Been There, Done That, Got That T-Shirt–Again!

Everyday Adventures

Last year, shortly after we closed on the Dollhouse, we signed up for and participated in the Rose City 5K Walk. I thought it’d be fun (it was) and I figured it would be a good way to see more of our new neighborhood (the walk starts and ends about 3 blocks from our door), not to mention it sounded like something to do to get us moving that wouldn’t be boring or pointless (okay, debatable about the pointless part as we’re walking in a circle, but anyway).

IMG_20150418_081543085_HDR

My only goal, really, was that we not be the last people to cross the finish line.

We weren’t (though we were close). Our final time was 1:06:07, I believe.

Oh, sure, we though for sure we’d do some sort of training before next (i.e. this) year. But we didn’t. We joked that climbing up and down the stairs each day surely counts for something (maybe?) and we do occasionally walk the 10 blocks or so to get downtown for shopping or dinner or a festival, so it’s not like we’re complete sloths. But train we did not.

IMG_20150418_084114599

And somehow I managed to block all but the first hill from my memory of last year’s walk, assuring our friends that decided to join us for this year’s walk that there was only the one, at the beginning, and it wasn’t too bad.

Yeah…

At least this year it didn’t rain!

The obligatory before and after shots--Notice a tiny bit less exuberance in the 'after'..

The obligatory before and after shots–Notice a tiny bit less exuberance in the ‘after’..

On the up side: we made it through, once again, and beat last year’s time (our goal) and even made it in under an hour (bonus!). I huffed and puffed my way across the finish line at 59:48 and was just so very glad to be done (and, again, not the last people to cross, and by a better margin this year). We turned in our finish tickets, got the aforementioned t-shirts (and leather coasters, that was a nice surprise–last year the extra bit was a hat) and grabbed popsicles from the BlueBell truck before heading back home.

That’s where the down side comes in. At some point while we were standing there, enjoying the very cold and tasty lemonade popsicles, my right foot staged a major protest. And since we’d walked to the race, I had to limp my way home. *queue sad trombone*

They say there were 800 sign-ups, I'm thinking not all of them showed up!

They say there were 800 sign-ups, I’m thinking not all of them showed up because there were not 300 people after us, maybe more like 30!

I ended up spending the rest of the day like Tiny Tim on my one crutch so I didn’t have to put any weight on the ball of my foot where a large and angry blood blister had decided to form, and icing both the affected area and my ankle which was feeling a bit ill-used from walking funny for the first little while trying to accommodate the owie.

No good deed goes unpunished, right?

Thankfully, the worst of the pain and swelling went down by the end of the weekend and the crutch went back in the closet. Unfortunately my plans to wear heels to various meetings on Monday most certainly did not pan out, and walking in flats is all I can stand until this fully heals. But at least I wasn’t limping and didn’t have to explain to various people I was trying to impress with my business acumen (oh, yeah, the business plan is done, now–more on that in another post) how I’d managed to maim myself doing something so simple as walking!

 

Happy House-iversary to Us!

The Gingerbread Diaries

I’m so glad I finally told the roof tale last week and got it out of the way before today, the anniversary of our buying the Gingerbread Dollhouse.

Flashback to a year ago to-date.

Flashback to a year ago to-date.(And no worries, we changed the locks shortly after this picture was taken.)

We had some ups and a number of downs this year, but overall we’re still very happy to be homeowners, especially of the Dollhouse.

For the paper anniversary I’m afraid we haven’t done anything special for our pink lady–unless you count throwing dollars at her! As I mentioned, before, we were waiting until our taxes were tallied for 2014, just in case we owed anything (we did, but it wasn’t as bad as we were afraid–a busy convention season helped offset some of it), before starting any major renovations. Taxes were submitted on Sunday so we’re more or less clear to plan, right?

Except for a little analysis paralysis, that is: too many choices, too many places we could start.

But let’s go back to paper for a minute, shall we? Namely: wall paper.

Our rose-filtered entryway.

Our rose-filtered entryway.

We get a lot of compliments on the pretty rose wallpaper in the front hall and stairwell, but it’s just not in great shape. I thought I had my mind made up that we wouldn’t paper any of the walls, but I’m so used to seeing this pattern I’m afraid the entry would look terribly boring if we just chose a color scheme and painted.

