James Michener - Authors List

James Michener - Authors List. I read 7 books by this bestselling writer and the first one was Tales of the South Pacific followed by Hawaii but it was The Drifters that was my favorite of his novels. Maybe it was something about the hippies traveling together. I especially liked the parts in Morocco. I had just left the Navy shortly before reading this one. I was still on board a ship when I read those first two novels about places in the Pacific. I also liked his novel about the space program. The last book of his I read was an historical novel about the Caribbean where I had spent a lot of time.

James Michener books I've read:

• Tales of the South Pacific, 1947 - Jul 1972
• Hawaii, 1959  - Aug 1973
• The Drifters, 1971 - Jul 1974
• Space, 1982 - Apr 1983
• Chesapeake, 1978 - Jul 1983
• Poland, 1983 - Feb 1984
• Caribbean, 1989 - Dec 1990

Asian Beats - Kitchen Listening

Kitchen Listening a little deeper into my album collection and into the various artists compilation section and in particular the Asian underground fusion dance club tracks although this set is mostly South Asian and Indian. These four albums formed an interesting listening experience and not our usual thing although I do have many more similar albums especially in the Rough Guide series and have used many of these tracks in mixes over the years but it's a whole other thing to listen to these albums as they were put together. Maybe some of them are next.

The various artists compilations albums today:

• Anokha: Talvin Singh Presents Soundz of the Asian Underground, 1997
• Asian Underground Vibes Vol. 1, 2012
• Eastern Sonics: Asian Underground Beats Vol. 2, 2012
• Asian Massive: A Six Degrees Compilation, 2002

Ankle Pain

Two nights ago I woke up around 1 am with some severe shooting pains in my left ankle. I was surprised and it was hard to get back to sleep. The pain was coming every couple of minutes and would flare up lasting several seconds. This seemed like it was part of my ongoing problem with my arthritic pinched nerve and hip problems but it was a new and different aspect of it. At one point a little later I laid in bed and looked up ankle pain problems on my tablet and did narrow down some of the pain issues to my current problems. This was just a new aspect of it and could probably only last a day or so. There were recommendations of icing the ankle which I did today. 

I've also focused more on my exercises and the need to strengthen my leg and hip muscles.

We were out for dinner last night at Coles and there were a few times sitting in the booth when my ankle started throbbing again but overall it wasn't too bad.

I am concerned with driving down to Philly next week to see Katie and the kids. I'm glad my leg problems have all been my left leg and not my driving right leg. If it was my right leg I would probably not want to do any long driving.

Coles w/ Val

This evening Becky and I went over to Val's house and picked her up to take her to dinner at Coles. We all had a very nice time and a wonderful dinner there as usual. We sat in a booth in the dining room rather than our usual booth in the bar area. Val had a cheese burger, Becky had a beef on weck and I had their clancy roast beef sandwich. Some of our favorites.

Going there tonight on this particular Thursday night was carefully selected once we decided to go to Coles this week. The reason was the Sabres-Canadiens hockey games this week. There was a game last night and there will be another one tomorrow night so to avoid the crazy crowds heading to this bar we decided to go tonight. It was actually a very quiet night for a Thursday which is usually busy. The server told us they were expecting a somewhat quiet night between to very busy game nights.

Well, Val had a great time and she really appreciated us contacting her and asking to go out to dinner with us. She said she had been stir-crazy lately and needed to go out. We picked her up at 5:30 and were sitting in our booth about 15 minutes later. We sat in our booth talking and enjoying our food until almost 7:30 pm. She really enjoyed looking at some of the grandkid photos on my phone particularly the recent ones of Autumn and Clara. Overall we had a great time and we will take her out to dinner again sometime in the near future.

S. M. Stirling - Authors List

S. M. Stirling - Authors List. I read 6 novels by this science fiction writer. I read them all during the summer and fall of 2016 starting with the time travel Nantucket series and then the loss of technology alternate universe Emberverse series of which I read the first 3 of the 10 books in the series. I guess that was enough.

