Before the books--a week ago today, on July 24, Josie and her friend Olivia were coming home from a movie (Superman) and barely made it to our driveway because one of Olivia's tires had hit something and the last few blocks home, they were rapidly losing air. So fortunate that it happened when it did.
Olivia's car did not come with a jack or a spare, but we have both, so we figured, we've got this. (And by we, I mean, I will loan the stuff from my car, and they would do the work!)
Josie totally figured out the jack, and got the car jacked up, but then I texted Clark across the street asking if he wanted to help rescue some damsels in distress, and he came right over. And that is when we discovered that my spare only had four lug nuts and Olivia's car required a spare with five lug nuts. Call me naive, but I thought that a spare was a spare.
So I went to wake Bruce (who due to recent and future arm operations should not be doing the kind of work a tire change requires) to see if we could use the spare from the van instead. That is when Josie got smart and counted lug nuts--before we went to the work of extracting the spare for the van, because that is not easy. The van uses six lug nuts. So many kinds of spares!
Clark got the idea to see if the Christensens had a five lug nut spare, and they did!! He brought it back, used his handy dandy tools to get the tire on there--and it was kind of flat. So Bruce started up our air compressor, and he and Clark pumped the tire, and (an hour later) sent Olivia on her way. Her apartment is not far away, and so she did not have far to go.
It was fun how the neighbors came together to help! Many hands make easier work! (It was still not "light" work!)
Books read: It was a light reading month, but not as light as I thought it might be, because I actually read three books on my trip. I got three paperbacks from the Sampler Collection in the library. One in the plane and in airports on the way, one that night I couldn't sleep for worry in Salzburg, and one in the plane and in airports on the way home, although I did not quite finish--I had a chapter or two left to finish at home.
1. I don't usually read paperbacks, so I was not sure I would like any, but the first one I chose of the three was Aunt Dimity Detetive (2001) by Nancy Atherton. Lori teams up with Nick Fox to solve a hometown murder--but is it a murder? Kind of cute story.
2. Family Ties (2005) by Bonnie K. Winn was a formula romance, so obviously a super quick read, a good choice for middle of the night reading to distract myself from worrying. There were cute triplet children in it, too, for added fun.
3. The trouble with magic (2006) by Madelyn Alt. Maggie's new job puts her in close contact with a murder, which her boss Felicity is charged with. Not belieiving in her guilt, Maggie sets out to find out what really happened. (Felicity is a white magic kind of woman.)
4. Before I left on my trip, I had put an ILL request in for a book about Kay Swift--you remember I read her book last month? Our library had a biography about Kay Swift, but I was interested in learning more, and the biography we did not have is by her granddaughter and namesake, Katharine Swift Weber: The memory of all that: George Gershwin, Kay Swift, and my family's legacy of infidelities (2011) It was so good! (Says this memoir-loving reader.) The book came in while I was gone, so I was happy to pick it up and dive in. There are family trees, and stories from both sides, the Warburgs (Kay's first husband), the Swifts, and also Katharine's father's side.
5. Maizy Chen's Last Chance (2022) by Lisa Yee. In this case, Last Chance is the fictional name of a town in Minnesota, where Maizy's grandparents are the only Chinese-Americans. Maizy, from California, doesn't super want to spend the entire summer there--but she learns to appreciate it, and to love her grandparents. The book explores issues of racism and also the "paper sons" who came from China to work in the railroad. I really liked this well-told story.
6. Guests of the Sheik: an ethnography of an Iraqi village (1965) by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea is an old book that is enjoying a resurgence in popularity. It is our book club book for August, and they are using a library set. I was the one who pointed out that this is an OLD book about Iraq, and not a look at today's Iraq. Which my book ladies thought it would be. However, it was super good, in my opinion. Also, the food I ate at the Persian restaurant? The walnut/pomegranate/chicken dish? That gets prepared in this book! I was like "I have eaten that!"
The last three were my favorite books this month. Which only stands to reason, because the others were rapidly chosen paperbacks, chosen for their handy size for airplane reading!
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