If I’ve learned one thing from all the Victorian home magazines I read while we not-so-patiently waited (3 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days) to close, it’s that Bradbury & Bradbury is THE place to go for period-perfect wall papers. They are beautifully silk-screened art wallpapers made in California and the weight of the samples I received is amazing: not too flimsy, but not as heavy as some wallpaper samples I’ve crafted with in the past.

It so happens that Bradbury & Bradbury is also the wallpaper of choice for a very popular “landmark” of a slightly more modern era…

Image via Disney.Go

Image via Disney.Go

Yup, the Haunted Mansion.  In fact, they use patterns from the Victorian-Era Dresser II (named for designers Christopher Dresser, 1834-1904) in the Ashes of Roses colorway.

Screenshot from Bradbury.com

Screenshot from Bradbury.com

I ordered samples of both the Ashes of Roses colorway as well as the Terra Cotta/Burgundy colorway as well.

Screenshot via Bradbury.com

Screenshot via Bradbury.com

The “Lily” pattern is a touch too busy for my taste, but the Roland could definitely work, at least going up the stairs at about chair rail-height, topped with the Pinstripe Border. Above that, we might stick to just paint or use one of the more subtle patterns (not grabbed in the above screenshot), the Plaza Ceiling with its metallic pattern.

Now, it goes without saying that these are beautiful patterns in their own right, but the fact that they have a tie to one of our favorite places without being obnoxiously obvious is the kind of fun trivia that makes the decision more compelling.

I don’t know when we’ll bite the bullet and repaper the stairwell, but I’m almost certain it’ll be with this paper. Of course, there’s the not-so-small matter of needing to replace the front door (and the back door, and while we’re at it maybe the kitchen door, too) and frame, which means finding one I like that doesn’t look too modern for the house and in a material that Todd’s comfortable with that (of course) won’t break the bank.

Here’s to many long years ahead of us in the Dollhouse!

We've come a long way, baby!

We’ve come a long way, baby! From this before

To the after (so far)!

To the after (so far)!

What’s in a Name: Filing an LLC in Georgia

Creative Business

Instead of lying and telling you that the business plan is done (though it’s really close, the light at the end of the planning tunnel is really super big!), I have a little story to tell you about how not to register your LLC in Georgia. (And, possibly, other states, but I can only swear to Georgia).

TCBlogotypes-03

At the beginning of the year I wanted to go ahead and nail down a name for the business. I generally start with names or themes for projects, so why would the store be any different? After all, it’s just a really really big project, right?

After brainstorming (name-storming?) a couple dozen possibilities, the next step was to vet them for .com and social media availability (in my case I checked twitter, pinterest, instagram, etsy, and Facebook). It’s tedious as hell, but a necessary step in this digital day and age. I mean, you don’t want to get your heart set on The Name only to find some idiot is using it on twitter already. Sure, you could add a ‘the’ at the beginning or a ‘shop’ or ‘store’ to the end, but what are the odds your customers are going to find them before you? Exactly. It’s just not worth it.

Then, because it never hurts to test your favorites, I polled a few private Facebook groups I’m in as to their favorites, then I ended up picking one that wasn’t even in the top 3.

Because sometimes you just have to go with your gut.

Part of that was that I had put Scraps of Life in the hat, and it won by a landslide, but I realized that if the time came to sell the business, I’d be selling my online identity for the last decade or more. Since I wasn’t comfortable with that possibility, whether it was 5 years or 20 away, it and any other names I was personally attached to went out the window.

So, now to the good stuff: filing with the state.

Thankfully Georgia has a pretty simple online system to register your company with the Secretary of State. You’ll need to create a cGov360 account, then you can handle pretty much anything you need from this one login. One thing that came highly recommended was to reserve the desired business name before filing your official registration. It’s an additional $25 fee, but the name reservations will come back a yay or nay fairly quickly and, if you do it online, refiling in case of a problem is really simple.

Ask me how I know?

I was pretty sure that The Crafty Branch wasn’t going to have any obvious conflicts in Georgia, so imagine my surprise when my initial name reservation failed!

