Sunday Post – 13 November 2022 @kimbacaffeinate @readingreality

Posted November 13, 2022 by Anne - Books of My Heart in Sunday Post / 66 Comments

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly  @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week, and showcase books and things we have received.


Don’t forget to look at my giveaways on the right sidebar.  Giveaways end tonight for Blackwater Falls and the Read-along giveaway of a Jeaniene Frost digital book.

Sunday,  a nice day but one with lots of blog visiting.  I woke up earlier than early for me even considering the time change.  My brother called me from Sao Paulo, Brazil where he and his wife are visiting with her family. I got to see them on Facetime.  They come home tomorrow.  We had a nice FB chat for the Read-along.  Then I hurried up to take Lulu on a longer route before it got dark at 5pm!  I made lists of everything I need to do outside tomorrow while the weather is still really nice.

Monday,  I went right to sleep last night so I started the day with reading and finished my book. I still got going pretty well.  After notifying the winners of two giveaways, Vanishing Hour and Archangel’s Resurrection,  and doing some blog visiting.  I went to work on the outside tasks. I got everything done except the leaves. The tree in the front yard still has half so I have time. lol  I pulled weeds, trimmed back the rosemary,  planted one perennial I had been trying to decide where to plant.  Lulu and I did our walk. It was 84F (29C), a new record high.

Tuesday,  today my schedule is going well.  Right now, going to bed earlier and getting up earlier is working for me.  Today I’m focusing on phone calls, paper work, etc.  We already voted last week.  I’m looking at healthcare options for 2023.  I have a review to write and I’m writing my first discussion post.  Almost always now, I walk Lulu at 4 since it gets dark at 5.  I went down to go to the bathroom and leave. No water in the kitchen. No water in the bathroom.  I saw on FB that the water main got damaged and they are working on it from 2 hours ago.  So Lulu and I went on our walk.  We got the water about the time we would be having dinner. Luckily we had distilled water for diffusers or the iron or we wouldn’t have had any water for anything.  I switched to a simpler dinner, but did add steamed veggies once the water was back.  All the energy went out of me with the lack of water; it lasted about 5 hours.  Then I watched some of the election results on MSNBC because I could watch Steve Kornacki do statistics and graphs every day.  I didn’t go to sleep until 3am.  There’s a few people I was really happy to see win and some I felt so badly that lost.

Wednesday,   so of course I was going to be tired today and I woke up a bit too early.  My daughter and I went to  the chiro.  Then I went to the post office and picked up a bit at Aldis.  On the way back, we got stopped on the road because there was an accident.  We were stopped and 3 ambulances went past us.  Finally, we turned around and went another way.  It took over an hour longer and it was dark. So poor Lulu didn’t get a walk. I had to put away the groceries, get dinner going.  Because of the water main break we have an advisory so we can’t use the ice maker. I bought bottled water for drinking and teeth brushing. I’m boiling water in the tea pot then letting it cool and put into a pitcher.  The pitchers I use for Lulu’s water, washing food,  I need to get to bed earlier tonight.  They notified us after dinner that the water has tested free of contaminants and now we just need to run all the faucets for a couple minutes to flush the lines.

Thursday, I set my alarm to get going but woke up before the alarm.  I got all the right clothing together.  Then I went out and cleaned the Harley, dressed in my gear and headed out.  I was a bit anxious because there was that big accident last night.  I was also worried it wouldn’t start and I fumbled a bit but it started right away.  I rode up to the dealership to have the annual inspection and had them put air in the tires.  It was cloudy and there was a threat of wind and rain, but not as cold as I thought it might be.  After I went to get some gas,  $3.41 for premium, folks!  It was just fun. I need to ride more.  We got a farm box today.  I took Lulu on a medium walk.  Then I got chicken thighs baking to make a batch of her food. I was working to finish a library book due today.  My account said it expired at 8pm. but thankfully it let me finish reading it from bedtime to just after midnight.

Friday,  I started out pretty early. I made calls to handle some upcoming med appts, refills, and start on next year’s health insurance.   I spent a lot of time messing with different post sharing apps. If you’re interested look at my notes below. I tried a new cabbage / vegetable soup recipe for dinner. My daughter thought she wouldn’t like it but she did.