S. M. Stirling books that I've read:

• Island in the Sea of Time, 1998 - Jun 2016
• Against the Tide of Years, 1999 - Jun 2016
• On the Oceans of Eternity, 2000 - Jul 2016
• Dies in the Fire, 2004 - Aug 2016
• The Protector's War, 2005 - Sep 2016
• A Meeting at Corvallis, 2006 - Oct 2016

Getting Vent Cleaning Estimate

Today we got an estimate from Reimer for cleaning our duct vents. We haven't had it done in probably 20 years and we really need it done bad as there is lots of dust in our vent system. So a technician from Reimer came by. I called them because we have an annual maintenance account with them and they recently added vent cleaning to their services. 

The tech Greg was very talkative and we had a nice time talking about the neighborhood since he grew up down the street and he also attended Canisius College during the time I worked there. We spent time in the basement looking at the vent system and how they would access everything. I was surprised that he didn't need to see any of the vents or returns throughout the house or ever knowing the number of them... there are 14. 

Reimer is coming by on June 15th to do the annual AC inspection and tune-up and said they could also do the vent cleaning on the same day. He showed me the estimate but later I needed to contact the company to get the written estimate which was $2,495.00 along with a $500 discount because of our membership so the total would be $2,169.56 with tax added. That seems a lot more than expected.

I went online and looked at other companies suggest vent cleaning cost for a house with 14 vents and returns and they were all significantly less... usually around $600 to $800. I will contact Stanley Steamer and get an estimate from them too. I think they were the ones who did the vent cleaning last time.

Reimer Annual Member

Andrzej Sapkowski - Authors List

Andrzej Sapkowski - Authors List. I read 7 books in this Polish author's The Witcher series starting with the Sword of Destiny in 2020. Actually I read all of these books in about a six month period. I usually don't read sword and sorcery novels but for some reason, maybe the onset of the Covid Pandemic, I dived into this fantasy series... and enjoyed the novels. There was also the first season of the TV series on Netflix at that time. I would watch that and two more seasons over the next few years but never had an urge to read any more of his books.

Andrzej Sapkowski books I've read:

• Sword of Destiny, 1992 - Mar 2020
• The Last Wish, 1993 - Apr 2020
• Blood of Elves, 1994 - May 2020
• The Time of Contempt, 1995 - Jun 2020
• Baptism of Fire, 1996 - Jul 2020
• The Tower of Swallows, 1997 - Sep 2020
• Lady of the Lake, 1999 - Oct 2020

Pendergast: The Beginning

Pendergast: The Beginning by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, 2026. This prequel origin story of Agent Pendergast was just published about three months ago and I was fortunate to be able to download an e-book copy from the library so quickly. The book was then so good that I read it in four day and just finished it. Having read so many novels in this Pendergast detective series it was fun to see how he got started with the FBI and his unique style of investigation. An incredible thriller.

I wrote about these writers in my Authors List series of post here and I had read 26 of their Preston & Child novels. This is number 27.

So Blue So Funky Soulful Grooves - Kitchen Listening

Kitchen Listening to a lot of soulful funky instrumental jazz over the past few days. Earlier in the week we played one of my favorite funky jazz compilations Blue Break Beats from Blue Note Records which I wrote about a few months ago. This time we played several albums over a couple of days. All soul jazz instrumentals and three of them featuring the Hammond organ.

It was great listening to all of this wonderful classic music.

Various Artist Compilations from my collection.

• Soulful Grooves: R&B Instrumental Classics Vol. 1, 1996
• Soulful Grooves: R&B Instrumental Classics Vol. 2, 1996
• So Blue So Funky: Heroes of the Hammond Vol. 1, 1991
• So Blue So Funky: Heroes of the Hammond Vol. 2, 1994
• Organ-Ized: An All-Star Tribute to the Hammond B3 Organ, 1999