Turns out, just because you tell the state you’re registering an LLC (or a Corporation, I’d imagine), you are still required to include “LLC”, “L.L.C.” or “Limited Liability Company” as part of the name (or “INC”, “Inc.” or Incorporated, respectively).

So this is how I know just how simple it is to log back into your cGov360 account, make the necessary change, and click on refile.

Not surprisingly, the name went through just fine the second time.

Now, the name reservation is good for 30 days, so sometime within that window you go back to your cGov360 account and complete your Articles of Organization online and pay the $100 registration fee. The Articles of Organization, online at least, involve typing in your name and business addres 3 or 4 times and digitally signing it. It really is that simple. The down side to registering early, is that I didn’t have a business address yet, so I was using my home address (also could be referred to as a records address). That’s not a problem until I get an actual business location and need to update the records with the state: that privilege costs the same amount as the annual filing fee, $50. But you want to be sure of the name and registration before you go shopping your business around the investors, so you do what you have to do!

Again, with such a simple process, how could I screw it up?

Apparently easily.

The failure notice, this time, said that I entered a title (when I digitally “signed” the application) that was not appropriate for an LLC registration. The only appropriate titles for the signer of the LLC application are Member/Manager, Organizer, or Attorney-In-Fact. The first screw-up I take full blame for as it totally didn’t occur to me to include LLC in the registered name, but I’m going to have to insist the State of Georgia take partial blame for the second error. You see, I listed myself as the Owner (which is technically correct) but it’s not like I typed it in–I selected it from their drop-down menu of about a dozen options.

So, listen up programmers, how about another If>Then statement to narrow the drop-down options for the type of registration being filed, mmmkay?

Anyway, another login, update, and refile (thankfully these refiles don’t require re-paying the fees) and another week of waiting and I finally had full and clear license to The Crafty Branch, LLC; at least as far as the state of Georgia is concerned.

And while you’re in a filing mood, you’ll probably want to register the name with the IRS to get an FEID number (instead of using your social at this point) as well as set yourself up with the Georgia Department of Revenue for sales tax (and any other taxes you may need to file, like employment taxes and unemployment insurance if you’ll have employees in the near future).

And a disclaimer, just to cover my butt in case something of the above is wrong or becomes wrong by the time some stranger reads this and takes it as gospel: I am not a lawyer and I am giving absolutely zero business or legal advice, because that would probably be illegal. This is just my experience to date, as of it’s original posting. You should always verify the current regulations and fees in the state you are looking to organize in for the most up to date information, and seek actual legal counsel if your organization is in any way, shape, or form more complex than a single-member LLC. And even probably then.

The Saga of the Roof

The Gingerbread Diaries

Alrighty then, let’s tell this tale!

But first I want to point out that, despite everything you’re about to read, I do not regret making the choices we did (i.e., our contractor) because, ultimately, those decisions allowed us to own the Gingerbread Dollhouse. At the time the decision had to be made we were working with limited options, the thinning patience of the sellers, and a narrow window of what the bank would agree to. We made it work because we had to. And we will still make it work.

We clear? Okay. Remember (or be aware, for those new to the Dollhouse stories), we closed April 14, 2014, we had to wait until early May on a revised contractor license (individual vs company name on the license) before the permits could be pulled, and the roof was the first thing done on the house. We moved in the last weekend of June, just prior to the hottest July on record.

So, how on earth did it get to the point where I was sending this email in November?

Nov 24, 2014

To: L***, S*****

Unfortunately this weekend’s rain proved, once again, too much for whatever part of our roof is allowing water into the house. The leak was, thankfully, not severe, but even one drop in my hallway is one drop too many, and there was more than that yesterday afternoon/evening.

To reiterate, as of the completion of the contracted renovations in July (the roof having been installed in May), I have had to call L*** to report leaks on the following occasions:

July 12
August 6
August 30
September 3
October 14 (contacted S***** first)
November 24

6 leaks in 6 months is ridiculous. I think another pair of eyes (S*****) needs to assess this issue so that an actual solution can be found, not a temporary patch. A roof is expected to last decades, not mere months, and I am rapidly losing patience with this situation.