Saturday, I tried to get going for all the yard work which needed to happen. I woke up too early and then took a bit to go back to sleep.   The snow peas are up. No sign of the swiss chard. The broccoli looks good.  I took the tomato vines on a tray into the dining room.  I threw out the rest of the vines and brought the cages into the garage.  The city sucked up the leaves so I blew all the new ones in front to the curb.  Then I mowed the front yard.  In the middle, I ate a bit of lunch. Afterwards, Lulu and I walked on the long route.  The colder weather starts tomorrow, in the 50s all week and it will freeze some nights.

 


Things I Learned This Week:

OK  if I’m asking for help, I’m also going to share the cool things I learn. You may already know them but hopefully it will help someone.

I’ve been reviewing ways to share my posts to Facebook, Twitter, etc. These are all things I can access without cost for the 40ish posts I have per month.

I’ve been looking at Buffer which is free, but for one post a day, but I can’t figure out how to get the posts to Buffer.  I think it can be plugged into WordPress or I’ve found 2 programs to do it but don’t know how to feed my posts to them either.  On the plus side, Buffer is easier to post the sales and deals which I do manually on a daily basis.  On Buffer, I only have to do it once and send, instead of posting to each site, and I don’t have to change my account for Facebook.  It does only allow one account per channel which works for sales and deals because I only post those to Books of My Heart on FB and @BooksofMyHeart on Twitter.  But posts I share to more Twitter accounts.

I also looked at Post Promoter but haven’t figured out how to use it.  It’s already set up as a plugin for UBB (Ultimate Book Blogger) but when I try to link accounts it doesn’t work.  The website looks like it has several levels of subscriptions from $99 – $499 which even the lowest level is almost as much as Jetpack and I’d have to do all the setup again. OK it’s free as part of my hosting at UBB.  But I only get errors when I try to set it up.

Then I found DLVR.IT.  It allows posts to only one account per channel and I set that up using RSS feed for the FB and Twitter Books of My Heart accounts.  It works fine and wasn’t too hard to set up.  I don’t know how to get my tags there if I can include them in the feed or in the post titles (too long I think).

Next I found IFTTT.  Here there are these little apps that do a bunch of things.  I was able to use one to share posts for my @Northwomn Twitter (also without the tags)  but this is fine.  I’m happy with it working and I don’t have to have the tags for this account.  I may find more things which will work here from RSS feed. There are a lot of apps.

I’m also going to look at SlackSocial but I ran out of time.

 


Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Marlene at  Reading Reality.  These are the exciting ARCs I received this week (If you click on the cover, it will take you to the Goodreads entry):

 

           

 

         

 My grateful thanks to Harper Audio,  Recorded Books, Random House Audio,  Berkley Romance.                           

 

(If you click on the cover, it will take you to the Goodreads entry)

Nothing  but Audible and Chirp are having sales I will look at on Sunday.

 

Now the really scary one. This is all the Kindle and Audible freebies I grabbed this past week. You can see why I need to do Thrifty Thursday to be sure I read a few at least one each month.

                   

                   

 

I really meant to cut back on freebies BUT  they are free so I guess that won’t be happening.

 

I’m not including things like reviews posted or upcoming as they are always in the right sidebar. And, my challenge status is also there.

 

Anne

 

 

Anne - Books of My Heart
Follow me
Please follow and like us:
Follow by Email
Instagram
Twitter
Visit Us
Follow Me
RSS

Posted November 13, 2022 by Anne - Books of My Heart in Sunday Post / 66 Comments


66 responses to “Sunday Post – 13 November 2022

  1. Sounds like an eventful week. I’m glad you had a good time riding your motorcycle even though the gas is so high. I love IFTTT. I used it for my Instagram posts. Anytime I post something on Instagram, it posts natively to Twitter so my followers can see my picture without clicking a link back to Instagram.

    Jenni Elyse recently posted: Sunday News #43
  2. It hovered around 80 degrees here all week (or a little above) but today it’s dropped about 10 degrees so I’m a happy girl. 🙂 I’m totally an early to bed early to rise person. I tend to have plenty of energy and motivation in the morning. By the evening – I’m done. lol I’m almost always in bed by 9 PM. Great pic of you on the bike! I’ve only ridden a motorcycle once and didn’t love it, but I was a passenger. I might feel differently if I was on my own and the one in control.

