sunday destination, Miyajama, but we got here this morning and it's beautiful.  We're staying in a Ryokon, a Japanese style room.  Thank God there are some chairs or I'd be crawling around on the floor.  Next stop is Kyoto.