It started 2 weeks after we moved in when a bit of a storm rolled through. I was shocked to find water inside instead of out!

July12Texts

Please forgive the typos…

And, to his credit, he came out on a Sunday afternoon with his son and his ladder and they climbed up there are pronounced the problem to be some caulk that had shrunk as it cured and left some gaps. No problem to fix, they said.

It was on this visit that I asked about the warranty (I have yet to receive anything in writing on either his labor warranty or the shingles).

The next time it rained I kept nervously checking the hallway and downstairs bathroom, the two places prone to let the water in, and nothing happened. Okay, I thought, last time was just a blip, it’s all good.

You didn't think it'd be that simple, right?

You didn’t think it’d be that simple, right?

This was our dance: the every-other-rain tango. There’d be water in the house, I’d text, he’d come out, target something else, it’d hold for one storm, then we’d do it all again. The third time it happened I was losing my patience. We wanted to be able to move forward with house repairs, to replace that nasty used-to-be-outside-now-it’s-inside wall that has seen so very much water damage over the years, but how can you do that if the water is just going to keep coming in.

Scraps gets feisty!

Scraps gets feisty!

I’ve tried transferring the video mentioned in the text but it appears locked on my phone for the time being. Here is a still, though, that shows what we were seeing when we crawled shoulder-up into the “attic” above the back hall. (And when I say we, I absolutely mean Todd as the combination of a ladder and a damp, dark, cramped space is a combination I have no intention of putting myself into. My phone is my periscope.)

The problem child of the Gingerbread Dollhouse.

The problem child of the Gingerbread Dollhouse.

From what we could tell, the flashing (that, for those unawares, exists to channel water that might slip under a shingle or two along a joist and out, or something like that) ends at this supporting wooden pillar. Wherever the water was coming from (because it’s also true that water will find the path of least resistance, so it doesn’t have to be coming from directly above when it has a nice alley to travel down) if was getting into our hallway and bathroom here.

I pretty much gave L one more shot before I contacted S (S being the contractor of record, with L doing the actual work). He met Todd out at the house and did something (I don’t even remember what he claimed to do at this point), and told Todd that if that didn’t work, he had one more thing he could try.

Now, I ask you, how many times would you ask the same person to fix the seemingly same problem without getting results before finding another solution? The “definition of insanity” saw comes to me, you know? But since he claimed he had one more fix (which begs the question why he didn’t do that in the first place), I let him come back when, in short order, the “fix” proved useless.

It so happens that the “final” solution was to add additional flashing (this time to the exterior of the roof, because to do otherwise would require removing a bunch of the single-story roof or some such). It also happened that this was a day I was at home, sick, and trying desperately to rest on the sofa while they banged away on the roof. I didn’t even go out and say anything to them about it because I wanted my damn roof fixed and if adding a headache onto the existing aches and pains was how I was going to get it, so be it!

The "beautiful" job they did of adding in the afterthought flashing--photo by Todd this January while he was up on the roof (because you know I'm not getting out there!)

The “beautiful” job they did of adding in the afterthought flashing–photo by Todd this January while he was up on the roof (because you know I’m not getting out there!)

Too bad it didn’t work.

That’s when I called S****, asked him to take care of it, and he had a talking to with L*** as to what needed to be done. Suddenly it was all the fault of that pillar/post thing, you know, where the flashing stopped that we talked about back in August (it was mid-October, now) creating an uneven surface in the roof. If that’s so, then why in the hell didn’t they a) take care of it when they put the new roof on, or, b) fix it the last 4 times you’d been out?!

At this point I was also exploring whether we had any recourse through the bank (since they had their hands in the renovation–no go there). And getting more and more clear with L*** that I was about ready to get someone else to fix it and that, after spending more than $12K on a roof 6 months prior I was not going to be the one paying for the fix!

I have no idea what (if anything) they did in October. I remember he was trying to tell me, at some point, that it wasn’t the roof that was the problem it was the exterior of the home (he mentioned that in August, too, not that he made any move to do anything about it then, either), a matter of relative pressures, and the water was actually defying gravity and scooting up under the clapboards (up being the key word).