    Tanya @ Girl Plus Books recently posted: The Sunday Post #311 | November 13, 2022
  3. It honestly never occurred to me to look for a auto-share app and now that you’ve started the research, I feel like I need to look into it – it would sure save time! My blog is hosted on Wix so I have to start there and see what’s compatible with that. I’ll be following up on this for sure.
    You got some great books this week – hope you enjoy them.
    Terrie @ Bookshelf Journeys

    Terrie @ Bookshelf Journeys recently posted: Stacking the Shelves #24, Sunday Post and Sunday Salon #24
  4. I did not know you ride a Harley! Wow! I rode on the back of my Uncle’s motorcycle once, but I don’t think it was a Harley. It was scary-fun!

    What a pain when the water was off. I have a feeling the EPA is going to want our community to replace these pipes from the 70s in the near future so that should be fun times when they start working on that. I should start stocking up on bottled water the day I get a notice in the mail confirming my suspicions.

    Jinjer recently posted: Anime
  5. You had a really busy week! I haven’t been doing anything with my Facebook page for my blog since I started having issues even putting a link to the post on there. So that page is just sitting there. I should figure out if I can use one of those things you talked about to have it automatically post there. We got the colder weather here now finally. And while I’m glad for it to not be just miserable hot, I don’t like wearing a coat either, lol. Looks like it was nice getting your Harley out and going for a ride! You should do it more! Have a great week!

    Lisa Mandina (Lisa Loves Literature) recently posted: Weekly Wrap-Up #93 – November 13th, 2022
    • Thanks Lisa. The easiest ones I found were ones that use RSS feed because you don’t have to add a WordPress plugin but plugins can also be easy. That said, I really like IFTTT but none of the Facebook apps seems to be working currently. It’s a process to learn about all the options and everyone’s situation is different.

      Anne - Books of My Heart recently posted: 🎧 Raven Unveiled by Grace Draven
    • Thanks Sophia! I think I am caught up from the trip but there’s still so much to do. I feel it every day. I don’t get to crafts or watching tv at all. I’d recommend IFTTT for you so you can automate posts from RSS or Buffer to manually share to your facebook and/or Twitter. I’m not sure what to do since none of them have Mastodon but that could be put into a rafflecopter. So many things are already connected to Twitter and I have long-term follows and followers there.

      Anne - Books of My Heart recently posted: Hold On to Me by Karen Grey
  6. Glad you had a good week and you look happy on your Harley! Funny how $3.41 seems ok now, with how pricy gas was over this past summer. Glad you got the water back. I’m still not used to it being so dark now earlier, it makes me not want to leave the house to get anything done in the evenings. Enjoy your week ahead!

  7. It is such an adjustment now with the time change and getting dark sooner. The elections were a late night, weren’t they? 🙂

    It’s been getting colder here too. Love hearing about how your garden is doing.

    I want to read that Lisa Unger, it seems to be everywhere.

    Greg recently posted: Sunday Post #478
  8. Look at you on that Harley! Looks like fun, Anne! $3.41 for premium is pretty cheap when you consider ours is about $6 per gallon! It was more during the summer. You’ve had some nice weather! Our temps will be in the 50s too next week which is a warm up for us. It was sunny and gorgeous today, but cold. I’m enjoying our fire right now!

    I was thinking about that Lisa Unger. I look forward to your thoughts. I’m also on the fence about The Spice Master at Bistro Exotic. I love that it’s set in Paris so maybe I’ll give it a shot.

    • yes I thought that was cheap for premium and some people are saying it’s so expensive. They haven’t ridden to California on their Harley in the summer. Or to Canada. The Harley is fun and I’ve been dragged down by daily life a bit these days and just not ridden as much, partly because with Covid I don’t go out as much traveling.

      Anne - Books of My Heart recently posted: Series on Saturday: Colorado edition
      • Yes! Canada is expensive! Although, the first time I went to Europe back in 2012 the gas was $10 per gallon in Paris! It was no wonder there were no SUVs or trucks. There were a lot of motorcycle riders even though it was cold. I’m sure to save money. They had special leather blankets that snapped on over their legs and were kitted out in leather gear.

  9. A water main break sounds awful! How come so many of us book bloggers are having issues right now (for me it’s my oven needs a new motherboard). I hope you enjoy your books and have a wonderful week ahead.

