Hello from the Big Easy.  Laissez le bons temps rouler!  I’m here on business all week – so for those of you who are enjoying a holiday Monday off work right now, I salute you and hope you have a wonderful day, but I’m working and what’s more, I was working yesterday, too.  I’m at a week-long trial advocacy training conference that I know is going to be a wonderful and valuable experience, and I get to explore New Orleans a little bit in my very limited free time, so that’s going to be fun.  I got in yesterday morning at 8:30 a.m. local time – yes, that meant a 6:30 a.m. flight out of D.C.  #yawn.  So far the highlight has definitely been flying in over the bayou.  Wish I could get out and explore it, but that’s definitely not going to happen!  So – anyway – it wasn’t much of a weekend.  On Friday night Steve and I were able to escape for a date night, which was fun, but we mostly discussed our ongoing frustrations with our kids’ school situation, which was not fun.  Saturday was just a bumming around the house kind of day.  Steve spent most of the day hauling things out of the basement.  Long story, but our landlords’ aged and decrepit washing machine overflowed and flooded the basement.  Steve thought: no probs, we’ll just use our own washer that we’ve moved from house to house.  Well!  It didn’t survive the last move, and is even deader than the ancient model that came with our rental.  So, not great, but just the kick in the pants we needed to really apply ourselves to cleaning the basement.  While Steve worked on his portion of the job (hauling, moving, etc.) I spent the day breaking up bickering matches between the kids, who seemed determined to make it reeeeeeeally easy for me to leave on a business trip the next day.  And then – leave I did, at zero dark thirty, and have been holed up in a hotel near the New Orleans convention center in lectures and mock trials ever since.

Reading.  Most of the week was devoted to Madensky Square, which is on its final library renewal.  Deadline ahoy!  It’s proving much better than Magic Flutes, but a slower go.  But rather than hauling a library hardcover along with all of the conference materials (two BIG binders) I had to bring on the plane, I decided to leave it home, and as a result, I wasn’t really all that motivated to churn through it over the week.  So little motivated, in fact, that on Saturday I wandered off and read Wonder Woman, Vol. I: The Just War, by G. Willow Wilson (!!!) instead.  I’ve been looking forward to Wilson’s take on Wonder Woman for ages now, and she didn’t disappoint.  But never fear, friends.  The kindle came with me to the conference, so I’m not short of reading material.  Over the course of my plane ride and dinner on Sunday, I read through Whose Body? – trying to catch up on the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries I’ve not yet read, and this was one of them.  It was good, but not as good as any Wimsey novel featuring Harriet Vane.  Finally – I’m all over the place – after taking leave of Lord Peter, I started The Siren Years, a Canadian diplomat’s wartime diary detailing his posting in London in the late 1930s.  Right up my street.

Watching.  The usual: one or maybe two episodes of The Great British Baking Show.  Also!  Very exciting news, you guys!  A new season of PJ Masks dropped on Netflix!  Okay, maybe not all that exciting for you, and – if I’m being honest – not all that exciting for me either, but certain people with whom I live (when I’m not swanning off to legal conferences) are very stoked about this.

Listening.  The Shedunnit obsession continues apace.  I think I’ve listened to about half of the available episodes so far and I cannot! get! enough!  I’m not even sure I can pick a highlight.  The show is such a great mix of history, literary criticism, and true crime.  I love the way the host, Caroline Crampton, tracks the golden age crime writers’ inspirations by profiling notorious real cases of the day, then loops in a discussion of the books in which the actual crimes and trials are mentioned.  It’s such fun, and I am loving every second.

Making.  Nothing, really, at all.  It was a busy week at work, getting ready for my conference, and made more complicated by home excitement (washing machine roulette!) so I didn’t really have time to do anything creative at all.  Plus, why bother to bake bread or make homemade soup when you’re going to be away all week and the other three people in your household never eat what you make?

Blogging.  I have some resolutions and a general theme for the year on Wednesday, and Part II of my annual reading retrospective on Friday.  Check in with me then!

Loving.  Since I suppose it would be cheating to say I am loving Shedunnit for a second time in a row, I have to pick something else.  Think, think, think, as Winnie-the-Pooh would say.  You know what I’m really enjoying right now?  Reading my own books.  I know, you just fell over.  Don’t all get up off the floor at once.  I have been trying for more balance in my reading over the past couple of months, so this isn’t exactly new.  But it’s definitely picking up steam.  I love supporting the library and will never stop borrowing books – don’t worry.  We’re not going too crazy here.  But I have a collection of books I’ve curated to exactly my tastes and I’ve started making a real effort to actually enjoy them.  There’s no reason for them to sit unread on my shelves.  In all of January so far, I’ve only read one-and-a-half library books; all the rest have been from either my physical bookshelves or my kindle.  And I am having so much fun; it turns out, I bought these books for a reason!  Look at me go!

Asking.  What are you reading this week?