Now, okay, there’s actually precedent for differing pressures in and outside of the building envelope to create those kinds of situations, though the only references I’ve really been able to find were in commercial buildings, not clapboard Victorians, but whatever. My bullshit detector was pretty much pinging in the red with him by this point. I reminded him that one of the many tasks he had during the renovation was to check out and replace any bad boards on the house as part of the exterior work–he had his hands (or, well, his crew’s hands, and I’ve already theorized on that point) on every exterior inch of the house, so an error there was his responsibility to catch before now. I also questioned the premise that, if it wasn’t, in fact, the roof, then why in the hell did his previous roof “fixes” all see to work, even if only temporarily?!

Like I said, BS-meter overload.

That final email in November has them out at the house again, Thanksgiving weekend no less, patching yet another spot (oh, yes, on the roof again) and testing other areas.

The diagnosis this time? That it wasn’t the roof (then what the hell did they fix when the hose-test caused the water to come again while he was standing with his head in the attic?!), it was actually the water falling from the upstairs roof, hitting the downstairs roof, bouncing up several feet, and entering through—dun dun dun—the casing of the upstairs bathroom window! *gasp*

He caulked the window, explained that it would hold a while but not forever, and strongly suggested installing gutters.

I certainly hope he didn’t think I’d ask him to install them!

The front of the house shows no signs of renovation, the back, though, is a patchwork of rooflines and angles. This is the offending edge from whence our troubles, apparently, spring.

The front of the house shows no signs of renovation, the back, though, is a patchwork of rooflines and angles. This is the offending edge from whence our troubles, apparently, spring, and the beginning of Todd’s gutter additions on the left.

Now, it’s been several months since their last visit (November) and several months since Todd started installing the gutters (January) and I don’t want to jinx us, but since then we’ve been drip free. Being just one dude, awesome though he may be, means that pretty much one section of gutter is going up a weekend (if that). The uppermost roof-line will probably require a scissor lift or cherry picker and the aid of a brother or friend or all of the above, but so far, so dripless.

While I’ve been adamant that they would get the roof fixed one way or another, when it comes to the rest of their handiwork I’ve pretty much given up. The sections of floor they replaced were not done well. In the back hallway you can clearly see where the screws holding down the cement board are attached because they raise little tents in the vinyl flooring. There are puckers in said flooring where tubs or refrigerators sit. And there’s a section in the kitchen that is compressed or something (supposedly the stuff they used is like hardie board, but for floors) and I swear one of these days I’m going to put a high heel through the vinyl and get stuck. We’re not sure if it got crushed pre-install, or if it’s where some corners are meeting, unsupported. Either way, we’ll deal with it when we redo those areas ourselves. Because I’m bound and determined not to have that man back in or near my house!

On The Nightstand: March 2015

Everyday Adventures

That’s a loaded title, isn’t it? When I first envisioned this website (12 years ago, ahem) I always planned for their to be a little section on the sidebar with whatever book(s) I was currently reading and linked to my thoughts on said books. I suppose I could still do that (or use the Goodreads app/plugin or some such), but I’ll be honest: I only remember to check in with Goodreads at the end of the month, I’m not sure I’d be any better with a manual sidebar feature.

Enough blathering about blathering about books, let’s get to the more direct stuff!

Book covers snagged from GoodReads

Book covers snagged from GoodReads

In addition to everything else that was going on in March, I was really ripping through some books!

First up was the Traveler’s Gate Trilogy by Will Wight. Which started out as me just having House of Blades on my Kindle because I met the author’s brother at a convention the weekend it was being released and blah blah blah supporting other creators, etc. I read the first couple of chapters and reminded myself why I don’t read high fantasy as a general rule. That was 2013.

BUT! It was next up on the oldest unread books on my Kindle list, so I dove back in, waded through the world building and character soup, and damn if I wasn’t really interested in who these people were by the mid-point in the book. And by the end? Totally checking to see if book 2 was available. Not only was it, but it was available for borrowing via Prime, so I didn’t even have to break my spending diet to get it!

Oh, another thing, I actually read House of Blades in February, but after I wrote the last book round-up, and I didn’t realize I’d devour it quite so quickly! So I borrowed Book 2 at the very end of February and was able to borrow Book 3 a few days later once the counter had reset for March. Book binge!