  10. Sounds like another busy week for you.
    I’m not very good in going to bed early, and i have to wake up early with our kids. So I’ve been getting very little sleep these last few months. I’m starting to feel it though. Probably good to try and work something out.
    You look great on that Harley. 😉 Be safe!
    Have a great week and happy reading.

    Maureen @ Maureen's Books recently posted: Review ‘Memories of Mistletoe’ by Carrie Elks
  11. The time change is really messing with my dog! He likes to take his walk before the sun sets and is not loving keeping to the schedule we’ve always had. Love the Harley pic and how great to go out and have some fun. Have a great week!

  12. Jen

    Do you know how the new JetPack system will work? Will it charge me if I go over, or just stop functioning once I hit my limit? And do you know if it sends to twitter and facebook does that count as two or one, since it’s all one post?

    I had a wonderful weekend – I was in NYC with my daughter, mom, sister, and nieces. We did all the stuff! Lots of fun.

    • I’ve been using Jetpack Publicize for about 5 years. It changed on my post setup to say Jetpack Social now which is the new version. One post can go to multiple places. Mine goes to the facebook page and 3 Twitter accounts. But since I have more than one post some days I will be over 30. I don’t know what will happen. This is what it said in the email I got:

      If you want to auto-share more than 30 social posts per month, you can upgrade to the Basic plan. We have a special introductory offer with a one-month trial for $1. After that, it’s $10 per month (billed yearly). If you aren’t ready to upgrade, there is still time to decide. We won’t start counting posts until November 21st.

      I expect when they want money I’ll have to turn it off. I’m double sharing things right now to get it setup up for December.

      I’d love to go to NYC again but we won’t do something like that right now with Covid out there. It’s so fun. We went on the train from here. And one time we drove / megabus from Philly.

      Anne - Books of My Heart recently posted: Discussion Post: How do I figure out Ratings for Reviews?
  13. Yes, I use a WP plugin called “WP to Buffer.” I have the PRO version because I use it on several websites. That’s the only way I know how to get posts to Buffer, though I think they do allow you to import in an RSS feed? Something to look into. Cool seeing you on that Harley!

    S. J. Pajonas recently posted: The Fate of Shin-Osaka Is Now Available!
    • Thank you. yes I’m aware of that wp to Buffer plug in. I will have to look if they take RSS feed. I’ve done a lot of Harley riding and traveling. Until my daughter spent a year in a wheelchair, I used to put more miles on my Harley by far than my car and that was in MN!

      Anne - Books of My Heart recently posted: Hold On to Me by Karen Grey
  14. We have already had to walk our dogs in the dark with flashlights a couple of times since the time change and I am not a fan. You look good on your bike! I bet you had a ton of fun. The water issue sounds like a pain. I have been there and it is never fun. I hope that you have a great week, Anne!

    • Thank you Carole. I do love riding the Harley. The water thing is a pain. It’s not really hard to deal with, just tiring. Like, you know, just one more ball to juggle. We have a leash where the handle is a flashlight – lol. But when it’s dark, it’s also colder so we are not fans either.

      Anne - Books of My Heart recently posted: Series on Saturday: Colorado edition
  15. The weather last week was just whacked! Now we’re going below freezing at night? Ugh. But at least it’s not hot and humid again, right? lol The dogs are all messed up with the time change. It starts getting dark and they think it’s time to eat. Your garden is doing so much better than ours. And I still have a ton of stuff to do outside. But most of the Leafy Menace is now on the ground and blown into the woods. I’ll have to rake acorns though. I wish I could sell them. We had a bumper crop again this year. Yay for Harley riding! One day I’ll get one.

    • Thank you Carol. If you get a Harley we will have to go riding! My fall garden hasn’t done as well as I would like. My daughter and I will have to research what to do for a better result next year. The lettuce and spinach plants are the same size as they were when we bought them at the beginning of September and the lettuce is going to seed. I still have hopes for the broccoli and snow peas though. I don’t know if I will plant more than one tomato plant next year as they take a lot of space and my daughter won’t eat them. Lulu wants to eat at the usual time which is now an hour too early. It sure went from nice to cold quickly. I think in the spring we get more weeks of 60-70. My leaf battle has barely begun. Sigh.

      Anne - Books of My Heart recently posted: Discussion Post: How do I figure out Ratings for Reviews?