Here’s the short version (but no spoilers): In this world, magic-users are called Travelers. Some are born to it, others trained to it. Travelers are affiliated with Territories (usually only one, but there are exceptions) and each Territory comes with certain pros and cons. (There’s a bit of vague Norse references in some of the names and all, but nothing truly one culture or another.) Simon is our main character, ordinary poor kid in his village after his dad is killed by a Traveler and his mother tortured into mindlessness. Cheerful so far, right? It gets better (no, really, it does). Simon’s village is raided and in the scuffle Leah appears to distract the baddies and get captured instead of Simon, so he feels honor-bound to try and rescue her. Now, back when his family had that run-in with dark side of magic, another Traveler stepped in and saved him and his mom (more or less). Simon decides to go back to the spot it all happened and see if he can get the Traveler to train him so he can rescue Leah.

While Simon makes great strides in his training out of necessity, I appreciated that it was accomplished more out of abject stubbornness instead of dumb luck or some hidden ability. Simon kinda sucks at being a Traveler at times, but he’s also not a complete anti-hero or a whiny brat complaining about finding himself in a situation. I respect the character, in other words, and that made it easy to get interested in him. He also doesn’t “drink the Kool-Aide” the way another character, Alin, does when it’s discovered he’s (Alin’s) the first natural-born Traveler of super-Territory Elysia, the prophesied one, and all that. Alin would have made a far less interesting main character, but as supporting character it works better. And Leah, well, she’s got her own secrets. We’ll just leave it at that.

It’s far from a perfect story, but I really enjoyed the hell out of it and so would definitely recommend it if you can get into a story and ignore the details.

Next up was Rushed, by Brain Harmon. Modern day setting with some fantastical/supernatural elements. What it wasn’t, despite the title, was a quick-moving story. 95% or more of the book takes place during a single day. And while there are definite signs of imagination on the part of the writer, there are also so blatant pop-culture reference drops (Steven King, the Shining, Curious George, and Indiana Jones) that work in some ways but not in others. And the perceived antagonist is just referred to as the foggy man. Oookay.

Basically, this guy starts having this dream that wakes him up with this urgency to GO (as in travel, not heed nature’s call). But where and why are elusive. He resists for a couple of nights and then, finally, gives in and decides to get in his car and drive wherever and get it out of his system. His wife takes all of this in stride, almost unbelievably calm. I think this is meant to underscore their loving, trusting relationship. And, again, he’s just gone a day so, really, I suppose you could give their dynamic the benefit of the doubt, once he starts encountering weird stuff in corn fields (of course) and sending her cell phone pictures of the same, I’d expect her to be a little more concerned! In any other book their banter would have been delightful, it just didn’t seem to work for me, here.

I was reminded, more than once, of King’s Dark Tower series–a series I enjoyed, by the way, until that piss-poor ending he threw at us after waiting more than a decade for the damn series to end (apparently I’m still very. opinionated. on that point, ahem). Our main character (whose name I cannot even recall, that should tell you something) is no Roland, but we have a very similar, frustrating, oh-you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me, side-eye up on side and down the other ending in store and I was not pleased. I don’t think I’ll be reading the other two books in the series.

Now for something totally different!

The peril in downloading book and letting them sit for a while is that you might not remember why you downloaded them in the first place. When I started on Connie Brockaway’s No Place for a Dame I really wondered what I was thinking–it starts out like your typical bodice ripper! With “dame” in the title I was thinking 1920s and here I was about a century off!

While it did turn out to be a historical romance, with all the usual (dare I say formulaic) elements, the characters were engaging and the premise was pretty good. A gamekeeper’s daughter is granted the gift of education by the master of the house. She has a talent for astronomy, discovers a comet, and wants to present it to the Royal Astrological Society (yes, I know, it’s that for reasons), only one thing stands in the way: the fact that she’s a she and not a he. So she enlists the help of Lord Strand in the usual subterfuge, hilarity ensues, and they eventually succumb to the expected attraction. (I really don’t consider that a spoiler, see again: formula).

Now, I did like the way they extricated themselves from the resulting scandal-to-be. And telling would be a spoiler, but I’ll say it was inventive and funny. Turns out this is book 3 in a series, but I don’t think I’ll go back and read the others. I feel like No Place for a Dame stands alone really well and I don’t want to tempt fate with another book in a genre I’m not a big fan of.

The book club selection for the month was The Awakening, a shocking book in its day by Kate Chopin, but like a lot of the “scandalous” books from decades past, it doesn’t hold the same power when read in modern times. It’s all about a woman who realizes that she is unhappy with her life, her husband, and the strictures of Victorian society. And while I can empathize with a need to change one’s situation, her “awakening” didn’t come with any sense of responsibility or purpose, she was just as self-centered and careless in the choices she makes to extricate herself from the unhappiness as she appeared at the beginning of the book.

As is often the case, the secondary characters were far more interesting to me, and the ending of the book was disappointing, but in a different way from Rushed (though I’d still call it a cop-out). The book’s been out for more than a century so I’m going to “spoil” the ending: she kills herself. Why? Because the alternate life she drifted towards didn’t turn out the way she planned. The man she left her husband for had a shred of decency and didn’t succumb to her charms–but not because he didn’t want to, because he knew it wasn’t the right thing to do–and she runs off and ends herself. Oh, sure, she spares a momentary thought for her two young children, but it ultimately didn’t matter.

Even the way she ended it was thoughless and self-centered. She arrives at the resort the frequent each summer unannounced, in the off-season, sending the few people on the island into a tizzy trying to make up a room and meal for her, while she heads off to the beach. She refused offers from friends for help (including a kind doctor that actually seemed to have a clue about what she was going through and appeared ready to listen and talk without judging her thoughts or actions). Even taking into consideration the mores of the day and the narrow roles women could fill, she was weak and lacked character. And that just makes for a frustrating end of a story.

Thank goodness the next book was more my style, featured a strong female lead, and included enough humor to keep things light but without cheapening the suspense of who was really responsible for the death of a student in the admiralty law professor’s office. Long Knives, by Charles Rosenberg, is a pretty interesting legal thriller. There’s sunken treasure ships (or at least the rumor of them), university politics, condo board scheming, and so on and so forth.

I was stymied for most of the book what the title had to do with anything. Again, I had no memory of the book’s description and was expecting something adverture-y, and then maybe pirate-adjacent when the sunken treasure because a plot point. But, no, it’s apparently a metaphor for treachery (a quick search reveals that it dates to the 12th century–guess I missed that one during my SCA days) and was finally mentioned by one of the antagonists during an informal academic hearing that ultimately revealed whodoneit.

Nothing about the book blew me away, but it was an enjoyable read. If there are more novels featuring Jenna James (the lawyer-turned-professor protagonist), I’d probably give them a try. (Oh, looks like this might have actually been a sequel. There’s a lot of history between some of the characters, history that apparently is fully discussed in Death on a High Floor.)

Just one more to go! Even though I finished Back on Murder in April, I’m liable to forget about it by the end of the month, so I’ll go ahead and cover it, now. It’s your basic police procedural starring a fallen-from-grace homicide cop, March, who really wants to get back on the regular rotation but it seems like he’s on his way out, not up. At first I was worried that he was going to be another anti-hero, but I discovered I like him well-enough by the end.

There’s a shoot-out at a drug house and Marsh, trying to make himself useful, actually discovers something at the scene that suggests there was another person there, definitely injured, possibly dead, but why is the body not there? Then there’s a fair haired do-gooder that goes missing, and March is convinced there’s a connection, as incongruous as it seems, and pins his hopes on it being the case that redeems him in the eyes of the department. Things don’t go as planned (it’d have been a short book if they had!) and another couple of opportunities present themself that also seem to fizzle (hope that doesn’t give too much away).

The fact that this is #1 is a series of March mysteries tells you right off that something eventually goes right, but it was pretty damn touch-and-go for a good long while. Would I read the rest of his series? Maybe. Once I catch up on all the other books still in my backlog I’ll consider it.

According to GoodReads I’m 2 books behind schedule my goal of 75 books read this year. Guess I need to step things up a bit more, huh?